What the hell do I say to my straight 14-year-old son about porn? Should I say anything? My sister tells me that all the research shows my son has been looking at porn for three years already. Am I too late?
Distressed Anxious Dad
According to the Today show and the Boston Globe and the American Family Association and most of what pops up when you google “kids and porn,” DAD, you’re three years late to this pants-shitting party. “The average age a child first views Internet pornography is 11,” Matt Lauer warned parents on Today seven years ago. “And those kids don’t look away.”
But the alarming statistic Lauer cited — which was used to justify all sorts of proposed crackdowns on online porn — turned out to be total bullshit. Way, way back in 2005, Seth Lubove, a writer for Forbes, traced the stat back to its source. The Today show got it from the Boston Globe, the Boston Globe got it from Family Safe Media, “a small firm in Provo, Utah, [which] is in the business of scaring parents into buying software to protect their kids from Internet smut.” Family Safe Media got it from Internet Filter Review, a website that markets content-blocking software. Internet Filter Review got it from The Drug of the New Millennium, a self-published book about the dangers of porn addiction. Lubove tracked down the self-published author, and guess what? He couldn’t recall where he got that stat. Somewhere along the line, Third Way, “a Washington think tank that helps Democrats grab on to red-state issues,” was seriously pimping the bogus stat to credulous conservative Dems.
Lubove reviewed actual research done by legit social scientists — a real study! A statistically significant population sample! A random-sample survey! — and reported that most kids don’t start actively seeking out online porn until age 14.
So you’re not too late, DAD.
Now, here’s what I think you should tell your son about porn: There’s a lot of it out there, some of it’s pretty fucked up, and he can get in huge and potentially life-derailing trouble if he gets caught watching or downloading the wrong kind of porn, e.g., underage, kiddie, etc. You should tell your son that the sex in porn bears about as much resemblance to real-life sex as action movies bear to real-life life. And warn him that a lot of porn is made by and for guys who have no other sexual outlets, i.e., guys who have no wives, no girlfriends, and no hope. Many of these guys — many, not most, but many — are angry and resentful, and their anger and resentment is a poison that creeps into a lot of porn; sometimes the poison is obvious, sometimes it’s not. If you put it in your straight son’s head that the poisonously misogynist shit he’ll see in some porn is there to appeal to angry losers who can’t get laid, DAD, your son will be less likely to internalize it — because your son doesn’t want to see himself as an angry loser, right?
Finally, DAD, if your son is watching porn, he’s masturbating. Tell him to vary his routine: left hand, right hand, a little lube, a lot of lube, firm grip, loose grip. You don’t want your son to ruin himself for partnered sex by using the “death grip” — a fist clenched tighter than any human throat or pussy can clench — during solo sex. And send him to makelovenotporn.com for a brisk, sex-positive porn-versus-reality check.
Gay Republicans, Dan. Why? How?
Confused
Self-loathing, that’s why. Homophobia, that’s how.
Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.
This article appears in Oct 25-31, 2012.