h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It strikes me that the sheer range of pornography available on the internet has the effect of de-sensitising the viewer.

As a teenager I probably only looked at an average amount of internet porn but I was worried (as much as teens can moralise) by just how blase (sp?) it made me about what and was not indecent. Once you have seen something on a brightly-lit internet picture or movie, it somehow seems rather scientific.

There are probably a lot of intelligent arguements against me here but that was my experience as a young internet user.

HCIP

I dunno. On the one hand, this is a good point. Some argue that desensitisation has the effect of making the viewer take the opposite sex for granted. One tends to absorb cultural stereotypes along with the titillation. Others argue that desensitisation to porn makes it seem like less of a jump when teens consider having sex.

On the other hand, people have been saying this stuff since the invention of songs with bawdy lyrics. Wood carvings of naked women were ruled the stuff of evil during the Dark Ages, but people kept making and viewing them anyway. And I suppose in the future, it will be virtual reality porn that is looked down as the ultimate source of desensitization. And rightly so.

I hate to say it, but it seems to me that people choose the extent to which they desensitize themselves. It's probably quite common for young men and women to find that point where it's become too much for them, then back off to a more comfortable level. To some extent, it may be healthy and necessary for people to learn where their limits lie.

For all the other arguments, I feel that it's more healthy to go through this phase online in relative privacy that the old way. That is, I'd rather kids not have to steal porn mags or have actual sex. And let's be honest. If it wasn't online, they'd just get it some other way.

Frag - glad to see one of us authors is still around - I rarely come here these days.

My attitude may have been changing of late, as my life has. I can now see a few darker sides of the easilly availability of porn.

True there have always been images around (I've been readin "sex in History" by Reay Tannahill, a very good read, but maybe a misleading title, more "The roles of the sexes in history") but not as accessible.

The danger as I am now seeing it, is that certain sexual acts, which I see more and more online (anal sex, group sex (equal men and women) gang bangs, (many more men than women)) may give the impression to some who have yet to venture into the sexual arena that such practises are more common than they are.

This does have the obvious dangers of young men demanding such activities from their partners and maybe even their partners going along with it under the impression that "everyone is doing it"

So not so much "desenitization" but a misleading impression of what goes on in the majority of relationships. I'm still in favour of the freedom to view images, and am pleased with the fact that more and more hardcore images show condom use, but sometimes feel that the lack of reality may in fact lead to self fullilling prophecy.

Kadu Flyer - a different trip in view.

Nice to see you also, KF.

I remember there has been some argument over the years that the Kama Sutra creates a similar problem, where people assume that they're not doing it right if they don't go through dozens of positions during sex. And then there are the multiple wives, lebianism, and prostitute chapters...

I like to think that good parenting and practical experience will tend to sort this sort of thing out in the long term. In the short term, though, I agree that porn of any sort has the ability to distort people's perceptions of what is 'normal.'