Do you discuss porn with your kids and, more to the point, do they talk about it with you?
Tonight’s episode of Insight on SBS brings together a mix of parents and their children (alongside some experts) and achieves something remarkable: it gets them to talk openly.
Charlie Kay, that’s the young fellow in the video above, says pornography taught him far more about sex than any classroom sex-ed discussion. He’s bisexual and said pornography taught him how to approach sex in the first place because no one else ever did. He reckons schools would be better off including frank discussions on porn in the classroom.
Michael Flood, in the second part of the clip, is concerned that watching some sorts of pornography may result in sexist and violent attitudes towards sexual partners. But he uses this argument to push the case for a better class of porn.
Here’s another clip, as a mother and daughter argue their points of view:
The full show airs tonight at 8.30pm, but let’s start the discussion now. What do you think?
And here’s what else is on our radar:
1. You’ve heard enough about Craig Thomson and the ‘did he or didn’t he’ know about the union credit cards used to buy escorts and prostitutes. Well, the Fair Work Australia report has been made public and, well, it’s blunt. “I consider that Mr Thomson used his CBA Mastercard to purchase $330 in escort services from Aboutoun either during his visit to Sydney on 17 February 2003 or while in Perth on 26 February 2003,” said the FWA investigator. Thomson says he didn’t realise the charges were for escort services as they showed as ‘catering’ on the bill.
2. So apparently most cheaters can be found in the wealthier suburbs. But still, we’re trying to get over the fact there is a website for cheaters to find hook-ups.
3. Today is Budget day for the Federal Government. We’ll have more details later but we look to be getting a $1.5 billion surplus.
4. Should circumcision get the chop from Medicare? That’s what the Health Department is asking its expert review panel. But it’s just a question … for now.
5. An Australian study has found sexy pop music videos are having an effect on how young children dress and behave. Believe it or not, researchers from Adelaide studied what children up to Year 7 wore at their school disco and observed whether they were dancing ‘exotically’. The answer was: apparently pop music has a lot to answer for.
Top Comments
I find it really distressing that it's likely that 100% of males (in the internet generation/s), have seen some kind of porn before they reach 18yrs.
This means that there's not even a chance that my sons will not have a CHOICE whether to view some kind of pornograpy before they're emotionally ready. Because which 11, 12, 13, 14yr old has the 'strength' to say to their friends, "No, I don't want to watch/look at that" without fear of being teased?
This is the quote that I liked the most out of that episode of Insight:
"...where is your discovery of something that I discovered in the natural path of growing? It's almost it's just exposed to you and you've seen... I think that somehow this pornography industry is stealing that away from you and I think all of you have had something stolen because It's like, here, whether you want it or not, this is what you should be seeing."
Perhaps children should be taught of sex before they reach their pre-tween years so they can be prepared for the porn they would be exposed to as well as the pressure from peers to be sexually active.
Porn for young teenage boys is the equivillent of airbrushed images in the media for women. Complete fantasy. Its natural to be curious as hormones kick in and young adults explore the various aspects of sexuality as caricatured through porn. However, as with airbrushing, they need to understand the unrealistic picture these settings paint and I believe expectations should be discussed and made clear in the open in schools to begin with so young people understand how to properly 'read' these types of media from the outset.