I had a chance to read a recent discussion on how young is too young to view erotic materials. One person argued that it is the law, therefore it didn’t matter what was right or wrong, it was the law. I must admit to being dismayed by that sort of statement. I don’t have any respect for that argument or a person who will make it. Although the law is an attempt to codify what is right, it very seldom actually does that. It often codifies what is wrong instead. As Jefferson said, "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." The recent attempts by the U.S. Attorney General to censure adult language websites are an example of the tryant's will violating the rights of the individual doing no harm to others rights. I am much more concerned with what is right rather than what is legal. Doing what is legal without reference to what is right led many Germans down the path of evil.
That discussion made me start thinking about several questions, is porn bad for you? If not, at what age is it no longer bad for you? That the erotic is bad for you has been the standard argument used against all erotic literature since the Seventeenth Century as a reason to suppress it. It's a wonder, and comment on Milton's influence, that Chaucer managed to survive the Puritans. Shakespeare wouldn't have, had the Puritans had their way. The two greatest English writers would have been purged from history by the Religious extremists because they were considerd pornographic. That Shakespeare could have been eradicated from the English language should be a very important lesson to those who want to censor writings because they are dirty, but of course, the tryants won't listen or think.
The basic question we need to ask is, does reading about sex compel anti-social behavior? Well, what about reading Tom Clancy? Does that compel a reader to become a spy? How about reading a Dashiell Hammett novel? Does that compel a reader to go murder someone? The assertion that reading erotic fiction is somehow different than reading other sorts of fiction, or watching a murder mystery movie, and that it compels behavior when other genres don’t, is simply ridiculous on the face of it. No genre of fiction compels people to behave like the characters in the story, except for a very small number of true psychotics who will model their behavior after a fictional character, whether that is a mass murderer or a sex fiend. And if we really care about this very small number of nut cases, we’d be better off banning detective stories and war movies with their killings and writing sex stories so that the nut cases won’t kill but will try to screw themselves silly. It seems like we’d be better off.
Those Americans who have been lucky enough to live in Europe know how ridiculous our ban on erotica really is. And guess what, Europe has much lower rates of sex crimes, STDs, and teen pregnancies than the United States. You mean suppressing a natural impulse like sex causes anti-social impulses? Gee whiz. Who could have guessed it? Material that would bring prosecution in America is widely available on TV, news counters, everywhere in Europe. And the thing is, it doesn’t cause all those Europeans, adults or children, to break down and become raving sex addicts. They are much more balanced and sane in their approach to sex than Americans. “In America, sex is an obsession; in other parts of the world it is a fact.” -- Marlene Dietrich. Suppression is the evil, not exposure. How many times is it going to take Americans before they realize that Prohibition causes more evils than it solves?
Study after study has failed to find any real link between exposure to erotic material and anti-social behavior. Readers of pedophilia stories don’t go out and molest children. It is true that pedophiles will read erotica, but they are already pedophiles. The fictional accounts do not turn them into pedophiles anymore than reading Thomas Paine turned Timothy McVeigh into a murderer. A rapist is what he is whether he reads or not. We don’t automatically assume that he read a Truman Capote book and that caused him to commit rape, only erotic literature would cause that. Absurd. That sort of behavior is internal, not the result of reading fiction. More importantly, banning erotic stories won’t turn pedophiles into non-pedophiles. You can’t turn off the behavior by banning books. Catholic Priests spend their time reading the Bible, not porn, and yet we have had thousands of documented cases of serial pedophiles among the clergy. Should we ban reading the Bible? The idea is absurd. No sane person would conclude that the Bible turned priests into pedophiles, but they do believe reading erotica would. That is laughable, but unfortunately it is enshrined in our laws. It's not a book's fault. This is so ingrained in our Victorian hypocritical society that when Josh Powell blew himself and his children up, the cops made sure people knew he had porn on his computer, like viewing porn caused a man to blow up his family?!? 75 million Americans look at porn on the Internet but one guy had it on his computer and blew up his family, it must have been the porn that did it to him. How come those other 75 million people didn't blow up their families?
Then why do we even have a legal concept of obscenity? Obscenity is simply the erotic that is currently unacceptable in front of a jury. Since the State cannot prove any harm in the erotic, see the above, then the State has no right to enter the private lives of citizens and ban erotic materials, even by calling them obscene. A free society isn't a Monastary where the Government is the Abbott and punishes erotic thought by penances of jail terms. Since there is no harm in the erotic, never has been and never will be, (the fact that some don't like it isn't harm, some don't like communism but we don't arrest people for reading Das Capital,) and we aren't yet living in a totalitarian theocracy, the State has no right to regulate the erotic or prosecute obscenity which is simply the erotic they think a jury might not like.
Legislatures, with court acquiesce, have assumed the right to regulate morals. They shouldn't, but they do. What are morals? "Rules or habits of conduct, especially of sexual conduct, with reference to standards of right and wrong." From the American Heritage online dictionary. The keys in this definition are the 'rules' and 'standards.' In other words, morals are societal standards; what we all agree is right and wrong.
All right, what do we, as society, accept? There is no doubt that much of the usage of the Internet is for 'adult' entertainment, much of that is erotica. Americans use the Internet to see erotica and pornography. That should mean within the rules and standards, since most people do it, it should be fine. Why do the courts get away with persecuting erotica as a crime?
* 25 percent of all search engine requests are pornography related (Internet Pornography Statistics: 2003, David C. Bissette, Psy.D. www.healthymind.com, 2004)
* 72 million Internet users visit pornography web sites per year (Pornography Statistics 2003, www.internetfilterreview.com, 2003)
* A Montreal University study wanted to study men who watch porn versus those that don't. Well, they had a problem. They couldn't find a single man who hadn't watched porn. And the average age when boys started watching porn, ten. Ten! And yet we hear constantly a litany of, 'teens are too young.' By the time they are teens they are already experienced porn-o-philes.
* 94 percent of Americans believe a ban on Internet pornography should be legal (Statistics on Internet Pornography, www.levelbest.com)
In this contradiction lies the answer; hypocrisy. 94% of those folks using the Internet in the privacy of their home to view erotica will say, "Oh yes, terrible stuff. Should be banned," when asked publicly about it. There is no way to reconcile the first two statistics and the Montreal study with the third except to acknowledge Americans are incredible hypocrites and insane on the subject of sexuality. 'I want to look at it, but it ought to be illegal.' That duality is Nuts! It's about time Americans just admit the truth; we like to be entertained by sexual content and that desire starts way younger than we want to admit.
In truth, erotica is within the rules and standards of American's actual behavior. They just lie about it. That is how the courts get away with persecuting innocent people. Inside that jury room, Americans won't admit, "Yep, I look at it every day." They lie and vote the poor sap guilty. Speaking of hypocrisy, the prosecutors and judges on these monkey trials look at porn too. The FBI tried to set up a new office to 'combat pornography' and they couldn't find enough agents to staff it. They had to get a couple former nuns and a strict Mormon from Utah to get enought agents who don't look at porn themselves. When J. Edgar ran the FBI any agent who seized porn had to send it to his office for 'review.' Then J. Edgar would sign the arrest documents while his boyfriend gave him a blow job as they watched the porn. Typical American hypocrisy about sex.
I just read a study in Newsweek, similar to the failed Montreal study, that attempted to find out how men feel about buying access to sex, whether actual sex like hookers or simulated like Porn. The problem is they couldn't find enough men who hadn't 'bought' sex in some form in the last six months to have a control group so they had to cheat and alter their definition. Don't admit that everyone does it, let's change the definition and pretended half of the men hadn't, even if they really do. Typical Americans, lie about sex.
There is no reasonable person who could draw the conclusion that erotica influences behavior in such a way as to compel a reader into anti-social behavior. Americans real behavior shows that erotica is part of our usual and normal entertainment of choice. Therefore, access to erotica should not be blocked for adults any more than access to detective fiction, the Bible, sports, or any other material which gives pleasure to the reader.
As I mentioned earlier, the discussion that started me asking these questions was on a thread about keeping children, that is anyone under 18, from seeing or reading erotica. I hope I have already shown that there is no harm to adults in having access to erotic content. What about kids? That proscription strikes me as hard to defend rationally. Are seventeen-year-olds really children? Granted, many in America have done everything they can to delay the maturation of kids, but the truth is that they aren't children no matter how much we try to pretend they are children. They are functioning adults. They are simply young adults with a lack of experience. Preventing them from gaining experience won’t help them mature and it doesn’t make them children.
Let's examine how biologists classify Primates. There are three phases by which all primates are classified: infant, entirely dependant on Mother; juvenile, increasingly independent but not yet sexually mature; and adult, sexually mature. We can approximate human ages with these standard scientific divisions. Until age 3 or 4 is the infant stage. Juvenile would be up to age 13 or 14 for boys and probably a year younger for girls. After that humans would be adults as viewed by standard application of science to humans. That Montreal study showing men started watching porn at 10 shows when those hormones start running in changing the brain itself to desire access to information about sex. History certainly supports this view since most humans have, until very recently, married soon after sexual maturity. Of course, we don’t apply the same measures we apply to all other animals to ourselves. We are special. But we ought to. We too are primates. I think these are much more useful divisions to discuss whether or not someone is old enough to view erotic materials than our current, child till 18 then a second after midnight on their birthday, an adult, an artificial division which has no connection to reality.
Here's a revealing fact, the average teenage boy thinks about sex every five minutes. Of course, that goes way up when he's walking past the girls' gym class. If there are fifty girls he has sex fifty times in his mind. You do the math and the average teen is thinking about sex 105,120 times a year. How innocent is that? He may be ignorant of some facts but he sure as hell isn't innocent. Folks, reading erotica is not going to corrupt the innocence of someone who is already thinking about sex every five minutes and has been actively seaching for and watching porn since he was ten. And just as important, banning porn is not going to stop what is going on in that boy's head and hand - Sex!
Our current beliefs that people are children until eighteen is ridiculous from a historical view. In the 1800's England passed the first consent law and set twelve as the age a woman could legally consent. In his book Letters from the Earth Mark Twain wrote, "From the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick to receive the candle." Today such a idea would cause poor Mark to be pilloried. A hundred years ago it was not even debated. No one raised a stink. Where did this sudden idea that young adults are incapable of having sex come from? Actually, the age 12 used in England at least accorded with reality. The average age of puberty in girls is 8 - 12. Most girls in the U.S. will be in or through puberty by twelve. You know how you see a young girl and all of a sudden she is all legs? That is it, she is changing and that is one of the first outward signs. The biggest change is invisible and happens before any outward sign. Her body is being flooded with sex hormones which are changing her body to be able to reproduce and changing her brain to want to reproduce. And there is nothing anyone can do to change that. She is going to want sex. Send her to an all girl school. You ought to see the letters I get from girls in those schools. Hoo boy. I wish I could sneak in and join those lesbian couplings. You can't stop it, you can only redirect it in counter-productive ways.
The truth is, once a human matures sexually, they are an adult with all of the same drives, desires, fascinations, and fantasies. As puberty begins, the body douses the brain in sex hormones, marinating it in sex, so to speak, so that the very internal structure of the brain changes and it changes to be adult; that brain now commands a teen, go forth and reproduce and they do. The facts show how much this child until 18 is a lie. Every recent valid study has shown that half of the girls have sex before their fouteenth birthday. Most teens are having sex and yet, we pretend they are children. The facts are the facts. As I have argued above, adults should have access to erotic materials and that it is not harmful for adults to see these materials. Per standard science the age of adulthood should be the age at which the human matures sexually, and in most cases the studies show 'young adults' have begun sex, which is that point early in puberty, 8-12 for girls a year later for boys, that their brain become a seething cauldron of sex hormones. “Excuse me, but before you buy the magazine I need you to supply a blood test to see if your testosterone level is high enough.” I can picture some truly ridiculous results. The fact is, there is no bright line of maturity we can use to set an ideal age limit. 18 is ridiculous and too high but how then do we set an acceptable age limit?
Before answering that question, let’s examine the two remaining categories in a scientific way. Would an infant be harmed by exposure to erotic materials? Daddy is reading The Story of O while Mommy breast feeds the little tyke. Is junior going to be harmed? Not unless Daddy gets too excited and makes a grab for Mommy before the tyke is finished with dinner. Then Junior might go hungry.
Junior is not going to have the foggiest notion of what Daddy is reading, or watching or jerking off to because Mommy has been too tired since Junior arrived. The truth is an infant will have no cognizance of what ‘erotic’ even is. It would make no impression at all since infants have no concept of the erotic. It doesn’t exist in their world view. An infant could sit on Mommy’s lap while Daddy and Mommy watched Debbie Does Dallas and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference. In fact, they could take junior into the bedroom and put him in his crib while they made the beast with two backs, groaning out their orgasms and junior wouldn’t have any idea that anything erotic was occurring. He’d go right on playing with his rattle and goo-gooing away. There seems to be no reason to ‘protect’ infants from porn.
That leaves the third category, juveniles, to consider. At the younger ages it would seem that juveniles would behave similarly to infants, they would be too young to conceptualize what is erotic and therefore could suffer no harm. Once they are old enough to conceptualize what they are reading, then it would seem they are old enough to begin learning. Isn't this the basis of all of our educational theories? Teach them once they can understand, and the earlier they are exposed to any knowledge they can conceptualize the better they learn. Why then is sex different?
People bemoan the loss of 'innocence' of children exposed to erotic material, but really all they lose is their ignorance. I remember my own time when I was wildly interested in the differences between girls and boys but in complete ignorance because no information was available and I had no sister. Was I innocent or simply ignorant? I wasn’t innocent at all; I lusted heartily in my ignorance. Once the body begins pumping those hormones, they are no longer children
I remember playing doctor with the neighbor girl when I was 5, a very young age. I wasn’t innocent - I desperately wanted to get her knickers off - and worked my little brain to distraction talking her into it. And I don’t think I tarnished her innocence either, she seemed quite interested in my equipment as well. We did take a bite out of each other’s ignorance, for which we both got our bottoms paddled to remind us of our Puritan heritage, but neither of us suffered a loss of innocence unless what we really mean by innocence is ignorance. I think what most parents mean by innocence is ignorance. They can ignore their own uncomfortable feelings about sex, the ones they inherited from their Victorian parents and pretend they don't have to be frank with their kids. And the cycle continues.
I guess I'm not the only dirty little boy who is curious, am I? Go ahead, take that towel out of the way!
So, it seems that juveniles will fall naturally into one of two categories. They are too young to even be cognizant of erotic content and don’t need to be protected from it or they will be old enough to be cognizant of sex in which case, applying standard pedagogic models, the earlier they learn and lose their ignorance, the better off they will be as adults.
What follows logically is a very shocking conclusion; at least I find it shocking. I can’t believe I can even state it, but the truth shall make us free. There is no justifiable reason to ban or limit the distribution of erotica at all. If the child is too young, it will go over their head and won’t have any impact. If the child is old enough to understand, then exposure will vanquish ignorance and learning will occur. Once a child is old enough to understand the question, they are old enough for the answers. Darn, we are going to be like those Europeans where there is free access and rationality prevails.
I know some parent will point out the time their child asked some question that the parent misunderstood and they answered in too much embarrassing detail and then they'll say this proves that children are too young. Yada Yada. Another author I know told this anecdote, “My son is 28 and I remember an incident when he was a little boy (20 years ago?). We were watching a movie that mentioned condoms. He asked what that was. My wife and I looked at each other in shock, and came up with an answer. Then he nonchalantly said, ‘Oh, rubbers,’ and turned back to the TV.” I think this little story has a telling point. It is the parents who get shocked and embarrassed in discussions of sex, not the kids. Phillip Pullman, author of the children's books The Dark Materials, wrote of his first experience, "I didn't know what girls were like until a little girl showed me. I was about to show her what I was like when her mother came along and found us. The moment she appeared I knew what we were doing was terribly wrong, yet a moment earlier I had no idea of that, not the slighest notion."
Yes, it takes judgment on the part of parents to know which answer their child is ready for. Do I say, "That's how adults have fun," and junior shakes his head at the stupid adults who don't know how to have real fun and goes off to jump in rain puddles. Do I say, "That’s how adults make babies," and launch into the speech. These sorts of scenes are going to happen whether there is a ban on erotica or not. Erotic literature or pictures won't force the questions early. It will be part of the learning process when junior is ready. The questions are already there whether adults want to admit it or go on in their own pretended ignorance. A parent’s embarrassment won’t change junior’s inquisitiveness. One thing we know absolutely is that most parents wait way too long before they have that little talk.
I think the ban on porn for kids has more to do with their parent’s uncomfortable feelings in not wanting to discuss it. This is a reflection of how sick American culture is when it comes to sex than any real harm that could come to the kids in dispelling their ignorance. How often have I heard a parent tell an anecdote about how they couldn’t tell their child even simple facts of life and how uncomfortable they became when the subject was broached. No wonder our kids become crazy on the subject. They catch ‘crazy’ from their parents. It is the parents who are the problem when kids have questions about sex, not the kids. Exposing children to erotica will not harm them; their parent’s attitude will.
When I was living in Germany an American co-worker came in on a Monday morning completely flustered. His ten-year-old daughter had been watching the German equivalent of Wild Kingdom on TV. He walked into the back of the room as the show was describing animal mating and two rabbits went at it. His daughter was unaware of him watching. Flustered, he walked out. Later he looked in as the show moved on to larger and larger animals. Panicked, he wondered what he should do; turn off the TV? The capper came when the show switched to two humans, naked, in bed, doing the same primal mating dance. He fled; she was still unaware of the turmoil the show was creating in her poor father and was just watching and learning. He was still upset on Monday. His daughter, of course, took it all in stride. The only one bothered by the factual and graphic descriptions of animal kingdom sex, including human sex, was poor dad.
Children learn from their parent’s emotional reactions as much or more than by the words used. Making sex an open subject, instead of a veiled hidden one, will help shape a natural and rational approach to sex in the next generation. I have many art books, paintings, sculpture and photography around my house full of naked people. I don’t worry in the least about them being seen by anyone. Why should I? It is just people the way they actually are. If a young person looks and has questions, I will answer their questions honestly and directly. I know that they won’t be interested if they are too young. If they are old enough to be interested, they are old enough to be told the truth. It wouldn’t be any different if they were looking at any book, a book on religious persecution or an erotic book. I probably would keep a book on the tax code hidden; that is perverse.
The truth is teens bodies are being filled with sex hormones, it is practically oozing from their pores. They are evolutionarily ready, really ready, and eager for sex. A recent study at MacMasters University used computer modeling of genetics to predict that historically most women bore children between 15 and 30. Those teens are ready as ready as they can be to get the poke. You can't pretend they are children anymore because their bodies aren't children's bodies.
One reader wondered about the difference between ‘good’ erotic literature and ‘bad’ porn. What about good and bad literature in general? Should we ban 'bad' detective stories but allow good ones for our children? Sherlock Holmes is okay to read but Micky Spillane is banned? Who makes that judgment? In any case, it isn't the Government who should be making this decision. I’ve used porn and erotica interchangeably throughout this tract on purpose. What is one person’s porn is another’s art. The quality or subject matter or even genre doesn’t really enter into it as far as I can see. It still comes down to the same circumstances; if the person is old enough to understand what they are reading or watching, then they are old enough to understand the explanation and they deserve the explanation. The only difference between explaining ‘romantic’ erotica and scatological crud is how uncomfortable you are going to be explaining it. Luckily, after our kids grow up, if we do the job properly, they won’t have to be uncomfortable explaining it to their children. After all, that is the parent's job not the Governments, raising their children.
Last, I am not talking about using kids in porn. This isn't about involving kids in sex, it is about learning. I have seen images on the net that made me sick; pre-pubescent children engaged in sex with adult men. Those people deserve the Elizabethan punishment, death. There is a difference between fiction and rape. I think kids should be allowed to read about the horrors of war as soon as they can understand, but they shouldn’t be forced to actually experience it. The same goes for sex.
Learning is not the same thing as kid touching. I do believe, having traced the line of thought above, that exposure to erotica will no more damage children than will exposure to any other genre of literature. If they are old enough to understand, they will learn. If they are too young, it will simply be irrelevant. In neither case will they be harmed. It is ignorance that is harmful. It is their parent’s displays of repression and embarrassment that are harmful. Reading never hurt anyone, except those who rely on ignorance to maintain their power.
Post script
In case you, the reader, are attempting to extend this reasoning into other areas I must amplify my thoughts. It goes without saying that the current age of consent of eighteen is as ridiculous, or perhaps more so, as the age of exposure to erotica, and for all of the same reasons. When the vast majority of teens are having sex before their 18th birthday, such consent laws are voided by reality. California has at least 1.25 million sexually active teens and they prosecute about 600 cases of statutory rape a year (eight hundredths of one percent.) Reality has voided the age of consent and only blindness, and sensationalist news stories, can keep such antiquated laws on the books. When studies show that 50% of girls are starting sex by their 14th birthday and 18% by age 10 common sense says we as a society need to change with the reality, not continue to pretend we live in the Victorian age.
BTW, that Victorian age wasn't so different. Mark Twain, writing to us from that age says, "From the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick to receive the candle. But man is only briefly competent: ...After fifty his performance is of poor quality; the intervals between are wide, and its satisfactions of no great quality to either party; whereas his great-grandmother is as good as new." - Letters from the Earth. The truth is, even in that prudish age, society knew women were able to have sex much younger than we now pretend. So if you are one of those people who have bought the load of bull that young women are 'children' and would be harmed by sex, think again. It just isn't true and it has never been true, unless you get a shrink involved to load up the girl with drugs and thoughts she never had in the first place, then the shrink will ruin her life as they do so many lives. She still won't have been harmed by the sex only by the Shrink. Read about Stevie Nicks and her shrink.
Postscript
I just happened on an article that was talking about the growth of sex crimes in younger and younger people, as young as 11. Wow. Then it went on to admit that these are almost all consensual sex crimes. Oh great. Now we have criminalized an entire generation of kids playing doctor. I got the 2012 census data and applied the percent of sexually active teens from sex studies, 18% of 10 year olds, 50% of 14 year olds, 75% of 18 year olds, filled in the blanks with numbers in between, 20% on 12 year olds for instance and calculated that we now have 14,408,946 teen sex criminals in the U.S. They are locking up teens for making child porn, taking pictures of themselves. Where are we going to get the jails to hold all of these sex criminals?
Would you like to see what readers say about this article?
Let me know what you thought. I answer all feedback. Please make sure your address is correct and you are set up to accept email from me:
Or you can e-mail me directly
Return to the Serious Discussions homepage
Copyright Rod O'Steele © 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2014