What is pornography in SL?

I have asked this in many places where people gather to discuss this and I get almost universal agreement. Who here were exposed to porn before the age of 18? Are you damaged by the experience? Most children are actually sickened and revolted by the idea of sex until their bodies are ready for it. Once puberty kicks in it's another story though and they become interested in sex. Once they become intersted, there isn't anything you can really do to prevent them from seeking out porn or even making their own with a pencil and a piece of paper. Hell, many adults have their first sexual encounter by the time they are 15 and many places 16 is the age of consent. My father was 14 when he had his first kid and joined the Navy to fight in WWII, my mom was married at 15. Both grew up to be pretty normal and raised a family of their own pretty well. They tried to protect us kids from adult material just as most parents do but I was still exposed to porn around 8 or so by my friends. I wasn't interested other than satisfying curiosity and later while growing up I was exposed to a lot more. So, exactly what are we protecting by going apeshit over cartoon avatars bumping uglies?

Linden Lab.

Because every time I tell people I was born in not the best part of Amsterdam, the Red Light District is the first thing they think of .
Anyway it was meant as clarification and not meant directly towards you

Morwen.

I believe the ruling is that sex with a horse is bestiality, but sex with a unicorn is not, because a unicorn is a mythical creature, not an animal. Saw the horn off a unicorn and it becomes ambiguous.

Satyrs are no problem.

Saw off the horn from a unicorn?? You cruel, cruel woman !!!



Morwen

Heh, everyone says that ...

Hey, remember? Fantasy world? For people? HEY!!! Remember? Phantasy? Dreams? Virtual?

I am 41 years old. If I ever, ever knew for sure that an avatar is under 18 i would do something about it. There is a Teen SL, is it? So, let's not be hipocrite about this. Sex, nudity is something normal, nature is forcing us to be this way. Please ....

And btw. why 18? why not 30? Why not 12? Children are now more mature at age of 14 as WE all 40 generation where at 20 .... Think about this ...

/IN

I dont think theres anything wrong with nudity - there is of course a difference between pornography and nudity.


I disagree with the Children are more mature part -

Children are children, they are the same mature as children the same age of 30 years ago, 100 years ago, 1000 years ago.

They may have been exposed to different things - but it doesnt effect their maturity.

It takes more than exposure to sex and violence and imagry related to it to equate to maturity.

A 15 year old mother is not necessarily any more mature than a 15 year old Altar Boy.

Now that's the meat of it.

It doesn't matter what the actual majority things is decent. What matters is when one kid goes into a ponygirl or bdsm or rape sim and their parents find out and want to sue someone instead of taking the responsibility of handling the situation themselves.

If I remember correctly there was a big, long battle about porn on the internet for a while until sufficient age verification was put together (sufficient by ignorant standards anyway). I don't think this will be any different since this is a new situation in technology.

I think that's one thing most people forget in this situation. It would only take one big lawsuit to ruin LL and make all this go away. They're just covering their asses as much as they can. Whether or not it's a realistic way is another story. I think we'll just have to see how it plays out...

The amount of information got from the tv, even from that Cartoon Network Channel, is much, much more that we received in their age. I maybe was wrong in saying that a child now is more "mature". But the information a child receives today, makes them act more "mature" as we did. Remember, a child today saw other childs blown apart by bombs ... And sex on TV at noon!

So come on, children today have much more information about what nudity, sex and all that "wrong" things we are talking about in this thread ....

/IN

But their capacity to handle the results of that exposure is no more than people's capactity 30 years ago.

So they have all this material or exposure and react in immature ways to it.

You are right that they have been exposed to mere adult material than we were as kids. Im just saying their ability to cope with it is no more than it ever was.

Theres an additional wrinkle of coure - the place to argue what kids should be allowed to be exposed to , and at what age - isnt Second Life.

It would be in First Life.

Second Life just has to follow the same decisions the rest of the Internet does. And will navagate it however they see they need to to stay in business.

You are just kidding yourself. Sorry, but u do ....

/IN

*laughs*

You feel that humanity has evolved in the last 30 years? In the last 50? 100?

Sorry your brain matures at the pace it matures at. Even when people got married at age 15 they were no more or less mature than 15 year olds are today.

Burdened with more responsiblity perhaps - learned to cope with that responsibility - likely.

People like tho think their times are somehow magicaly different than times past. They arent.

What someone who has been exposed to a lot of mature content becoems is more numb to seeing more of that content. It makes them no more capable of making mature decisions about sex.

Mature decisions about sex dont come from wathing the real world on MTV.

But our children do it .... Open your eyes ...

...and look at how many teens get pregnant these days. Look at how many get STDs these days.

Now I know that it didn't just start and people have been doing things like this forever but you can't deny how common it's become...and it's all due to losing the stigma of sex without replacing it with legitimate education so they know what they're getting into.

They're figuring it out for themselves...but so many are making mistakes that could easily have been avoided.

Children having sex does not make them Mature.

It doesnt give them the capacity to make Mature decisions about sex.

And it Aboslutely doesnt give them the capactiy to make Mature Descions about sex with an adult.

Besides -

There were plenty of kids having sex when were were teens, im only a few years younger than you. 12-13 was very rare, 14 was rare , 15 and 16 was common.

I have teeangers - the ages are about the same still.

And of course we do not want to take this thread all to a dispute between us ...

The fact is that children today have much more information as we did.

The fact is that children today are more exposed to the issue discussed here.

The fact is that the "issue" discussed here in this thread is actually not the "issue".

The fact is that children today see death on the screen.

The fact is that children today have to cope, as u said, with that.

And the fact is, we should be there to explain.

How we do that, is another matter ...

/IN

whether interactive cartoon sex in a virtual world constitutes porn is one thing. as for the question at the top of this thread, "what is pornography in SL?" .. well surely it is exactly what porn is in RL? Debbie Does Dallas on the Quicktime feed on your land - that is pornography in SL. A bunch of scans from the latest copy of Pantyplay uploaded as textures - that is pornography in SL.

i have no idea whether a magazine called Pantyplay exists, but it would make a great SL surname.

That's what I was wondering when I posted, where is the line? A naked AV or a picture of a real naked person? A stream of Debbie Does Dallas or two AVs almost bumping uglies on a badly set up pair of poseballs? Its clear that different people have different opinions which is why I think LL is once again wrong to leave it to us all to figure out rather than simply laying down the law as it were. It might not be nice but it saves a lot of uncertainty.

For some reason Horatio Pantyplay has a great rnig to it...

Im not really disputing your assertion kids are exposed to more things we'd have considered Pornography, or are having sex, or any of that - Im disputing the concept they are more mature than children of another era.

Basically Maturity as it relates in the ability to make informed consent with adults is a Biological Condition. It involvs the brain and its relationship to rational thought, responsibility and emotions -

If it were otherwise: Then we would be saying that its possible to teach a child the ability to give informed consent to have sex with an adult. Thus it would be possible to teach a child of any age with sufficient intelligence.

While this might be a good argument in Culturally realtivist point of view - I personally can see no possible way it could be moral to come to that conclusion.

Now- does that mean expossure to pornograghy will ruin children? No. Im merely stating children are not mature, reguardless of exposure.

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Now as to whats pornography?

If cartoon images can be pornography - then virtual sex is pornogrpahy, virutal poses involving nudity done in a lewd manner would also be pornography.

Just becuase its interactive doesnt remove it from being a pornographic image.

If its not posible for a Cartoon to be Porn - then this activity isnt Pornography.

it depends on the country, and the person. hell if the art is old enough (paintings, sculptures, etc), it could even be a museum, open for any child to see. This surely happens in European museums.

depending on aesthetics, it could be termed erotica as well.

But it doesn't matter - LL isn't using the highly subjective word "pornography" - instead they are terming it "adult content" which can very well include erotic art and cartoon sex.

I agree

I assume sex involving avatars is considered an adult activity.

Unless somehow someone can have non-explicit sex when they are involved in it? 0.o

hehe When one has no genitalia at all and the other has a pink toilet brush is it explicit?

I hear there's a blue moon soon, maybe LL will give us a proper definition

mmm, yes and no. It is cruel to push or parade your sexuality on others, for the simple reason that you can't necessarily tell what might freak someone else out. I enjoy expressing myself both on SL and in RL, but I don't enjoy seeing someone reduced to tears because I've scared 'em - it's simple social politeness: a day when I've given someone a sleepless night by rogering someone senseless in front of them, isn't really a day when I've been a good person.

Yes, they might be completely hysterical to end up like that; yes, I might have done it as a role-play; yes, whoever I rogered senseless might have consented - but all of those things can be true and it's still a lose-lose proposition. Therefore, extension of consent to the audience seems to me a responsibility which goes along with the right of self-expression. And, as I may have bored people by pointing out already - I've done this in RL already, not just virtually.

Personally, the things about SL porn that freak me out are rather unpredictable. Right near me in Nadata some guy has a rotating advert blob with a rendered 3d graphic of a woman with unfeasibly large breasts. To make things "nice" for the general public he has thrown black bars over the rude bits and (from memory) also the eyes. The whole thing presents very, very freakishly and disturbs me every time the damn advert column spins round to face me - partly for the bizarre censorship, partly for the objectification, partly for putting it 200 frickin feet in the air... am I then being hysterical?