Porn Stars Don’t Owe Your Kids A Thing

It is not the first time the porn stars get used as scapegoats of the society. The anti porn activists just love to push upon us the responsibility of making sure that kids aren’t watching porn. After all – porn is this bad, violent thing that damages young minds forever, right? Yet, at the same time, parents don’t want to talk about sex and sexuality to their kids because the talk makes them feel awkward. So, instead, they preach abstinence. Best case scenario — you’ll get some condoms thrown at you, but that’s where it ends.

Puritans and anti porn activists say that porn is ruining the lives of children. Those who come across porn at a young age will have a skewed view on what sex should be like, and those whose mums do porn will be bullied in school. In their eyes, the core problem is the existence of porn and porn stars. This leads me to wishing they would understand a couple of important things.

1. Porn is entertainment, not education. Just like we don’t use romcoms as dating manuals, we shouldn’t use porn as a guide to sex. They are nothing but fantasies that we consume in our free time for our own pleasure.
2. We are not the reason free porn is so widely available on the internet. Initially, tube sites built themselves on stolen content, which meant that a lot of companies and creators lost a lot of money. Believe me, porn stars were not thrilled about this change at all. However, since we realized that tube sites are not going anywhere, we learned to adjust and make sure they use additional verification to prevent content piracy. Of course, it took a long time, but we’re finally making progress.

Side note: I am perfectly aware that Pornhub and other MindGeek owned sites were pressured into this instead of making the choice themselves. While many adult content creators use sites like these (including myself), we always insisted on stricter upload and verification rules.

3. There is only so much we as creators can do. While we use sites that require age verification and put a lot of content behind payment walls, that’s kind of where our impact stops. The next step is for parents to prevent their kids from accessing adult websites in one way or another. There’s plenty of child block plugins out there that will protect their young eyes from seeing NSFW content.

4. Comprehensive sex education matters more than you think. It is not enough to preach abstinence and/or tell youngsters to use condoms. They need to learn about consent, bodily autonomy and the difference between sex in porn and sex in personal life. They need to learn that catching an STD is not the end of the world, and ways to practice self-love if/when they eventually get one. And they need to learn that sexuality is a natural and beautiful part of everyone’s life. It doesn’t have to be dirty or scandalous like the modern society often portrays it.

At the end of the day, we care about the wellbeing of children as much as the next person does. We agree that people under the age of eighteen should not have access to pornography, and we don’t want young people to obtain a twisted perspective on sex that they carry into their own personal life. But while we do care A LOT, it is not our sole responsibility to protect your children. It has to be a teamwork that results in a happier world for every party involved.