A Growing Trend: Teen Pornography
Date: Thursday, February 24 @ 03:06:21 EST
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, Sex Industry


Especially for Parents News and Commentary by Sharon Secor
October 2004
http://www.moralityinmedia.org/
index.htm?mediaIssues/espforparents2004-10.htm
A Growing Trend: Teen Pornography
There is much to be dismayed about within the multi-billion dollar pornography industry. However, one trend that should be noted is the increasing popularity within the mainstream of pornography of what is hyped as teen porn. This genre uses the youngest performers permitted by law, with the producers of such material often selecting the 18- and 19-year old participants specifically for their underage appearance.

“If it’s a ‘young’ title, says ‘teen’, has ‘young girl’ on the box, I buy 25% more,” said Don Endy, the buyer for General Video of America West, according to a May 2004 Adult Video News article. “The younger they look, the more I’ll buy. My people tell me that’s what’s selling.” What happens to our society when increasing numbers of adult men become fixated upon seeing young girls sexualized, often finding entertainment, even arousal, in viewing them in the most sexually abusive and degrading fashions? What happens to young girls who see themselves in these ways day after day after day­both in the mainstream media outlets that so often take their cues from the pornography industries and in the eyes of the men and boys who look at them? What happens to boys who grow up internalizing this one-dimensional view of girls and women? The cultural connotations of this growing trend are disturbing, as are the social repercussions. The near constant refrain chanted by porn defenders is that there is no scientific evidence of a “causal connection” between pornography and sex crimes. However, the women and children victimized by sexual predators often have a different tale to tell, as do the law enforcement agents who deal with such cases. In The Link Between Pornography and Violent Sex Crimes, an article by Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media, the relationship between pornography and sex crimes is carefully explored. Citing several law enforcement experts, Peters notes that in the vast majority of searches and investigations of sexual offenders, police officers find pornography. On October 17, 2004, Associated Press reported that a northern Utah sheriff’s department “is requiring deputies to begin documenting pornography found at crime scenes and during arrests.” Speaking for the Cache County Sheriff's Department, Lt. Matt Bilodeau indicated that police have noted what the AP writer referred to as “a steady increase in porn associated with crimes.” According to an October 3, 2004, report on Independent Online, at www.iol.co.za, German psychologists at a conference of the German Society for Research on Sexuality say a sharp increase in the number of people whose sex drives have gone out of control is mainly the result of pornography and sex chat on the Internet. Conference chairperson Steffen Fliegel said, as reported by IOL, “about 75 percent of people, who can no longer control their sexual instincts, are men.” Ben Doherty, of the Australia based Canberra Times, reported on October 1, 2004, that, according to Emeritus Professor Freda Briggs, “research showed a 100 per cent correlation between those who collected child pornography and those who abuse children.” Briggs, of the University of South Australia, “specializes in child protection.” We now live in a damaged society, one in which the trust we once had in those charged with protecting and guiding youth­teachers, police officers, clergy, etc.­has been tarnished. Day after day, we read news accounts of young people sexually used by the adults who, in times past, could be counted upon to care for them, those who we believed in as part of the social network that served to help bring our children safely to adulthood. Both in pornography and in mainstream media we see a distorted, hyper-sexualized view of teens. Not only are adult men and adolescent males being media-conditioned to view teenaged girls as objects of gratification, but so too are the girls themselves. In current teen and tween sexual trends, it seems that the focus is also on pleasuring the males. With the all-to-common “hook-ups,” it is usually the girls who perform oral sex upon boys. Emotional commitment is not a prerequisite. The influence of pornography can also in home made video tapes­by teens­that periodically pop up, depicting same sex interaction before an audience, group sex, and other sexual practices that were once confined to the adult realms of sexuality. In a study of black females, aged 14 to 18, published in the May 2001 issue of Pediatrics, it was found that the teen girls who were exposed to x-rated films were “more likely to have negative attitudes toward using condoms, to have multiple sex partners, to have sex more frequently, to not have not used contraception during the last intercourse, to have not used contraception in the past 6 months, to have a strong desire to conceive, and to test positive for Chlamydia.” It is worth noting, while considering the increasing social acceptance of teen girls being portrayed as sexual objects for adult men, that the Population Reference Bureau found that in the past decade approximately two-thirds of babies born to teenaged mothers were fathered by men 20 years of age and older. Many experts on adolescent sexuality indicate that these types of sexual behaviors often result from the female seeking acceptance and approval from the males. In other words, the girls themselves act upon a belief that it is their sexual services that make them valuable, not their character, intelligence or any other positive quality. Young women, however, are not the only ones who are damaged by this increased sexual fixation upon sexualized teen girls. In her testimony to the Committee on Government Reform, Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, on March 13, 2003, developmental psychologist and Professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA Dr. Patricia Greenfield presented several ways in which pornography was harmful to the psycho-sexual development of youth. Many pornography addicts speak of becoming addicted during their adolescence, which is not surprising, as the immature brain is more vulnerable to addictions of many types. Developing intimacy skills is an important part of adolescent male psycho-sexual development, as it is in this way that sex and love are brought together, allowing successful and satisfying adult relationships. Pornography, however, is about emotional distance, self-gratification often at the expense of another’s pain, and objectification­polar opposites of what a teenage boy needs most to learn. Pornography has the power to leave a young man without the most essential tools he needs to achieve emotional and sexual maturity. The overt sexual commodification of young girls by pornographers and mainstream media outlets is tragic for both the individual and society as a whole. By conditioning adult men to indulge in sexual fantasies (often violent) about girls who are not yet women, the sexual boundaries between adults and children are eroded, making children less safe from harm. By perverting the psycho-sexual development of our youth, we destabilize our culture by disrupting their abilities to form the loving, intimate relationships from which families­the foundation of healthy nations and happy individuals­blossom.






This article comes from genderberg.com
http://genderberg.com/phpNuke

The URL for this story is:
http://genderberg.com/phpNuke/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=80