"Pornography fills the void created by the lack of education provided by parents and teachers. It is a source of information for most teenagers who have no on to explicitely talk to about sex." In Hass's investigation, 99% of the boys said they had looked at sex books and magazines, 58% had seen a sex movie. There is no reason to regret this. As Alec Graig said, "Erotic realism reflects a basically healthy and therapeutic attitude to life, and its effects on the average person are generally beneficial."
"As long as we continue to fail in our responsibility to present sexual material in an accurate, sensitive way, teenagers will ahve to look to pornography for their education." The only problem Hass discerns is that the boy has no experienced person with whom he can discuss these matters.
The only problem Hass discerns is that the boy has no experienced person with whom he can discuss these matters.
But the boy loved by a boy-lover ,i/does/ have such a person at hand. If he can find in the home of his adult friend a good collection of texts and pictures showing the various sexual activities, and if he can openly discuss them and the feelings they elicit with the man, then he has a great pedagogical head-start on his contemporaries (Eggenkamp 1978,8). Exaggerations, distortions, unrealistic aspects of the depictions can now be discussed and put in proportion, something that is imposible if the boy can only enjoy such material in secret.
Hunger, thirst and sexual lust are no anatomical or psychological limit's to monetary greed. It continues undiminished even when it has lost all usefulness for the individual.
Watching other do it makes one less shy oneself; it can even liberate a boy from groundless shame over his own desires. The proof that the acts which he secretly longs to perform are quite usual and natural for others can take an enormous load off his mind. It can also make him more physically free with his friend.
That some boys are shocked and repulsed is usually due to their upbringing. Most are extremely curious. One is struck by how very little research there is on the effects of exposure to such material. It would cause a great commotion, a loud outcry of disgust, if scientists were to confront a large experimental population of minors with ahrd-core pornography in order to study their reactions. That no such outcry is heard when similar experiments are made on children with pictures and movies of hard-core violence is just another demonstration of how much less alarming our society finds physical cruelty than physical tenderness.
Prof. Hart de Ruyter of Groningen University, a children's psychiatrist, thinks that "pornographic" literature may help to socialise the tensions of pubertal youngsters. These often outlawed publications are at times helpful. "The only really objectionable things are those texts and comics in which aggression is mixed with sex. (...) If society would accept a well-balanced amount of pornography, excitement about the longed-for forbidden fruit would diminish and we could help the teenager solve one of his pressing problems without exaggereated feelings of guilt."