ADOLT SITES (1998)
    My kids have started accessing "adult" sites in their typically ignorant, blundering way.  Which sites have they accessed?  The ones they heard about in mainstream media, of course.  Of course, because they have no idea, except what they hear about, see on TV, etc.  They go to whitehouse.com, just to see what the noise is all about.  Somehow whitehouse.com is linked to a site called wetdreams.com and that showed up in the URL box, even though everyone denies having been there.  So the 7 year old: "Daddy, what's a wet dream?" and I say it's complicated and the 12 year old says: "I think I know."  I just didn't want to get into it right then.  Big one will have one in the next 6 months or so.
    If we were in the 50s there would be a stifling, neurotic conspiracy of silence and the stuff would be hard to find.  The nature of modern communications makes that impossible.  No sense in crying over spilled milk, and that culture went sour on hypocrisy anyway.
    What I told the big one was that I would really like it if he would stay away from that stuff until he had some real experience with real people.  Why?  Because if he looked at porn he would inevitably get the wrong idea of how things are done.  Why?  Because of the requirements of taking the pictures.  You have to sort of spread things out to take the pictures, and in real life you want to get as close together as you can.  So you get the porn pictures in your head and some part of you is going to try to arrange things so you can LOOK at it instead of DO it, and your partner is going to think you're weird.
    He thinks about it for a while.  I blast on.  And another thing: what do you suppose the actors think about the consumers of porn?  Why, they think they're all losers of course.  Wimps and weaklings.  Never mind whether what they're doing is OK or fun, they are thinking "I am doing this and you will NEVER, nyah, nyah, nyah."
    Finally, he doesn't have the time, does he?
    He hasn't been back to those sites.  On to the next surge.
    I don't use the blocking programs.  Who needs them?  They don't work anyway.  I talk at my kids myself.  I want them to know.
    I want Internic to add the handle .por.  I want every pander site to have that handle.  That's what I want. They can show anything they please, after all, even the worst of it is not significantly different than what's on TV (though there they pander to your urge to be titilated by violence rather than sex, and which is worse: to film a sex act or to film an auto accident?)  But they have to clearly announce their product.  It's like selling everclear as spring water.
    The porn guys (and girls, I figure the ratio among the producers is about 98/2, but the females are there, they're not all sex-slaves (and I figure the user ratio is about 99.5/0.5)) are driven by a need to be naughty, and are always trying to push the limit.  They have developed some subspecialties that even I, a professional open mind, think are pretty weird.  But never mind  At least they're not killing each other.  To me they've got a right to do it, record it, and post it.  But they have to be honest and announce what it is.  They have to stop putting these hidden porn bombs on the web, so that you go to look for crushed rocks for your driveway and you end up at a sadism site.  It's like they want to get themselves shut down.  I know it's strange in this context, but they have to act, how can I say this delicately, responsibly.
    And I guess the best mechanism would be for all of the porn sites to become pay only.  Abolish all the free sites.  Sorry guys (meant gender-neutrally), for your own good.  For most people and porn it's out of site out of mind, and you pornographers ought to take steps to keep it that way.  The world is not going to turn into LA and SF, and the future of porn is not in everybody's face.
    I would love to see successful expression in art of human erotic behavior.  Where is it?
email
home

(Jonathan says: My friend wanted me to prove to him that www.whitehouse.com was a pornography site becouse I told him I heard it on the radio and that was the first time I went to that kind of site before.)
(And he hasn't been back.  Whitehouse is pretty innocuous, but still a nogoodnik because their intent is to deceive.  It's OK Jonathan.  Just don't do it again, OK?)

6/6/98 Today the 12 year old was trying to find his friend's site at angelfire.com.  So he punches up anglefire.com and guess what he gets?  This really POs me.  They named it that specifically to catch kids.  Actually it was one of those weird sites from Japan where, in porn terms, you never quite get anything, I guess they're just racking up hits.  So at least it wasn't a totally xxxxxxx site.  But they are fishing for kids, on the incorrect theory that they will catch a susceptible and turn it (I mean - mostly - him) into an addict.  It's incorrect because the susceptible will have already gone and found the real stuff.
    I really don't care about the existence of the porn industry, as long as they have their paperwork in order and can prove that they're all adults and that there's no slavery going on.  Sex is a global obsession.  They don't make prurient pictures of people eating (food), for example.  I'm willing to continue to watch that social phenomenon happen for a while.  But this business of hidden porn sites meant to ambush kids is total BS and has got to go.