There’s a great discussion going on over in the New York Times‘s Room for Debate. The topic: “Does pornography deserve its bad rap?” Eight different essays from different contributors, each with his or her own viewpoint on the matter, weigh in on the subject.
Experts from feminist porn director Candida Royalle to the co-founders of Stop Porn Culture share their opinions on whether porn is harmful to society, helpful to individuals, or a little bit of both.
One of our favorite sentiments was from Debby Herbenick, the co-director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, who authored the large-scale sex study published in 2010 we’ve reported on before.
Many of my college students who have watched porn but had little sex education (whether in schools or from their families) often have a skewed view of sex. They may believe that anal sex and group sex are common, that genitals should be hairless, and that facials (not the spa kind) are par for the course. Once they engage in a real relationship with someone they care for, many of their beliefs are challenged and they find themselves readjusting to sex in the real world — very different from the sex they’ve seen online. Then again, young women whose ideas about sex and love are shaped by Fifty Shades of Grey or Hollywood romantic comedies will also have to make room for reality.
She emphasizes that sex education needs to be ongoing in young people’s lives from both parents and schools.
Young women and men need to learn about their bodies, how to be emotionally vulnerable with one another, and what’s common (and not) about sexuality so that when they’re faced with creating their own sexual lives, they can create the sexual life that feels good to them rather than recreating the fictionalized, and often risky, sex they’ve seen online. They’ll know that pornography and romantic novels are fictions of sex and love — and that it’s for them to create reality.
We couldn’t agree more. For more resources on how to talk to your children about sex, read the vintage Sexcerpts post Study: Parents Want to Teach Their Kids About Sex.
[NY Times]
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