One kind of sexual behaviour of children is watching pornography. Here we collect some information about it:
"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.
But the boy loved by a boy-lover 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.
Haeberle contrasts the so-called "obscene" magazines which "sometimes contain valuable sexual information information in simple language" to the much more harmful misinformation often found "in medical and psychiatric textbooks, encyclopedias, marital guides, police training manuals, catechisms, pastoral letters, and devotional literature." "Some of these booklets may well have a crippling effect on an unsophisticated young mind. (...) By comparison, most 'pornography' seems relatively harmless."
Of course, looking at erotic pictures or reading erotic texts will excite a bou's sexual appetite. But is it not morally better to excite his sexual thirst than to excite his thirs for money, as so much well-intentioned education tends to do?
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."
In Article <199503281326.HAA23307@mail.cs.utexas.edu> *********** writes: >I am curious, on a home-school mailling list i subscribe to a >pornography debate has emerged. It is amazing to me how many parents >think that pornography should not be censored from their kids (as young >as 12) and that it can actually be helpful in learning about sexuality. >this baffles me completely. Does anybody here have experiences with >pornography that could either refute or defend that position? >All I have is my experience at 9 or 10 finding my brother's playboy >magazines and the word of Ted Bundy...(in interviews) *snip* >....having read the book "Ordeal" >and known of a few women who were abused by porn-obsessed men i >can't understand why a parent would want to *allow* their child to see that >stuff...well, I was allowed to see pornography (of a mild sort, I don't know whether my parents had hard-core material around the house) at an early age, and whatever sexual kinks I have, I doubt it came from that. "Helpful" is a funny sort of word ... I don;t know whether it was helpful or not in learning about sexuality to actually see pornography, but it *was* helpful to be raised in an environment where I felt that sexuality was not something to be hidden because it is nasty. taking the word of Ted Bundy on porn is like taking the word of Jerry Falwell on Christianity. your mention of women who were abused by porn-obsessed men is a non- sequitor; if someone was inspired by a cookbook to force-feed their children croissants until they became violently ill, would that mean there is something wrong with me wishing my children to appreciate the joys of a well-cooked French dinner?
(USENET posting)
In Article <3l9nen$s9f@universe.digex.net> ************ writes:This is observation, not experience, but almost all the descriptions of children being hurt by exposure to pornography that I've seen have been of children being forced to look at it or duplicate it by adults. I haven't seen much evidence of children being hurt by what they chose to read or look at on their own initiative.
(USENET posting)
In Article <3lalbj$ifo@NNTP.MsState.Edu> ********* writes
My husband has been looking at pornography since he was 8. this was voluntary, he stole his dad's magazines and hid them for his own use. And _i_ would say that he HAS been hurt. He has fantasies that he has great difficulty controlling. They intrude into his thoughts many times during the day. Now, he didnt feel that this was much of a concern until we got married and he began to want to act those fantasies out with me.
Well, this becames a VERY frightening experience for me since i'm a rape victim in the process of recovery. It took me nearly six months into our marriage to be able to tell him that the fantasies and the acting out scared me and hurt me. So he tried to stop thinking about them and found that this made them even more powerful.
Its my opinion that if he had not been exposed to pornography at such a young age that he would not be so addicted to it now. And further that he would not want to act out the things he sees in the magazines.
so there may not be any official studies out there to back me up, but that is MY experience. Maybe it can be of help to someone...and help them avoid some of the pain and fear i've gone through.
(USENET posting)
In Article <3lie1l$oaj@lear.cs.duke.edu> ********** writes:
The idea that you can prevent teenagers with high levels of hormones from finding porno is a nice fantasy but not very practical. E.g. I came from a country where most hard-core porno was illegal, so the organized crime just had one more source of income and as a teenager I had access to all the hard-core porn I could pay for...
(USENET posting)
In Article <3lie1l$oaj@lear.cs.duke.edu> ********* writes:
I have a friend who is into SM; she keeps her porno books in a plane view in the living room. Her teenager son is not into SM, he consider that as "something that mommy does" and he did not read her porno and has never discussed that with her. Then one day the kid had a party to his friends and afterward he told his mom: "you know mom, X read 'Macho Sluts' all night, he just could not stop." It was the first time that the kid realized that his mother "boring" books can turn *on* kids his age.
So her son and X had access to the same porno, one was turned on and one thought that it was boring. Do you think that it is because of the porno or because something much more internal?
Is it possible that you were turned on by the porno because of something very internal, and the porno just exposed that?
(USENET posting)
One of Oskamp's subjects said, "I learned a great deal from movies, for example where there is good licking and sucking. Positions and that kind of thing. Certain sorts of porno could very well be used to instruct people about sexual practices."
"A French acquaintance visited me for several days with his 15-year-old lover Bernard. The boy had heard of my collection of sex films and asked to have a look at them. 'What would you prefer, hetero- or homo-movies?' I asked. 'Hetero, of course! I'm not the least bit interested in queer films.' And so every nicht before going to bed we had a film. But on the fourth night I said, 'sorry, no more movies. You've seen all my hetero films - I don't have any more' 'Well,' the boy said, 'if there's nothing else, wee could see a gay film.' So I choose one of two German boys, 15-year-olds like Bernard, strong, healthy, athletic, masculine boys, both with nice-looking faces. They were really in love with one another and expressed this in the film in every possible way. Bernard seemed completely fascinated with the show. The next morning his friend told me, 'Last night Bernard was really mad with passion. He just went crazy with desire; he was much more wound up than after any of the hetero movies. He was always too inhibited to suck my cock; real boys, he thought, just didn't do that. After watching how these German boys sucked each other, he did it to me, too, with complete assurance - and pleasure. He confessed tha he had always wanted to do this but he'd restrained himself because he was afraid it was unmanly."
Geraldo, a 15-year-old Sicilian boy, saw a movie of a man having intercourse with a woman at the house of an adult man he knew. He and his companions openly an unashamedly masturbated during the showing. The next day Geraldo returned with his 12-year-old brother Tanino, whom he dearly loved. He said to the man, "Tanino must see that film. I have found out that he has been jerking himself off, but hasn't the slightest idea what all this means. He needs that movie to show him." Geraldo ordered Tanino to masturbate as the film was shown, setting an example himself. At first Tanino was too shy, but when he saw, on the screen, the man inserting his penis into the woman's vagina his excitement overwhelmed him and he immediately started imitating his older brother.
This is how some of the Hass's subjects thought about erotic literature:
About pictures and films, often used during masturbation, the boys said: