Dear Blowfish,
What lube can we use with our Cyberskin Dream Cock?
Any water-based lube can be used with Cyberskin. We’d recommend avoiding any oil-based lube (which are bad ideas for anal or vaginal sex, anyway), and we don’t have strong data either way on whether or not silicone lubes are OK with Cyberskin. But water-based lubes means Liquid Silk, our favorite, so you’re all set!
Happy playing!
Happy Hallowe’en! This week’s column honors the one holiday of the year dedicated to fear, darkness, the undead, creepy-crawly things, and illuminated pumpkins. (Oh, and hot women in skimpy costumes. Sure, such things are a far cry from ancient harvest celebrations and beware-of-encroaching-spirits festivals, but that’s modern life.)
I’ve linked to the Sexy Witch blog before, but there’s new content regularly, and a couple of especially seasonal entries: “New Sexy Witch Costumes, 2007″ and a follow-up with even more costumes. From Pixie witches to Pumpkin witches to Punk Rock witches to Hipster witches to Spider witches to, yum, Sexy Lace-Up witches. Which witch is which? Who cares, as long as the lady in the costume has plenty of treats?
Not all creatures of the night are so attractive, but even the more disgusting denizens of the twilight world need love. Thus, The Zombie Sex Guide. It’s an illustrated lists of do’s and don’ts, noting the particular challenges that walking corpses face when trying to hook up: incurable crotch rot, appendages that fall off without warning, etc. On the plus side, masochism is a breeze since whip strikes no longer hurt much, love bites are nourishing (since you can literally bite off hunks of your partner), and extreme sex acts no longer seem all that taboo, since you’re already necrophilia walking. Remember, the brain is the most powerful sex organ of them all, which might explain why zombies like to eat them.
Now, I’ve personally never understood how vampires became so sexy — they are, let’s face it, basically cousins to zombies, being dead things that like blood as opposed to dead things that like brains. But, hey, I’m as susceptible to the charms of a pale black-haired girl in a corset as anybody, so I happily point you to the sexy vampires group on Flickr. Fangs and blood and cleavage, oh my!
There’s nothing scarier, though . . . than strippers! A couple of dancers from famous New York strip club Scores volunteered to help out at a Halloween carnival in Park Slope, but they got uninvited for fear of outraging local parents. Granted, the dancers let local newspapers know they were volunteering in an attempt to make themselves seem charitable and community-minded, so it’s not like they were completely selfless volunteers — if not for the ensuing publicity, they would’ve been allowed to pass out candy in peace. Still, it’s a shame. Then again, they weren’t even planning to dress in skimpy/slutty costumes, which would have been a crushing disappointment to all the twelve-year-old-boys in attendance.
Until next week, don’t eat too much candy, and watch out for tricks.
Since 2004 I’ve done a small amount of dabbling in erotic digital photography. In about five years of doing it, I’ve shot about 40 models and many thousands of photos. I’ve even sold a few photographs. But I still have a soft spot for the days when taking nude photos required a hell of a lot more effort. Before the era of ubiquitous digital cameras, taking nude and/or erotic pictures of myself and/or a loved one was a source of anxiety and, to put it kindly, a big pain in the ass.
Shooting on film with a “point and shoot” or an instant camera, was more expensive than taking digital pictures nowadays — but the cameras were substantially cheaper. What made the process difficult for “everyday” people were privacy concerns. Take nude pictures of one’s self, a loved one or a paid model, and one had to process that film somehow. That’s when fear took hold: I had often been warned that employees at the local drug store would keep copies of any naked pictures that crossed their counter, and very well might distribute them — if only to their friends.
What’s more, film featuring nudes was reputed to often be destroyed in the labs by self-appointed censors who would scratch or otherwise destroy any nude or erotic photos, and might even call the cops if they didn’t approve of what you were doing in them. Paranoia! Fear! The Government Is Going To Come Get Me!!!
The fear seems silly to me in retrospect, but at the time it was profoundly real, and to make light of it is probably ill-advised even in this era. I had friends whose nude photos, processed at the local drug store, had been scratched up to obliterate all naughty bits.
The “instant camera,” popularly called the Polaroid, was a tasty workaround that enabled a heated photo session in what I often fondly think of as “the old days.” I acquired one through devious means in about 1990, so my first few erotic photo sessions were done with a Polaroid.
The way the first one went down was this: A kinky girlfriend and I decided we were going to make sexy photos; she got naked, I tied her up, draped a decorative scarf around her to accentuate the curves of her oh so fine body, and in about three minutes the $12 cartridge of 12 Polaroid exposures was a gooey mass of erotica on the bedroom floor. Fueled by exhibitionism and an almost Warholian sense of having created a trashy piece of art history, she and I had fantastic sex. I refrained from untying her first, but I wasn’t a very good bondage top, so she came undone, which really wasn’t a problem given that the mutual turn-on of transgression and/or art had been achieved with a dozen loud snaps of the camera.
That $12 translated to about a dollar a shot. Oh so worth it, but well outside my meager budget as a regular vice.
Producing “prints,” if you can call them that, proved equally expensive; $1 was a good price for color copies, about the only option I knew of. I went to the local Kinko’s, where I sheepishly asked the attendant at the color copier “These are nudes . . . is that all right?” The attendant was unfazed, but this was Santa Cruz, a left-wing college town. A photographer in another city might have had a different experience, and for that reason many of them wouldn’t have gotten that far.
The thing that I appreciate so much about the few cherished photos from that era is the sense of naughtiness, the idea that we were doing something outside the norm. Nowadays, it seems like everyone has a digital camera, and porn is everywhere. Having shot thousands of photos, many of which look pretty good, I find that the only ones that actually turn me on are the ones I shot in the “good ol’ days,” when the Polaroid was a tool of transgression and a nude bondage photograph an entry into a dark world of deviance.
Is that any less true nowadays? Probably not. With some regularity, people still get fired for appearing in porn, and most “everyday” people with undistributed nude photos of themselves probably wouldn’t want those pictures to reach their neighbors or coworkers. There’s even a subgenre of porn featuring “real life” ex-girlfriends, consumers of which, I suspect, especially like the idea that they are viewing something illicit. In some cases this footage is simply repackaged shots and video scenes with familiar porn faces. In other cases, it’s something that wasn’t meant to be shared, in which cases the guys (it always seems to be guys . . . go figure) sharing it are ungentlemanly, to put it kindly.
Regardless, what makes my own 1990 nude photos favorites of mine is the intention — we were being kinky, we were experimenting, we were having fun. I still find them unbelievably hot, to this very day. A few private snapshots, even 17 years on, can go a very long way.
I’d actually be able to pay my rent if I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say, “I’ve tried, but I don’t get turned on by porn.” Well, I can relate. I’ve never been someone who gets aroused watching other people on a screen get freaky. That is, I never did until I started masturbating while I browsed.
The first, oh I don’t know, fifty pornos I sat through left me cold. There’s nothing novel about my reasons for the chill, just the usual complaints—bodies too fake, orgasms too fake, guys too ugly, a glazed look in her eye, and overzealous reactions to getting semen up the nose. I complained for years that most porn was contrived, made by men for other men, and thus I could not be surprised when it did nothing for me.
Popping in an adult DVD did very little other than turn me into a critical bystander, living in my head and leaving my body someplace totally separate. I could only concentrate on the absurdities before me.
“Can you believe that his skin is actually that orange? Is he doubling for a Halloween flick?”
“Is he thrusting while limp? How does he do that?”
“No way is that going to fit! No way! Nooo . . . . Oh my god, it freaking fits!”
Once I’ve reached the point of commenting, the chance of me reaching orgasm drops through the floor.
But if I touch myself while watching, a whole new world emerges. Suddenly it won’t matter if her left breast is nearly two inches closer to her armpit than her right one. All I will notice is the sex. Pressure on my clit acts as a mute button in reverse; I can hear what is going on between the actors only when I make contact.
Why is porn so much hotter when I am lubed and rubbing off? I have no idea. I’ve formulated a theory that arousal short-circuits my brain into thinking just about anything is desirable. I’ll attempt anything while horny. You want me to hang you from the ceiling by your labia? No way. But ask me after there has been some significant foreplay and I’ll have the power drill out and ceiling hooks hung faster than you can untangle the bondage rope. Arousal is an all-powerful enigma.
So I have taken to watching porn every now and again, but only after I begin masturbating. I make sure that I am well positioned facing the TV/computer with anything I might need (lube, toys, tissues, glass of water, friend) within arm’s reach. I shuck off my underpants, go to town, and only then do I press play.
Turning off the brain chatter is an active process. In my experience, some people are better at it than others. Ever catch yourself giving head and thinking, one-two-long lick-lick short-short-short-and long? When we concentrate on our actions instead of our feelings, we get stuck in what I like to call “cognitive sex”. This isn’t bad, per se. Cognitive sex is simply harder to enjoy.
If you find yourself thinking in whole paragraphs while engaging sexually, you could very well be losing out on your experience for the sake of staying in control.
I’ve historically done this while watching porn, but I’ve also done it in real time with lovers. When I get nervous about my performance, it can be downright impossible to get out of my head. I get so concerned with making a mistake or my partner not liking what I am doing that I forget I should be enjoying myself.
Mindful sex is one way I’ve discovered to bring me out of my head and back into my body. When I become aware that I am thinking a lot, I remind myself to feel what my body is going through. (Bear with me; I know this errs on the side of hippy-enlightenment trappings.)
It is incredibly difficult to worry about how I’m doing with my thrusting pattern when I stop focusing on counting and check-in with my nipples. How are my nipples feeling right now? Swollen, hot, begging to be pinched? And how is my pussy? Is the harness rubbing anyplace good? How do the sounds I’m hearing affect my mood? Does the man grunting on the tape bring anything up for me? When I bring my attention back to my body, to my arousal and my feelings, the sex/porn experience improves dramatically.
I find the key to hot sex is, above all else, staying in touch with my body. For me, sometimes that means actually touching my body in order to stay connected. Whether or not you ever find your groove with porn, experiencing pleasure to the fullest potential will become another handy gadget in your erotic toolbox.
I’ve now been writing this Caught in the Net column for 52 weeks — a whole year! It seems remarkable that I’ve been able to find enough quirky sexy stuff to write about, week in and week out, for twelve long months . . . and yet, my bookmarks folder for Caught in the Net stuff is longer than ever. I could stop surfing the net right now, and still not run out of material for months. In the spirit of passing time, here’s a look at some strange and/or sexy calendars for the next year of our lives:
The Nerdcore 2008 Heroes/Villains calendar is a genius idea — twelve months of scantily-clad superheroines and their nemeses. Granted, a costume that consists only of a cape, a thong, and some boots isn’t exactly practical, but there’s more to life than fighting crime. (The calendar also notes geek milestones, like the dates of Comic-Con and Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s birthday. What more could you want?)
For those of you who like to note the passage of time with a riding crop in hand, there’s the Kinky Style Fetish Calendar 2008, full of beautiful women in various kinky circumstances. Personally, I would’ve put the bound-in-a-running-shower photo in April rather than October (”April showers,” you know), but these are issues on which reasonable persons may disagree. (Premier sex blog Fleshbot has a special preview with bigger images for each month, too.)
It would be futile to attempt any sort of comprehensive round-up of calendars featuring bare-breasted beauties, so here are a couple of highlights: British cheesecake model Lucy Pinder’s 2008 calendar, and lad-rag favorite Kelley Hazell’s nude calendar (She’s doing a “family friendly” calendar without nudity, too . . . still, that must be one interesting hypothetical family.)
There are calendars full of scantily-clad boys out there, too, of course, from the shirtless missionaries of Mormons Exposed to some equally shirtless rugby players. Mmm, man-cake!
Finally, not actually a calendar, but very much about marking time: “365 the mofo way” is one photographer’s project to post a photo of a different person every day for a year. Why is this of interest? Well, the people are frequently only partially clothed, or making lewd gestures, or otherwise provocatively posed. It’s a hell of a way to pass the time.
Here’s to another year!
Twice a year, I am one of about a dozen instructors who, with the help of guest speakers, teach a 60-hour four-weekend class on sex for San Francisco Sex Information, a nonprofit educational service that answers peoples’ sex questions by phone and email and occasionally (as in the case of events like the Folsom Street Fair) in person. The purpose of the training is to educate the phone (and now internet) volunteers in sex information, communication and sex-positivity, so they can offer accurate, free, anonymous, nonjudgemental sex information. SFSI has been operating since 1972, so the training has graduated literally thousands of people, and many prominent sex educators from the SF Bay Area and around the world have taken the training and/or served as guest lecturers.
I’ve been involved with the organization since I first took the training in the spring of 1993. In those days, technology was a critical part of the training. I and my fellow trainees were presented with a very clear promise-cum-warning on the first day by the training coordinators Carol Queen and Robert Lawrence: This is a multimedia class; you will hear lectures, you will see explicit images, you will watch pornography. There will be no live demos, but you’ll see and hear about more variations of the human sexual mind and body than you probably knew existed. Watching pornography and seeing explicit images may be a new experience for you (it wasn’t for me) and watching it in this context may “bring up some issues” for you (it did).
That initial SFSI training was the single most important educational experience of my life. I learned more in fiftyish hours at SFSI than I’d learned in three years in the esteemed classrooms of The University of California, Santa Cruz. That isn’t because I was sexually naïve (I wasn’t — though straight, I had been professionally writing gay leather porn for several years at that point), nor because the information itself was entirely new to me (some of it was and some of it wasn’t). What made this different is that it used technology to present all available media. For me, college lectures always equaled naptime. At SFSI, we heard lectures and panel discussions, had discussions in small breakout groups, saw still images both medical and explicit, and watched movies — many of them porn. SFSI training in 1993 was a parade of technology at its best.
I can be forgiven if I acknowledge that this is a little in-joke, as anyone reading this who happens to have been through SFSI training around that time will probably understand. As a nonprofit operating on a shoestring, SFSI in 1993 relied on equipment that was, even then, shockingly retro. The charts, graphs and other still images were handwritten on posterboard or shown by slide projector. The movies — most of them “sexual patterning films” directed a sex ed pioneer named Laird Sutton — were projected on a white wall from an 8mm projector that flickered and whirred like a steampunk fetish item. Add scurrying rodents, a guy named Vinnie at the door and a few choice aromas, and it coulda been 42nd Street circa 1972, only with lots more tattooed new age guys and bisexual chicks.
When in our third weekend the staff unleashed the “Fuckarama,” wherein trainees were shown an overwhelming array of pornography with the use of perhaps a dozen slide projectors and another dozen 8mm film projectors showing everything from ’20s stag films to Deep Throat to video-era porn flicks, the only thing that kept the sound of whirring machinery from deafening us was the sound that dominated it — Led Zeppelin’s “A Whole Lotta Love” at top volume. I ask you: Can the University of California compete with that?
In case you haven’t noticed, there was a technological revolution since then (actually, there’s been one going on pretty much nonstop since the steam engine, or maybe since agriculture) and today’s tech doesn’t look much like the tech SFSI used in 1993. Late in that first training I took, the organization received a donated video projector the size of a portable dishwasher; the six or eight media staff members required to move it up and down the stairs of the training space affectionately remember it as “The Widowmaker.” This training, SFSI was able to acquire a new projector for less than $700, and it’s roughly the size of a laptop computer. We show excerpts of DVDs from Comstock Films, Blowfish Video and Maria Beatty rather than Laird’s films on 8mm, but the intention is the same: to learn about how people have sex, it is important (or can be) to see people having sex.
That’s one of the reasons pornography is so important. Laird’s films were created for educational purpose, and in conjunction with nonprofit enterprises. There were no apologies made for any titillation offered — but that wasn’t the point. The films of Shine Louise Houston, Tony Comstock and Maria Beatty are created, quite gleefully, for the purpose of getting you turned on, but they are at once porn and something else — or maybe porn is, or can be, at once porn and something else. And that something else is education.
For all its failings — and oh, it has so, so many — the pornography market allows one to see other people having sex, which can be a critical component of understanding how other people have sex. You might not get a realistic impression of everyday sex even from the most artful or sex-positive porn. You certainly won’t get it from Nasty Sluts #37. But you’ll see people having sex, all right, and that’s a fine place to start.
Porn provides tools for sex educators in a profound and concrete way. This past weekend when I gave 30-minute lecture on oral sex with author Violet Blue — (kind of a dream job, if you ask me), I looked through the lecture notes and saw a hastily-jotted trainer comment about the oral sex lecture from the last training:
“why not slides? WE NEED A SIX-FOOT PUSSY!!!“
One of my fellow trainers, who shall remain anonymous, wished Violet and I to pantomime cunnilingus techniques on a projected poontang, to par-tay with a Powerpoint prong. Violet and I thought it was a great idea.
Know where I found these colossal friendlies to cut-and-paste into our slides? Porn, where else?
Gives new meaning to the term “learning tools.”
Everyone in my life is having babies right now. If I were to throw a rock randomly into the air, it would surely land on a pregnant friend. And I’m not sure what’s in the water, but it seems like everyone is having boys.
If you are one of the many who have uttered the words, “It’s a boy!” in my home, you’d still be telling the stories about the four queer men who swooped in on you demanding a answer to their only question, “You gonna have him clipped?”
To cut or not to cut, that is the question facing new parents today. I suppose the question has always been around for parents to contend with, but it’s rearing its head (sorry, bad pun) with more ferocity in the last few years thanks to public health research and what passes for social awareness in this country.
Why, just back in March the World Health Organization and UNAIDS reported that male circumcision is an effective method for helping prevent HIV transmission. This study piggybacks off another project in 2000; a research study found that circumcising infants reduced the rate of penile cancer in adult men anywhere from 3 to 22 percent. (Side note: 3 to 22 percent is a wiiiide margin, people!) These studies are oft cited as proof that snipping is the preferred penis fashion of the new century, at least for American males.
On the flip side, groups like Hands Off Our Penises (HOOP) and Anti-Circ are fighting to keep the foreskins on the babies of the world. They present similar studies that propose opposite results, reporting that any health benefits of circumcision are largely a product of inadequate hygiene practices in those with intact members. One also should consider that the rate of infection and mutilation from botched circumcisions could greatly outweigh the potential health risks sited by the WHO. Plus, they argue, the foreskin is part of an individual’s genitals. Removing parts of someone else’s body without consent is never permissible and can very well be considered an act of mutilation. Touché.
What are anxious parents to do?
I strongly believe that I have no business intervening between you and your kid’s peepee. Besides, anything I say can and will be used against me for the rest of my life. I can just imagine the calls rolling in forty-five years down the road. “Hello? Is this Ms. Skoor? Yes, well, this is David, the one whose parent’s you advised to leave my foreskin intact. Yeah, well, my boyfriend is pissed off that I’m ‘un-cut” because he says that I come too fast when he sucks me off and I’m afraid at any moment I am going to come down with some rare form of never-before-seen penis cancer and it’s ALL YOUR FAULT!”
Yeah, we don’t need to go there.
I think there are some terrific reasons both for and against male circumcision. Especially if your religion and/or your cultural background strongly inform your snipping decision, I won’t get near your choice with a ten-foot pole. But if you are cutting the tip of your tyke’s weewee because, well, everyone else is doing it, I think it’s worth spending a few minutes thinking critically about the perks and pitfalls of either decision.
Medical professionals and activist websites will be more than happy to fill your brain with statistics about this or that in order to sway your decision in whichever way their background deems most appropriate. I’ll leave that to them.
I’m more interested in how circumcision affects one’s sex life.
What better place to go than my very own kitchen to ask some of the most sexually active men in the entire world about what they like in a good cock.
My informal study questioned twelve gay and bi men and one bi woman about their circumcision preferences. By far and away, men who generally fuck cut men like their men cut. When asked why, the answers I got back were a hair shy of revolutionary. “Um, because, well, that’s what I am used to thinking is normal,” was a popular response. Coming in as the second most popular answer was something along the lines of, “I think it might be cleaner to be cut, but I’m not sure.” I also got a fair number of, “That is what I see in porn” as well as, “I’m afraid I’ll dig up some smegma with my tongue.” There was some general unrest about the average man’s ability to keep his foreskin fresh. I’ll give them that.
Those who liked their ding-a-lings uncut reported functional reasons for their opinions. “Less lube required,” said a housemate with a glimmer in his eye. Another swears on his still-present foreskin that he “would never, ever think about circumcision” because he adores the sensitivity of his head and the sensation of the skin moving over itself. A third once dated a guy with an “unusually tight circ” who wasn’t able to get fully erect because the skin around his cornea pulled too tightly and chafed. Nothing says buzz-kill like chafing, over-stretched penis skin.
I’ve always been a fan of waiting until my kids were old enough to make their own bodily decisions before asking if they wanted to get circumcised. I ran this idea by the boys and they looked aghast, as if I had just taken away their new Prada shoes and replaced them with Tevas. “Oh HELL no!” they shrieked. Apparently no one in their right mind would volunteer for a circumcision when they were old enough to remember it.
Isn’t that telling parents something, though? If you won’t submit your penis to Mr. Knife when you are old enough to remember it, wouldn’t it reason that these babies are lying in their cribs thinking, “Just what the hell do you think you are gonna do with THAT?”
I wished, just for a moment, that I had my own flesh-and-blood penis so I could stand hip to hip with these sex-fiend friends and relate to what it must feel like to consider removing part of my own anatomy. I can’t really imagine what it must be like to know that my parents could very well have agonized about the future of my willie for months, subjecting their friends to lists of pros and cons, and reading up on opinion pieces not so unlike this one.
I’m still unsure what I’ll do if I give birth to boys one day. I know that my gut reaction to circumcision is quite different from that of my girlfriend, never an easy starting point. I’ve come up with a failsafe avoidance plan, however . . .
Note to future self: when choosing donor sperm, remember to have them spun and sorted for only female swimmers.
There. Debate over.
Porn is not sex education.
I’ll say it again: Porn is not sex education.
I’m saying this to everyone who’s reading this. But I’m especially saying it to parents: Porn is not sex education. So you need to make sure your kids are getting actual sex education. Because if you don’t, then all they really need to know about sex they’ll learn from porn — and they’re going to get it completely wrong.
This came up because of a piece I heard on the NPR radio show, “This American Life.” The program was on the topic of “talking to kids,” and it had a whole segment on talking to kids and teenagers about sex. The entire segment was excellent . . . but the part that jumped out at me was the teenagers saying that they didn’t have good information about sex. Specifically, they didn’t have good information about the actual mechanics of sex, what goes where and how.
And so they looked at porn.
And I didn’t know whether to vomit, throw things, or cry.
It wasn’t just the appalling state of sex education in our country that made me want to cry. Although that was a big part of it. The sex education these kids are getting from their schools is pathetic and insulting, and they know it.
No, what was really making me want to throw bricks through windows was that these teenagers were getting their sex education from porn . . . and I know, in great and vivid detail from the many years I’ve been watching porn, exactly how lousy that education will be.
Here is a very short list of things that people will get grotesquely wrong if they get their sex education from porn.
What women’s genitals look like. This is a biggie. If you’re looking at porn video to satisfy your curiosity about what a pussy looks like — well, standards of female beauty in porn are almost as rigid with pussies as they are with basic body types, and female genital cosmetic surgery in the porn industry is getting increasingly and depressingly common.
What male genitals look like. Another biggie — literally. Every time I read a letter to a sex advice columnist from a guy complaining that his dick is pathetically small — not like the guys in the porn videos — I want to scream and bite people. Male porn actors are specifically selected for their large genitalia. They are not a statistically representative sampling. Statistically speaking, they represent the far, far end of the bell curve.
The realities of female sexual response. This may be the worst offender of the bunch. There’s already enough ignorance about what gives women sexual pleasure and what gets us off, without “porn as sex ed” adding to the mix. Look, I have no doubt that there are some women out there who don’t need foreplay, get very aroused by giving blowjobs, have intense multiple orgasms from intercourse alone, and couldn’t care less if you touched their clit. But if that’s how you’re trying to get a woman off, you’re really not playing the percentages. Trust me on this.
The realities of male sexual response. If you’re getting your sex education from porn, you’re going to think that it’s normal for men to get rock-hard immediately, at will, and to stay rock-hard throughout the encounter until they come. You won’t necessarily know that (a) male porn actors are specifically selected for their ability to get wood and keep it; and (b) the omnipresence of wood in porn videos is due in large part to the miracle of video editing (and more recently to the miracle of Viagra).
To round it all off, we have the actual mechanics; the “What happens during sex?” stuff that the teenagers in the NPR story were desperately looking for. The sex in porn videos is choreographed to give a clear, unobstructed view of the penetration. It’s choreographed to look good — not to feel good. I shudder to think of a generation coming into their sexual prime thinking that reverse cowgirl and that stupid position where the woman sticks her leg up on the wall are the gold standard of the sexual nuts and bolts.
And all of that is just the tip of the sexual misinformation iceberg.
So I want to say a few things to parents:
1. Sex education in our country is in an appalling state. It has huge holes in it at best, and dispenses gross misinformation at worst.
2. If you think your kids aren’t seeing porn, think again. Even before the Internet, kids and teenagers were looking at porn. (How many of us swiped our dad’s Playboys for a peek? I sure did.) And with the Internet, the horse is definitely out of the barn
So do something. If you’re not comfortable talking frankly with your kids about sex yourself — and I have more sympathy for that position than you might imagine, I sure didn’t want to talk with my parents about sex — you need to make sure they have a way to get the information they want and need. Get them books. Point them at the Scarleteen or San Francisco Sex Information websites. Make sure there’s an adult in their life they can talk about sex with. Or suck it up, get over your discomfort, and talk to them yourself.
But for the love of all that is beautiful in this world, do not let them grow up thinking that they can get accurate, useful sex information from porn. They can — once they’re adults, of course — use porn to get entertainment, inspiration, arousal, even some interesting new ideas. But the sex information they’ll get from porn will be, if possible, even more useless and misleading than the sex information they’re getting from their schools.
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