AS someone assigned female at birth, and as a parent, I have a very complex opinion about pronography. As a young teen girl, being exposed to standard pornography was a shaming experience. My body did not look like their body, the way I expressed pleasure did not look or sound like the way that they expressed ”pleasure”, they things they were doing and having done to their bodies did not match what worked for my body to create pleasure. The videos were very centered on male pleasure, of course, and I felt wrong, grossed out, and worried too about if there was something inately broken in me. As I was able to explore more woman created pornography, my view of it changed, allowing for a sense of artistry in some pornography, and allowing me to connect and enjoy the consent based, diverse pornography for entertainment, connecting with a partner, or just to fuel desire. As a parent, porn scared me. I have had many conversations with my kids (all now adults) about porn, realistic views of sex, and not centering pleasure and activities around the male ego or body-but there is a lot of really nasty porn available that depicts nonconsensual violence, harm to children etc. We talk about ethical consumption too..
