Thursday, October 4, 2012

porn in the house and babysitters

The mom of a twelve-year-old girl who was going to babysit our daughter expressed concern her daughter might get her hands on some of my porn while she was here. She explained in an email:
I figure to research your book you probably have some porn in your house. While I figure this material is safely out of the reach of a 4 year old, I am just writing to make sure that it is also out of sight of curious 12-year-olds. I remember running into porn at a home as a babysitting teenager and of course I had to look at it. The father of the family kept magazines on his bedside table and I still have clear memories of some of the photos.
In any case, I would prefer that my daughter not have a similar experience at this age. I am sure you understand. Maybe someday we can chat about any ideas you have on how to discuss porn with your children.
My gut reaction was to have that chat with her right there and then, but there wasn't really time for that before the scheduled arrival of her daughter. So I wrote back stating that "yes; we have porn in the house and it's not boxed up and locked away, but it's all down in the basement [this was in fact not entirely true; I had to quick take a few DVDs downstairs where I have them lined up on bookshelves]. The basement is unfinished and not a place to hang out in, so I don't see why she would go down there. It just serves as storage space and has our washer and drier."

This still didn't reassure said concerned mom. She wrote back asking if there was any reason that our daughter would want to go downstairs, for toys or hide and seek or a book, or even just to show her daughter around. "I never would have gone in the master bedroom of that house long ago," she explained, "except that the kids I was watching took me in there." She added that in general, her daughter doesn't like basements, but if our daughter has a reason to go down there, then she would follow.

I found this entire exchange so interesting in terms of what it reveals about ideas about porn in our culture and fears and suspicion to it. As my husband said, our babysitter would be much better off watching some of the porn I look at as opposed to some random mainstream smut. And as I write in my book, re-visioned and transformed feminist porn by women presents the kind of positive thinking about sexuality and instructive role modeling of healthy sexual behavior that I would want my daughter to be exposed to as a part of her sex education when she grows up.

For kids who are exposed to mainstream porn (and let's face it: kids today are pretty much bound to run into it online), adults need to be prepared for how to talk to them about it — to make kids "porn literate," as experienced sex therapist, author and educator Dr. Marty Klein puts it. I have featured a post by him about how to talk about porn with kids at Love, Sex, and Family. I encourage all parents, educators and adults who work with kids to check it out!

Photo: When Children See Internet Pornography (New York Times)
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