On July 21st, the
New York Times ran an article entitled, "He's Watching That, in Public? Pornography Takes Next Seat."
This article talked about how some people have used the rise of portable personal electronics as a way to view explicit content in public areas, like cafes and airplanes. Some people are even looking at porn on shared computers at public libraries. Upon reading this, my first reaction was, "This has to be illegal." But apparently, it's not.
Well, it sort of is. According to the
Times, laws against the public viewing of obscene material have passed in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Virginia and is pending in New Jersey.
But a similar law failed in Pennsylvania. The fact is, given Americans' firm belief in our right to watch what we want when we want, the issue is a thorny one. Companies are reluctant to censor the content of what their patrons are watching.
Illegal or not, I find this extremely distasteful. I don't have anything against porn itself. If you'd like to watch it alone or with your partner, please, be my guest.
But do so in private, where others don't have to see it.I would be weirded out if someone watched porn in front of me. I don't think I would be viscerally offended. But I'm 21, and it's nothing I haven't seen before. Sure, I would feel a little disgusted and very awkward, but I would deal. However, I don't think that porn is appropriate for children. Neither does the US government and, I would imagine, most adults, since it's illegal to buy porn until you're 18.
Yes, it's easy to find free porn on the Internet. And I know most teenagers don't wait till they're 18, which I don't think is a huge problem if they're at least somewhat mature and curious. For me, that cutoff is around 14-16, but it depends on the person.
But small children are an entirely different story. Under no circumstances should a 7-year-old be watching pornography. That kid isn't emotionally or sexually mature, and frankly it's just wrong.
That's my problem with watching porn in public. The viewer doesn't have any idea who else could be watching porn. If that audience is solely adults, it's still kind of rude but whatever. When that audience includes small children... well, to choose a super-cheesy movie quote, "Houston, we have a problem."
I may not be alone in this, but I also know I'll have a lot of detractors. There are just too many variables here. The biggest being - what, exactly, is porn or 'explicit content'? What isn't appropriate for kids? If porn isn't allowed then shouldn't violent content also be censored? How violent is too violent?
What do you think? Would you watch pornography in public? What would you do if someone started watching it in front of you or your kids?Image Source
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Comments (33)
ROFL. The Children Oh no the children.
I honestly wouldn't care if somebody was watching porn in front of my children in public so long as the person does not call my child over and say hey kid check this out. One of my memories from Germany is of all the porn being advertized on billboards, fliers, etc. etc. I am not some kind of sexual deviant because of it.
if the person is really tall, so the screen isn't that easily visible to shorty kids, and the volume is off, then go ahead and knock yourself out. if you're sitting down somewhere at the public transit bus stop, mall, park, waiting in line at the grocery store where there is a kid sitting on the shopping cart next to you and can see the porn you're watching on your porno-phone, then at least be considerate enough to hold a tabloid magazine to conceal your phone while hunching your shoulders higher to shield the kid's eyes. why would a guy watch porn in public and walk around with a boner
females don't have visible boners, so we can go about watching porn in public more unnoticed, but if I was a guy, I wouldn't watch porn in public and then a guy winks at me because he thinks that I'm hot for him when I'm not. so he flirts with me and snaps a pic of my boner and posts it on his facebook showing the entire world how much I wanted him.
"Under no circumstances should a 7-year-old be watching pornography."
You are absolutely right... if you take what you just said literally on all counts. "Seeing" and "watching" are two completely different things.
The fact of the matter is that if they aren't emotionally mature enough to understand what they're seeing, what is the result? They're not going to understand it (or find it at all interesting enough to watch it for that matter).
It's not that children should be sheltered from their environment. It's that adults should be aware of how their actions effect others.
Courtesy > Convenience.
I agree with you entirely... and I think that the people who are commenting on this post really have no clue.
Children see things, are affected by things and (shock) REMEMBER things...
And that should be the end of the debate.
Heck no. I don't have kids so I can't answer the last question.
hahaha. Wait, "Huston we have a problem" was around before the damn movie! ugggh. Love these kids today!
I understand watching a movie or show that happens to have nudity or sex in it, but why the hell would you be looking at straight up porn in public? Unless you are masturbating in public. Which is illegal last time I checked.
@Erika_Steele@xanga - I lived when I was 4-6 ('94-96) and I don't remember porn so much as nudity, specifically lots of topless women. I don't know what the technical definition of porn is, but I never considered a pair of tits and no sexual act to be pornographic. Maybe I missed "the good stuff".
@Digital_Angel21@xanga - I lived there in the 80s. I am using the term porn loosely. There were nude pictures of men and women...the text advertized porn.
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I have never seen anyone watching/looking at porn (or even nude pictures) any place where I would take my child or any place else. If I did, I'd tell my child that some people didn't know how to keep their private lives private, moreover, it is rude to look over other people's shoulders. As long as a person isn't obviously trying to get other people to look at their screen, it's no one's business what they are looking at.
@P0RCELA1N_D0LL@xanga - Guys will get and have to walk around with erections no matter what, watching porn or not. Most guys are smart/skilled enough to hide them so people can't see. Something you learn to live with heh.
First time I saw porn was when I was 4. I think it actually did me good to see it that young, because when I was a raging hormonal teenager and my guy friends were scouring for porn, or watching the tv with the super distorted colors and image just to get a glimpse of a nipple I was already used to it and just thought of it as whatever. Was more interested in seeing real people naked instead heh.
As for public porn stuff. I have a friend who often sends me sexual gifs/images off of tumblr and when I'm in public sometimes I get those and they'll pop up. And often times when searching things on google porn stuff will show up. Or I get into conversations about anatomy and female body parts with people so I'll search things to show what I'm talking about. I try to always sit with my back against a wall and with my laptop not facing anyone in general anyway so it should never disturb anyone. Not just for porn related reasons but just because I don't like people seeing what I'm doing in the first place.
I guess if people are discreet about it then who cares. But if they're watching in order to get off in public that's a pretty messed up. Hard to judge that though unless they actually do do something, so I can understand how making it illegal would be tough.
If we allow the government to police something so small, then how much power are we willing to give up? Why should anyone have the power to tell someone else what to watch or how to use their personal electronic devices if it's not causing harm? There are worse things to watch than porn, but because sex is such a taboo topic in our society we think it's some grave sin. What about TV shows and Movies that frequently show sex such as Spartacus, Dexter, Mad Men, Basic Instinct, etc.? If you take out that one scene in all those shows where there's some kind of nudity and make a GIF out of it, guess what? It's considered porn by the government. Recently, Kate Upton did a photoshoot where she comes out of a pool in a white T-shirt with no bra - you can clearly see a lot (Sidenote, super hot ~,o), guess what? That's softcore porn. Have you seen some of the old playboys? It's just naked girls standing around, not doing anything, and that was the hugest taboo back in the day!
So in summary, no I do not watch porn in public. If someone watches porn in front of me and my future kids, I would move away. If someone watched porn in public with the sound on, I would call the cops on them for "Disturbing the peace" which is already a law.
The biggest issue for me, besides the one I take issue with about little kids being exposed to porn too soon (some kids get messed up by it, and some don't.... but the point is that there are kids who can get messed up from it) -- is that the person watching it is probably getting horny and most likely masturbating in public. Which I find disturbing.
I was waiting for a train in Japan, and there was a teenage boy standing next to me reading explicit hentai manga. I was creeped out. Mostly by the fact that he was clearly turned on by it. In front of everybody.
As long as I don't know I don't care, therefore it harms no one. I know the purpose of porn and how it works and not only perverts and sickos watch it, nor the ones that feel the need to look while, say, riding the bus home. It probably excites them to watch porn in public the same as a man checking out a hot girl, again if unknowing, whats the harm?
I hate the argument that it's going to scar kids for life. Go to any European city and you'll see topless advertising, naked advertising, signs for sex shops and women openly prostituting themselves on the street corners. I went to Italy when I was nine with my dad, and we were walked along a fairly main road and there was a group of prostitutes on the corner just talking and smoking. Sex and porn is this huge taboo in America and I don't get it. These kids aren't sitting down and watching BDSM and violence, they're seeing the human body naked - it's not going to scar them unless you act like it's something they should be scared and ashamed of.
I much rather porn floating around than images of violence. I mean think about how many violent movies, games, pictures, and shows float around America. I much rather have porn in their place.
When I think of porn, I don't think of naked people.
I think of two people, putting things in the others orifaces in different positions and different levels of roughness. I think of moaning and screaming.
Would I care if my child saw a naked billboard like EVERYONE keeps bringing up? No.
Would I care if my 7-year-old child saw someone getting a cucumber shoved inside of them? Oral sex? Being tied up and beaten for sexual pleasure? Yes.
Nudity and porn are not equivalent, and I think this is a good rule of thumb:
If you would get arrested for having sex right here and right now, you should not choose to watch porn right here and right now.
Yes, porn can have an effect on children. They can imitate it. They reach puberty at even an age of 9... I KNOW.
The problem is, what socially constitutes porn? While some people may be looking at actual intended-to-be-whacked-to porn, others may just be looking at art with naked people in it. Everyone knows there's those sorts of people who like to be offended at every inkling of a nude person and they'd get their granny-panties in a bunch over anything. I hope these laws legally spell out what is considered porn, and that art is not covered by the same blanket.
But yes, certainly in poor taste if it's public. ≡
I've only seen a person watch porn in public once. It was some random guy in one of my Friday lecture courses and I was sitting in the last row behind him.
I honestly remember it being pretty goddamn funny. I was secretly hoping that he'd accidentally hit the mute tab on his laptop, so the entire lecture about the dynamics of cross-cultural communication would be interrupted by the sound of humping. Alas it did not come to pass.
@izzybizz@xanga - @LKJSlain@xanga - Japanese kids seem to be doing alright, and business men read porn on public transportation all the time. It's rather shocking as a first-timer, even when you're an older teen, but then you get over it. And then you go home XD
Or, if you'd like to shoot closer to home, I've been to Vegas with my little brother and my family. The awkward sexual signs didn't affected him as much as it affected me (looking at sexual things with the fam generally tends to be awkward especially when you're at an age where you think you understand everything better than everyone), and the two times we went, he was in the single digits. @daydreams_nightmares@xanga - Right? Though there was this one incredibly disturbing billboard that seemed to depict an after-rape in Luxembourg. It was in German so I didn't know what it said and of course, since this was high-school aged band trip the German-fluent teachers refrained from telling us. I thought that was rather inappropriate. Mostly because it was scary.
@dw817@xanga - It really only seems like it's in poor taste in weird pro-militancy, anti-sexuality places.
You people. Wow.
I believe in privacy. Go ahead and do what you want within your home but keep it the fuck out of public.
@daydreams_nightmares@xanga - There's a difference between seeing a naked body and seeing naked bodies performing sex acts. It does indeed scare children. I know this because it happened to my daughter. She googled "Kiss the Girl video", ya know the little Mermaid song and got a porn virus that popped up on screen. She was freaked out! The sex acts are way too heavy for a young child to understand. Seeing naked people on screen and seeing a man insert his penis into some part of a woman are way two different things.
I am addressing adults looking at porn in public libraries that our tax money supports.
Children and kids under the age of 18 walk through the computer section and see these a holes looking at this crap.
This is illegal and yet our tax money pays for it.In the library here where I live the computers are right by the childrens section and they can see what these sick a holes are looking at all the while being very aware children are near. When the librarians were told about this they would say they can not legally stop people from watching porn.No one gave a shit about the rights of the children, just the rights of the perverts.That library is now shut down for a month and will not allowed ot repoen til they have the filters on the computer blocking the porn. Anyone who allows their child to watch porn doesn"t deserve to be a parent.At my old job, there was apparently a problem with this, so they actually had to put the kibosh on using internet-ready devices at work altogether. I thought that was a very strange thing to have to do, since I was always working too hard to even look at my phone, let alone watch porn, but then I remembered that I was almost the only one working hard and that was how everyone was able to watch porn on their phones.