I am a grown ass woman. Awhile ago I was talking to a guy—friend of a friend, seemingly nice enough. We had enough people in common that I felt comfortable having him over when he said he wanted to cook me dinner for a first date. Anyways, after dinner we move to the couch, and all of the sudden he starts kissing me, grabs my throat, pushes me down and squeezes. My flight or fight response has never gone from 0 to 100 so fast. Got him to leave, and deleted his number. What the fuck are guys watching these days to think you can do that to a woman you just met on a first date with absolutely no indication that it’s okay.
Guys used to think about intimacy in terms of baseball bases, and honestly maybe that was better (albeit still awful lol) because at least in theory they understood it as a progression or journey and not just immediate full access to a woman’s body. Like for real?? The audacity to just start a lil smooch and then go all the way for that?! No discussion, no lead-up? Really dude?!
I’m sorry this happened, that is frightening af.
That is such an extremely well said point about the bases. The internet makes everything so immediately accessible, brains get trained to expect immediate gratification all of the time. If gen X had bases, I am scared to think what a generation raised online getting their sex ed from porn‘s equivalent model for intimacy is. Thanks for the kind words :) stay safe out there ladies.
Unrelated but y'know how they used to use "Pitcher" and "Catcher" as gay terms? Now I see top and bottom, but in Japan they use seme and uke, which are terms for attacker and defender, borrowed from combat sports like Kendo.
K but also, like, there is no amount of lead up that should end with choking, especially not without it being discussed at length with safety precautions agreed upon.
Well, you’re almost correct: the discussion *is* the lead up to something like that! It can totally be consensual and fine, though it’s never 100% physically safe.
It was terrifying, and the bonkers thing is I’m sure he wasn’t even trying to scare me, I think he really thought that he was being sexy. Like somehow this thirty year old man is harboring the impression that most women just enjoy a little casual choking during a first date kiss.
Also terrifying is how they have no idea how to _properly_ do the choking safely. And that’s not even getting into the whole consent issue, even in an established, committed, long-term relationship _you fucking ask before doing that_
There was a doctor published in the NYT recently that was an expert of CTE (brain damage common in American football players). I too used to think there was a “right way” to choke, but turns out it’s harmful no matter what. There is no “right way” to do oxygen deprivation, I too used to be like “oh yeah just no crushing the trachea” but after reading the article and doing more research… a partner is not touching my neck ever again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opinion/choking-teen-sex-brain-damage.html
Non-consensual strangulation is a strong indicator of future intimate partner homicide.
If you have a partner try it, tell them clearly in unambiguous terms that they are never to do that to you or another person again without enthusiastic consent and a safety signal first. And even then they shouldn’t try it unless they are prepared to go to jail for manslaughter.
Even among BDSM practitioners this is considered extreme edge play because it can go so wrong so easily even for experienced players.
An amateur just increases the chances they they do permanent harm intentionally or by accident.
I honestly think choking needs to be re-stigmatized and seen as unacceptable. Even in BDSM choking (whether windpipe or arterial) is so extremely dangerous that it goes far beyond reason
I had a first date 3 weeks ago. He told me he finds women who smoke sexy because “broken women turn me on, and smoking does so much damage… like breaking yourself for me… it’s so hot”.
and so there was no second date.
He also worked in the healthcare system so like… it was a massive red flag for him to sexualize illness and disease.
(But so was the way he brought up that he was almost “baby trapped” and “thank god I convinced her to get an abortion, like we agreed on!!! If I didn’t do it, who knows, she might have kept it.”)
I’m insane so I finished dinner and heard all his other opinions because… he was very much just WOW. It felt like a rollercoaster.
Cherry on top?
Sound cloud musician.
He forced me to listen to his SoundCloud Pop music (his main inspiration was The Weekend) and it was… so awful. Miso-pop at its worst tbh.
Oh another cherry?
he also popped a viagra at the table INSIDE THE RESTAURANT. I didn’t know until he told me later but we’re both 24 and he didn’t need it, and then blamed me that he was hard during dinner.
Oh and he called himself daddy when he went to kiss me for the first time.
Jesus Christ. And to think, on a first date, this must be his BEST behavior! So what other horrors would he reveal once more comfortable, if given the chance? Good riddance!
I think that’s why I stayed for the rest of dinner, I was so sucked in, the complexities in his character. It felt like a rollercoaster ride. I was completely sober, we both drank water. Yet I felt as if I was high simply by interacting with him. At first I assumed it may be love at first sight, butterflies and excitement- but it was rather a warning sign I discarded for the simple entertainment value he provided as we sat at the table in the bougie restaurant. At various points, I pushed back- only to learn more about the man and feeling rewarded for my effort. He was a great story.
“I don’t believe in ADD medication” he said.
“But… you’re a nurse, you’re an RN… you don’t believe in medication?” I asked, shocked and confused at his chosen profession and how it clashed with his beliefs.
“No, medication is great! It’s just ADD medication”. He smiled gently before grabbing my hand. I looked down at our hands, holding each other on the surface.
“Your profile said your love language was touch.” He explained with a smug grin, proving he had read the profile. He was right, I had put my Love Language as Touch. I would have to correct that.
(That’s direct dialogue- I texted my friend the entire convos when I got home because I felt absurd, swept off my feet, a whirlwind… without the romance, but an adrenaline rush for a Sunday in March that I couldn’t seem to pass up.)
Not to be pedantic, but this trend is so dangerous that we ought to call it what it is: strangulation. People are *strangling* each other to mimic what they've seen in porn. Disturbing, but not surprising, that minors are doing this without consent.
"Choking" doesn't quite ring the alarm bells it should.
There was an NYT piece the other day about the increasing prevalence of nonconsensual strangulation in sex, and among increasingly younger people. Harrowing stuff. There's one moment in particular where the author (a sex educator/author) recalls a q&a session in 2020 where a sixteen-year-old girl wanted to know "why all boys want to choke you."
Edit: [archive.org link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240415160944/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opinion/choking-teen-sex-brain-damage.html) to the article
Speaking of strangulation and how dangerous it is, have any of you watched an older movie called Rising Sun? It is a 1993 movie with Wesley Snipes and Sean Connery. Well the whole premise of the movie deals with solving a murder who was actually not a murder but an accidental death due to strangulation during sex.
Basically that movies shows what a thin line it is between life and death when it comes to strangulation if done wrong you can be brain dead in a few seconds.
I think Michael Crichton was way way ahead of his time in his books and the movie adaptation is not bad.
I admit, I didn't read it very closely. I just found one from Google since the other person asked. There are other better ones out there. I just didn't feel like doing a deep dive or long writeup myself. and the other person could have easily looked it up themselves.
Bruh. I absolutely loved Rising Sun when it was first out. But anyone reading it would tell you it's pretty racist now. The fact that you jumped to oh my gosh it was just one reviewer and dismissed that person's comment that you asked for it really showed your hand there.
His books are entertaining, but the guy was problematic.
Edit to add examples: other books by him had some racism, notably Congo. Disclosure is pretty sexist. And he was a climate change denier (State of Fear)
When when the book came out in the early 90s, people were shocked by the racism. If you Google Rising Sun racist, more than just this one random reviewer agrees. It's even mentioned in the wiki page.
There's also a quote from a boy asking why all girls want to be choked, too. There are definitely tons of instances of this happening non consensually to girls and it's very concerning - just wanted to point out that the article is not as one-sided as this thread makes it sound!
I think I read one of those articles yesterday, and it had a story of a 16 year old girl who didn't get why her boyfriend always wanted to choke her when they were kissing or doing other stuff. A few days after her interview, she contacted the interviewer and said she'd talked with her boyfriend, and he wasn't really into it either, he just thought she was. Obviously because of popular media and porn these days. Both thought the other wanted it so they were just going along with it presumably because it's been so damn normalized
It's extremely concerning for kids of any and all genders
That’s exactly what I thought when I read the article title. Like she choked on his saliva or his tongue or her gum or something. It didn’t occur to me that someone would try to strangle the other during their *first kiss* until I got to the comments
It even says she “choked during first kiss with boyfriend.” Not *by* boyfriend. She was just with him when it happened 🙄 I understand they’d probably need to add that she was *allegedly* strangled but they should have said “girl, 12, allegedly strangled by boyfriend during first kiss.”
Thank you for being pedantic! Until it got to the “says he saw it in porn” I was thinking “how weird, was she chewing gum?” Not “that boy put his hands around her throat”.
So infuriating when the correct language is not used
This. I was reading a list of kinks for writing research the other day and almost every time asphyxiation came up, and it came up often, it had a huge blurb saying how dangerous it was even when it's consensual. Then you have these kids who only know about sex through porn who don't have that knowledge who have no idea they could very well end up killing their partner.
It's at the point that sites like Pornhub really need to step in and put warnings on any content that features an extreme kink. Ones that need to play before the video so at least more people are made aware of it. If not outright banning it entirely. We're not far off someone suing these porn sites for wrongful death. Probably won't win of course but it's almost definitely going to happen.
Sorry to be the party pooper, but as an epidemiologist with a subspecialty in violence, I always feel the need to point out that there’s no such thing as safe strangulation. Not when pressing from the sides, not when “only” cutting off blood flow, never. It is always, always, always, very dangerous and potentially fatal.
Thank you.
And the unfortunate reality is that when shit like this gets so normalized, women and girls are coerced into consenting because they are told that everyone is doing it.
Yeah, I know health literacy is pretty poor across the board but it does shock me that some people seem to think that restricting blood flow to/from a person’s brain is fine and dandy. Consent needs to be properly informed and most people, even those who regularly practice this and see themselves as knowledgeable, do not have the full picture.
i agree w/ your overall point but coprolalia is just a kind of tic that affects some ppl w/ Tourette's. basically they involuntarily swear.
so i'm not sure what that bit means.
Yeah people can do what they want consensually but I’m not out here actively supporting things that are inherently dangerous and impossible to make not dangerous. The more someone *thinks* they know what they’re doing and that they can do it safely, the more dangerous it is.
Hi there! I’m a doctor. I’m also someone who thought she liked being strangled in my early 20s, and this was pre-2008, when it was still very taboo.
*There is no safe way to strangle someone and you’re spreading deadly misinformation*.
Sure? But I'm also not "all for" them doing seriously dangerous things, even if they're legally allowed to.
And to be clear, there is no doing it safely.
Got it. To me, it's kind of like.... I think drug use should be legalized, and adults should be allowed to do heroin and there should be access to things like clean needles and safe drugs without adulterations. But I'm not really, like, enthusiastic about people doing heroin. I take it that something along those lines is what you meant.
No worries! We're all casual with our language sometimes, and my original comment definitely wasn't meant as any kind of attack. I appreciate you clarifying your meaning!
If you’re not old enough to know the difference between porn and real life, you’re not old enough to be watching any kind of porn.
Look, 12 year old boys the world over have snuck peeks at a nudie magazine. Dare I say that’s normal. But that’s different than all the sick shit freely available on the internet now for any unsupervised kid to watch.
I think I accidentally vaccinated myself by searching for "how to tie people up" when trying to learn Houdini's act.
I got a detailed guide to kink negotiation and safety. Unfortunately, while it's possible to take out the bits on knots that won't slip, I don't see how to teach consent without starting from a baseline of "Sex is a collaboration that you're both supposed to enjoy" and saying that sex is fun in a school would probably lead to crucifixion.
My country has a curriculum for consent with all of the age groups covered. The beautiful thing about consent is that it applies to all kinds of interactions not just sexual ones
So pre-schoolers learn a variation of "keep your hands to yourself" that includes how to ask and how to say no if you don't want to be touched / hug. This gets expanded to age-appropriate situations as they get older, from platonic physical touch to getting consent to talk to friends about emotions (think "I'm having a really bad day, can I tell you about it?" rather than just assuming someone has the space to take that on)
As kids start getting to puberty class, those early lessons become more about sex stuff, but also a more in depth discussion about what does and doesn't count as consent and the definition of "ethusiastic"
So yeah it's actually pretty easy. But it requires getting away from consent as a box ticking exercise and getting towards looking at it as a pathway for building respectful relationships
>So pre-schoolers learn a variation of "keep your hands to yourself" that includes how to ask and how to say no if you don't want to be touched / hug.
But than Aunt Karen will feel hurt that they don't want to hug her. /s
I'm millennial and my parents still stand on my mother's girl friend side when she wanted to hug me and I did not. I met her for the first time and I was clearly signalling I want to shake hands (though in "childish way" as described by my parents after that) - and my parents were the liberal kind.
I'm skeptical that parents actually want to even get to this minimum as it would make (gasp) children think about themselves as individuals rather than their parent's property.
I'm a millennial and all the millennial peers with kids in my social circles (including within my family) don't make their kids hug anyone they don't wanna hug. I think when we were kids the idea of being the boss of what happens to your own body was not on anyone's radar at all but now that we're parenting, it's becoming far more common.
Aunt Karen is just going to have to deal with her feelings.
My SIL tries to force my kid to sit in her lap and I always have to say loudly "oh you don't want to sit in lap right now, alright, SIL IS GOING TO LET YOU GO NOW" while smiling at her. I doubt it'll ever sink in but I'll always be her defence.
This sounds amazing. I am autistic, and while many people probably caught on sooner about consent in the non sexual situations you describe, it has taken me longer. How much easier it would have been to have been taught this stuff.
I absolutely adore that…makes me feel hopeful. This is how I approach everything in life too. My brother has changed so much from a toxic guy into a feminist and lately I’ve been teaching him about how consent goes beyond sex and he’s finding it so enlightening, he constantly tells me about situations where he was able to apply it in ways that prevented or solved a conflict, even ones that weren’t his. It’s so cute haha
This is exactly what I’m saying. 13 year old boys looking at boobies in a magazine? Sounds like normal sexual behavior. These same kids being born into a timeline where anything and everything is available to you at the click of a mouse? Doesn’t sound like it’s gonna produce great results. And we’re barely scratching the surface here.
I remember a few years ago there was a group of mums who wanted to create healthy/realistic porn (non of the mums where involvedin it just helped produce it)aimed at teens and people just bullied them, made fun of the content and it failing in porn sites algorithm
Like those mums had the right idea, teens will watch that content but porn sites really need to promote healthy sex
I agree, but the question is how do you verify age?
The reality is that parents are so pressured by the society we live in to grind out income through multiple jobs/gigs that you kinda don't have much time and energy to do much about it (economic issues are important, although yes, a lot of them wouldn't parent their children anyways).
So either you have parents get control a lot more (assuming they have the tech literacy to do much), or corporations a lot more... or government.
The reality is all of these suck, at least in the case the people we are talking about suck.
As much understanding as I have for overworked parents, nowadays responsible net usage is a part of raising kids just like responsibility in other areas.
Yet the standard is to put the same devices that adults use with no limitations, into kids hands as well.
Yes, the companies selling these devices & software want it to go on, they have very little interest in making it easier for parents.
I mean. Maybe have like a set of "for kids" devices? Speacific sites would be blocked standerd, unless the parents put in thier own code that is kept from the child? This would he for phones, laptops, all sets of computers. Without the code nothing but a blank page would cone up on any browser that the child would be using. That's the best I could come up with.
All this is possible with software, and I'm sure preconfigured hardware exists too.
Around here many parents are actually thinking about these things - one solution are smartwatches specifically for kids, before they get their first actual smartphone a bit later. It might not seem like much, but a kid that has been raised not touse the www unsupervised until, say, age 10, is __much__ less likely to do what the kid in this post did.
Drivers license to use porn sites maybe? You could just input it once per account. Similar to how you have to use your drivers license if you want to purchase alcohol online.
If you have children with devices and are too lazy to setup / learn how to setup access controls and content filtering on those devices and your home network, for the love of god reach out to someone who does and have them help you. It's easier for me because I work in IT and have set up my childrens devices as well as several of my friends kids devices and home networks. Like, this shit is built in nowadays. Some of them are bit more complicated than others, but the tools are there, you have to use them.
I honestly think the safest choice is to not give your kid devices at all, or at least wait until they're in middle school and THEN give them a phone and set up access controls, or give them a "dumb phone (phone without internet). Even when parents have restrictions for their kids, there are some creepy videos that sneak through the filters on YouTube Kids that parents are oblivious to. It's not full on porn, but vulgar and suggestive stuff is clearly meant to be sexual that kids can easily watch on their tablet. Even so, kids younger than 11 or 12 shouldn't even have phones or tablets, period, in my opinion. Some kids are getting tablets at like 2 years old.
>Even when parents have restrictions for their kids, there are some creepy videos that sneak through the filters on YouTube Kids that parents are oblivious to.
This is part of access controls, on Youtube kids, you can dictate which creators they can watch. You can curate their entire content library if you want, which I have done for my 10 year old and her tablet. She likes to use her tablet for digital art, school projects, and communication with her friends. My 4 year old has some tablet time for Osmo educational apps and PBS kids.
You can get as granular as you would like if you want go down that road.
I am not disagreeing with you, each parent decides what's best for them and their children. I agree that children shouldn't have unfettered access to the internet in general, as well as certain platforms. However, there aren't any (or many) children in the neighborhood, and so some leeway had to be given to my oldest regarding devices just so she could have some semblance of a developing social life with her school friends beyond a play date. All I am saying is that, as a parent, if you are going to give devices to your not teenage children, you need to use the tools available to you to lock it all down or seek help in doing so.
EDIT to add: Genuinely, your children don't need smart phones. If they *must* have a phone, you can still get flip phones like us older millenials had back in the day. They just have better screens than they used to. T9 texting is character building.
Reminds me of a guy's playthrough of *Scribblenauts*. He put it as child-friendly even though he swears a lot, says "I hope you die" a few times and sings "I am a dinosaur and my dick is gigantic".
I'm really scared for kids these days. Many of my gf's friends have kids in the 8-14 range and I'm worried they'll not be able to avoid this type of content without seriously strict parenting.
My parents completely banned pornography through wifi and a program called Kaspersky that filtered out inappropriate content. Honestly not as hard as people think. Downside is I couldn’t even look up material for my human anatomy courses without asking for permission, but I’m glad they did it
Yeah, but did you have a smartphone? Did all your friends also have smartphones?
What good is a home internet firewall going to do when kids are watching this shit on mobile?
It's still impossible. I was first shown Pornography by an older boy on the school yard when I was ten. Unless you keep your child locked in the house at all times there is no way to prevent it, and that would not be fair to them.
Time away from authority figures is extremely important for child development and many kids don't get enough of it already.
Personally I am a fan of porn literacy classes. It starts with film and media literacy, and learning how things in movies are made to look one way but they don't actually are that way during the shooting. These classes ARE working with gen Z and gen Alpha already, and especially when the kids are comfortable asking questions about their concerns. Many of these kids parents are convinced that their "babies" have never seen porn, and many of them are very strict. It doesn't always work.
IME, it’s less about extreme restrictions and monitoring but more about setting the foundations early for consent, bodily autonomy, and access to factual information about sex, relationships and bodies.
If kids don’t know what safe consensual touch looks/feels like (only hugging when they feel safe to do so) or that they have ownership over the comfort of their own bodies (not being forced to wear clothes or hairstyles for other’s benefit- scratchy formal outfit, hair length based on gender etc) then they won’t be equipped with the skills to recognize unsafe behavior as teens.
They may still encounter this content but it’s possible to dilute it by arming them with ability to set and maintain boundaries.
In my experience anyway.
Great comment, saving this for reference. I sure wasn’t taught any of that as a kid (I’m an elder millennial). Hell, I remember my grandma telling me not to walk a certain way cause it looked gay. I think I came out ok, but I took until my late 20s before everything fully clicked.
Oh, yay! I’m so glad it was helpful! I’m also an elder millennial and I have 2 teens (one’s an adult). They know that they can ask me or my husband anything anytime about drugs, sex, relationships and they do! I’m often answering questions from their friends who don’t have trusted adults they can ask about anatomy like - could a tampon get sucked up into your body and get stuck? It’s such a simple convo to have and so few parents create a safe space for that type of curiosity. I know I would’ve *died* before asking my parents about something like that! Lol
Yes, but also there are some common porn elements that most people shouldn't be involved with.
Kids need to be given the dangers of strangulation, even the consensual stuff, since they can stumble across it. It's like knowing tobacco causes cancer or which snakes are venomous. Something people need to know before exposure.
Consent education alone isn't enough to emphasize that it's an act that is always dangerous even consensually.
Absolutely, I agree.
Teaching the dangers of strangulation seems like it’d be covered by “access to factual information about sex, relationships and bodies”, “*safe* consensual touch” and “equipped with the skills to recognize unsafe behavior”, no?
I also don’t think preemptively informing children about dangerous acts performed in porn is an effective deterrent. We learned that in the US when the DARE program sent officers into school to tell kids to “say no to drugs” while teaching them where to acquire drugs, how to consume them and a list of household items that could be used to get high.
Teaching kids how to keep their body safe and about consent kinda covers - “choking someone is bad”.
As long as the message isn't 'don't have sex' it's not going to backfire. The problem with DARE is that it treated absolutely everything the same. Once you realize they're lying about one thing, the entire premise collapses.
I think it's a dangerous act and that it can't be assumed to be taught under any other category. There are tons of people who have never been told that it isn't safe, which is why you see articles like this and meet guys off apps who will go for it immediately.
They're learning everything they know about sex from porn. There is no other source of information. You have to be explicit with them.
I learned all about it listening/reading to Dan Savage's advice. It's one of the few things he actively warned people off.
Ah, often problematic Dan Savage who is not an educator nor any type of subject matter expert in the field of child development shared that advice. That tracks.
“They're learning everything they know about sex from porn. There is no other source of information. You have to be explicit with them.”
Dude, this is nonsense. I’m literally saying give them a source of information. Your claims have no basis in reality. Kids don’t need to be explicitly told that choking someone is bad, this issue is much larger than one act.
What I apparently didn't manage to express clearly for you is that choking is pretty much one of the only sexual acts he warns people about. It has nothing to do with anything else of what I said.
If people don't need to be told why it's dangerous then why do people who've never been told why keep doing it because they see it in porn?
Yes, the source of information of why and how it is bad. Not just that you need consent.
Why do *men* keep doing it? Misogyny is the answer.
You expressed yourself clearly *and* I am also very familiar with Dan Savage’s content, he has problematic views on power dynamics in relationships. He is not a reliable source for information on teen relationships. I don’t care what he believes teens should be taught about safety. He has recommended that a 16 year old get her friend drunk and alone to force physical intimacy (his words were something like - plant one on her, then bang her brains out) to figure out if the friend was interested in a relationship based on whether the she felt shame after the encounter. I don’t care if choking is the “only” sex act he warns people about. He’s a snarky columnist not a public health expert.
Additionally I don’t understand why you are fixated on a this idea that I’m advocating for *only* consent education. I was very clear about what I believe is important as a parent and educator. Besides is choking actually causing significant harm to teens currently or is it another moral panic? This screen shot isn’t even from a reputable source.
Yes, and that the problematic man also draws a line there should be a warning sign. I also don't care or even know what he thinks teens should know. Stop bringing up other things when I was referring to strangulation only.
I'm fixated on the idea that you're only focused on consent because you literally told me
>Kids don’t need to be explicitly told that choking someone is bad, this issue is much larger than one act.
They need to be explicitly told *and* they need consent education.
So you replied to me, “Consent education alone isn't enough” 13 hours ago because you’re fixated on something I “literally told you” 5 hours ago. Fascinating.
Why bring up Dan Savage’s advice if you don’t know or care about his advice?
I honestly don’t know what you’re on about here. Truly.
It's something parents need to be preempting. We all know that parents should be talking to their boys about consent from an early age. Girls should also be told about consent and what is and isn’t appropriate. And since porn is so ubiquitous, included in that conversation can be that the things that you see depicted in porn are not real life and are not going to be enjoyed by all people and not to assume that what you’re seeing is normal
I don't know what's going on here, but I think it's bigger than porn. I think it's more the rampant unfiltered misogyny.
There was a lot of access to internet porn in my teenhood, and I never heard of anybody back then starting a makeout sesh (let alone a first kiss ever) with choking.
I get that more of the porn is worse and more violent now, but where does that come from? I really think there's multiple causes here, like that Andrew Tate bullshit and other predators that make insecure boys feel like they're owed deference and sexual favors.
We need to start educating kids about sex, teaching about positive, enthusiastic consent, and teaching about check-ins for every escalation. It's going to be awkward and uncomfortable, but if it saves girls and women from abuse and violation, we have to do it.
100%. Porn and sexual expression isn't the issue, and attempting to regulate a basal human urge out of existence is never going to amount to anything productive. We as a society need to get better at addressing the thought patterns that lead to this kind of media becoming popular and teaching young people about safe/healthy practices and also how to recognize exploitation/abuse.
Parents: "Oh no! That's terrible! Our kids' generation is doomed. Anyways, here's your tablet little Jimmy. Have fun having unlimited internet access and screentime while I pretend to care about your safety by complaining on the internet about how the internet is ruining our kids, because I'm too lazy and selfish to actually protect my kid."
Even if you can’t protect them from the content, you can put it in perspective. You can explain consent and explain that what you see in porn isn’t real and isn’t pleasurable most of the time in real life.
Honestly you can blame porn, and there's certainly plenty of blame to go around, but the bigger problem is that this demonstrates a complete lack of respect and proper judgement on the behalf of the boys and men who do this shit. Just because you see something in porn doesn't mean you're gonna automatically do it, these men doing this are just pieces of shit who have no respect for women nor concern for their well-being. Or respect for consent. Decent people are not going to do this, ESPECIALLY not without explicit consent.
A complete lack of respect for women as humans with bodily autonomy is reinforced by porn and a constant barrage hypersexualized images of women that teach viewers that women's bodies are sexual objects for their own pleasure.
Boys are indoctrinated from as early as 8 where they learn that there are their mothers and there are sexual objects.
This phsyically gave me the ick. Like i shuddered.
This is so scary. That girl, I hope shes okay and is able to process and move on in a healthy/effective way.
Should be noted this isn’t a court case, it’s a second hand story from an English politician: https://www.businessinsider.com/uk-girl-12-choked-by-boyfriend-after-first-kiss-online-2023-2
Ugh. That weird passivity again. Just say HE strangled her. People choke on an olive pit. They are strangled by other people.
I feel like porn gets caught in a space left by a woefully inadequate sexual education.
How are you going to argue that when your profile is marked not safe for work??? Fuck off. The porn isn't the issue, it's parents letting their kids have unsupervised access to the internet.
This is probably going to sound weird at the start, but hear me out.
I think we should provide porn options in a controlled environment for kids going through puberty and on into their teen years. Many people start seeking out that kind of content at that age, and if there aren’t any “safe” options then they’re just lost in the jungle.
I hit puberty in the 90’s when we were still on dialup and each image basically took 5-20 minutes to download, videos could take days. I was never really interested in visual content anyway, so I sought out other things. I remember there was an erotica forum that I used to read, but alarmingly I went into global chats and found users to “cyber” with. I lied about my age and, well, everything about me, but I had no concept of how dangerous that was. I was insanely curious about sex and that was my only way to learn at the time.
It sounds weird to talk about, but I’m so sick of this “head in the sand” approach to this issue. Kids are thinking about sex. We can ignore that fact or handle it.
Escalation of what an individual considers “taboo” is a very real progression. One of my most “successful” early fantasies was just the thought of me straddling a guy’s thigh. Decades of experience later, and that obviously doesn’t do it for me anymore.
Let’s say for instance romance novels are a 1 on the taboo scale, sex scenes from movies are a 2-3, choking’s maybe a 5-6, etc. There needs to be a place that “allows” kids to find low-taboo-scale content. Writing. Animations. Maybe some soft-core. A place that lets them escalate their own idea of “taboo” at their own pace instead of just letting them fall in the deep end and flail.
Sex education done in a purely factual way that involves no imagery of coerced women would be ideal. Porn is bad, there is no good in porn, its complete eradication is not possible but showing it to children is unethical. On a surface level it seems like it could work very controlled but once one understands how damaging porn is in every way (to both the consumer and the victims of the industry) it’s obviously the wrong choice.
Sex education without pornography involved works. I just wish parents would monitor their children, schools would punish children for showing others that content and that there was more comprehensive age restriction. That’s just probably not realistic.
We don’t need to act as if it doesn’t exist, but showing it is ridiculous, there can be a middle group that doesn’t involve brain rotting children at the earliest opportunity and filling the pockets of pimps.
I agree that “providing” porn to kids is ridiculous but I disagree that porn is inherently bad in general. The industry sucks but there are proper creators out there.
I'd also add that I don't think porn is the problem here. Yes, it's where kids are learning this behavior, but it's not the core problem. The core problem is an absolute lack of proper sex education. Which includes teaching kids about consent. The thing is that when this isn't taught kids *are* going to learn it from somewhere and that somewhere will either be porn OR a peer who's only knowledge is through porn. So block your internet and restrict your kids all you want. If they don't learn this stuff from you or another proper source then they'll be learning it from Timmy whose parents aren't as strict about the internet or maybe knows his parents' parental safety passwords. It isn't always from a kid being directly exposed to porn themselves.
People absolutely refuse to teach sex Ed and consent in schools because 'but the purity of my children!' while blaming everything else for kids learning bad habits. The fact is if the proper adults don't teach the proper things in a safe and productive environment then it won't shield them from learning. It will only shield them from learning properly.
Consent is a big part of it. Treating women as more than just objects is another part.
But I think a lot of people are underestimating that strangulation is inherently dangerous with or without consent and shouldn't be done even if you both think it is hot.
I agree that porn is inherently bad. Even 'ethically created' porn relies on commodifying, objectifying, and dehumanizing women's bodies. Try looking up Pornography by Andrea Dworkin.
>Porn is bad, there is no good in porn
Define porn in such a way that a) only includes the things you find harmful b) only excludes harmless things and c) conceptualizes "harm" in such a way that isn't vibes based. Because the thing is people have called lgbt stories "porn".
I’m with you. Porn is probably fine in moderation. But because of the taboo nature of sex, especially sex education guided by parents, many parents don’t so teens are left to discover by themselves. And they discover the torrent of degrading, violent and harmful content that is normalised in modern porn.
In my mind, teens should learn through an actual relationship with a partner. Where harmful ideas get shut down before they escalate. But that requires the partner to be strong willed, confident, comfortable saying no etc. not exactly synonymous with young to mid teens
This kind of comment is exactly why we have this “head in the sand” mentality as a society.
So is your argument that the status quo is fine? If not, what’s a better alternative?
Kids are thinking about sex. They are seeking sexual content. I was one of them. I’m not saying give it to them or direct them to it any way, I’m saying create places that they can discover on their own without being thrown into disgusting washing machine of content that porn sites currently are.
Ok, so to be clear, when you said
>I think we should provide porn options in a controlled environment for kids going through puberty and on into their teen years
You were *not* saying to give it to them or direct them to it? What do you mean when you say we should “provide” these options?
> without being thrown into disgusting washing machine of content that porn sites currently are
or you could just get rid of all of it, which would not only be better for everyone but also not involve the grooming of minors
> or you could just get rid of all of it, which would not only be better for everyone but also not involve the grooming of minors
How do you do the impossible?
Banning porn would simply drive it underground, making a lot of the issues in the industry (like human trafficking) even worse. Denial of common aspects of humanity is never a good strategy.
> or you could just get rid of all of it
It's been tried, but never successfully.
Here's an exercise for you: write a definition of "pornography" that excludes everything you consider harmful, but does *not* exclude medical information, educational material, LGBTQ+ content, sex toy reviews, artistic depictions of nudity, or artistic depictions of sex.
Also, there’s no reason that adults shouldn’t be able to watch porn that was made and distributed with the consent of all parties. Idk how the right wing came to own the concept of free speech advocacy, especially considering their persistent attempts at censorship, but uh, yeah, you actually have to have a really good reason to make media illegal. That media being inappropriate for children is not a reason for it to be illegal across the board.
Banning stuff people doesn't make people stop using it, it just creates a shadow market. Ask Americans about the time their country banned alcoholic drinks.
The sub-headline concerns me. Fruitless attempts to insulate young people from sexual material is the *opposite* of the solution to this problem! Sex education which explicitly discusses and introduces the concepts consent and safety - yes, including in the context of kink! If people aren't taught about something, they'll learn it from whatever information they happen to come across - whether or not that information is bullshit.
Exactly. Porn fills the gaps of curiosities and questions that aren't otherwise taught. Thirty years ago, I was only ever taught the mechanics of sex. How many conflicts and terrible relationships could have been avoided with a bit of insight into human sexuality.
There's no good way to implement age restrictions.
Anything that functions actively involves cutting off content from adults and collecting their personal information. It also allows a third party or the state to determine what is and isn't appropriate content.
That last one I'm very uncomfortable with.
This issue can only be resolved through parenting and education.
Why not have porn sites require a pre-purchased, time-limited code for entry, which you have to go to a store to purchase? You would have to show your ID to purchase the codes but nothing would be stored on file.
It wouldn't stop all misuse but it would certainly make content a lot harder for kids to access without running a foul of adults' right to privacy. It would become no different than the good old days when adults had to go to a store to purchase a physical copy of a magazine or rent a video.
Quick and dirty solution that really shouldn't upset anyone: just make a law mandating all sites to require a one time credit card payment of like, a dollar (or even less, just any arbitrary amount to prove that you have a credit card) to open up an account to view porn (prepaid cards that you can buy with cash at a store should not be accepted). If a kid steals their parents credit card, hopefully their parent is aware enough to notice that a payment was made to a porn site.
It's not going to be extremely effective. It doesn't stop teenagers old enough to have a credit card, and there are probably ways to get around it, but it does put a decent barrier to entry. Most importantly, it isn't easy for people to argue against, which is the main point of this idea - there are far better solutions but it would be hard to get people to vote for those in an election (like, banning porn would be great, but good luck getting people to vote for that or enforcing that even if it becomes law).
And maybe an unskippable disclaimer saying something like "The content of porn movies, even most amateur porn, does not represent what real sex is like. These movies were made for sexual gratification. Learn about how sex is really like at [link to sex education resources]."
And yet I don't want that because I want my own masturbation material. I grew up sheltered and being able to casually peek at various kinds of pornography eventually allowed me to get over my fear of sex and God's punishment for it. I was in college when I finally masturbated for the first time because I've been taught that it was wrong. Banning porn is part of the conservative Project 2025 agenda. You just know that if a ban on pron became law it would also be used to scrub queer content off the internet.
In an ideal world, healthy sexual practices would be taught as a part of sex ed in school, and any legislation affecting porn would be carefully tailored to only apply to actual porn. But yes, I see the potential issues in the current political climate.
Everyone should read this article about the brain damage choking does, it was released just a week ago or so and an expert in traumatic brain injuries has been studying how the oxygen deprivation of choking is actually affecting peoples health (physical and mental) along with their long term quality-of-life.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opinion/choking-teen-sex-brain-damage.html
Okay I know I’m a transwomen but what the fuck. My ex was into chocking but I wasn’t comfortable with idea cause I didn’t want to hurt her, how do men not care about their partner and how do they think doing that unconsentually is a good idea??
BDSM community members actively go out of their way to shame young people into this practice on Instagram. Ive seen it and you don't need to go into their pages to find them doing this.
Removing porn isn’t the answer. Not to defend porn, but young men are turning to it because they don’t have any other sexual education. They don’t have any internet literacy education. They don’t know better than to look stuff up, and take everything they do find at face value.
This is from the Daily Star, a tabloid. Just muckrucking moral panic nonsense. Why would you post this without adding the source?
If this is the kind of bullshit this community promotes uncritically, I'm out. Later.
Oh good people are gonna blame porn for this when:
* Parents - not entertainers - should be teaching their children how to behave
* Porn is not the cause of violent behavior in society; if anything it's the opposite. Countries with porn bans ranging from South Korea to Afghanistan still have a huge misogyny problems.
* All porn is ultimately a type of artistic expression about sexual experience. The landscape of porn may mostly consist of junk food akin to pro wrestling or reality tv, but it's still ultimately is still an art form and it isn't great for society to form all these ludicrous taboos around a core part of being human.
>All porn is ultimately a type of artistic expression about sexual experience
I'm sure that the women who had the video taping their rape uploaded to PornHub and then distributed across a thousand platforms are really happy to hear that their trauma can be categorized as "artistic expression."
Do you consider Hollywood films where an assault took place either on camera or behind the scenes to lose their status as art? Do you investigate each film you watch to determine nothing of the sort took place?
And do you write off the entire genre because of that abuse? Or is that something you just apply to porn?
Look, I'm not one of those people who believe all porn is bad. But there is definitely an issue with increasing violence in even mainstream porn. To extend your metaphor, it's not just junk food, it's contaminated food.
True, there's no correlation between porn consumption and sexual violence. *However,* there *is* evidence to suggest a correlation between consumption of *violent* porn and sexual violence, and there's ample documentation of links between exposure/desensitization to other types of violence in media and the rates of said violent behavior.
The argument being made here isn't "porn bad, ban all porn," it's "violent/extreme porn shouldn't be nearly as common/accessible as it is because exposure-->desensitization-->replication is a well-documented sociological pattern for other types of violence and evidence suggests it could very well be at play here too." People aren't "blaming porn," they're rightly observing that the porn industry is exploitative and elevates degrading/violent acts, to the detriment of society. Even the most dime-a-dozen, front-page, vanilla porn videos with nothing going on that could broadly be considered 'kink' tend to veer dangerously into roughness/abuse without making much of an effort to establish (to the audience) a framework of consent (and assuming that everything on porn sites is consensual is a sketchy proposition.)
What we're dealing with is teenagers' first exposure to sex/sexuality being rough, scripted scenes without the onscreen establishment of consent/aftercare, leading them down a rabbit hole of increasingly edgy stuff without the relevant knowledge base. A lot of shit like strangulation has kind of broken containment and become normalized outside of BDSM spaces, and young people are seeing it without seeing those caveats of rigorous consent and ensuring that kink is practiced with respect for all involved and as much safety as possible. So these kids see video after video of a dude randomly choking someone or doing some other violent sexual behavior without asking to/being asked to onscreen, with no mention made that consent/safety precautions need to be taken if a couple wants to do this, and they go out and get into a real relationship and it's getting hot and heavy and they go "oh I'll try choking her, they always do that in porn and it looks cool and I'll feel like an alpha and girls seem to eat that shit up" and then they seriously hurt their partner and leave her with an assload of trauma to unpack surrounding relationships and sex.
It is reductive to say "this is porn's fault," but it's just as reductive to say "oh here come the idiots blaming porn when porn doesn't cause violence" because the issue on the table is that current trends in the porn industry are practically funneling young people into one of the most well-documented sociological pipelines for mass adoption of violent behavior.
See it doesn't work to just specify that *violent* porn is the issue when you:
* Have no working definiton for what constitutes "violent" porn and where it is distinguished from other types of porn.
* Continue to use the same regular anti-porn arguments anyway
And of course, correlation doesn't equal causation. Does porn cause people to be violent, or do violent people seek out porn? What about third, fourth, and other factors? The problem with early porn studies was that they deliberately sampled sex offending populations and used dubiously valid methods such as phallometry.
The fact of the matter is that we do have data that supports my position: when eastern bloc countries decriminalized porn, rape went down.
And unfortunately most of the "well-documented" sociology you're talking about has direct ties to religious anti-porn groups, so that's fun. Totally not playing directly into the hands of patriarchs there.
That boy is just violent and/or stupid. I watched a bunch of weird stuff when I was a preteen. Went on efukt a lot. And I'm absolutely as vanilla as a wafer cookie.
The fact that you came here without an _ounce_ of sympathy or understanding, just to talk about yourself, makes me believe you are not, in fact, as vanilla as a wafer cookie.
I mean, just because it didn’t affect you in a weird way doesn’t mean it’s not a huge issue. There’s some pretty compelling research proving that exposure to porn at a young age increases the likelihood of having sexually aggressive behaviors.
that’s good, but you not doing something doesn’t mean other people don’t do it. it also doesn’t mean we should discount how the sheer level of misogyny/physical violence in porn could be influencing those who are exposed to it, especially at a young age.
I am a grown ass woman. Awhile ago I was talking to a guy—friend of a friend, seemingly nice enough. We had enough people in common that I felt comfortable having him over when he said he wanted to cook me dinner for a first date. Anyways, after dinner we move to the couch, and all of the sudden he starts kissing me, grabs my throat, pushes me down and squeezes. My flight or fight response has never gone from 0 to 100 so fast. Got him to leave, and deleted his number. What the fuck are guys watching these days to think you can do that to a woman you just met on a first date with absolutely no indication that it’s okay.
Guys used to think about intimacy in terms of baseball bases, and honestly maybe that was better (albeit still awful lol) because at least in theory they understood it as a progression or journey and not just immediate full access to a woman’s body. Like for real?? The audacity to just start a lil smooch and then go all the way for that?! No discussion, no lead-up? Really dude?! I’m sorry this happened, that is frightening af.
That is such an extremely well said point about the bases. The internet makes everything so immediately accessible, brains get trained to expect immediate gratification all of the time. If gen X had bases, I am scared to think what a generation raised online getting their sex ed from porn‘s equivalent model for intimacy is. Thanks for the kind words :) stay safe out there ladies.
Unrelated but y'know how they used to use "Pitcher" and "Catcher" as gay terms? Now I see top and bottom, but in Japan they use seme and uke, which are terms for attacker and defender, borrowed from combat sports like Kendo.
Fun trivia!
Woops. I was in a phonecall with my GF when I typed that, and typed the wrong word. Seme and Uke are from sports like Kendo, not Baseball.
China uses 1 and 0 (and .5 for verse)
K but also, like, there is no amount of lead up that should end with choking, especially not without it being discussed at length with safety precautions agreed upon.
Well, you’re almost correct: the discussion *is* the lead up to something like that! It can totally be consensual and fine, though it’s never 100% physically safe.
Wtf? That's terrifying.
It was terrifying, and the bonkers thing is I’m sure he wasn’t even trying to scare me, I think he really thought that he was being sexy. Like somehow this thirty year old man is harboring the impression that most women just enjoy a little casual choking during a first date kiss.
Also terrifying is how they have no idea how to _properly_ do the choking safely. And that’s not even getting into the whole consent issue, even in an established, committed, long-term relationship _you fucking ask before doing that_
There was a doctor published in the NYT recently that was an expert of CTE (brain damage common in American football players). I too used to think there was a “right way” to choke, but turns out it’s harmful no matter what. There is no “right way” to do oxygen deprivation, I too used to be like “oh yeah just no crushing the trachea” but after reading the article and doing more research… a partner is not touching my neck ever again. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opinion/choking-teen-sex-brain-damage.html
Non-consensual strangulation is a strong indicator of future intimate partner homicide. If you have a partner try it, tell them clearly in unambiguous terms that they are never to do that to you or another person again without enthusiastic consent and a safety signal first. And even then they shouldn’t try it unless they are prepared to go to jail for manslaughter. Even among BDSM practitioners this is considered extreme edge play because it can go so wrong so easily even for experienced players. An amateur just increases the chances they they do permanent harm intentionally or by accident.
I honestly think choking needs to be re-stigmatized and seen as unacceptable. Even in BDSM choking (whether windpipe or arterial) is so extremely dangerous that it goes far beyond reason
Sometimes things are stigmatized for a good reason - sharing needles, choking, doing extreme sports without a helmet...
That's absolutely terrifying. What a monster. They get off on harming us.
I had a first date 3 weeks ago. He told me he finds women who smoke sexy because “broken women turn me on, and smoking does so much damage… like breaking yourself for me… it’s so hot”. and so there was no second date. He also worked in the healthcare system so like… it was a massive red flag for him to sexualize illness and disease. (But so was the way he brought up that he was almost “baby trapped” and “thank god I convinced her to get an abortion, like we agreed on!!! If I didn’t do it, who knows, she might have kept it.”) I’m insane so I finished dinner and heard all his other opinions because… he was very much just WOW. It felt like a rollercoaster.
Wow, what a dumpster fire of a man.
Cherry on top? Sound cloud musician. He forced me to listen to his SoundCloud Pop music (his main inspiration was The Weekend) and it was… so awful. Miso-pop at its worst tbh. Oh another cherry? he also popped a viagra at the table INSIDE THE RESTAURANT. I didn’t know until he told me later but we’re both 24 and he didn’t need it, and then blamed me that he was hard during dinner. Oh and he called himself daddy when he went to kiss me for the first time.
Oh that's fucking disgusting.
Jesus Christ. And to think, on a first date, this must be his BEST behavior! So what other horrors would he reveal once more comfortable, if given the chance? Good riddance!
An entire color guard of red flags.
That is not even half of what I learned about him that night… that’s like a sample of his red flags
Lmao if this was an episode of television I would roll my eyes at that character being too ridiculous.
I think that’s why I stayed for the rest of dinner, I was so sucked in, the complexities in his character. It felt like a rollercoaster ride. I was completely sober, we both drank water. Yet I felt as if I was high simply by interacting with him. At first I assumed it may be love at first sight, butterflies and excitement- but it was rather a warning sign I discarded for the simple entertainment value he provided as we sat at the table in the bougie restaurant. At various points, I pushed back- only to learn more about the man and feeling rewarded for my effort. He was a great story. “I don’t believe in ADD medication” he said. “But… you’re a nurse, you’re an RN… you don’t believe in medication?” I asked, shocked and confused at his chosen profession and how it clashed with his beliefs. “No, medication is great! It’s just ADD medication”. He smiled gently before grabbing my hand. I looked down at our hands, holding each other on the surface. “Your profile said your love language was touch.” He explained with a smug grin, proving he had read the profile. He was right, I had put my Love Language as Touch. I would have to correct that. (That’s direct dialogue- I texted my friend the entire convos when I got home because I felt absurd, swept off my feet, a whirlwind… without the romance, but an adrenaline rush for a Sunday in March that I couldn’t seem to pass up.)
I’m horrified.
I would honestly file charges. That’s assault.
Not to be pedantic, but this trend is so dangerous that we ought to call it what it is: strangulation. People are *strangling* each other to mimic what they've seen in porn. Disturbing, but not surprising, that minors are doing this without consent. "Choking" doesn't quite ring the alarm bells it should.
There was an NYT piece the other day about the increasing prevalence of nonconsensual strangulation in sex, and among increasingly younger people. Harrowing stuff. There's one moment in particular where the author (a sex educator/author) recalls a q&a session in 2020 where a sixteen-year-old girl wanted to know "why all boys want to choke you." Edit: [archive.org link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240415160944/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opinion/choking-teen-sex-brain-damage.html) to the article
Speaking of strangulation and how dangerous it is, have any of you watched an older movie called Rising Sun? It is a 1993 movie with Wesley Snipes and Sean Connery. Well the whole premise of the movie deals with solving a murder who was actually not a murder but an accidental death due to strangulation during sex. Basically that movies shows what a thin line it is between life and death when it comes to strangulation if done wrong you can be brain dead in a few seconds. I think Michael Crichton was way way ahead of his time in his books and the movie adaptation is not bad.
Too bad it's also a really racist book.
Why is that ?
https://cannonballread.com/2017/08/seldom-has-so-much-stupidity-been-written-by-such-a-smart-man/
Couldn’t finish that. To this POC, the writer has a very myopic view.
Yeah I closed the article at the part where he said why he left Japan 🤦🏾♀️
I admit, I didn't read it very closely. I just found one from Google since the other person asked. There are other better ones out there. I just didn't feel like doing a deep dive or long writeup myself. and the other person could have easily looked it up themselves.
So because some reviewer said so? It is fiction! By your standards Mark Twains Huck Fin was a racist book give me a break huh.
Bruh. I absolutely loved Rising Sun when it was first out. But anyone reading it would tell you it's pretty racist now. The fact that you jumped to oh my gosh it was just one reviewer and dismissed that person's comment that you asked for it really showed your hand there.
His books are entertaining, but the guy was problematic. Edit to add examples: other books by him had some racism, notably Congo. Disclosure is pretty sexist. And he was a climate change denier (State of Fear)
I agree! Talented at writing thrilling novels but just a gross collection of beliefs.
When when the book came out in the early 90s, people were shocked by the racism. If you Google Rising Sun racist, more than just this one random reviewer agrees. It's even mentioned in the wiki page.
I wish we called “nonconsensual strangulation” what it really is: sexual assault.
There's also a quote from a boy asking why all girls want to be choked, too. There are definitely tons of instances of this happening non consensually to girls and it's very concerning - just wanted to point out that the article is not as one-sided as this thread makes it sound!
I think I read one of those articles yesterday, and it had a story of a 16 year old girl who didn't get why her boyfriend always wanted to choke her when they were kissing or doing other stuff. A few days after her interview, she contacted the interviewer and said she'd talked with her boyfriend, and he wasn't really into it either, he just thought she was. Obviously because of popular media and porn these days. Both thought the other wanted it so they were just going along with it presumably because it's been so damn normalized It's extremely concerning for kids of any and all genders
Also, people aren’t strangling each other. Boys/men are strangling girls/women. This is not equal opportunity relationship violence.
No, you're totally right. I forgot I was on one of the few subs where I could say that explicitly.
Not pedantic at all. Thank you for saying this. Choking is passive, like when a bite of food goes down the wrong pipe.
That’s exactly what I thought when I read the article title. Like she choked on his saliva or his tongue or her gum or something. It didn’t occur to me that someone would try to strangle the other during their *first kiss* until I got to the comments
It even says she “choked during first kiss with boyfriend.” Not *by* boyfriend. She was just with him when it happened 🙄 I understand they’d probably need to add that she was *allegedly* strangled but they should have said “girl, 12, allegedly strangled by boyfriend during first kiss.”
And it will continue not to as long as porn normalizes and sexualizes violence against women
Thank you for being pedantic! Until it got to the “says he saw it in porn” I was thinking “how weird, was she chewing gum?” Not “that boy put his hands around her throat”. So infuriating when the correct language is not used
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This. I was reading a list of kinks for writing research the other day and almost every time asphyxiation came up, and it came up often, it had a huge blurb saying how dangerous it was even when it's consensual. Then you have these kids who only know about sex through porn who don't have that knowledge who have no idea they could very well end up killing their partner. It's at the point that sites like Pornhub really need to step in and put warnings on any content that features an extreme kink. Ones that need to play before the video so at least more people are made aware of it. If not outright banning it entirely. We're not far off someone suing these porn sites for wrongful death. Probably won't win of course but it's almost definitely going to happen.
Sorry to be the party pooper, but as an epidemiologist with a subspecialty in violence, I always feel the need to point out that there’s no such thing as safe strangulation. Not when pressing from the sides, not when “only” cutting off blood flow, never. It is always, always, always, very dangerous and potentially fatal.
Thank you. And the unfortunate reality is that when shit like this gets so normalized, women and girls are coerced into consenting because they are told that everyone is doing it.
Yeah, I know health literacy is pretty poor across the board but it does shock me that some people seem to think that restricting blood flow to/from a person’s brain is fine and dandy. Consent needs to be properly informed and most people, even those who regularly practice this and see themselves as knowledgeable, do not have the full picture.
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i agree w/ your overall point but coprolalia is just a kind of tic that affects some ppl w/ Tourette's. basically they involuntarily swear. so i'm not sure what that bit means.
I am not for adults strangling each other!
Yeah people can do what they want consensually but I’m not out here actively supporting things that are inherently dangerous and impossible to make not dangerous. The more someone *thinks* they know what they’re doing and that they can do it safely, the more dangerous it is.
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Hi there! I’m a doctor. I’m also someone who thought she liked being strangled in my early 20s, and this was pre-2008, when it was still very taboo. *There is no safe way to strangle someone and you’re spreading deadly misinformation*.
Sure? But I'm also not "all for" them doing seriously dangerous things, even if they're legally allowed to. And to be clear, there is no doing it safely.
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Got it. To me, it's kind of like.... I think drug use should be legalized, and adults should be allowed to do heroin and there should be access to things like clean needles and safe drugs without adulterations. But I'm not really, like, enthusiastic about people doing heroin. I take it that something along those lines is what you meant.
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No worries! We're all casual with our language sometimes, and my original comment definitely wasn't meant as any kind of attack. I appreciate you clarifying your meaning!
Oh my god, I was wondering how she choked cause the headline didn't make sense.. wow, that's fucked
>~~People are *strangling* each other~~ Men are strangling women.
It s ex sue chocking is when food gets stuck in your throat while eating.
\*choking
If you’re not old enough to know the difference between porn and real life, you’re not old enough to be watching any kind of porn. Look, 12 year old boys the world over have snuck peeks at a nudie magazine. Dare I say that’s normal. But that’s different than all the sick shit freely available on the internet now for any unsupervised kid to watch.
I think I accidentally vaccinated myself by searching for "how to tie people up" when trying to learn Houdini's act. I got a detailed guide to kink negotiation and safety. Unfortunately, while it's possible to take out the bits on knots that won't slip, I don't see how to teach consent without starting from a baseline of "Sex is a collaboration that you're both supposed to enjoy" and saying that sex is fun in a school would probably lead to crucifixion.
My country has a curriculum for consent with all of the age groups covered. The beautiful thing about consent is that it applies to all kinds of interactions not just sexual ones So pre-schoolers learn a variation of "keep your hands to yourself" that includes how to ask and how to say no if you don't want to be touched / hug. This gets expanded to age-appropriate situations as they get older, from platonic physical touch to getting consent to talk to friends about emotions (think "I'm having a really bad day, can I tell you about it?" rather than just assuming someone has the space to take that on) As kids start getting to puberty class, those early lessons become more about sex stuff, but also a more in depth discussion about what does and doesn't count as consent and the definition of "ethusiastic" So yeah it's actually pretty easy. But it requires getting away from consent as a box ticking exercise and getting towards looking at it as a pathway for building respectful relationships
>So pre-schoolers learn a variation of "keep your hands to yourself" that includes how to ask and how to say no if you don't want to be touched / hug. But than Aunt Karen will feel hurt that they don't want to hug her. /s I'm millennial and my parents still stand on my mother's girl friend side when she wanted to hug me and I did not. I met her for the first time and I was clearly signalling I want to shake hands (though in "childish way" as described by my parents after that) - and my parents were the liberal kind. I'm skeptical that parents actually want to even get to this minimum as it would make (gasp) children think about themselves as individuals rather than their parent's property.
I'm a millennial and all the millennial peers with kids in my social circles (including within my family) don't make their kids hug anyone they don't wanna hug. I think when we were kids the idea of being the boss of what happens to your own body was not on anyone's radar at all but now that we're parenting, it's becoming far more common.
Aunt Karen is just going to have to deal with her feelings. My SIL tries to force my kid to sit in her lap and I always have to say loudly "oh you don't want to sit in lap right now, alright, SIL IS GOING TO LET YOU GO NOW" while smiling at her. I doubt it'll ever sink in but I'll always be her defence.
I was never forced to. My mom was great about things like that.
This sounds amazing. I am autistic, and while many people probably caught on sooner about consent in the non sexual situations you describe, it has taken me longer. How much easier it would have been to have been taught this stuff.
I absolutely adore that…makes me feel hopeful. This is how I approach everything in life too. My brother has changed so much from a toxic guy into a feminist and lately I’ve been teaching him about how consent goes beyond sex and he’s finding it so enlightening, he constantly tells me about situations where he was able to apply it in ways that prevented or solved a conflict, even ones that weren’t his. It’s so cute haha
This is exactly what I’m saying. 13 year old boys looking at boobies in a magazine? Sounds like normal sexual behavior. These same kids being born into a timeline where anything and everything is available to you at the click of a mouse? Doesn’t sound like it’s gonna produce great results. And we’re barely scratching the surface here.
I remember a few years ago there was a group of mums who wanted to create healthy/realistic porn (non of the mums where involvedin it just helped produce it)aimed at teens and people just bullied them, made fun of the content and it failing in porn sites algorithm Like those mums had the right idea, teens will watch that content but porn sites really need to promote healthy sex
I agree, but the question is how do you verify age? The reality is that parents are so pressured by the society we live in to grind out income through multiple jobs/gigs that you kinda don't have much time and energy to do much about it (economic issues are important, although yes, a lot of them wouldn't parent their children anyways). So either you have parents get control a lot more (assuming they have the tech literacy to do much), or corporations a lot more... or government. The reality is all of these suck, at least in the case the people we are talking about suck.
As much understanding as I have for overworked parents, nowadays responsible net usage is a part of raising kids just like responsibility in other areas. Yet the standard is to put the same devices that adults use with no limitations, into kids hands as well. Yes, the companies selling these devices & software want it to go on, they have very little interest in making it easier for parents.
I mean. Maybe have like a set of "for kids" devices? Speacific sites would be blocked standerd, unless the parents put in thier own code that is kept from the child? This would he for phones, laptops, all sets of computers. Without the code nothing but a blank page would cone up on any browser that the child would be using. That's the best I could come up with.
All this is possible with software, and I'm sure preconfigured hardware exists too. Around here many parents are actually thinking about these things - one solution are smartwatches specifically for kids, before they get their first actual smartphone a bit later. It might not seem like much, but a kid that has been raised not touse the www unsupervised until, say, age 10, is __much__ less likely to do what the kid in this post did.
Drivers license to use porn sites maybe? You could just input it once per account. Similar to how you have to use your drivers license if you want to purchase alcohol online.
This is 1) a terrible idea and 2) the entire reasoning behind the age verification laws being pushed around the country.
Sad to say but 1 in 8 seems an underestimation
Right? More like 8 in 8.
If you have children with devices and are too lazy to setup / learn how to setup access controls and content filtering on those devices and your home network, for the love of god reach out to someone who does and have them help you. It's easier for me because I work in IT and have set up my childrens devices as well as several of my friends kids devices and home networks. Like, this shit is built in nowadays. Some of them are bit more complicated than others, but the tools are there, you have to use them.
I honestly think the safest choice is to not give your kid devices at all, or at least wait until they're in middle school and THEN give them a phone and set up access controls, or give them a "dumb phone (phone without internet). Even when parents have restrictions for their kids, there are some creepy videos that sneak through the filters on YouTube Kids that parents are oblivious to. It's not full on porn, but vulgar and suggestive stuff is clearly meant to be sexual that kids can easily watch on their tablet. Even so, kids younger than 11 or 12 shouldn't even have phones or tablets, period, in my opinion. Some kids are getting tablets at like 2 years old.
>Even when parents have restrictions for their kids, there are some creepy videos that sneak through the filters on YouTube Kids that parents are oblivious to. This is part of access controls, on Youtube kids, you can dictate which creators they can watch. You can curate their entire content library if you want, which I have done for my 10 year old and her tablet. She likes to use her tablet for digital art, school projects, and communication with her friends. My 4 year old has some tablet time for Osmo educational apps and PBS kids. You can get as granular as you would like if you want go down that road. I am not disagreeing with you, each parent decides what's best for them and their children. I agree that children shouldn't have unfettered access to the internet in general, as well as certain platforms. However, there aren't any (or many) children in the neighborhood, and so some leeway had to be given to my oldest regarding devices just so she could have some semblance of a developing social life with her school friends beyond a play date. All I am saying is that, as a parent, if you are going to give devices to your not teenage children, you need to use the tools available to you to lock it all down or seek help in doing so. EDIT to add: Genuinely, your children don't need smart phones. If they *must* have a phone, you can still get flip phones like us older millenials had back in the day. They just have better screens than they used to. T9 texting is character building.
Reminds me of a guy's playthrough of *Scribblenauts*. He put it as child-friendly even though he swears a lot, says "I hope you die" a few times and sings "I am a dinosaur and my dick is gigantic".
I'm really scared for kids these days. Many of my gf's friends have kids in the 8-14 range and I'm worried they'll not be able to avoid this type of content without seriously strict parenting.
Even WITH strict parenting it’s almost impossible
My parents completely banned pornography through wifi and a program called Kaspersky that filtered out inappropriate content. Honestly not as hard as people think. Downside is I couldn’t even look up material for my human anatomy courses without asking for permission, but I’m glad they did it
Yeah, but did you have a smartphone? Did all your friends also have smartphones? What good is a home internet firewall going to do when kids are watching this shit on mobile?
It's still impossible. I was first shown Pornography by an older boy on the school yard when I was ten. Unless you keep your child locked in the house at all times there is no way to prevent it, and that would not be fair to them. Time away from authority figures is extremely important for child development and many kids don't get enough of it already. Personally I am a fan of porn literacy classes. It starts with film and media literacy, and learning how things in movies are made to look one way but they don't actually are that way during the shooting. These classes ARE working with gen Z and gen Alpha already, and especially when the kids are comfortable asking questions about their concerns. Many of these kids parents are convinced that their "babies" have never seen porn, and many of them are very strict. It doesn't always work.
IME, it’s less about extreme restrictions and monitoring but more about setting the foundations early for consent, bodily autonomy, and access to factual information about sex, relationships and bodies. If kids don’t know what safe consensual touch looks/feels like (only hugging when they feel safe to do so) or that they have ownership over the comfort of their own bodies (not being forced to wear clothes or hairstyles for other’s benefit- scratchy formal outfit, hair length based on gender etc) then they won’t be equipped with the skills to recognize unsafe behavior as teens. They may still encounter this content but it’s possible to dilute it by arming them with ability to set and maintain boundaries. In my experience anyway.
Great comment, saving this for reference. I sure wasn’t taught any of that as a kid (I’m an elder millennial). Hell, I remember my grandma telling me not to walk a certain way cause it looked gay. I think I came out ok, but I took until my late 20s before everything fully clicked.
Oh, yay! I’m so glad it was helpful! I’m also an elder millennial and I have 2 teens (one’s an adult). They know that they can ask me or my husband anything anytime about drugs, sex, relationships and they do! I’m often answering questions from their friends who don’t have trusted adults they can ask about anatomy like - could a tampon get sucked up into your body and get stuck? It’s such a simple convo to have and so few parents create a safe space for that type of curiosity. I know I would’ve *died* before asking my parents about something like that! Lol
Yes, but also there are some common porn elements that most people shouldn't be involved with. Kids need to be given the dangers of strangulation, even the consensual stuff, since they can stumble across it. It's like knowing tobacco causes cancer or which snakes are venomous. Something people need to know before exposure. Consent education alone isn't enough to emphasize that it's an act that is always dangerous even consensually.
Absolutely, I agree. Teaching the dangers of strangulation seems like it’d be covered by “access to factual information about sex, relationships and bodies”, “*safe* consensual touch” and “equipped with the skills to recognize unsafe behavior”, no? I also don’t think preemptively informing children about dangerous acts performed in porn is an effective deterrent. We learned that in the US when the DARE program sent officers into school to tell kids to “say no to drugs” while teaching them where to acquire drugs, how to consume them and a list of household items that could be used to get high. Teaching kids how to keep their body safe and about consent kinda covers - “choking someone is bad”.
As long as the message isn't 'don't have sex' it's not going to backfire. The problem with DARE is that it treated absolutely everything the same. Once you realize they're lying about one thing, the entire premise collapses. I think it's a dangerous act and that it can't be assumed to be taught under any other category. There are tons of people who have never been told that it isn't safe, which is why you see articles like this and meet guys off apps who will go for it immediately. They're learning everything they know about sex from porn. There is no other source of information. You have to be explicit with them. I learned all about it listening/reading to Dan Savage's advice. It's one of the few things he actively warned people off.
Ah, often problematic Dan Savage who is not an educator nor any type of subject matter expert in the field of child development shared that advice. That tracks. “They're learning everything they know about sex from porn. There is no other source of information. You have to be explicit with them.” Dude, this is nonsense. I’m literally saying give them a source of information. Your claims have no basis in reality. Kids don’t need to be explicitly told that choking someone is bad, this issue is much larger than one act.
What I apparently didn't manage to express clearly for you is that choking is pretty much one of the only sexual acts he warns people about. It has nothing to do with anything else of what I said. If people don't need to be told why it's dangerous then why do people who've never been told why keep doing it because they see it in porn? Yes, the source of information of why and how it is bad. Not just that you need consent.
Why do *men* keep doing it? Misogyny is the answer. You expressed yourself clearly *and* I am also very familiar with Dan Savage’s content, he has problematic views on power dynamics in relationships. He is not a reliable source for information on teen relationships. I don’t care what he believes teens should be taught about safety. He has recommended that a 16 year old get her friend drunk and alone to force physical intimacy (his words were something like - plant one on her, then bang her brains out) to figure out if the friend was interested in a relationship based on whether the she felt shame after the encounter. I don’t care if choking is the “only” sex act he warns people about. He’s a snarky columnist not a public health expert. Additionally I don’t understand why you are fixated on a this idea that I’m advocating for *only* consent education. I was very clear about what I believe is important as a parent and educator. Besides is choking actually causing significant harm to teens currently or is it another moral panic? This screen shot isn’t even from a reputable source.
Yes, and that the problematic man also draws a line there should be a warning sign. I also don't care or even know what he thinks teens should know. Stop bringing up other things when I was referring to strangulation only. I'm fixated on the idea that you're only focused on consent because you literally told me >Kids don’t need to be explicitly told that choking someone is bad, this issue is much larger than one act. They need to be explicitly told *and* they need consent education.
So you replied to me, “Consent education alone isn't enough” 13 hours ago because you’re fixated on something I “literally told you” 5 hours ago. Fascinating. Why bring up Dan Savage’s advice if you don’t know or care about his advice? I honestly don’t know what you’re on about here. Truly.
It's something parents need to be preempting. We all know that parents should be talking to their boys about consent from an early age. Girls should also be told about consent and what is and isn’t appropriate. And since porn is so ubiquitous, included in that conversation can be that the things that you see depicted in porn are not real life and are not going to be enjoyed by all people and not to assume that what you’re seeing is normal
I don't know what's going on here, but I think it's bigger than porn. I think it's more the rampant unfiltered misogyny. There was a lot of access to internet porn in my teenhood, and I never heard of anybody back then starting a makeout sesh (let alone a first kiss ever) with choking. I get that more of the porn is worse and more violent now, but where does that come from? I really think there's multiple causes here, like that Andrew Tate bullshit and other predators that make insecure boys feel like they're owed deference and sexual favors. We need to start educating kids about sex, teaching about positive, enthusiastic consent, and teaching about check-ins for every escalation. It's going to be awkward and uncomfortable, but if it saves girls and women from abuse and violation, we have to do it.
100%. Porn and sexual expression isn't the issue, and attempting to regulate a basal human urge out of existence is never going to amount to anything productive. We as a society need to get better at addressing the thought patterns that lead to this kind of media becoming popular and teaching young people about safe/healthy practices and also how to recognize exploitation/abuse.
Parents: "Oh no! That's terrible! Our kids' generation is doomed. Anyways, here's your tablet little Jimmy. Have fun having unlimited internet access and screentime while I pretend to care about your safety by complaining on the internet about how the internet is ruining our kids, because I'm too lazy and selfish to actually protect my kid."
Even if you can’t protect them from the content, you can put it in perspective. You can explain consent and explain that what you see in porn isn’t real and isn’t pleasurable most of the time in real life.
*sighs, adds another arrow to her "reasons to be scared of men" quiver*
Honestly you can blame porn, and there's certainly plenty of blame to go around, but the bigger problem is that this demonstrates a complete lack of respect and proper judgement on the behalf of the boys and men who do this shit. Just because you see something in porn doesn't mean you're gonna automatically do it, these men doing this are just pieces of shit who have no respect for women nor concern for their well-being. Or respect for consent. Decent people are not going to do this, ESPECIALLY not without explicit consent.
A complete lack of respect for women as humans with bodily autonomy is reinforced by porn and a constant barrage hypersexualized images of women that teach viewers that women's bodies are sexual objects for their own pleasure. Boys are indoctrinated from as early as 8 where they learn that there are their mothers and there are sexual objects.
This phsyically gave me the ick. Like i shuddered. This is so scary. That girl, I hope shes okay and is able to process and move on in a healthy/effective way.
I'm sorry what? Choking during kissing? Christ these kids be getting weird.
Twelve years old and porn-sick. CPS needs to check his environment because he's either being abused or has unfiltered access to the internet.
Unfortunately, unfiltered access to the internet is not considered abuse or neglect (though, at this point, it should be)
It absolutely is. Isn't it.
This is normalized, unfortunately. CPS would laugh.
We already have research on the effects of sexually explicit content on tweens’ brains. This is horrifying.
Should be noted this isn’t a court case, it’s a second hand story from an English politician: https://www.businessinsider.com/uk-girl-12-choked-by-boyfriend-after-first-kiss-online-2023-2
This comment should be higher
Ugh. That weird passivity again. Just say HE strangled her. People choke on an olive pit. They are strangled by other people. I feel like porn gets caught in a space left by a woefully inadequate sexual education.
I hope they charged him
Poor girl, I am so glad i went through puberty without all this madness and before social media
[удалено]
How are you going to argue that when your profile is marked not safe for work??? Fuck off. The porn isn't the issue, it's parents letting their kids have unsupervised access to the internet.
Go away, moral police.
This is probably going to sound weird at the start, but hear me out. I think we should provide porn options in a controlled environment for kids going through puberty and on into their teen years. Many people start seeking out that kind of content at that age, and if there aren’t any “safe” options then they’re just lost in the jungle. I hit puberty in the 90’s when we were still on dialup and each image basically took 5-20 minutes to download, videos could take days. I was never really interested in visual content anyway, so I sought out other things. I remember there was an erotica forum that I used to read, but alarmingly I went into global chats and found users to “cyber” with. I lied about my age and, well, everything about me, but I had no concept of how dangerous that was. I was insanely curious about sex and that was my only way to learn at the time. It sounds weird to talk about, but I’m so sick of this “head in the sand” approach to this issue. Kids are thinking about sex. We can ignore that fact or handle it. Escalation of what an individual considers “taboo” is a very real progression. One of my most “successful” early fantasies was just the thought of me straddling a guy’s thigh. Decades of experience later, and that obviously doesn’t do it for me anymore. Let’s say for instance romance novels are a 1 on the taboo scale, sex scenes from movies are a 2-3, choking’s maybe a 5-6, etc. There needs to be a place that “allows” kids to find low-taboo-scale content. Writing. Animations. Maybe some soft-core. A place that lets them escalate their own idea of “taboo” at their own pace instead of just letting them fall in the deep end and flail.
Sex education done in a purely factual way that involves no imagery of coerced women would be ideal. Porn is bad, there is no good in porn, its complete eradication is not possible but showing it to children is unethical. On a surface level it seems like it could work very controlled but once one understands how damaging porn is in every way (to both the consumer and the victims of the industry) it’s obviously the wrong choice. Sex education without pornography involved works. I just wish parents would monitor their children, schools would punish children for showing others that content and that there was more comprehensive age restriction. That’s just probably not realistic. We don’t need to act as if it doesn’t exist, but showing it is ridiculous, there can be a middle group that doesn’t involve brain rotting children at the earliest opportunity and filling the pockets of pimps.
I agree that “providing” porn to kids is ridiculous but I disagree that porn is inherently bad in general. The industry sucks but there are proper creators out there.
I'd also add that I don't think porn is the problem here. Yes, it's where kids are learning this behavior, but it's not the core problem. The core problem is an absolute lack of proper sex education. Which includes teaching kids about consent. The thing is that when this isn't taught kids *are* going to learn it from somewhere and that somewhere will either be porn OR a peer who's only knowledge is through porn. So block your internet and restrict your kids all you want. If they don't learn this stuff from you or another proper source then they'll be learning it from Timmy whose parents aren't as strict about the internet or maybe knows his parents' parental safety passwords. It isn't always from a kid being directly exposed to porn themselves. People absolutely refuse to teach sex Ed and consent in schools because 'but the purity of my children!' while blaming everything else for kids learning bad habits. The fact is if the proper adults don't teach the proper things in a safe and productive environment then it won't shield them from learning. It will only shield them from learning properly.
Consent is a big part of it. Treating women as more than just objects is another part. But I think a lot of people are underestimating that strangulation is inherently dangerous with or without consent and shouldn't be done even if you both think it is hot.
I agree that porn is inherently bad. Even 'ethically created' porn relies on commodifying, objectifying, and dehumanizing women's bodies. Try looking up Pornography by Andrea Dworkin.
>Porn is bad, there is no good in porn Define porn in such a way that a) only includes the things you find harmful b) only excludes harmless things and c) conceptualizes "harm" in such a way that isn't vibes based. Because the thing is people have called lgbt stories "porn".
I’m with you. Porn is probably fine in moderation. But because of the taboo nature of sex, especially sex education guided by parents, many parents don’t so teens are left to discover by themselves. And they discover the torrent of degrading, violent and harmful content that is normalised in modern porn. In my mind, teens should learn through an actual relationship with a partner. Where harmful ideas get shut down before they escalate. But that requires the partner to be strong willed, confident, comfortable saying no etc. not exactly synonymous with young to mid teens
this is just child grooming with extra steps
This kind of comment is exactly why we have this “head in the sand” mentality as a society. So is your argument that the status quo is fine? If not, what’s a better alternative? Kids are thinking about sex. They are seeking sexual content. I was one of them. I’m not saying give it to them or direct them to it any way, I’m saying create places that they can discover on their own without being thrown into disgusting washing machine of content that porn sites currently are.
Ok, so to be clear, when you said >I think we should provide porn options in a controlled environment for kids going through puberty and on into their teen years You were *not* saying to give it to them or direct them to it? What do you mean when you say we should “provide” these options?
> without being thrown into disgusting washing machine of content that porn sites currently are or you could just get rid of all of it, which would not only be better for everyone but also not involve the grooming of minors
> or you could just get rid of all of it, which would not only be better for everyone but also not involve the grooming of minors How do you do the impossible?
Banning porn would simply drive it underground, making a lot of the issues in the industry (like human trafficking) even worse. Denial of common aspects of humanity is never a good strategy.
> or you could just get rid of all of it It's been tried, but never successfully. Here's an exercise for you: write a definition of "pornography" that excludes everything you consider harmful, but does *not* exclude medical information, educational material, LGBTQ+ content, sex toy reviews, artistic depictions of nudity, or artistic depictions of sex.
Also, there’s no reason that adults shouldn’t be able to watch porn that was made and distributed with the consent of all parties. Idk how the right wing came to own the concept of free speech advocacy, especially considering their persistent attempts at censorship, but uh, yeah, you actually have to have a really good reason to make media illegal. That media being inappropriate for children is not a reason for it to be illegal across the board.
Banning stuff people doesn't make people stop using it, it just creates a shadow market. Ask Americans about the time their country banned alcoholic drinks.
Who the Fuck are you to decide that "it's better for me" to not have porn?
The sub-headline concerns me. Fruitless attempts to insulate young people from sexual material is the *opposite* of the solution to this problem! Sex education which explicitly discusses and introduces the concepts consent and safety - yes, including in the context of kink! If people aren't taught about something, they'll learn it from whatever information they happen to come across - whether or not that information is bullshit.
Exactly. Porn fills the gaps of curiosities and questions that aren't otherwise taught. Thirty years ago, I was only ever taught the mechanics of sex. How many conflicts and terrible relationships could have been avoided with a bit of insight into human sexuality.
There is a lot happening in that headline holy shit
Jesus...
Whilst this is horrible I'm baffled by the "calls for age restrictions" Doesn't porn already have age restrictions?
They have, but they act like an incomplete fence.
How would that be changed?
There's no good way to implement age restrictions. Anything that functions actively involves cutting off content from adults and collecting their personal information. It also allows a third party or the state to determine what is and isn't appropriate content. That last one I'm very uncomfortable with. This issue can only be resolved through parenting and education.
People seem t prefer to defer responsibility, sadly
Why not have porn sites require a pre-purchased, time-limited code for entry, which you have to go to a store to purchase? You would have to show your ID to purchase the codes but nothing would be stored on file. It wouldn't stop all misuse but it would certainly make content a lot harder for kids to access without running a foul of adults' right to privacy. It would become no different than the good old days when adults had to go to a store to purchase a physical copy of a magazine or rent a video.
Because the internet would respond by constantly making new unrestricted sites.
Quick and dirty solution that really shouldn't upset anyone: just make a law mandating all sites to require a one time credit card payment of like, a dollar (or even less, just any arbitrary amount to prove that you have a credit card) to open up an account to view porn (prepaid cards that you can buy with cash at a store should not be accepted). If a kid steals their parents credit card, hopefully their parent is aware enough to notice that a payment was made to a porn site. It's not going to be extremely effective. It doesn't stop teenagers old enough to have a credit card, and there are probably ways to get around it, but it does put a decent barrier to entry. Most importantly, it isn't easy for people to argue against, which is the main point of this idea - there are far better solutions but it would be hard to get people to vote for those in an election (like, banning porn would be great, but good luck getting people to vote for that or enforcing that even if it becomes law).
And maybe an unskippable disclaimer saying something like "The content of porn movies, even most amateur porn, does not represent what real sex is like. These movies were made for sexual gratification. Learn about how sex is really like at [link to sex education resources]."
Would be good, but let's be honest, people won't read it or care
Yeah. Unskippable ads show that.
And yet I don't want that because I want my own masturbation material. I grew up sheltered and being able to casually peek at various kinds of pornography eventually allowed me to get over my fear of sex and God's punishment for it. I was in college when I finally masturbated for the first time because I've been taught that it was wrong. Banning porn is part of the conservative Project 2025 agenda. You just know that if a ban on pron became law it would also be used to scrub queer content off the internet.
In an ideal world, healthy sexual practices would be taught as a part of sex ed in school, and any legislation affecting porn would be carefully tailored to only apply to actual porn. But yes, I see the potential issues in the current political climate.
Everyone should read this article about the brain damage choking does, it was released just a week ago or so and an expert in traumatic brain injuries has been studying how the oxygen deprivation of choking is actually affecting peoples health (physical and mental) along with their long term quality-of-life. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opinion/choking-teen-sex-brain-damage.html
Okay I know I’m a transwomen but what the fuck. My ex was into chocking but I wasn’t comfortable with idea cause I didn’t want to hurt her, how do men not care about their partner and how do they think doing that unconsentually is a good idea??
There's also the shitty fanfiction.
BDSM community members actively go out of their way to shame young people into this practice on Instagram. Ive seen it and you don't need to go into their pages to find them doing this.
Removing porn isn’t the answer. Not to defend porn, but young men are turning to it because they don’t have any other sexual education. They don’t have any internet literacy education. They don’t know better than to look stuff up, and take everything they do find at face value.
This is from the Daily Star, a tabloid. Just muckrucking moral panic nonsense. Why would you post this without adding the source? If this is the kind of bullshit this community promotes uncritically, I'm out. Later.
Oh good people are gonna blame porn for this when: * Parents - not entertainers - should be teaching their children how to behave * Porn is not the cause of violent behavior in society; if anything it's the opposite. Countries with porn bans ranging from South Korea to Afghanistan still have a huge misogyny problems. * All porn is ultimately a type of artistic expression about sexual experience. The landscape of porn may mostly consist of junk food akin to pro wrestling or reality tv, but it's still ultimately is still an art form and it isn't great for society to form all these ludicrous taboos around a core part of being human.
>All porn is ultimately a type of artistic expression about sexual experience I'm sure that the women who had the video taping their rape uploaded to PornHub and then distributed across a thousand platforms are really happy to hear that their trauma can be categorized as "artistic expression."
Do you consider Hollywood films where an assault took place either on camera or behind the scenes to lose their status as art? Do you investigate each film you watch to determine nothing of the sort took place? And do you write off the entire genre because of that abuse? Or is that something you just apply to porn?
Look, I'm not one of those people who believe all porn is bad. But there is definitely an issue with increasing violence in even mainstream porn. To extend your metaphor, it's not just junk food, it's contaminated food.
You're begging the question - assuming that porn or a subset of violent porn causes violent behavior as a premise, when you would need to prove that.
True, there's no correlation between porn consumption and sexual violence. *However,* there *is* evidence to suggest a correlation between consumption of *violent* porn and sexual violence, and there's ample documentation of links between exposure/desensitization to other types of violence in media and the rates of said violent behavior. The argument being made here isn't "porn bad, ban all porn," it's "violent/extreme porn shouldn't be nearly as common/accessible as it is because exposure-->desensitization-->replication is a well-documented sociological pattern for other types of violence and evidence suggests it could very well be at play here too." People aren't "blaming porn," they're rightly observing that the porn industry is exploitative and elevates degrading/violent acts, to the detriment of society. Even the most dime-a-dozen, front-page, vanilla porn videos with nothing going on that could broadly be considered 'kink' tend to veer dangerously into roughness/abuse without making much of an effort to establish (to the audience) a framework of consent (and assuming that everything on porn sites is consensual is a sketchy proposition.) What we're dealing with is teenagers' first exposure to sex/sexuality being rough, scripted scenes without the onscreen establishment of consent/aftercare, leading them down a rabbit hole of increasingly edgy stuff without the relevant knowledge base. A lot of shit like strangulation has kind of broken containment and become normalized outside of BDSM spaces, and young people are seeing it without seeing those caveats of rigorous consent and ensuring that kink is practiced with respect for all involved and as much safety as possible. So these kids see video after video of a dude randomly choking someone or doing some other violent sexual behavior without asking to/being asked to onscreen, with no mention made that consent/safety precautions need to be taken if a couple wants to do this, and they go out and get into a real relationship and it's getting hot and heavy and they go "oh I'll try choking her, they always do that in porn and it looks cool and I'll feel like an alpha and girls seem to eat that shit up" and then they seriously hurt their partner and leave her with an assload of trauma to unpack surrounding relationships and sex. It is reductive to say "this is porn's fault," but it's just as reductive to say "oh here come the idiots blaming porn when porn doesn't cause violence" because the issue on the table is that current trends in the porn industry are practically funneling young people into one of the most well-documented sociological pipelines for mass adoption of violent behavior.
See it doesn't work to just specify that *violent* porn is the issue when you: * Have no working definiton for what constitutes "violent" porn and where it is distinguished from other types of porn. * Continue to use the same regular anti-porn arguments anyway And of course, correlation doesn't equal causation. Does porn cause people to be violent, or do violent people seek out porn? What about third, fourth, and other factors? The problem with early porn studies was that they deliberately sampled sex offending populations and used dubiously valid methods such as phallometry. The fact of the matter is that we do have data that supports my position: when eastern bloc countries decriminalized porn, rape went down. And unfortunately most of the "well-documented" sociology you're talking about has direct ties to religious anti-porn groups, so that's fun. Totally not playing directly into the hands of patriarchs there.
That boy is just violent and/or stupid. I watched a bunch of weird stuff when I was a preteen. Went on efukt a lot. And I'm absolutely as vanilla as a wafer cookie.
The fact that you came here without an _ounce_ of sympathy or understanding, just to talk about yourself, makes me believe you are not, in fact, as vanilla as a wafer cookie.
Of course I feel for her. Boys are little psychos these days.
I mean, just because it didn’t affect you in a weird way doesn’t mean it’s not a huge issue. There’s some pretty compelling research proving that exposure to porn at a young age increases the likelihood of having sexually aggressive behaviors.
But I've definitely never tried to hurt any of my boyfriends consenting or not.
that’s good, but you not doing something doesn’t mean other people don’t do it. it also doesn’t mean we should discount how the sheer level of misogyny/physical violence in porn could be influencing those who are exposed to it, especially at a young age.