I think that bad smut, whether it's written or visual, whether you call it porn or erotica, reinforces negative ideas we already have, which is not good. The good stuff challenges it, or gives you an alternate model. The bad stuff is more visible because there's more of it. I do see that changing, which is good. Those bad ideas are promoted in far more places than porn, and in far more kid-accessible places.
If you're pushing it underground, you're just creating an atmosphere where the worst elements will flourish, so publishing and creating x-rated material should be, as far as I am concerned, as unfettered as possible. If it involves actual humans, some form of monitoring should probably be happening, but the complexities of that are great enough that I personally can't say with any confidence what form that should take. (Requiring all porn made in the US to depict safer sex = porn companies moving to eastern Europe to shoot their porn, where it will be even more unsafe. That sort of thing.) It will take sympathetic people within the industry to do that, and that will require people willing to listen to them, not people just trying to shut it down and make it stop happening.
But, as you bring up, restricting access to it based on age is another issue entirely. I think that's not going to have the desired effect, really, if there's not better education and those negative ideas I mentioned up there are not broken apart. Education has to be the focus. Denying people access to something is never as effective as educating them about how to properly use that thing. If kids are getting most of their information about sex from porn, the problem is not that they can see porn. The problem is that they are being failed by their parents, their educators, and everyone whose responsibility it is to make sure they know what real-life risks and rewards there are. And until there is GOOD education available for everyone, I can't see blaming porn for increased rates of disease or pregnancy or general human suffering. I know when I did stupid things it wasn't because of porn, it was because I was a teenager, I was impulsive, and I literally could not think things through properly. Restricting porn won't help if the root of the problem is a lack of education. They'll still be getting similarly incredibly stupid ideas from mainstream movies and TV.
I don't like the idea of a really young kid seeing the really gonzo and awful stuff -- I reserve judgment on how often this actually happens -- and I think parents should take a greater interest in monitoring what their kids see. They aren't great at it, unfortunately, and I wish that I could think of a way to keep really young kids from getting at that stuff without penalizing adults, whose freedoms to watch and create whatever they wish to watch or create should come first, but whose job does it become to watch for that? Who gets to regulate it? And who gets punished when that fails? Who is legally responsible? What effect will that have on the people who make it? And on the people who are not making gonzo extreme ultra-ridiculous porn, but whose work cannot be distinguished from it on a legal basis because there is no legal way to define "quality" that isn't open to rampant abuse.
I write fucking, it's my living, such as it is, and I've become really, really aware of just how eager people are to do away with what I do because of the ugly things other people do. And kids are the lever people use to make that happen. Everyone wants to protect kids, right? What kind of monster would you have to be to not want to protect kids? Except I value freedom of expression -- a very real thing that is always under a great deal of threat -- more than "kids" as a nebulous entity who may or may not, for all I know, truly be affected negatively by porn in numbers great enough to justify the restriction of adults' freedom. Kids can't be trusted to take care of themselves, true, but governments, governments cannot be trusted to respect our freedoms. I have yet to see a solution that is fair to both.
If you're pushing it underground, you're just creating an atmosphere where the worst elements will flourish, so publishing and creating x-rated material should be, as far as I am concerned, as unfettered as possible. If it involves actual humans, some form of monitoring should probably be happening, but the complexities of that are great enough that I personally can't say with any confidence what form that should take. (Requiring all porn made in the US to depict safer sex = porn companies moving to eastern Europe to shoot their porn, where it will be even more unsafe. That sort of thing.) It will take sympathetic people within the industry to do that, and that will require people willing to listen to them, not people just trying to shut it down and make it stop happening.
But, as you bring up, restricting access to it based on age is another issue entirely. I think that's not going to have the desired effect, really, if there's not better education and those negative ideas I mentioned up there are not broken apart. Education has to be the focus. Denying people access to something is never as effective as educating them about how to properly use that thing. If kids are getting most of their information about sex from porn, the problem is not that they can see porn. The problem is that they are being failed by their parents, their educators, and everyone whose responsibility it is to make sure they know what real-life risks and rewards there are. And until there is GOOD education available for everyone, I can't see blaming porn for increased rates of disease or pregnancy or general human suffering. I know when I did stupid things it wasn't because of porn, it was because I was a teenager, I was impulsive, and I literally could not think things through properly. Restricting porn won't help if the root of the problem is a lack of education. They'll still be getting similarly incredibly stupid ideas from mainstream movies and TV.
I don't like the idea of a really young kid seeing the really gonzo and awful stuff -- I reserve judgment on how often this actually happens -- and I think parents should take a greater interest in monitoring what their kids see. They aren't great at it, unfortunately, and I wish that I could think of a way to keep really young kids from getting at that stuff without penalizing adults, whose freedoms to watch and create whatever they wish to watch or create should come first, but whose job does it become to watch for that? Who gets to regulate it? And who gets punished when that fails? Who is legally responsible? What effect will that have on the people who make it? And on the people who are not making gonzo extreme ultra-ridiculous porn, but whose work cannot be distinguished from it on a legal basis because there is no legal way to define "quality" that isn't open to rampant abuse.
I write fucking, it's my living, such as it is, and I've become really, really aware of just how eager people are to do away with what I do because of the ugly things other people do. And kids are the lever people use to make that happen. Everyone wants to protect kids, right? What kind of monster would you have to be to not want to protect kids? Except I value freedom of expression -- a very real thing that is always under a great deal of threat -- more than "kids" as a nebulous entity who may or may not, for all I know, truly be affected negatively by porn in numbers great enough to justify the restriction of adults' freedom. Kids can't be trusted to take care of themselves, true, but governments, governments cannot be trusted to respect our freedoms. I have yet to see a solution that is fair to both.
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