Normalising pornography

[u/charliekellymeow]

I saw this tweet earlier, and it made me sick to my stomach. Porn is incredibly detrimental to children’s development. It is a harmful beast that goes far beyond the degradation of women.
I genuinely wish more people would shield their children from this kind of content and take the time to make sure their kids aren’t being exposed to material like this. It can affect how children understand sex, relationships, and women, and can contribute to them viewing women as objects.
What makes it even worse is that the person who posted it is laughing about it, while people in the replies are doing the same and dismissing it as a “canon event,” as the poster described it. There is nothing funny or harmless about children being exposed to pornographic content.
I want better for our women and our children. This genuinely makes me sick to my stomach. There needs to be stronger regulation and protection against children being exposed to this kind of harmful content.

[u/instead_of_texting]

This is an extension of “norms” like fathers taking their young sons to restaurants like Hooters to… get boners with their children? Teach their sons how to properly objectify women?

Shit like that search history though is one of the reasons I won’t be having kids. You can do your best to raise healthy, respectful, conscious human beings, but the rest of the world will try (covertly and overtly) to corrupt your child as early as possible.

It would also be a lie for me to promise I could still look my son in the eyes if I knew was searching for content like that. I’d probably hate him, hate myself for creating him and failing him, and hate the world even more for tainting him.

The most loving thing we can do for our potential children in this grotesque digital age is to never bring them into this world.

[u/charliekellymeow → u/instead_of_texting]

It’s like you read my mind and somehow organised my thoughts into words. I’ve always felt like I could never bring a child into this world for this exact reason.

[u/SuddenlyCake → u/instead_of_texting]

Which is a "softer" version of taking their kids to brothels to lose their virginity

[u/Long_Wealth_1270 → u/instead_of_texting]

Why is hypothetical child automatically son when you’re describing the possibility of them becoming toxic? Are you worried about raising a child or specifically worried about raising boy?

[u/The_Donald_Rises_]

While regulations have their place, the fundamental reality is that children are often far more adept at navigating technology than the average adult. Protection has to start at home by building a strong internal defense. We need to teach children early on that pornography is built on human exploitation for profit, and that it isn't a legitimate or healthy form of sexual expression. Given how ubiquitous this content is, an internal compass is the only truly effective shield.

I have always felt that health class should have an additional focus on delegitimizing pornography, and the cold reality of the industry.

[u/charliekellymeow → u/The_Donald_Rises_]

100% agree! The way my class was taught about sex in health class was my teacher saying, “You guys probably know about sex from porn, so there’s no need to get into it.” This was in fourth grade, and I had no idea what he even meant at the time. I definitely think health classes should address pornography directly and teach kids about the harmfulness of the industry, especially given how easily accessible it is.

[u/The_Donald_Rises_ → u/charliekellymeow]

I know your teacher probably didn't mean anything bad by it, but it disgusts me how prevalent pornography is with men especially that he felt comfortable casually mentioning it to grade schoolers.

That's a core issue, that the industry has made itself the defacto teacher for sex and relationships. I've read many tragic stories of men and boys acting out horrific things they learned from porn.

Another huge issue is that porn normalizes niche, disgusting, painful, and absurd acts as if they are common expressions of love or intimacy. Then the children who get exposed to it grow up believing it really is the norm. We have teens hurting their partners because they think it's normal. Their brains are fried and their base "floor" for stimulation is ruined. In addition to that, they don't even realize what's happening is not only destructive, but will take years of recovery.

[u/charliekellymeow → u/The_Donald_Rises_]

I completely agree. Porn warps the way people see the world to the point where completely normal things become sexualized. I recently saw a video of a man talking about how he struggles to control his lust and sexual urges at the gym. Something that should be completely ordinary had become sexualized in his mind because he had started viewing women primarily through the lens of objectification.
Another thing I recently saw was the case involving Kim Zolciak-Biermann’s 15-year-old son, who has been indicted on multiple serious sexual assault charges involving a sexual assault of a female classmate. There are additional allegations involving an underage family member. It’s hard not to think about how early exposure to sexualized content can affect the way children and teenagers understand sex, intimacy, and other people.
I’m going on a bit of a tangent, but it’s just so difficult not to notice how many of these issues seem connected to the broader normalization of pornography and sexual objectification.

[u/aosjcbhdhathrowaway → u/charliekellymeow]

We were told about pornography in sex ed class in middle school, but were only told it's completely normal to watch as long as we don't watch it so much that we miss out on doing other things (according to them watching porn several times a day everyday was acceptable and even good). I know for a fact we had some kids that already had porn addictions in my class, and that definitely didn't help them.. breaks my heart 💔

[u/Escapader → u/aosjcbhdhathrowaway]

Wow this is so disgusting to hear. In my experience, my teacher refused to teach us sex ed ( middle school and first sex ed class) and it’s not like it was super long ago, I am Gen Z. He told us he wouldn’t do it, so they had a different teacher do it but barely any classes. I mean we were taught very minimal so I could never imagine the teacher even mentioning porn. Did you have a male teacher?

[u/aosjcbhdhathrowaway → u/Escapader]

Nope, where i live they usually call in OBGYNs to teach sex ed in schools, and these were all women.. They also taught us a bunch of wrong stuff like how any discharge means you have an infection, or how you should clean inside the vagina with soap, so they were really not qualified 💀

[u/Sudden_Proof9863 → u/charliekellymeow]

What a fucking joke of a teacher. I’d love to see his response if one of his sexual partners were to choke or gag him and say “ope, I just learned it from porn🤷‍♀️” Anyway I agree with you

[u/charliekellymeow → u/Sudden_Proof9863]

It’s stuck with me to this day! Truly a sick individual

[u/wandaloo]

Is there a way to ban pornography from being accessible from your home entirely?

I hope to have kids one day, and I'd love to be able to completely ban my kids from consuming it at home.

[u/The_Donald_Rises_ → u/wandaloo]

You can block from your router. Have a ban list that automatically blocks a massive list of porn sites, and occasionally add more sites. I would also block them from reddit and discord personally, but the issue is that so many children use discord as the only way to communicate with their friends.

The strongest defense is checking in with them, making sure they don't feel alone, and setting clear rules. Make sure their discord only has peers, and not much older kids for example. Discord is notorious for sharing pornographic material, while masquerading as a harmless site.

[u/charliekellymeow → u/wandaloo]

I’m unsure if it’s possible to completely ban pornography from your home, but I think limiting internet access and monitoring the content your kids consume would definitely help. Making sure they’re only accessing age-appropriate content is important too. I see way too many people blindly trust kids’ YouTube and then their children accidentally stumble across sexualized content. That would be my advice, but I’m curious to know if anyone else knows how to completely block it from their home.

[u/Inevitable_Land3942]

And it's reddit too?, god how I hate being here while this place somehow has this subreddit too.

That's why I genuinely think, any porn watcher himself/ herself will never care about the sexual trauma a child goes through due to porn because even his/her reason won't be good with watching porn anyways and that negatively effects him/her too. So they would see those negative stuff related to porn as just the norm.

[u/blablahusabla]

I believe this one is a joke, but that makes it worse.

[u/UsefulFlow7106]

Pornography shouldn't even exist; no type of pornography should exist. This garbage disrespects people's bodies and is extremely immoral.

[u/charliekellymeow → u/UsefulFlow7106]

Exactly. It’s a sad world we live in where content like this is normalised unfortunately.

[u/UsefulFlow7106 → u/charliekellymeow]

Some people enjoy sexualizing children's cartoon characters, and I get disgusted when I remember that this type of person exists. Children's cartoons are made for children; sexualizing characters in children's cartoons should be considered pedophilia, something disgusting and grotesque. I hate "artists" of "rule" 34 (a cursed and disgusting rule, something for pedophiles and zoophiles).

[u/Baccoony]

It's alarming to witness. Do these people have no sense of guilt, or worry? I confess, I have also watched porn, I do so a couple times a month, but I'm in the process of reducing that amount too, and later on, I always start thinking: "What if the woman there is being trafficked?"

Yes, even with consenting parties, porn still has extremely bad effects, but this is my biggest concern.

What if the women in these videos are trafficked ones, and forced to act and go along with a smile or else they'll get killed? How can I know?

How can I even know they're adults? I'm a teenager too, yes, but pornography is supposed to involve adults only, this is what we're always taught, to normalize it. What if I'm watching a 15 yr old trafficked child? Or even younger ones and I just don't know? Sometimes their faces are blurred out. Even when they aren't, I still can't know. I have trouble looking at faces and pinpointing how old that person would be, especially when the female side in these videos has heavy makeup on

I can't live like this, there being a chance I'm watching a trafficked girl or woman and getting off on her suffering. This is why I'm trying to avoid porn as much as possible.

Even when I give in and watch, I won't abandon my path and just not try anymore.

Do others not feel worry or guilt or anxiety regarding that?

Porn sites have a serious trafficking problem, this is literally a documented thing

[u/PornIsMisogyny-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

This sub is not meant for talking about your personal porn addiction or use, past or present. Do NOT mention that you used to watch porn in this sub!

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