[subego]

The thread spinoffs continue...

13 for me. These days that's got to be considered late in the game.

[Laminar]

Mid teens probably? I couldn't give you an exact date.

[subego]

That's okay. You were busy.

[andi*pandi]

16. I saw about 5 seconds before I shut the vcr off and sent the little bastards I was babysitting to bed. They had found their dad's unmarked porn stash and said it was a kid movie they had taped off the tv.

[subego]

Awk...ward.

Did you mention it to dad?

[subego]

Harry Reems was in the movie I "found".

You know you're getting old when the guy you saw in your first porno is dead.

[andi*pandi]

Originally Posted by subego 

Awk...ward.

Did you mention it to dad?

hell no. Not even to their mom. We put it back on the shelf where they said they found it.

[subego]

Wow.

Unless they led you to a shelf which happened to be in the back of the parents' bedroom closet, I'd say that's bad.

[Shaddim]

10-11ish, my uncle had a huge stash of videos and magazines.

[subego]

Hidden, or in plain view?

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by subego 

Hidden, or in plain view?

In stacks next to the living room couch.

[lpkmckenna]

I found porn mags in the woods near my home. I was pretty young, so I guess 8 or so.

Apparently, "found porn in the woods" is a very common phenomenon.

Also, my best friend and I also used to find porn mags in factories on the weekends. Back then, it was really common for factories near where I lived to be left unsecured over the weekend, and we loved exploring. And this was before harassment laws made bringing porn to work a complete no-no, so it was everywhere.

Toronto used to be infamous as the local independent station CityTV would broadcast "blue movies" on Friday nights. I seem to recall the level of explicitness varied, as porn companies often made "blue" and "XXX" versions of their films, and CityTV would sometimes broadcast the wrong version.

And I'm old enough to remember "fuzzy porn," and that occasionally the cable company would accidentally broadcast porn in the clear.

But I'm pretty sure the first full porn film I ever saw was a Traci Lords film before it was revealed that she was working while underage. So I guess it was actually child pornography, legally. Not sure if I saw this before or after her age was revealed, or if I was even aware of the issue at the time. A friend showed it during a sleep over, as he had pilfered it from his dad's dresser or something. Needless to say, a room full of boys not knowing how to deal with their erections in all-male company is still pretty funny.

Sorry if this was TMI. I thought some of this was oddly noteworthy, in a puerile way.

[lpkmckenna]

Originally Posted by Shaddim 

In stacks next to the living room couch.

Ick.

[mattyb]

Late, 17 or 18. AFAIK, hardcore was pretty rare in the UK before widespread internet usage.

[subego]

I had a friend with a Traci Lords video which I "borrowed" until it was "borrowed" from me a few years later. We knew it was in child porn territory, but when you're young enough to sleep with someone the age she was when it was filmed, the CP aspect is more of a curiosity than anything.

[Thorzdad]

Probably early-to-mid-teens or so. Of course, that was pre-home video days, so it was probably some over-used magazines that were making the rounds, or a grainy 8mm stag film someone found in their dad's closet.

My cousins and I had been sneaking our grandfather's Playboys years before that, though. But that's not hardcore.

[ghporter]

I was at least 18. A friend said "hey, this looks pretty <then current word equivalent to "hot">, let's go see!" The theater was seedy, the film was atrocious, and it had that "trainwreck" sort of affect on me for the first 15 minutes or so. After the cast went through the basic gymnastics a couple of times, it got old pretty quickly, and my friend and I sneaked out, heads down. It was only when we were leaving that we realized that two 18 year old guys going to such a film might look "odd."

I was introduced to less extreme stuff (Playboy, et al) much younger, probably about 10, because another friend had an older brother who had this collection...

[The Final Dakar]

14.

[subego]

How old were you when you got Internet?

[Laminar]

College (officially).

[shifuimam]

College. My boyfriend at the time was stealing satellite and had six channels of hardcore porn.

I watched it for like an hour and just could not figure out what the appeal was.

[mattyb]

It took you 60 minutes to "not figure out what the appeal was"?

[subego]

Took me a whole lot longer.

In fact, I'm still trying to not figure out what the appeal is.

[Spheric Harlot]

[mattyb]

I find it strange that ANYONE would need 60 minutes to not figure out what the appeal was for ANYTHING.

Maybe I'm just impatient.

[Shaddim]

It's all a clever long-range marketing ploy started by the lotion companies.

[ctt1wbw]

I thought the thread title was DID. Then, it would 14.

[shifuimam]

Originally Posted by mattyb 

It took you 60 minutes to "not figure out what the appeal was"?

I was bored.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

I was bored.

That's the thing about most hard core. It gets so repetitive that it's hard to figure out what's interesting about it. Once you get past the visuals pushing the buttons in your brainstem, it's all pretty boring.

[osiris]

I think I was 14 or so, Time Square's Show Palace. I watched hairy 70s people have sex, live, from behind a plexiglass viewing booth. They had peep shows too. Ah, the good old days.

[Jawbone54]

I was probably 13, back in the AOL 56k days. My parents didn't really how accessible the stuff was, and didn't know I had a "master account" with access to all the parental controls. My friends and I became curious, and surfed around a bit.

The average age for hardcore porn exposure these days is reported to be anywhere from 11 to 14, depending on which study you'd prefer to cite.

[ort888]

I want to say 12 or 13. They were old 8mm reel-to-reel tapes from the 70s. I had to learn to operate my parents 8mm tape player to watch them.

As for magazines, my father had tons of older Playboys "hidden" in his closet. I say "hidden" because I'm 100% certain he put them where he knew we would find them and he knew that we were getting into them.

The world is changing, because I'm pretty sure my kids will answer this question very differently. I'd be shocked if most modern kids haven't seen hardcore porn by the 3rd grade or so. Basically as soon as they figure out the internet and how to type.

[Jawbone54]

The next, possibly-volatile question: do you guys believe it's healthy for a pre-teen to be exposed to porn?

[osiris]

Originally Posted by ort888 

I want to say 12 or 13. They were old 8mm reel-to-reel tapes from the 70s. I had to learn to operate my parents 8mm tape player to watch them.

As for magazines, my father had tons of older Playboys "hidden" in his closet. I say "hidden" because I'm 100% certain he put them where he knew we would find them and he knew that we were getting into them.

The world is changing, because I'm pretty sure my kids will answer this question very differently. I'd be shocked if most modern kids haven't seen hardcore porn by the 3rd grade or earlier. Basically as soon as they figure out the internet and how to type.

I remember reading the Playboys and Penthouse magazines at a Brooklyn barber shop, with my dad lending a wink in approval.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by Jawbone54 

The next, possibly-volatile question: do you guys believe it's healthy for a pre-teen to be exposed to porn?

I guess if we are talking about hardcore porn then we'd have a discussion on our hands, if we're talking about stuff like Playboy I don't have an issue with someone at any age seeing images of beautiful naked women. Hardcore porn can vary so much it's hard to say, just explicit intercourse isn't the same as sodomy, choking, slapping, etc... I think much like the video game discussion a regular pre-teen is going to be able to separate reality from fantasy and when it comes to porn I've never believed this is the way sex is actually supposed to happen, although it has at times come in handy for certain...maneuvers. What scarred me the most as a pre-teen was more of the rotten.com type stuff, murders, decapitations, etc... I've always found porn to be less detrimental than violence, especially when the violence is real life.

My first encounter with explicit porn was probably around 10 and it was a Hustler magazine a buddy of mine got ahold of somehow, first video porn was probably a year or two later.

[osiris]

Originally Posted by Jawbone54 

The next, possibly-volatile question: do you guys believe it's healthy for a pre-teen to be exposed to porn?

As a kid seeing real porn (not the soft playboy stuff) I wanted more - I wanted a nice pair of boobies to play with.
It was more frustrating at such a young age than anything else.

I do think that porn desensitizes and creates unreasonably high expectations for many. Not me though.

[ort888]

Originally Posted by Jawbone54 

The next, possibly-volatile question: do you guys believe it's healthy for a pre-teen to be exposed to porn?

It would be more healthy if porn was more realistic and tasteful. The problem is that most porn is painting a very poor image about what to expect from sex.

That said, it's inevitable. You just have to have a good relationship with your kids and hopefully raise them so they have a healthy attitude about sex and relationships.

[subego]

As uncomfortable as this is, I think the bottom line is parents are going to have to discuss porn with their children.

Asking a 7-year-old to unpack the full breadth of Internet sexuality themselves is too much.

[Shaddim]

Nudie pictures of girls? Not an issue there. Visuals of sex acts where nothing is left to the imagination (hardcore porn). No, preteens shouldn't be seeing that (or young teens, for that matter).

[subego]

How would you suggest achieving that? (No snark)

[Laminar]

I'd put a warning dialog before any objectionable material requiring users to verify that they are of age. This seems like a workable plan to me.

[subego]

A moment experienced by many, but now lost to time:

Waitaminnit... I'm old enough to buy my own porn.

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

I'd put a warning dialog before any objectionable material requiring users to verify that they are of age. This seems like a workable plan to me.

I have a bridge that you might like.

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by subego 

How would you suggest achieving that? (No snark)

Talking with them, letting them know that porn sex isn't normal. Explaining that sex is a thing that you should only do with people you love, and people involved in that type of sex usually aren't well, they have a type of illness and they've been abused. Being that close to someone has a time and a place, and you don't do it with just anyone. Worked with my nephew, who loves looking at pretty women but thinks most porn is "gross", but YMMV.

[ghporter]

I agree with Shaddim here. It's how my wife and I handled this with our son, and it worked. Of course we knew he was going to go looking, but he'd had relatively unfettered access to Playboy his whole life, so we knew he wasn't going to get weird over nudity. We did explain the "that's not real" part, and also pointed out that we could see every single thing he'd surfed to (before "parental controls" there was "dad knows how to review a browser cache). It worked. Sure, he poked around, but when he found some of the stuff that was out there, he reacted the way we wanted him to: he came to us and asked questions. It worked.

[subego]

I can only speak from a position of growing up with a limited supply, and how I'd react were I suddenly presented with an infinite one.

I got the "porn is not real sex" talk, and my dad presented a general position of not being fond of pornography, but I can't say that had much of an impact on consumption, certainly compared to supply.

One thing which does give me hope, is a few times I know I threw out my entire porn collection in disgust. Of course, I always ended up regretting it, but I was in my 20s before I realized that was a losing proposition.

South Park really nails it every now and then. The episode based on Lord of the Rings, where instead of the ring, Butters finds a porno. It starts turning him into Gollum, and the movie becomes "his preciousss". I felt that way more than once growing up.

[subego]

I'm also guessing a kid today can't come across a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves and think "Score!"

[subego]

An added wrinkle is all the amateur porn out there. Isn't that porn which is like real sex?

At least to a degree which makes a blanket statement "sex is not like porn" suspect?

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by subego 

An added wrinkle is all the amateur porn out there. Isn't that porn which is like real sex?

That was the question I was going to pose earlier: Not everything is Brazzers-style staged, lit, made-up sex. What about real amateur? What about voyeur stuff? Videos of nudists?

The only real argument I can come up with to counter that is that it blurs our perception of access to sex. In the real world, some amount of effort is required to "get" sex. Once in a relationship, there's real work involved to maintain the health of that relationship and to maintain physical intimacy over time. For someone used to "sex" of any kind being easily accessible, figuring out that sex requires a real investment of time and emotion can be...I don't know...a difficult transition?

Or maybe I'm way off base.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by subego 

I got the "porn is not real sex" talk, and my dad presented a general position of not being fond of pornography, but I can't say that had much of an impact on consumption, certainly compared to supply.

Same here, I got it after getting caught with a few buddies in the back of an auditorium with the aforementioned Hustler. My dad said he didn't think such graphic material was desirable and reinforced that regular old naked ladies are just fine. That did not exactly color my opinion for the years to come.

Originally Posted by subego 

An added wrinkle is all the amateur porn out there. Isn't that porn which is like real sex?

At least to a degree which makes a blanket statement "sex is not like porn" suspect?

Absolutely, there's a noticeable difference between two people having sex because they want to versus two people getting paid to do it dozens of times a week. I can't say I won't partake in the latter but the former is usually, I dunno, sexier I suppose.

Originally Posted by Laminar 

The only real argument I can come up with to counter that is that it blurs our perception of access to sex. In the real world, some amount of effort is required to "get" sex. Once in a relationship, there's real work involved to maintain the health of that relationship and to maintain physical intimacy over time. For someone used to "sex" of any kind being easily accessible, figuring out that sex requires a real investment of time and emotion can be...I don't know...a difficult transition?

Or maybe I'm way off base.

There's definitely a thread of truth there. With the immediate nature of online porn these days it can be more difficult to get shut down I suppose. I am an average consumer of porn and also a rather commitment-minded guy when it comes to the ladies. I would consider myself a generous lover and on the whole I think I've cherry-picked things from pornos that I find to be useful while ignoring all the unrealistic over the top stuff. However, there's no real baseline for me, since I never had a relationship until well into the porno only years. When I'm around sexy women, including my beautiful girlfriend, I am indeed often overcome with dirty thoughts, but surely that isn't just from porn right?