Does Internet Porn cause relationship/performance problems?

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Thu Jul 09, 2015 5:46 pm

A while ago - which probably makes it before I went in the hospital, so call it 2-3 months - a woman was a guest on one of the shows on the BBC World Service radio network, and said that statistics seem to indicate that exposure to the typical extremely graphic porn available over the Internet to anyone with a connection, essentially for free, has tended to cause problems with men - specifically younger men - to establish relationships with women or to respond to them sexually.

There are several issues, first being that it's damn near impossible to find any male over the age of 12 who hasn't watched Internet-supplied porn, and that the effects tend to be more pronounced for young men as for older ones, that it can take perhaps a month for someone my age to get the images out of their head and be able to respond to women normally, vs. as long as 5 or 6 months for someone 20 or younger.

The issue is over intensity. Men my age (54) got exposure when they were young to, at most, still images of female nudity (or of couples apparently engaged in sex acts) like Playboy (or some of the raunchier stuff, like Penthouse, High Society, or Hustler), and weren't exposed to extremely realistic and graphic moving images of sexual activity (at least until we turned 18 and could go to a theater). Thus we as a group were not loaded up during our formative years to extremely strong and very explicit visual stimuli of a sexual nature, especially moving images. But kids today can see this stuff before they've even reached puberty, quite possibly giving them strange and/or potentially unhealthy expectations of what sexual activity should represent.

Note I am more-or-less summarizing her opinion, which may or may not have any relationship with mine.

There is also the psychotic (and often hypocritical) attirudes related to sexuality in Western Civilization and how it should be looked at. Let's take two scenarios. Consider the example of a 16-year-old boy and his 15-year-old girlfriend (in a state where the age of consent is 16 and permits consensual sex with someone under 16 if you're no more than 3 years older, which applies to about 30 of the 50 states).

Scenario 1. If they have sex together, in private, it's perfectly legal. However, if they recorded it, having a copy of it for themselves, even though they are not giving it away, if they get caught, constitutes possession of child pornography, a crime punishable by several years in prison and additional sanctions. It also doesn't matter if it was actual sex being filmed or if they were faking it. Note that the sex act itself is completely legal, but it's a crime for them to film it or to have copies around.

Scenario 2. If he films himself beating up his girlfriend, that film is not illegal and he can show it around to anyone he wants or post it on YouTube (if it wasn't faked he might be charged for the assault, if it can be estimated when and where it happened.) Having the film of an assault and battery or showing it is perfectly legal even though what was done might have been a crime.

At least one appeals court upheld the conviction of two underaged kids having video of themselves engaging in (consensual) sex together (where the sex itself was legal but filming it wasn't), the court saying that the anti-child pornography laws are to protect children against sexual exploitation.

Nobody seemed to be able to say why a teenager doing something stupid (filming you and your boyfriend or girlfriend having sex) should require both of you to get a felony conviction and registration as a sex offender.

Realize also that "child pornography" can include such horribly exploitive material as a girl under 18 doing a selfie topless. And if she sends it around - or her boyfriend does - not realizing that it's illegal. they're potentially looking at prison time for "distribution of child pornography."

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Thu Jul 09, 2015 7:41 pm

Yes.

NEXT TOPIC.

RetroRomper · Post by **RetroRomper** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 8:34 pm

I'm honestly curious if Tdarcos actually had any personal experience to draw from for this topic.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Sun Jul 26, 2015 8:56 am

NEXT TOPIC.

LG · Post by LG » Fri Sep 18, 2015 7:34 pm

Consent and honest, open communication.

Stay the f*ck away from barely legal, if this is an issue for you, please contact the center for missing and exploited children and ask them what sexual slavery is, and the estimated number for children currently involved in that industry. Human beings. Not meat.