I Started Watching Porn at 12

I’m not worried if my daughters do the same

My father’s the one who brought porn into our home, though I’m not sure he really intended to.

He upgraded us to satellite TV. But he also knew a guy who could rig it so that all the premium channels were unblocked (my dad’s the kind of person who “knows a guy” for everything).

And with premium channels came porn, from the softcore stuff on Playboy TV to a 24/7 stream of hardcore movies.

And 12-year-old me couldn’t get enough of it.

I didn’t get to watch it often — the conditions had to be right. But whenever my parents were both out of the house, I would draw the living room curtains shut, keep the volume low enough so I could hear the car pull into the driveway, and I would turn to the dirtiest channels I could find.

That was the same year I discovered erotica. That one was my mom’s.

It was a well-worn paperback that she hid behind a row of boring, tame books. Not a bad spot, but kids find everything.

I can’t remember the title. I have no idea what the plot was. But I kept that thing hidden in the back of my nightstand drawer. On nights I couldn’t watch porn in the living room, I’d read smut in my bedroom.

The reason I don’t remember the plot is because I dog-eared every steamy scene in the book. Once I read it a couple of times, I started skipping right to the good stuff.

Porn introduced me to nudity, to blowjobs and fucking, and to the idea that sometimes you might fuck more than one person at a time.

The novel introduced me to light bondage, kink, and fetishes. It also gave me some insight into the inner thoughts and feelings that come with sex. Unlike porn, I knew what these characters were feeling and what they were anticipating.

It was a hundred times better than the sex education I got from my parents and through the school.

Porn Empowered Me

Whenever I write positively about porn, I usually get a couple of responses from concerned citizens worried about what porn is teaching us.

I’m with them to some extent. It can exacerbate the worst in some people. If they already think of women as human sex toys, porn is just going to show them different ways to put their dicks in them.

But there are also people who form unrealistic assumptions about dating and relationships because of movies. I don’t let those people spoil my enjoyment of rom-coms, and I don’t let jerks ruin porn for me, either.

I also have a hard time looking down on porn because it was so empowering for me.

I started humping my stuffed animals when I was about 9 years old. I didn’t know what I was doing, exactly, but I knew that it felt good.

Discovering porn a few years later put all that pre-adolescent masturbation into context for me. I wasn’t just humping things out of boredom — I was doing something that belonged in the same universe as the sex I saw on screen.

That was the first time I realized that porn was helping me understand myself.

Other revelations came, even if they were a bit dim at first. Some stuff appealed to me more than others.

Blowjobs were fascinating, but they didn’t excite me as much as watching penetrative sex.

Anal scenes intrigued me, but the pussy rubbing and fingering that preceded it is what got me really flushed.

And sometimes I’d catch a scene of women eating each other out — and that was damn fine by me.

Figuring out what I liked and getting some visual material for my fantasies helped me develop some sexual agency.

I know we’re “supposed” to develop that agency by having sex, but it just didn’t work out that way for me. The first few guys I slept with didn’t really care about my sexual agency or did anything to make sex empowering for me. The guy who raped me, the one who tried to push my head down on his cock, and the boyfriend who emotionally manipulated me into sex all actively tried to take my agency away.

The only thing that saved the sexual side of myself, that kept me from being broken by all that, were all the ways I nurtured my own sexuality. And porn played a big role in that — it fed my interest in sex in a way that was safe and that was mine.

I’m Not Worried

My daughters are only five and seven years old. They haven’t even heard about sex yet, but it’s coming.

And even though we don’t have satellite TV in the home, it will be easier for them to find porn than it was for me.

That doesn’t worry me, though.

I know I’m supposed to want them to stay pure and innocent until they move out, but that’s absurd. Sex is a part of life, and it will be a part of theirs.

My hope is that they develop a strong sense of their sexual agency. That they feel empowered, not confused, by the sexual feelings and desires they experience.

I want them to be comfortable enough with the idea of sex to voice what they want and what they don’t want. I want them to feel empowered to set clear boundaries without feeling guilty about it.

I don’t want them to think that sex is something scary of shameful. I want them to know it can be thrilling, ecstatic, and just plain fun.

And if porn gives them a safe and personal space to explore that side of themselves, then I’m all for it.

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