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Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

Looking from afar, this type of debate is becoming more interesting to me as a recent parent and as a strong anti-censorship type. As of now I'm thinking that I'll never block my kid from looking at any kind of content. If she happens to come across some nudity or sex and she has questions about it I'll be open and honest and explain it. Life is sex, sex is why we exist, sex is beautiful and sacred. I hope my daughter will have great sex someday, why hide it from her now? The impulse that so many parents have to hide sex from their kids seems like their brain damage that they want to pass on to their kids. And impose it on mine. Their line of thinking is what I wish I could hide from my daughter. But I won't. She'll be exposed to it along with all the other ugly and beautiful things in the real world.

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I think the argument (and I don't really believe it, so excuse me if I don't present it convincingly) is that certain materials are just harmful to children (and possibly adults). You have a daughter, but I think that with boys/young men you can point to porn and say that it's addictive and has a lot of negative side effects. In that case, it's not about protecting them from knowing about sex, but instead trying to keep things the way they were before internet porn existed (and the porn on the internet certainly seems different than a playboy or something). I think that's a natural tendency in a lot of areas and it may or may not have any substance to it.

As far as your little girl goes, would you really be okay her stumbling onto a site like liveleak and watched dudes' heads be cut off or whatever messed up thing is on there right now? I'm not even sure of how to answer that question, but I don't think it's absurd to think "no".

So I can at least understand why people would want to block this kind of content from kids. Did they go about it in the right way? Doesn't it seem like it would be easy to abuse? It's an understatement to say that governments haven't exactly earned our trust when it comes to technological issues.

  > As of now I'm thinking that I'll never block my kid from
  > looking at any kind of content. If she happens to come across
  > some nudity or sex and she has questions about it I'll be open
  > and honest and explain it.

There's some really, really nasty stuff out there. Really nasty stuff. Not just people having sex, but some brutal stuff that a medic friend of mine says gave him significant nightmares for some days.

It's not just about nudity and sex. If it were I'd be less ambivalent. As it is I feel that you're being a bit naive.

Either naive, or an idealist sans children.

Re-read his post, he said he's a "recent parent".

> It's not just about nudity and sex.

Agreed. Even the "just sex" vanilla porn is pretty unhealthy for children to see. That way leads to a skewed and unrealistic expectations and understanding of relationships, sex, and bodies.

Media in general gives you skewed and unrealistic expectations about all facets of life. What is special about porn?

It's more so. Anyway that's an argument for restricting other media until the kid is ready, not letting them see porn.

I don't understand why sex became such taboo. Everyone does it, it's nothing to be ashamed of, yet kids must be protected from it by any means necessary. I think this viewpoint creates many more problems than the alternative (young people have sex while uninformed and spread STDs/get pregnant/etc).

I don't see why we can't just treat sex as natural and treat online porn like a Hollywood movie, i.e. "the basic premise is the same, but it doesn't actually happen like that in real life".

Porn isn't "great sex".

Can you see there's a difference between the weird ideas of sex depicted in online porn and actual sex? And that teaching a child about sex in all its diverse forms (and about the hateful nature of a lot of online porn) is not incompatible with wanting to prevent your 7 year old child seeing the extremes shown in online porn?

There is such a thing as innocence, the time in your childhood when you can be carefree and not have to consider the terrors and vices of this world. It's natural to want to extend this gestation period, so that a child can meet serious subjects with a more mature mind. At what age would you have your child consider the implications of two girls one cup? Of being in a child militia? Of walking on broken glass?

The protection (along with education and discipline) is the responsibility of parents, not the government. Successful governments have set up constructs to attempt to aid like minded parents (for example the justice system and public schools).

While the porn filters could be construed as an extension of that aid (attempting to delay/soften the introduction to a controversial and mature topic), the ability to censor is at too great a risk for abuse by those with power or influence.

> As of now I'm thinking that I'll never block my kid from looking at any kind of content. If she happens to come across some nudity or sex and she has questions about it I'll be open and honest and explain it. Life is sex, sex is why we exist, sex is beautiful and sacred. I hope my daughter will have great sex someday, why hide it from her now?

Spoken like an intelligent and thoughtful person. Posts like this ultimately keep me coming back to HN and make me realize that most people here are true one-percenters when it comes to intelligence and the ability to think rationally.

Most people in this world are complete dumbasses and morons and that's part of the reason why the world is in the state it is right now.

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