The Very Thin Line Between “Teen Porn” and “Child Porn.”

In regards to what I wrote last night about teen porn. It struck me that underage girls are classified as “children,” so that when certain men, “enjoy” or “partake in” or “make” porn with “teen” girls, who are underage, they really are dealing with “Child Porn.”

And I bet you most of those people, who do look at those photos and do away or ignore the age of consent, would generally be totally against that, in fact would be upset at the idea that they partake in child porn. Most people who use the stuff and even those in the porn industry would say child porn is “wrong’ as they are only interested in “consenting adults.” But when the “consenting adult” isn’t 18 then they aren’t. Are they?

It’s something to think about don’t you think?

Other blogs, Drugs! Teen Porn? I think it’s sorta sick don’t you?

Lately, I have been surfing all the blogs in Salon, pretty systematically, from bottom of the rankings up. I never knew what a range there was, and how many different kinds of blog exists. I thought it was sad, someone could give up their dreams of doing a marathon for an over bearing sister, amazing how cool girls in the 70s separated half way around the world could stay friends through letters, and excited for people who got book contracts. It was fascinating, the topics different people choose to write about and how they choose to present them. I just did mine blind. Whatever I felt was best for me. And I didn’t know it could be so personal…

Teen Porn?

But I did come across something that really bothered me. From a link that was recommended to me by a fellow salon blogger. I went to a link called first-time-teens or something like that. On it was a girl that I could bet my bank account on is not 18. I worked with teens on and off, I have a younger brother and sister, I can tell you when a girl is underage, there are certain things about their bodies, the way that they carry themselves that are obvious tell tale signs. Even if they are undeveloped for their age. Even if they are small framed. I don’t really think 18 is an arbitrary number in terms of development and this girl looked 14 anyway.

I felt it was horrible something like that is not only made, but advertised somewhere I just expect to be “safe” in. Maybe I am a prude. I don’t really want to debate with anyone on this topic, especially with men who feel it’s okay, or lie to themselves that this girl or these girls are over age. I think it’s something that needs to be debated within oneself.

For me, I do believe in the age of consent, especially when it comes to huge age difference or the idea of financial return. And it’s not what is hint at, its whether someone else takes advantage. And taping a girl having sex, or taking photographs of her naked and putting it on the net is taking advantage or even recommended it, is a blurry line to me. Whether the girls “acts” old or not, whether they look as if they are enjoying it or not.

Maybe because I was once a teenage girl, who dressed like Britney, when Britney was in the Mickey Mouse Club, I feel a certain passion on the topic. As I find myself defending her and Christina to my peers more often then I care to count: “Come on guys.. Don’t you remember how WE dressed? Don’t be so old. You’re boring me with your morals!”

Maybe because I spent so much time with teen girls, who may seem really grown up on the outside, but when I sit down and listen to them, which I did often, there is no doubt they don’t know half of what they posture to know.

That girl in American Beauty is the archetype of those sexy teenage girls, all talk no experience. They may, joke, discuss, read about it, might even seem to know exactly what sex is all about. In real life however, they have come across the realities, the emotional, and the physical as often as the hiphop home boys are experienced with gang life. Which is NONE. It’s all about trying on different personas. It’s pretending to be grown up. They are so young they don’t even know what it means to even pretend.

And ever since I ended up on a child porn site by clicking on a masked link sent to me. I thought it was from a friend, asking me to look at the newest pictures for her portfolio or something. I realized it was possible for me to believe in the death penalty. Which I have ardently been against since a teenager.  Honestly tho, no matter how liberal you think you are. Once confronted with those continually pop up images of children, toddlers, pre-teens having sex with grown men. You too would happily do away, and decide to forget about trials, jury or what not and want, hope, wish, pray someone would take those bastards out to the back and shoot them in the head. 

What I am getting at really, in my long winded way, is that this teen porn shit is sick. Whether those girls are just innocent kids, trying to be grown up, or are grown up children whose been exploited for so long, it is a job and act like they enjoy it. It’s still just wrong.

Those who go onto these sites needs to get their hands off their dick and use their brains for a moment and not be blinded by a pretty picture of a pretty girl and just assume they are legal.

There really is nothing wrong with porn. Personally I don’t find it degrading and I don’t find it some howl of woman’s liberation (I did go to UCSC). To me, it’s just plain boring. But it’s out there, and it’s as close as a click of a mouse. But for god’s sake, while you’re at it, just go for someone your own age, or at least, someone who is over 18 and don’t give these creeps anymore click throughs. You don’t have to gratify every need, and you don’t need add to a problem we have as a society at this moment, just to get off.

Brain vs Dick! Just remember that! It’s totally possible.

Let’s be Honest, Drugs are fun. Can we start from there?

Of all the blogs I did go through, my personal favorite is still drug war rants.
Pete verbalizes ideas I have only touched upon in my mind and give it wings. Especially since no one has ever talked to me through a social/political/logical perspective about this topic. So it’s forever stuck in the realm of the personal: the highs, the come downs, the loses, and the laws. I know some arrests, one suicide, and countless stories of breakdowns, people who fell off the edge and those who recovered. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about dealers who became friends and friends who became dealers. Along with, of course, numerous and far more often talked about and better remembered stories off, -let’s be honest- the most important factor of drugs use: the damn good times.

On the radio ages ago, there was a program which had invited anti-drugs advocate to “discuss” the topic. Hearing these people going on and on about something they know nothing about, it compelled me to do something I have never done before and never done since, which is called the station and went head to head with the guests.

Because I have such a distinctive accent, and many of my friends zoned into that topic and is glued to KCRW anyway, I entertained a hell of a lot of them, and quite a few people called to thank me. Which is probably why I remember it so well.

The jist of the conversation was: You guys don’t know what you are doing or talking about. I am from another country and lived in two more, this is the only one where I heard “Fried” as a term of being high. You know where it’s from? It’s from that egg commercial. Which we all love that by the way. Stop lying to us, because it gives you no credibility. And most of all:

“We aren’t all running away, nor escaping, most of us don’t have personal problems. People do drugs because it’s FUN!”

The DJ eventually beeped me off, but he half laughing said, “How do you respond to that caller, that in the end there is a pleasurable aspect of doing drugs, that attracts people. Outside of all the other reasons which may or may not be true.”

It was met with the same line, “People do it because they have problems. Whether they know it or not.” I am still not sure. And as I grow older, and have dealt with all the darker side of drug use, I would really like someone to talk to me about it, in an honest, non-hyperbole way. Engage me like the thoughtful person I can be, like most of the users I know. We’re not stupid and we’re not all addicted. And it’s time we talk about it with the same kind of intelligence we use for other topics.

Lately, that’s what most of what I have been talking about in my writing, but I haven’t posted any yet. I still haven’t quite got it right. But for now, the site is the first time I feel I have been engaged as a thinking adult as I deserve to be. www.drugwarrants.com