So, I looked [at porn] today. It came to a tipping point and I thought it’s what I wanted. But as I was watching the videos go by, something seemed wrong. And it hit me.
They were people. It was the first time that I can remember that these women were people, not sex puppets. It was a huge difference. I knew it intellectually, of course, but this is the first time I felt it.
And I was struck by how young some of these girls looked. As I skimmed by videos, I swear some of them could have passed for junior high. They looked so young. And it made me think, well, yeah, that’s the point. Sure, videos claim that all models are 18 or older and represent 18 or older, we know that’s not really what’s going on. They’re meant to look younger than that. Such disclaimers are there to cover their asses.
It all just seemed so wrong, so inhumane. I know some of the women are there by choice, but damn. It sure doesn’t feel like it anymore.
Edit: As u/Idomeditate points out, my wording does make it sound like I’m suggesting porn companies are doing some highly illegal shit. I don’t mean to say that these girls *are* under the age of 18. What I meant to say was that despite the fact these girls are over the age of 18, a lot of them had “baby faces.” Yes, they’re 18 or older, but they could easily pass for someone much younger and it hit me that, for some of these videos, I personally think that was the idea. So, no, I don’t mean to imply that porn companies are up to no good in that department. It just bothered me the young looks of some of the girls.
[Reply] While it’s true that major porn companies are careful to make sure performers are at least 18, there have definitely been many cases where amateur videos got pulled from big sites like PornHub when it was discovered the people in the video were underaged. So if you’ve watched a lot of amateur stuff you probably have seen underaged people, sometimes it takes a while for them to find out and pull it, and I’m sure sometimes they just never find out and it stays up.
But I get what you’re saying! Even for major porn studios where the performers are definitely over 18, they do often purposefully try to make them look younger, and when you think about it, that’s pretty creepy. I don’t think it’s a healthy sexuality to fetishize girls who are barely adults and who are made up to look like they’re not even legal, to reinforce the idea that the sexiest and most ideal thing is for a girl to be just barely out of childhood.
And honestly I don’t think most barely-18 kids really have the maturity to make the decision to go into a job with such a high potential for trauma and death (porn performers have the lowest life expectancy of any career and PTSD rates as high as combat veterans.) It’s actually messed up that we let kids who could still be in high school sign up to do things like porn or like joining the military which is dangerous and could seriously traumatize them.
I think it’s a really good thing you’ve started seeing them as people though! Seeing people solely as sex objects and not humans also isn’t a healthy sexuality, and sex is actually better when you can feel attracted to your partner and their body while at the same time not forgetting that they’re a person. And a lot of people say getting away from porn helps them see regular women, as well as their actual sex partners, more as people and not just as objects.
[Another reply] In the end, the only thing you can do to make pornography enjoyable is to not look at the person on the screen as a full human being. Someone who had dreams and hopes just like we all do. You can’t enjoy it if you fully internalize and bring to focus that this person is someone’s daughter, and that this person did not exactly make a rational choice between going to Harvard and eating strange dick on screen for a living.
Pornography is a symptom of an underlying malaise, which is our failure to care. A consumer culture where even humans have become consumer goods that we can pick up and throw away like a box of Oreos.
Good on you for seeing the human, OP.
[Another reply] When I turned 24 I started noticing like…ew this girl is 18. I wouldn’t sleep with an 18 year old.
I realized if I never quit porn I’d probably be 40 and still fapping to 18 year olds. Not good. It’s gonna be a big problem for this generation when we’re older.
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