Porno Instead of Sex Ed?

Sorry for double posting, but I wanted to address this seperatly and not just in an edit.

I think this quote sums up the entire thread. This thread isn't about teaching sex in school, its about what sort of decisions you think kids should be able to make for themselves. You state these things like they are facts, but really they are nothing but very heavily colored opinions.

And to your last question, no - sex ed exists to teach kids the things that they wont get other places, such as safe sex and what STDs are. I think the fact that so many kids are having sex speaks for itself that kids manage to figure out how to have sex without help.

Because 30 year old people are grown adults who can make their own decisions.



Are you even listening to yourself?
All those things taught in school have a purpose. They're basic necessities that people should have.
Cooking.
Driving.
Health.

Tell me where licking a cunt comes into the importance of that?
Are you trying to tell me that you fear for children that they don't have the common sense to google some porn on their own?


Yes. If college level adults felt that they were inept to sexual intercourse, they could pay the few thousand dollars it does for a class at a average college in the united states. That's on them.



That would be age of consent. And the average age where a person can say 'yes' to sex where it wouldn't be statutory rape is 16.
However, the law is you cannot view porn until 18, buy anything materialistic until 18, etc. There is no person in England who is able to legally look at Fakku at the age of 16.



How many times in high school did a teacher show a picture of breasts in a bio book or health book and at least several people giggle in the background? Come now, seriously. You say you've had bio classes for shits and giggles, but have you ever taken psychology? Where there's the development for the brain?

The teenage years is one of the most important stages in a persons growing period, other then birth. Your brain is going through so many changes and so is your body. Just because you think you're capable of something at a certain age, does not mean that Bobby can next to you. And this is public schooling system that we're talking about.

All of those things you listed that you learned from school are true and important. So you want to be able to learn the secrets to sex without even knowing how your sperm travels in a girl?
You want to be able to have sex without the knowledge of the STDs and other consequences you can have without safe sex? Oh wait, you want safe good sex. :roll:



Yes, fuck those parents. How dare they give birth to us. What the hell did they ever do for us?

If you actually take a step back and think, you learned a shit ton from your parents.

Porn cannot replace sex ed, that being said, it is a good supplement to the sexual education offered at school and the current legal restrictions on it are wrong. Porn is information, who are you to say when someone is ready for certain information while not for others? People need to be given the facts and then left to make their own decisions.

There is a difference between teaching someone responsibility about sex and actively discouraging it, informing a teenager of the consequences of their sexual activity would fall into the responsibility category, while the pictures Shaggy described go more toward discouraging sex altogether.

Age is just a number, you'd be surprised how grown up you can be if it's necessary. Fuck the parents, if they can't look after their children then they don't deserve to have any, if someone gives birth to you, you don't owe them shit. It's how they prepare you for the horrors of this world that you should thank them for.

It is the fault of the parents, if they are not telling their children the truth about sex or teaching them responsibility, then they are to blame. If their child gets pregnant because they didn't explain things well enough, then they brought it upon themselves. They should take responsibility. Sex Ed alone is not enough.

Workshops for 17 year olds sound like a great idea, help people to understand and improve their sex-life, nothing wrong with that. In this current day and age people will be encouraged to have sex by the media, the internet, not to mention their own hormones. There is nothing wrong with having sex, it's fun, a leisure activity, a necessary part of life.

When it comes down to it, teenagers are going to have sex. You have to make a choice as to whether you want them to be knowledgeable about the subject, and have a fulfilling sex life from whatever age they decide to start. Or you can leave them to their own devices, and cross your fingers hoping they don't do it at all.

Anyway to sum up; Porn cannot replace Sex ed but it can and should supplement it.

Whoa. If anybody thinks I'm anti-parent or pro-teen sex, you're getting the wrong message. I don't think parents are unnecessary. In fact, I think they're very necessary. The trouble is, a lot of parents seem to be doing a bad job when it comes to sex. That's why discussion of STDs and pregnancy is done in school, isn't it? Because a lot of parents don't sit their kids down and talk to them about sex, and it is something important. (Or they only say, "Don't have sex," and that doesn't help anything.) If all parents talked to their kids about sex, there'd be no need to teach it in school.

As for talking about sex in school at all, there are only two ways to do it - from the approach that any kid in the classroom might have sex, or from the approach that you can scare the kids into not having sex. The second approach is of course the wrong way to do it, and the reasons have been stated already (and so many times, in so many places) that I don't feel the need to repeat them. So, sex should be taught as if any kid in the classroom will have sex. That is done by showing how to put on condoms (if you go to a good school) and talking about STDs and how girls get pregnant and the like. Why not take it a little further and explain some things about sex? For instance, introduce males to the vagina and explain how it all works, and introduce females to the penis and explain how the foreskin works and all that other stuff. That way, there's actual understanding, instead of whispered possibilities.

Everything about sex could just be looked up on the internet, but that goes for every subject, doesn't it? Fuck chemistry, I can just look it up on Wikipedia. Or I could ask my friends and they can tell me half-truths that they picked up someplace. That way, I feel like I know the subject, when really I don't.

We don't need to teach kids everything about sex, but I think a few simple facts would fit fine in a sex ed class. Otherwise, it's just a couple of months about STDs and pregnancy. I'm sure there's plenty of time to talk about how and why a girl gets wet after it is explained how sperms moves through the female body after sex.

Also, I have taken a psychology course. I've taken quite a few of them, and while I do know that the teenage years are a period of growth, it's also a period where some things are cemented, especially in terms of identity. Teach a 15-year-old that sex will make his dick shrivel up and fall off, and he'll probably be sexually repressed. Teach him that sex is perfectly fine and nothing to be embarrassed about, and he probably won't be sexually repressed. And once again, it'd be great if all parents could do that job, but that doesn't seem likely, though that isn't the fault of every parent out there.

People, yes, children, no. People are responsible for themselves, so they do indeed need to be given the facts and left to make their own decisions. Children do not. Its not a bad thing to allow children to be part of the process sometimes, but when it comes down to it they are children.



When you say horrors, are we talking about having sex? I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but laugh at that.

And you are wrong. Age is not just a number, it represents something. Can you guess what it represents? Thats right! It represents how old you are. Who would have guessed? And how old you are represents lots of things - your relative mental and physical maturity, how much life experience you have, and so on. You cannot pretend that a teenager is an adult, because they are not, the most you can hope to argue is that a teenager has the maturity required to handle the things we are talking about.

Maybe they do have the maturity to make these decisions, but it doesn't matter. The general consensus is that they do not, and the laws on what constitutes legal age also agrees that they do not. Like I said before, this thread isn't really about teaching sex in school, its just people arguing over what age they think kids should get to make their own decisions - and I'm afraid you will need a little more support than simply saying that it is so to convince people teenagers really are mature enough to make all their own decisions.



You would have us all believe that there is some great travesty, and no one ever has an enjoyable sex life because they were so traumatized by their first time - like no one in the world ever figured out how to properly fuck.

Apparently its not enough for kids to just have sex, they have to have really really good sex. Yes, kids will have sex anyway, and yes, sex is an important part of life - but to teenagers it is just recreation. I suppose next we should teach them how to play halo and world of warcraft, because I mean, its not enough that they play games - they need to be really good at them (mind you, there aren't a lot of ways you can end up with STDs from WoW).

All this goes back to what I said in my first post as well. I would actually agree with you, porn is a good supplement to sex ed. But do we really need to teach it? You teach kids the things in school that they won't figure out on their own. Kids obviously manage to figure sex out just fine, why waste tax money on it? Its just like when that other guy suggested we should teach slang in school - we could, but why would we waste money and time on it? Even if you tried, you couldn't teach slang to someone the way that real life would. Sex is the same way, you can give them stupid little pointers, but they could get all the same shit just googling it. You aren't ever really going to learn how to have amazing sex in a classroom - and I think its pretty well established that kids manage to have regular sex just fine.

Edit to Shaggy:

You seem to have backed way off your original argument. I'm not sure what you remember of your sex ed, but they definatly explained everything to us. They also definatly introduced us to what a vagina is. I'm not sure what you want here really.

I think you are making sex rather more complicated than it is. Your point about learning chemistry on wikipedia is partially true, but who the fuck is ever going to sit around and learn chemistry for fun off of wikipedia? Also, no matter what you say, chemistry and most other subjects taught in school are much more complicated than sex. If no one ever learned chemistry in school, then no one would ever know it, but that obviously isn't true for sex because no one learns it in school and *everyone* knows it.

Children and teenagers are two different kettles of fish, what I'm saying is that they should be given all the information available before making a decision. Cause they're gonna make that decision regardless of what the law says, and you're a fool if you think otherwise.

As for my horrors comment, I was referring to the world in general.

Nope, you are wrong about the age thing, it is nothing more than a guideline and it differs from person to person. You cannot tar everyone with the same brush. There is no magic in the air, as the clock strikes midnight on someone's 18th birthday that suddenly makes them mature enough to have sex.

If you accept that some teenagers are mature enough to have sex before the age of consent, then you would also agree that the law against them doing so is unfair?

I was saying that teenagers should have access to everything adults do in terms of their sex life. They don't HAVE to, but they should have the opportunity to. Would you go as far as to say that all teen sex is a bad thing? The fact is that there are a lot of teenagers out there who can and do enjoy sex responsibly.

I never said that Porn should be taught in school, I just said it should be supplementary to the Sex Ed they get at school, which is, in many cases; woeful.

I never said that there was any magic in the air when you turn 18, but you did say that it was just a number - and it isn't. Someone's age means something. I don't think I should have had to explain that, but you insist on pretending that there is no correlation between age and maturity.

To address your new point though, I think you will agree that it isn't practical to screen each individual teenager to see if they are mature enough to make their own choices. Besides the obvious complications, it would also create a lot of social problems for the kids that were decided to be too immature. While this may sound somewhat cliche, I must point out that if it isn't broken there is no need to fix it - and our current system certainly works just fine.

Teenagers really never get in any sort of legal trouble for having sex or watching porn. Currently the laws against both exist to be broken - but they do still serve important roles. For one thing, teenagers not legally being allowed to watch porn prevents the porn business from trying to blatantly market it to them, and it prevents adults more generally from trying to exploit them sexually. It forces everyone to maintain a pretense that is actually extremely important. I don't think the laws are unfair to the teenagers who presumably are mature enough to make their own decisions either, because there really wont be any consequences for breaking them anyway.




No, all teen sex isn't bad, but that doesn't mean that it is all good. Explain to me why the current system doesn't live up to your standards. What don't teenagers have access to? As you say yourself, there are lots of teenagers who enjoy sex responsibly. Whats the problem? Seems to me that they already have all the opportunities that you are talking about.

And again, I said that porn already supplements sex ed. Honestly, the current system works just fine. Sometimes its best for certain things to stay under the table so to speak.

Age is just a number, in that you can't use someone's age to determine their level of maturity, you can try to, but it is unreliable. If a 14 year old goes to a party where the general population is over 30, then you will see a remarkable difference in behavior when compared to how they behave in a situation with those of their own age.

It's the principle and the idea that some people are denying themselves based on the law. Not everyone is clear on which laws are made to be broken, however I agree that the law as a symbol does do more good than harm.

Ok, well firstly I would say that teenagers cannot walk into a sex shop and buy sex toys. The 18+ adults only signs are testament to this. There is nothing wrong with teenagers buying sex toys, and masturbation aids, and they should be allowed to do this. In my country there are fairly strict laws on advertising pornography as it is, they can't really market it to anyone.

Secondly, the act of denying teenagers access to certain information and yet encouraging them to break the law to procure it anyway seems counter-productive to me. If under 18's want to go to sex workshops then they should be allowed to do so. These things should be available to them if they want to make use of them.

In the end I agree with you to the extent that the current law has a purpose, but at the same time it denies things that surely should not be denied. There is nothing wrong with teenagers having everything at their disposal that adults do when it comes to a great sex life. With the current laws in place, they cannot achieve this.

You still aren't addressing the fact that not all teens should be buying sex toys and looking at porn. You are assuming that if you can find one teenager somewhere that is mature enough to handle it, then they should all be allowed to - which all goes back to what I was saying. Our current system may not be perfect, but very few things are. How are we supposed to individually screen everyone? Its much better to simply pick an age where we can be fairly sure everyone is mature enough to handle it, and not go through all the trouble. As I pointed out before, the laws themselves are very lax and barely enforced at all, so it really doesn't stop teenagers anyway - but it does help protect them.

And no, you are right - porn doesn't really get to market itself at all in real life, but its all over the place on the internet. I am of the firm opinion that maintaining the pretense that teenagers don't watch porn is the best approach for adult sites. If you remove that pretense adult advertisements would no longer be limited to adult sites, so sites like myspace and youtube would be free to post them if they want. Now maybe they wouldn't because they would want to maintain standards, but I'm sure there’s quite a few sites that would like the extra money. Also, who’s to say that porn wouldn't advertise in real life if there were no restrictions on minors seeing the advertisements?

Also, teenagers are hardly denied information. You can google 'sex ed' and come up with a wealth of teenager friendly sites that pretty much describe everything you guys have suggested in this thread except explicit pictures and videos. The information is out there, and it isn't particularly hard to find - and that’s all legal. But most of that is covered in sex ed classes in school anyway. I mean they won’t explain how to eat pussy to you, but they do tell you about arousal and that women get wet. They tell girls about erections and what the foreskin is and so on.

When it comes down to it, you have to draw the line somewhere. Right now the line is drawn at 18 - even if you don't agree with that, surely you realize that there has to be a limit somewhere. Most people feel that 18 errs on the side of safety, but that is usually the best approach with everything in life. As far as I am concerned, unless you are willing to make the argument that *all* teenagers are ready for sex, this debate is over.

dude, i pretty much agree with you on that
but think about one thing:
parents dont like they're kids to watch porno because of what?
are they that hyppocratich [sorry, dont know how to write this but you got the idea....]?
did they never watched some fuckin porno?
the thing about it is this: the problem is on the fuckin society.
think about it: everyone masturbates [ok, 99,999 percent of mankind. the other 0,0001 percent dont have arms to do it]. so whats the big deal about sex?
i think its the christian way of life, 'cause they see sex as a bad thing. a sin. but how coult it be, if we need sex? if sex is natural?
because of this fuckin lie they say sex is a bad thing even to kids and parents just agree with that without askin theyselves why sex is so bad.

if they teach us sex in school with porno, i think that the parents would just say no because of that. but if we could change the society way of thinking, we could do that.

PS: i think porno is a little bit agressive. how about mixing both of them? porno with sex education? porno enfatizates pretty much the whole sex thing and kids would masturbate during class. i think if we could do some sex ed with an explicit video, it could be ok.

whaddaya think? sorry for the bad english, 'kay?

No, I'm not going to say that all teenagers are ready for sex, but what I will say is that all teenagers should have the right to have sex with a consenting partner if they choose. It is their decision, and it is a decision they can and do make. You have spoken at length about the efficacy or rather lack of it, regarding the law in question, and I agree with you. However the system in the US should take a long, hard look at how European countries handle porn, such as Germany or the Netherlands, they have more liberal laws regarding pornography and it's not as if society is falling apart.

If you contrast the UK to countries like Holland or Germany, you can see who has the stricter laws regarding pornography (UK), funnily enough that is also the country with the highest teen pregnancy rate. Pornography should be available to younger people by law, there is little sense in setting the age of consent at 16, then when the person is 18, they can sign up to a Porn site and see all they things they were doing 2 years ago. :roll:

I am saying that the law is overly strict, if you think that there should be an age limit regarding such material, then would you also agree that it should be lowered in order to give a higher proportion of teenagers access to it.

You never know when people are actually going to start enforcing these laws, and if you say it's alright if it stays at 18 then that would mean a lot of people missing out on an important part of their sexual education. I'll also go on record as to saying that porn and sex toys will go a long way toward satisfying the lusts of your average teenager, making him less likely to pursue a girl and get her pregnant.

Porn should not be compulsory, nor should it be forced upon them, but it should be available to teenagers as and when they decide to look at it.

Sex Ed? Porno? How about mixing them both and even instilling some feeling of not wanting to have sex into the kids?

How? Get a VERY old man with an obscenely large penis and a VERY old woman (sagging tits, wrinkles, etc) moan like a wildebeest. That will explain what sex is, where babies come from, and why sex is horrifying sometimes. I bet teen pregnancy will shoot down immediately after that only because after that, when two people are having sex, they'll think of the old man or old woman.

Reminds me of a skit from Chappelle's Show, saying that the principle of the school should have sex with the oldest teacher in the school in front of the students, slathered in mayonnaise, to ensure that the students wouldn't want to have sex until their mid-thirties.

Anyways, thinking about the subject, I realize that I am perhaps a little biased because I live in a crappy state that had crappy sex ed classes. We never saw any real pictures of genitalia, just the diseased ones and the medical pictures of what the inside of the genitalia look like (the layout of the inside of a penis doesn't confuse you much, but looking at a picture of a woman's reproductive organs really gives you no clue what it actually looks like). Hell, we never even got the condom on a banana shtick. So, when I think of sex ed, I think of a half-assed attempt to teach kids about sex and a strong attempt to get kids to not have sex, and that pisses me off. And I forget that not all sex ed classes are like that.

Still, I never hear about sex ed classes teaching advice that is actually useful. From the beginning of middle school, it's shoved into students' brains that sex can have negative consequences. There are even commercials saying that stuff. I imagine the average 13-year-old knows that sex can create a child or make it burn when you pee or even kill you, but doesn't know what sex really is, the actual dynamics of it. I've heard too many people say that they lost their virginity because they were curious about what sex was. That's one of the problems, hearing the word "sex" being thrown around and having a vague idea of what it is but not being sure.

I don't necessarily think that sex ed classes should pop in Debbie Does Dallas and lets the kids enjoys themselves, but I think something should be shown without fear of nudity being shown. Perhaps a video that shows how to put a condom on a real man, instead of just a banana, or at least shows what a real erect penis looks like, and a real vagina, with an explanation of what the different parts are called and their purposes. It'd be educational, and it wouldn't be sugar-coated truth or truth behind a screen.

I'm not sure if such a video exists, and I'm not sure that if/when I have kids, sex ed will have progressed enough to allow such a video to be shown. That's why I said I'd show my kid porn, because I think it's important that a person sees what the human body looks like in real life, instead of just seeing drawn images and depictions of the inside of the body, and showing the kid my own boner would traumatize him/her for life.

I should note that I wouldn't want middle school students to be shown this sort of stuff. Freshmen year of high school, at the earliest. After all, don't people usually have sex in high school and not middle school? That's another thing that seems odd to me, how sex ed will be taught in middle school and forgotten in high school, when actual sexual education matters. Middle school's more about the biology of the sexual organs and why you're not a freak for waking up with a boner. Then again, with the way children are maturing nowadays, who knows?

You are still trying to side step my argument. I really could careless how European countries manage it. You make changes to your social system when it makes sense, not because someone else did it first. If you can't see the sense in a change then why would you do it?

Also, while it is true that some teens have sex before they are even legally allowed to view porn, telling me that its not fair that billy can't spend 10$ a month for porn he could get for free is a rather weak argument. I don't hate porn, but the industry behind it is rather dirty compared to the rest, and I think its just as well that adult companies aren't allowed to openly market it to teenagers who are more likely to impulsively waste money.

Another flaw I should point out in that argument as well - it is illegal for teenagers to have sex with adults, and rightly so because adults are more likely to intentionally take advantage of them. The porn industry is the same way, except that they don't want to fuck you, just take your money. Most teenagers who have sex do so with other teenagers, so its much more innocent than that. There’s a big underlying difference. Most people don't care if kids are watching porn, but it is best if the industry behind it is prevented from intentionally exploiting them.



Since I believe that the age restriction is justified I have to agree that it should be lowered? You act like one necessitates the other, but I don't see how. There is absolutely no logic in that statement. If anything, lowering the age restriction to give teenagers access defeats the purpose of having an age restriction.



None of this brings a new perspective to the debate. You are still ignoring my previous argument - I already addressed this. Porn is already accessible to teenagers; we just don’t hang a big sign on it to let everyone know.

To address shaggy: There is some sense in what you are proposing, though again you have backed way off from wanting teachers to show actual porn in school. Showing how to properly put on a condom could be good, especially since you will rarely see that in porn.

I think ziggy was right earlier though – if you ever show real pictures in class I can guarantee you there will be fits of giggling in the background. It would be difficult to get teenagers to actually watch and pay attention. And honestly, you want to show the guys how to put the condoms on probably more so than the girls, but if you show a video of a real guy putting on a condom all the guys are gonna act like it makes you gay to watch – because even if they watch porn at home by themselves, kids are still like that in groups. Even adults are sometimes.

Its still a good idea, but I’m not sure it is entirely realistic.

Well, talking about showing actual porn in school was kind of a joke. At least, I think it was. I sometimes lose sight of whether something said was meant to have a bit of humor or be taken as complete truth. But whether I was half-kidding at the beginning or not, I do agree now that just showing porn to students would be bad.

As for the way kids behave, yeah, they'd probably laugh, but it'd still be good to teach it. Kids will mock just about anything, after all. I remember kids cracking jokes in sex ed, even when we were talking about diseases, but that didn't make the teacher stop class. And in biology class, when we dissected things, people laughed and joked, but we still cut the things open.

Even if a kid acts like it's all a big joke in class, he may go home and be thankful for the information.

When I read this I found it hilarious :) Thank you for that, you really could care less about how European countries manage it? So you're going to ignore what has proven to be a better model? That doesn't make sense at all, the fact that these countries have a FAR lower teenage pregnancy rate does go some way toward saying that their system is better suited to this than your system. The US has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the developed world. That speaks for itself.

Your point seems to be; if it isn't broken then don't fix it, well evidently it is broken or you wouldn't be in the situation you're in right now.

On your "the porn industry exploits teens" line, I tell you again to look to your betters in Europe on this matter, a person can buy Porn or look at it for free, it doesn't matter one way or the other to me. But it should still be available. At a lower age than it is in the US.

The age of consent in Germany is 14, however someone who is over the age of 21 can be prosecuted for having sex with a 14 year old if they are judged to have "exploited their lack of capacity for sexual self-determination" In which case it requires a complaint from the younger individual.

You can say you don't care about how they do things in Europe all you like, but that is just ignorant. They offer valid alternatives to what is currently the norm in the US, and should not be ignored.

My betters in europe? lol? Better why? Because you said so? Wow, you're just so full of facts all of a sudden.

I'm glad that you find logic and common sense amusing, maybe that’s why you can't manage to refute any of my points. You must be laughing so hard you can't think properly.

You can't even see the sense behind what you're suggesting, your answer to everything is "that’s how europe does it". I hardly think that I or anyone else needs to take lessons from someone who can't think for himself.

The fact is any teenager with access to their own computer probably watches porn regularly, and changing the way it is labeled won't do anything to bring it to those who don’t already have access to it. Access to porn isn't determined by its legality in the US, it is determined by your access to the internet - and that’s it. You can't pretend that kids would spend more time watching porn than they already do if you made it legal, because it being legal isn't a factor in the first place. You might find one teenager in twenty who actually has the money to waste on subscriptions to porn sites and magazines, and one in a hundred who's parents will let him do it. Your argument makes no sense, because almost nothing would change. Its like change for the sake of change, just to feel like you are moving forward - its just so much wasted energy. But I'll address your 'lets idolize select parts of europe' argument anyway.

To start, I'd like to point out that a countries culture is very complex; you can't cite little aspects of it to idolize and ignore the rest. All of the countries you talked about are relatively small as well, which makes a big difference where politics are concerned. Our media and schools are completely different as well. You can't pretend that germany and holland have lower teen pregnancy rates because porn is legal, because it isn't even close to a direct comparison. There are so many underlying factors inbetween, and consequences that you might not have noticed. Germany, for example, was home to one of the largest child pornography rings ever uncovered(cited from wikipedia), and still has problems with it today.

Also, just about every country has lower teen pregnancy rates than the US, and they don't all have lax laws on porn. The US has serious issues with teen pregnancy, but I highly doubt that porn being illegal, or a lack of sex toys is the cause - because in truth kids in america watch more porn than probably anywhere else. If you want more proof look at japan - they have one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the entire world (yes, significantly lower than all the countries you mentioned) and they don’t even teach sex ed at all. Not only can kids not buy porn there, but adults can't either. The most you will ever see are boobs - everything else has to be censored by law. But you only picked the countries that had low teen pregnancy and lax laws on porn and sex to talk about. Don't you think that’s a little one sided?



Again, you failed to address any of my points. Teenagers buying porn in europe is evidence that the porn industry is not exploiting them? I can legally buy porn, and I still wouldn't waste money on that shit - its all over the place for free. I'd call spending money on it being exploited, but even if you wouldn't its still hard to justify that spending money on porn is proof that you aren't being exploited.



You think me debating about sex ed on a hentai site is evidence of our social system being broken? That’s almost as stupid as when you said that I should agree to lowering the age limit because I agree there should be one.

Maybe we should copy china, they do things differently too. Don't tell me we should ignore them, thats just ignorant. They offer valid alternatives to what is currently the norm in the US, and should not be ignored.

I personally believe that a good Sex Ed coupled with pornography every now and then should work well.
I cannot say whether one case will work over the other, as both sides have their pros and cons.
Learning from pornography will probably teach a person how sex looks like sometimes, the reality of the fact that people indeed engage in sex for money, and the looks of the sexual organs. However, it will not tell you the psychological factor that plays a part in sex. It will not tell you what it truly feels like for the female, as they are in most cases faking that they feel pleasure. The general feeling of pornography is that bigger is better, which may be instilled unto viewers. Also, as a side note, even knowing the positions displayed on pornos does not make you a better sex partner if you haven't tried them/aren't good at them.

Learning from sex education, granted it is a whole and not blatantly censored lesson, will teach the psychological factors that take part, the pain of the female in some cases, the look of the sexual organs, and the feeling of the male/understanding of both sexes hormones. The main problem with a sex ed is that the majority of sex ed teaches the "sex is bad until marriage." Even the ones that preach usin protection still have a "well, if you DO..." tone to them, discouraging sexual activity at young ages.

The fact is, pornography is readily availible to any child with internet access, and when any child sees enough, he/she will begin to wonder how it would seem and feel in real life. Eventually, this adolecent may go out and do these acts, possibly being one of the teens in a pregnancy couple. However, if this teen has knowledge of what to do and what not to do, through an equal balance of sex education and pornography, they can still have pleasure without consenquences.

What “logic and common sense?” were you employing when you said: “I really could careless how European countries manage it.”? You have to look at each country's track record with these kinds of things and say: this country is doing it better than this country, then ask yourself why; you seem to think that there is no connection between legal access to porn and teen pregnancy, I myself disagree; whether something is lawful or not affects how socially acceptable a subject is. In Germany for example; Porn is on the shelves in shops like anything else, people do not react to it. It is not as big of a deal to them as it is to you.

If you're asking me why make changes to your social system, you only need to look at it to see why; the highest teen birth rate, a high suicide rate. Surely these things can be improved upon? My citing European countries as points of reference as to how things should be done, is my own choice, thinking for myself and making my decision.



I disagree with you when you say that every teenager with access to the Internet watches porn regularly, you're generalizing. On the subject of the porn industry exploiting teenagers, I've got to question where you're going on this; you're terrified that people will try and sell your teenagers porn? Shouldn't you also be worried that there are people trying to sell your teenagers computer games? Or food? Why is it only “exploiting” when there is sexual content involved? The fact of the matter is that something would change; your country would stop encouraging it's teenagers to ignore the law. On the principle of it people should be encouraged to respect the law, when it is just and right.


I understand that a country's culture is complex, but I would take Germany or Holland's laws over those of the USA. Simple as that, when you talk about relatively small, I would compare how the USA has a number of states, which each have their own laws on a subject. Even if you looked at an average of all the teen pregnancy rates in the European union, the USA has a rate that is much, much higher. If you refuse to acknowledge European countries and governments based on the fact that they are small in comparison, you only need to look at the average over the EU to see that your country is doing something wrong.



Where do you get your statistics from btw? By that I mean the statistic that led you to state that Japan had a significantly lower teen birth rate than Holland? (What is significant in your opinion?, as I understand it they are two places away from each other in the “UNICEF teenage birth league”)

Nope you are very right; not every country that has a lower rate of teen pregnancy than the US has lax laws on pornography; But the majority of them do: Japan has the second, lowest teen birth rate, however that can actually be correlated with liberal laws in porn, and integration of pornography into popular culture. In Japan the laws affect censorship of genital regions, and not much else ie. As long as you censor genitalia, you can pretty much do whatever you like with the porn.

Would you be surprised to learn that the countries with the lowest teen birth rate in the developed world have “low” ages of consent: e.g. Korea (13), Japan (13), Holland (16), Switzerland (16), Sweden (15), Italy (14), Spain (13), Denmark (15), Italy (16), Finland (16), France (15), Luxembourg (16), Belgium (16) Greece (15), Norway (16), Germany (14), Austria (14), Czech Republic (15)......the list goes on and on; did you see any 18's in there? No, me either.

What this shows us is that countries that have lower ages of consent do more to educate their teenagers about responsibility with sex. In the USA it is evident that you do not do that, that is one of the reasons why your teen pregnancy rate is so high. In other countries teenagers have proven they can be responsible while having an active sex life, I would go as far as to say that this shows that it is not the teenager's fault for the high pregnancy rates, but rather America's.


As for your argument that choosing to spend money on Porn means you are being exploited, if there was no market for Porn, it would not sell, and would not be produced to the extent that it is today. You are profiting from the fact that there are people out there who pay for Porn, thus funding the industry that you we both leech off . Just because you can get something for free doesn't mean that you should.



When I wrote: Your point seems to be; if it isn't broken then don't fix it, well evidently it is broken or you wouldn't be in the situation you're in right now. The subject I was referring to was America's system for dealing with teen pregnancy, but I wouldn't blame you for taking my remark out of context, or not reading it properly, it's not the first time you've done it and probably won't be the last either. If you took the time to read carefully and think about what I might mean by the comment I made then you wouldn't be so confused. (I will also try to be clearer in future.)

As for my earlier comment, I was stating that based on the fact that you think there is a need for an age restriction on sex, wouldn't you also agree that is should be lower, I was responding to this:


By no means would I advocate ignoring China, It is probably the country for which I harbour the most disdain. Ideas need to be considered and some need to be avoided.