NYT: When Did Porn Become Sex Ed?
THE other day, I got an email from a 21-year-old college senior about sex — or perhaps more correctly, about how ill equipped she was to talk about sex. The abstinence-only curriculum in her middle and high schools had taught her little more than “don’t,” and she’d told me that although her otherwise liberal parents would have been willing to answer any questions, it was pretty clear the topic made them even more uncomfortable than it made her.
So she had turned to pornography. “There’s a lot of problems with porn,” she wrote. “But it is kind of nice to be able to use it to gain some knowledge of sex.”
I wish I could say her sentiments were unusual, but I heard them repeatedly during the three years I spent interviewing young women in high school and college for a book on girls and sex. In fact, according to a survey of college students in Britain, 60 percent consult pornography, at least in part, as though it were an instruction manual, even as nearly three-quarters say that they know it is as realistic as pro wrestling. (Its depictions of women, meanwhile, are about as accurate as those of the “The Real Housewives” franchise.)
My wife forwarded this to me a few days ago. More than a little disturbing…Report
This situation has led to completely unrealistic expectations for the modern plumber or pizza delivery guy.Report
Or NihilistReport
Say whatever else you will about the tenets of libertine post-modern hedonism. At least it’s an ethos.Report
Like, that the plumber will show up the same day you call them.Report
Not only the same day, but before you’ve managed to find release on your own.Report
As someone who’s been delivering pizzas for a little extra cash lately, I’ve got to say I am shocked at how much porn lied to me on this front. I’m only being invited in for sex two or three times a week, tops. Very disappointing.Report
I blame Bill Clinton for the spike in oral. He didn’t think it was sex, why should anyone else?Report
It’s strange how “not being sex” can be a selling point. Will we ever get commercials that say “Budweiser: Drinking this stuff is definitely not sex”.Report
It’s how playboy is marketing itself, these days, innit?Report
Blame? You say it like it’s a bad thing. Hell, that may be one of the greatest accomplishments of any president ever.Report
Well it did contribute to the hysteria over “rainbow parties”.
I’m sorry but anyone with half a brain cannot consider oral sex not sex. Hell, at a min, it’s got “sex” in the description of the act. But sign up if you want. Next you’re going to tell me that if you do anal but not vaginal, the girl can still “technically” call herself a virgin.
Sure…..Report
My parents were super-liberal and non-censorious. They had my older brother teach us how to use condoms. I also went to see Boggie Nights with my dad. People generally find this weird.
My sex Ed in HS was also non-censorious.
But I don’t see what the excerpt describing as changing any time soonReport
When did our older brother teach us how to use condoms? I don’t remember that at all. He was nine years older than us anyway. By the time we were interested in girls, he was living on his own in another state.Report
My parents were liberal and non-censorious and I went to the progressive “alternative” high school. There were still major gaps in my education, at least compared to what I’ve learned since.
For example I had to learn on my own that circumcision wasn’t just some weird Jewish thing (as pop culture has it) but customary for American boys like me. Not that I mourn my foreskin or anything, but I consider not mentioning it a signal of my still-definitely-liberal parents’ and teachers’ squeamishness. I mean, if I were gay and had had sex with an uncut dude before that particular discovery, I might have said “huh?”. I imagine more than one straight female — having only seen cut ones in textbooks and (to bring things to the orginal topic) porn — has done so.
It also took the Internet to disabuse me of the mythology around hymens. And to learn the importance of lube.
Sex ed should probably be a yearlong class, not just a section of health.Report
When the Josh Duggar scandal was cresting and details leaked out of his controversial(*) sexual encounter with Danica Dillon, a lot of people were “shocked, shocked I say”, but it seemed pretty clear to me that:
– Dude had no real hands-on sexual experience whatsoever with a woman who had any herself
– Everything he had learned came from watching current, industrialized, Western porn
– So many of the trends in current, industrialized Western porn fetishize rough, misogynistic sex that is actively uncomfortable for the female that liberal libertine I refuses to watch it
– Dude had more performance anxiety than a dog who actually caught the SUV, so he doubled down in his emulations of his heroes
– Female porn reactions are intentionally stylized/unrealistic, so he had no idea how to gauge real feedback and modulate the situation
So of course there was a disaster where someone could potentially be actually hurt somewhat.
(*) From what came out at the trial, looks like a lot more “he said, she said” than initially reported, and neither of them is exactly covered with glory.Report
Is the title of that piece meant to be rhetorical? Is porn now sex ed? Was it something different before? And if this is about abstinence only sex ed in the United States, why does she use a British survey.
I’m confused as to what this piece is about.
Never mind. Now I see that it is my questions that are rhetorical.Report
I thought the answer was rather obvious: when schools and parents voluntarily recuse themselves from certain conversations, the kids will just have them elsewhere without adult guidance. This isn’t a difficult concept and yet the number of teachers and parents who ignore or defy it — with sex or other topics — is astounding.Report
My confusion was why this was being linked to porn and abstinence-only education as opposed to being recognized as the case since time immemorial. I was less confused when I saw that the author was selling a book.Report
Have teens always looked to porn though? Or just always lookes beyond what adults offered them?Report
As long as porn has existed as something that teens could reliably get access to, I’m guessing that the answer is yes. And I’m guessing that it’s yes, whether or not those teens had good sex ed schooling or open parenting.
And I don’t mean that all teens do it, but whether they do or not isn’t all that dependent on those factors. One of the biggest set of lies that we consistently tell ourselves is that every decision we !ake with regards to kids has some deep and lasting implication.Report
People used to look at medical manuals as pornography in more censorious times. Humans started creating pornographic art as soon as we figured out how to paint and sculpt. So the answer is that humans always looked at pornography when available.Report
At some very victorian point, they looked for books on flowers.
(they were considered titillating, as they discussed sexual organs)Report
Sex education in my high school was very clinical. It wasn’t abstinence only but it most like was far from what the sex positive crowd wanted. We weren’t taught to weight for marriage but they didn’t exactly say have fun experimenting safely and with consent either.Report
Months ago the New York Times had an editorial about how European countries legendary libertine sex education was facing increasing pressures from Muslim parents to become more conservative. It was entitled the World’s Problem With Sex Education. Sex education is a very political issue and parents are going to have some strong opinions on it. They will use every tool available to them to to get sex education taught their way even if the results are horrendous.Report
Another fine example of how these folks will not assimilate. Maybe the Europeans will start to wake up.Report
I can’t wait for American conservatives to make this a talking point.Report
“@notme calls for deportation of all supporters of Abstinence-only sex education. Film at 11.”Report
You can almost different parts of notme’s belief systems struggle against each other.Report
Nice try but I don’t think abstinence only sex ed is the best way to go.Report
I assume notme is an avatar for what not to do. It’s always better to have a devil’s advocate.Report
How many people are looking at actual pornography, and how many are actually looking at security footage (or, the ever “popular” — look at me while I’m doing it…)Report
Can somebody get Kim not to write obtusely.Report
What, I need to explain that? I thought it was perfectly clear.
While there is professionally produced pornography available, there’s plenty of “I picked up my phone during a party” documentary style–documenting everything from 100% consensual to 100% unconsensual.
Someone looks at all that security footage too, so if someone’s doing it in the restroom, well… don’t be surprised if it winds up online.
Real sex looks a lot different from pornographic sexReport
Also, real actresses (and actors) have names, signed contracts, and paperwork including age verification all filed with the industry’s equivalent of Underwriters’ Laboratory.
If you don’t see evidence of all three of these, it’s circumstantial evidence that the actress’s (or actors, I don’t want to minimize their risks, but everything I have heard indicates it’s more real for females than males) presence on set, the sex act itself, or the filming of same, might not have been entirely consensual.Report
I have seen one or two named actresses getting raped during filming.
(wasn’t actually for a porno). I guess that’s the perils of knowing someone in the biz — an eye for “and that’s not just faking it…”Report
I believe it. As I said yesterday in a different thread, the violent misogyny and emphasis on “sex” acts that can’t be enjoyable for either partner are major reasons I don’t support even the “legitimate” industry with any of my money.
All I was saying is that, as a minimum, “professional” films have certain bona fides. If you haven’t seen them, it’s sadly probably safe to assume the worst. Even the best isn’t all that good.Report
This reminded me of a Caitlan Flannigan article:
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That’s where we have fallen, isn’t it?
There was a time when pundits wished to write a salacious article about moral decline, they had to actually document it, Hunter S. Thompson style and do the hard work of actually wallowing in decadence.
Now, the writers indulge in the worst form of laziness and merely find a hashtag about sexting or twerking of some other behavior, and never get to savor the actual ingestion of mescaline and opium, or bareback group sex in Big Sur.
And we as a society are the poorer for it.Report
Wall-vaginas were actually documented, though.
(Bonus points if you know who’s wall I’m referring to).Report
I just checked my account profile and I have exactly 0 kimmie points in over, what, 3-years now?Report
Dr. Doom, that’d be… (and yeah, he’s famous for his “out of control” parties).
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2009/03/nouriel_roubinis_wall_vaginas.html
(Maybe I should start asking easier questions?)Report
Most of our journalists are older these days because the Baby Boomers aren’t retiring. Hunter S. Thompson style decadence is all well and good when your in your twenties or thirties but it takes a toll on older bodies. Than again, this might be away to create more middle-class jobs for our underemployed youth. We should encourage senior citizen decadence to quicken the natural process and advance our youth. Baby Boomers and Silent Generation, you owe it to the youth to go wild.Report
Do you have a source for that quote @tod-kelly?Report