I’ve been commenting on internet porn for nearly 10 years. One reason is that as someone who graduated high school in the spring of 1995 I’m probably in the very last cohort of American males for whom pornography was an item subject to scarcity. Those who are 2-3 years younger already experienced a totally different world. The furtive quest to find a friend of a friend whose dad was less than vigilant in guarding his porn stash was a rite of adolescent male passage in my cohort, but would seem totally laughable by 1997. There’s a lot of commentary on the effect of porn on society and sexual relations, but from what I can tell nothing much has really changed between then and now, except that hardcore porn has become harder. Before I see hard data I’m skeptical that American males accept more perversion because of watching porn. Read the Kinsey Reports; farm boys long knew some farm boys lost their virginity to animals.
All this must be kept in mind when reading pieces tinged with moral panic, such as this one in The New York Times, So How Do We Talk About This?, which details the reaction of parents to their children discovering porn. There are few specific elements which strike me as manifestly stupid. For example:
Bonnie, a university administrator in North Carolina with a teenage son and two stepdaughters, realized only after discussing the matter that she and her husband had been sending unintended messages by emphasizing safety and self-protection with the girls and limits with her son.
“Later, we realized how terribly, albeit unconsciously, sexist that was,” she said.
I recently argued to Chris Mooney that the cultural Left in the United States has still not reconciled itself to sex differences,* and that is one of the clear areas where liberal ideology trumps the science. Now, I can understand the reasons why some might object to the idea that males and females have different cognitive profiles, which might result in differential representation in different fields (e.g., more men in engineering, more women in medicine). But at some point if you are going to hold the position that the Left has made its peace with human nature you have to be open to sex differences, there are compelling biological reasons why a species which exhibits physical sexual dimorphism would also exhibit behavioral sexual dimorphism. Do people truly entertain the idea that adolescent boys and girls react to visual pornography in the same way, if not for social or cultural pressures? If so, that’s really stupid, and reiterates why I refuse to identify myself as a liberal.
But more generally, I wonder if our perception of the development and maturation of children and their encounters with sexuality is ahistorical. From what I have read before the modern era private rooms were not common. Peasants lived in an open house, with children sleeping in a corner, and parents in the other corner. During winter the family might sleep together in one bed. Obviously sexual relations did occur, and there were a set of norms which governed this so that everyone could continue on their way.
My point is that for most of human history children have had some exposure to sex, whether because of lack of privacy in the home, or through observation of farm animals. I personally do not think this is optimal. For most of human history infant mortality was rather high too. But, it does remind us that the rapid rise of awareness of sexually explicit material by children younger than puberty, or just on the cusp, is not a totally novel phenomenon.
* Actually, Althouse’s Rule, you can discuss sex differences if it is unflattering to males.
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