The Web-Porn Patrol

Well, your kids may be "net savvy"--some are, some aren't. But I venture that even if they do figure out something is going on, they'll appreciate it in the end because their parent cares enough to protect them.

Many kids 6-10 can use the net, and without filtering, who knows what they might run into...
And its a documented fact that many sex offenders were addicted to pornography at early ages, due to parental negligence or even purposeful exposure.

See this site for just one example.

Thank you commonsense and Fang-Face for the readings.

I was going to post a long and involved response, but I am too old and too weary to type all that. If you want to meet me at the bar next to the dirty bookstore near my house we can discuss it there.

Alcohol is not a narcotic, that is just silly. Taber's dictionary is an authoratative source, I just can't find mine now. However Steadman's Medical Dictonary (also remarkably good at supporting shelves) notes that narcotics are " Origninally any drug derived from Opium" So when one discusses narcotics with nurses or physicians one thinks of opiate or synthetic opiate derived medications. ETOH is not an opiate. Those Blackinston-Gould fellas are out of their tree.

Does that mean that if they had never been exposed to porn, they never would have become sex offenders? As Fang-fang noted, you are making a HUGE leap.

I guess drinking doesn't lead to becoming an alcoholic, right?

Not by itself, no. Drinking is only one factor in a series of complex social and personal interactions. But censorship advocates don't like complexities. They generally can't think beyond black and white, so they like to keep things simplistic. Alcohol causes alcoholism, therefore if we enact a law banning alcohol we can cure alcoholism. Study up on how effective the 18th amendment was. The war on drugs is just as collosal a failure -- it is, after all, just another Prohibition -- because shortsighted fools can't see beyond the ends of their petty prejudices. The authors of the study or whatever it is you cited are the same. Ask any rape councillor and they should tell you that rape is not about sex.

And something you and they haven't taken into account is which condition is causal and which is effectal. The a priori assumption in the use of pornography is that porn causes criminal behaviour, but censorship advocates never look into whether or not porn use actually derives from a predisposition to engage in criminal behaviour. To do would violate the black/white paradigm.

For instance, the oldest came across the word "butt plug" on a humor site.

Along I-610 West Loop here in Houston, near the Galleria, used to be a great greasy-hamburger-joint called Luke's. After a fire it went out of business and is now "Zone d'Erotica", with a big purplish-pink sign just at eye-level for freeway traffic, right in your face, basically. Of course my daughter noticed it (she was riding with my wife) and asked about it. My wife gave an age-appropriate explanation along the lines of Rochelle's explanation, which satisfied her, but apparently she comments on it each time they pass it. I wish it were still Luke's. I enjoyed their burgers.

Truthfully one cannot be addicted to an action, and looking at pornography is an action.

I hate to say it, but this is wrong, mdoneil. There are two kinds of addiction; physical, such as alcoholism, and psychological. The most common form of physical addiction is a chemical dependency such as to nicotine, alcohol, street drugs, and etc. I can't think of any samples of psychological addiction off hand, but a psychological addiction is no less real than a physical one.

That doesn't make kctipton's reply correct, however. One can drink without becoming an alcoholic. I do. But with pornography, there is, among censorship advocates, an a priori assumption that use leads to addiction by way of a slippery slope argument. The argument is that if you use porn, you come to want increasingly more graphic porn. This is similar to the fallacious gateway drug argument that if you use marijuana, you're going to go on to use heroin and cocaine. This argument falls flat when you consider that caffeine is a drug (and alcohol is actually a narcotic by definition; check a Blackinston-Gould medical dicionary) and a lot of people who drink coffee, booze it up socially, and smoke like chimneys do not go on to be crackheads.

The "Harmful To Minors" argument is just another a priori assumption. If the human specie were all that frail we wouldn't have survived as long as we have. Censorship advocates use it as a handy excuse to try to control what the rest of humanity does; which is what all censorship boils down to.

If you're interested and haven't seen them already I have a couple of commentaries about this situation. The first one is about how to determine "Harmful To Minors", and the second is about the inherent disrespect in censorship for the human dignity of minors.

OK... I guess drinking doesn't lead to becoming an alcoholic, right? Somehow I fail to see that one can become an alcoholic without drinking!!

That said, it's not universal, and in some cases, sexual offenders have more a a violent motive than sexual, but here's a quote that I think says it well...

"Sexual addiction has progressive features. Whereas some sex addicts may not progress beyond self-destructive behavior, i.e. compulsive masturbation, hustling, cruising, or the extensive use of pornography or phone and computer sex services, others may escalate to victimizing activities such as exhibitionism, voyeurism, obscene phone calls, child molestation, or rape. For some, sexual dependency may lead to more risky, intense, and exploitative acts. The lack of appropriate assessment and treatment of sexual addiction in its early stages may lead to failure to prevent more assaultive sexual acts."

from: http://www.sexualrecovery.com/resources/articles/s exoffending.php

MORE LINKS... you'll have to judge whether any of them are "authoritative"!!

http://www.medlina.com/pornography.htm
From this site: http://www.ktk.ru/~cm/stat2.htm -->

Does Pornography Promote Abuse?

Dr. William Marshall (1983)
87% of girl child molesters and 77% of boy child molesters studied admitted to regular use of hard core adult pornography. The obscene material was used by these sex offenders for three reasons:
(1) to stimulate themselves;

(2) to destroy the consciences and lower the inhibitions and resistance to sexual activity in their intended child victims; and

(3) as teaching tools for the child to imitate or model in their real life sexual encounter with the adult.

John Rabun, Exploited and Missing Children Unit of Louisville, KY

"The Police/Social work team of the Exploited and Missing Child Unit (EMCU) of Louisville, KY investigated 1,400 cases of children suspected of being victims of sexual exploitation. Over 40 major cases involved the successful prosecution of adults involved with over 12 children each. One case involved 320 children. At the time of the arrest of and/or service of search warrants, all 40 of these adult predators were found with various forms of adult pornography, and in most cases child nudes and/or child pornography were also found.

"Over four years, the EMCU team learned to expect to always find adult pornography since it was used for:

(1) the offender's own arousal;

(2) self-validation of their own sex deviations;

(3) extortion of child victims or other adults; and

(4) deliberate and planned lowering of inhibitions of child victims.

The Badgley Report (1984)
The report found that almost 60% of both male and female juvenile prostitutes had been asked to be the subject of sexually explicit films or photographs; 12% of the girls and 20% of the boys had actually been used in making pornography; juvenile prostitutes are a high-risk group in regard to being exploited by pornographers.
Two smaller American studies (Burgess: 755 of youth hustlers had participated in pornography; John Rabun: 37% had participated) emphatically confirm this finding.

Silbert and Pines (1984)
A detailed content analysis of 193 cases of rape and of 178 cases of juvenile sexual abuse revealed a clear relationship between violent pornography and sexual abuse.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder 111-R
Pedophiles who act on their urges with children commonly develop excuses or rationalizations about their illegal sexual activities toward the children:
1) that they have "educational value" for the child

2) that the child derives "sexual pleasure" from them

3) that the child was "sexually provocative" toward them -- led them on.

These three rationalizations are "themes that are also common in pedophillic pornography." p.284. In other words, pornography teaches three myths that pedophiles believe, and act on, when they molest children.

Southern California Child Exploitation Task Force (1988)
"One of the men we prosecuted had 50,000 photographs of noncommercial child pornography in a storage locker. He admitted molesting several hundred children following his release from a state hospital for a child molestation conviction. He even maintained a ledger listing those molestations. He taught swimming and tennis to youngsters, some of whom became his victims."

http://www.ilppp.virginia.edu/Publications_and_Rep orts/UndJuvSexOff.html

http://www.fradical.com/Importance_of_COPA.htm

Butt plug. I would have to assume it is a medical device perhaps used during x-ray or endoscopic examinations.

Being an RN I know way too much stuff about how people use household objects. Sometimes I wish I still had my naïveté.

I am going to wash my brain with hot soapy water, again. I feel so dirty.

I have to disagree with your statement that it is a documented fact that many sex offenders were addicted to pornography.

Truthfully one cannot be addicted to an action, and looking at pornography is an action. This is of course a literal, medical interpretation. I have heard that people are addicted to ice cream or tennis or some such thing but those are not true addictions.

That said I find it very hard to believe that any study found a causal relationship between obsession with pornography and the commission of sex crimes. I have made a cursory search and I can find no authoratative study that demonstrates that. I did look at the site to which you linked, and I did see that studies it mentioned show that there is pornography use by sex offenders, but it does not establish a causal relationship.

However the points made on the linked site regarding the false messages sent by our sexualized culture (bullet points 1/3 of the way down) are on point. Avoiding promiscuity would serve each of us individually and collectively quite well.

Please note that I am vehemently opposed to allowing minors access to indecent, pornographic or obscene material. I also encourage parents to restrict their computer through the use of constant supervision, filters, or whatever they find works best for their family.

Looking at dirty books is not going to make a six year old a sex offender. Otherwise National Geographic would have been kept out of the Catholic schools' libraries.

"My kids are smart enough to know that if they keep getting error messages on their favorite websites, something's up."Your kids favorite websites are pron portals? heh

As near as I can recall to quote:

NARCOTIC: A substance which cause stupor, sleep, or euphoria, and which falls into one of three classes; opiates, bella donna alkaloids, and alcohol.

This was a medical dictionary.