... I was pretty crazy about sex. And while some people will claim that this has not much changed since then, being a 16 year old boy, living in a hole in the middle of nowhere with no girls my age around was rather depressing. My body changed in scary ways, unknown reactions, disturbing thoughts, disturbing dreams with sticky and messy results in my pajamas - nature plays a cruel game with you during puberty.I was lucky to got raised by liberal and educated parents. Sexuality did not get tabooed, neither did nakedness. Still there are some things you do NOT discuss with mother, but who need an outlet nevertheless.
During visits to hairdressers or doctors I preferred reading magazines who were known to have the occasional nude pic in them (it was in the early Eighties). I raided my parent's book shelves for erotic literature, there were porn magazines exchanged at school - candidly - and the older boys loaned them with a sleazy "no stains or you pay it!" - a sentence that took me a few months to understand. And finally we exchanged nude images on 5.25" floppy disks for my Commodore 64 computer. GIF files with 256 colors - GIF, by now a mostly outdated file format, being jokingly dubbed as "Girls In Files".
That was almost 3 decades ago. Access to nude images and videos, and even to pornographic images and videos, is ridiculously easy. Even with "safe search on" a query on Google will deliver the required result in a few tries. With "safe search off" I can see all the boobs I probably want right away, in vivid color and high resolution.
And now there is talk about protecting our children from the sex happening in SL. Sorry, I don't get it, I really don't get it.
- Second Life is a "game" for adults. If your kid is stealthily accessing SL, you as parent have done something wrong.
- The visual component of sex in SL - also known as "poseball humping" - has the quality of a bad cartoon. As nice as we can style our avatars, the arousing qualities of a naked avi are rather limited. Our 640x480 files in 256 colors back in the Eighties had better visual quality than a naked SL avatar. The typical erotic/pornographic images and even the videos you can get today are light years beyond what is possible in Second Life today. Same applies for the vast majority of sex anims - boring repetitive stuff.
- The non-visual component of sex in SL - the cybering, the emoting, the spinning of a scenario, the painting of a landscape of arousal and desire in your partner's head is something not even a young adult masters, not to mention a teenager or a kid.
I do absolutely accept that a percentage of the adults in SL don't want to come across sexual content. It is their right to do so, and everything that makes selecting and deselecting this content is basically a good idea. But please STOP claiming we need to protect our children from the stuff going on in SL. If they are determined - and from a certain age on they ARE determined - they will find it elsewhere easier.
8 comments:
I wouldn't say that if a kid is accessing SL, the parent has done something wrong; I would say WHY he wants to access SL is important ;)
But you are right, there is lots of porn all over, even in my country where porn is supposedly illegal and movies/tv shows are censored for nudity, sexual elements, and foul language. You can easily buy bootleg porn DVDs anywhere or just go to Google. Why anybody would need to go to SL to find porn is a bit beyond me.
OK, first the fun stuff.... my sweet 16:
I was interested in three things: Sex, music and programming. Was pretty good in the later two. As a long term nudist at the time I saw a hell lot of naked bodies, still it's not the same as seeing them in different context. I used 'zines and books for that. Was more interested in text than in pictures though. Beside that, I started going out regularly, still had no piercings, knew very well how being drunk feels like, driving my parents crazy with my outfits, had my first joint, started smoking tobacco again and digging smuggling channels to import my 16bit computer without paying taxes.
Now the SL part....
1) SL is not a "game" for adults only.
2) Kids will always find a way to get to the material they want. Live with it, kids are smarter than their parents. If they are not you did a bad job. Evolution is stronger than parent's fears.
3) For a teenager, SL is graphically less interesting than any "realistic" porn. Cybersex takes a dose of knowledge of the real thing, but still, that doesn't mean teens won't try it.
4) If a kid access SL that doesn't mane parent did something wrong, it just mean parent will have a tough job talking many things out, straight, honest and open. But then, that's something parents should do with or without SL.
5) Sure that some adults don't want to see naughty side of metaverse. And they have their right for that. Also, others have their right to live their imaginations up to tech possibilities and existence of consesual minds. So, each to the own corner of the grid, have your fun and don't bother the rest with your ideas.
very well said, Peter! (and, as an aside, your ability to tell a story with your pictures is remarkable)
I spend enormous time and effort keeping a reasonable awareness on what my 7 yr old sees, hears, and does. But, I was reminded again recently of my limitations, as she pranced past me chanting "I'm so sexy". I know she acquired this expression with no intentional seeking (and, no knowledge of what it means!). As you suggest -- it boggles the mind to think of what she can find with even a moderate amount of curiosity.
I think I agree that one of the more challenging places to go looking for sex is SL. Even for an older adult, who may have a rich mental bank to draw on, the technical limitations can often make the typical experience of SLex more comical than sensual.
Sorry to be long-winded, but something else occurs to me. I've noticed since becoming a parent (and an older one at that) that I see things so differently than a child does. I've had occasion to re-visit favorite fairy tales, stories, and cartoons with my child and have been quite surprised to see things I never saw as a child, and things I know my daughter doesn't see. I realize it is because I now carry a whole world of experience,knowledge, and associations that a child simply doesn't have. I'm just not sure a young person would be at all interested in the same things that fascinate, or repulse, or otherwise affect us in SL.
Hey Peter. Great post. SL is so not about sex - SL is about a second life... in all it's variety...
... and sex is part of life. Sex in SL? Hey, it's a second LIFE.
Folks desiring tighter societal norms in RL will most certainly desire them here.
The perception that if SL is to go mainstream, sex must be as closeted away as mainstream norms dictate is not necessarily true. Google is mainstream. :)
If SL has an inordinate skew from RL, I don't think it's in the sex - it's in the creativity of it's members.
Further to Dande's post earlier in the week, "SL is not a "game" for adults only", SL is great because it's about everything, not just sex.
There are valid concerns about predation. I've seen online predators in action (not in SL), and it they truly are concerning, but I've yet to encounter a true predator in SL yet. I'm sure they are around, but I think the social fabric of SL might be resistant to such. I'll have to think about that more and post on it.
Just some early morning, pre-coffee ramblings. Great stuff.
Ah, finally an adult gets it. Good show, Peter.
The MG sex scene is anything but a quick fix for some hormonal kid. For most adults roleplaying sex, the interaction aspect far outweighs the visual pleasure.
Teens are impatient and would hardly be expected to spend time and energy on something that can be so easily attained by a few clicks.
Based on some rudimentary surveys I've taken, only 8-10% of the the entire TG would visit a sex-orientated sim or industry on the MG, if given the chance. (Consider that there's an estimated 800 unique active players.)
The magic of SL is in a massive world of endless creative, social, entertainment and business opportunities.
~V.
When I was young there was little, very very little sexual information (and I include pornography on it); Spain suffered a dictatorship with a deep "moralist" base until 1975, and it took it ages to recover. I can remember checking our huge enciclopaedia in search of interesting data.
Later appeared some softcore magazines, and probably some imported porn but, anyway, I doubt I saw a naked man until I was, what? Maybe 15? And God, where they ugly (eeeks :-p).
With time the situation normaliced, mainly through Internet, but it has always easier to find porn than erotism, and in this case female models instead of male ones.
In fact, one of the first erotic images I got through the Internet was of a female model, and she had always been somehow etched in my mind; some years ago I discovered that she is called Sung-He Lee, and the picture that impressed me so much is widely available after a Google search (http://www.free-computer-wallpapers.com/pictures/albums/girls_wallpapers/Sung_Hi_Lee.jpg).
That didn't made me lesbian, not even rezzbian (:-p), but I can't deny that a lot of wrong concepts and taboos of mine come from that age. It is very disturbing when sexuallity is treated as something dirty, and of course, even worse if all what you can see is truly dirty.
As an adult I have found in SL an opportunity to develop myself, in a personal level that also includes my sexuality, and I HATE to see that liberty cut down. Still, the zoning may not be a bad idea (yes, it is me saying that :-p).
I have been told extraoficially that private island will probably be respected and that mainland owners MAY get help doing the moving... so maybe it will be a good thing at the end, and maybe (but only maybe) this isn't the time to whine about it :-)
For those unfamiliar with Vaughns terminology: MG = Main Grid = the Second Life all the adult residents live in. TG = Teen Grid.
Thanks Vaughn for your insightful comment.
Has LL said this is for the children?
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