Porn O Plenty
Back in my day, it was Playboy, Penthouse and the occasional Hustler (for the real wide-open skank) to get us red-blooded American teens all hot-and-bothered.
And only when you could swipe one from your brother’s stash (my main means of boobies), or you had a friend who boosted his dad’s stash.
These days, kids can get porn 24/7, piped right in with the telephone or cable line.
I certainly wasn’t totally shocked today when my wife called to report that the boy’s laptop was chocked full o porn.
Do-it-your-self topless portraits girls had snapped of themselves and emailed him. Video clips. Professional porn shots from any number of sites with free samples.
Nothing over the top (you have to be thankful it was heavily tilted toward heterosexual blowjobs and not bestiality or deviant bondage), but still very upsetting to the wife.
She had brought the laptop in to her business, so an office worker could use it three days a week, while we get ready to purchase more electronic equipment for the office.
“Imagine having my entire office staff, and my computer guy, looking over my shoulder at what (the boy) had downloaded,” she said. “I was horrified.”
It’s going to cost us at least $400 to get all the porn and viruses cleaned off the computer. It was so infected, it’s like it had syphilis (my wife finally told the computer guy to wipe the hard drive and begin over; the boy lost at least $150 worth of iTunes material and we do not weep for him).
“The computer is now ours,” my wife said. “I know it was a Christmas present, but we warned him what was expected.
“Until he pays us what it takes to clean it off, he doesn’t get it back.”
It will be my job to have the heart-to-heart with him; it will be my job to explain why this behavior is inappropriate.
But will I come off sounding like a hypocrite? It is going to be a very fine line in the way I present it.
Because I, too, am male.
If there was a thing called the Internet when I was 15, would I have looked at porn?
Absolutely.
I learned at a very early age that the penis makes a wonderful plaything. A friend that’s always close. It’s a natural part of growing up male (hence the Playboys, Penthouses, Hustlers and anything else we used to furiously pleasure ourselves).
However, this is another misstep in a long line of missteps for the 15-year-old. And I tire of everyone out there with a teen male saying this unending stream of boorish behavior, bad grades, bad judgement and general moodiness that is “part of being that age.”
“They are just like that at this age,” other confused parents have told us. “You just have to wait for the light to click on.”
I’ll have to call bullshit on that one.
Without getting into a raging debate on how to properly raise a well-adjusted male child, I think you have to be extremely firm and set boundaries.
And rely on generous use of corporal punishment.
But back to the porn.
These are different days from the time of my youth, when my mother first found girlie magazines under my mattress (and just laid them back on the bed and said nothing – my shame and self-loathing was punishment enough).
Nowadays, kids have access to so much technology that they’re trading pictures and streaming video of each-other.
Naked.
And they think nothing of it.
And I think that desensitizes our youth about sex – and it inhibits their ability to form ideas of what is really right and wrong with their sexuality.
Hey, I used to get hot-and-bothered by the bra and panty ads in the Sears catalog; I never had girls delivering topless pictures of themselves into my email inbox.
Like I said it’s a different time.
And as parents, you absolutely need to stay on top of the times. Know where your kid is at – especially online – and keep telling your teenage boys that it is highly inappropriate to treat women as sex objects. That what they see nowadays is not how it is in the real world.
My wife and I like to think we are raising some woman’s husband.
I am not a prude. I am a firm, firm fan of a female form. Sex, hell yes.
But gratuitous Internet porn – and that includes all the stuff you find out in the open for anyone to view on MySpace.com – is doing our society a real disservice. By corrupting a generation of youth who are smarter, more informed and more pressured than we ever were to experiment.
Pretty soon, we’ll be raising generation after generation of sexual deviants.
And that idea scares the shit out of me.
And only when you could swipe one from your brother’s stash (my main means of boobies), or you had a friend who boosted his dad’s stash.
These days, kids can get porn 24/7, piped right in with the telephone or cable line.
I certainly wasn’t totally shocked today when my wife called to report that the boy’s laptop was chocked full o porn.
Do-it-your-self topless portraits girls had snapped of themselves and emailed him. Video clips. Professional porn shots from any number of sites with free samples.
Nothing over the top (you have to be thankful it was heavily tilted toward heterosexual blowjobs and not bestiality or deviant bondage), but still very upsetting to the wife.
She had brought the laptop in to her business, so an office worker could use it three days a week, while we get ready to purchase more electronic equipment for the office.
“Imagine having my entire office staff, and my computer guy, looking over my shoulder at what (the boy) had downloaded,” she said. “I was horrified.”
It’s going to cost us at least $400 to get all the porn and viruses cleaned off the computer. It was so infected, it’s like it had syphilis (my wife finally told the computer guy to wipe the hard drive and begin over; the boy lost at least $150 worth of iTunes material and we do not weep for him).
“The computer is now ours,” my wife said. “I know it was a Christmas present, but we warned him what was expected.
“Until he pays us what it takes to clean it off, he doesn’t get it back.”
It will be my job to have the heart-to-heart with him; it will be my job to explain why this behavior is inappropriate.
But will I come off sounding like a hypocrite? It is going to be a very fine line in the way I present it.
Because I, too, am male.
If there was a thing called the Internet when I was 15, would I have looked at porn?
Absolutely.
I learned at a very early age that the penis makes a wonderful plaything. A friend that’s always close. It’s a natural part of growing up male (hence the Playboys, Penthouses, Hustlers and anything else we used to furiously pleasure ourselves).
However, this is another misstep in a long line of missteps for the 15-year-old. And I tire of everyone out there with a teen male saying this unending stream of boorish behavior, bad grades, bad judgement and general moodiness that is “part of being that age.”
“They are just like that at this age,” other confused parents have told us. “You just have to wait for the light to click on.”
I’ll have to call bullshit on that one.
Without getting into a raging debate on how to properly raise a well-adjusted male child, I think you have to be extremely firm and set boundaries.
And rely on generous use of corporal punishment.
But back to the porn.
These are different days from the time of my youth, when my mother first found girlie magazines under my mattress (and just laid them back on the bed and said nothing – my shame and self-loathing was punishment enough).
Nowadays, kids have access to so much technology that they’re trading pictures and streaming video of each-other.
Naked.
And they think nothing of it.
And I think that desensitizes our youth about sex – and it inhibits their ability to form ideas of what is really right and wrong with their sexuality.
Hey, I used to get hot-and-bothered by the bra and panty ads in the Sears catalog; I never had girls delivering topless pictures of themselves into my email inbox.
Like I said it’s a different time.
And as parents, you absolutely need to stay on top of the times. Know where your kid is at – especially online – and keep telling your teenage boys that it is highly inappropriate to treat women as sex objects. That what they see nowadays is not how it is in the real world.
My wife and I like to think we are raising some woman’s husband.
I am not a prude. I am a firm, firm fan of a female form. Sex, hell yes.
But gratuitous Internet porn – and that includes all the stuff you find out in the open for anyone to view on MySpace.com – is doing our society a real disservice. By corrupting a generation of youth who are smarter, more informed and more pressured than we ever were to experiment.
Pretty soon, we’ll be raising generation after generation of sexual deviants.
And that idea scares the shit out of me.
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