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I apologize if I was insufficiently clear. It has nothing to do with distinguishing reality from fiction. What matters is how the emotional content can affect

I apologize if I was insufficiently clear. It has nothing to do with distinguishing reality from fiction. What matters is how the emotional content can affect a child's development. Some fictional violence, even very graphic, simply has no emotional content of note. This means many parents are OK with it. Other forms of fictional violence, as well as most real violence, has possibly traumatic emotional content (even for adults) and therefore parents are cautious about exposing their children to it. Both fictional and real depictions of sexuality can carry emotional content which is likely to be inaccurate or unhealthy, often in very subtle ways. Therefore, parents are cautious about exposing their children to it (even if they have no particular sexual hangups.)

moe 15y ago
You keep making that hand-wavy distinction, without any backup or precision. Quote (emphasis mine): You say: Some fictional violence [...] has no emotional content of note You say: Both fictional and real depictions of sexuality can carry emotional content I'll assume you're trying to make the point that fictional sex is worse than fictional violence. I further assume you don't really know why (hence your imprecise wording) but have this diffuse belly-feeling that this is how it must be, because that has always been your belly-feeling.
- tedunangst 15y ago
  Belly feeling is needlessly puerile.
  - moe 15y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean to attack him personally but tried to point out the reasons that I suspect behind this kind of lazy arguing. These "belly-opinions" are very widespread, a more verbose description would have been: "I can't give exact reasons for my opinion but it feels like that's what my parents|peer-group|church|society|... would agree with". I felt that the verbose version would have been even less polite.. but oh well.
king_jester 15y ago
What you've said is incredibly vague. You mention "emotional content" in regards to violence and sexuality depicted through media, but there is no way to know what that means and you offer no way to define it. In my experience, this kind of rationalization comes from those who have their own discomfort on these issues and using non-specific language is way to avoid making definite statements while still affecting the outcome of a discussion. I don't mean to be harsh, but perhaps you could explain, in clear, concrete terms, why depictions of sexuality in media are of special concern compared to other depictions in media, unrealistic or not.
- lotharbot 15y ago
  Depictions of sexuality are of special concern (though certainly not the only area of concern) because sexuality is a deep thing, which most of us will deal with a lot in our lives, and which is easy to screw up in subtle ways. The difference between a great sex life and a mediocre one is often just a subtle shift in one's attitude in any of a multitude of ways. We form our expectations about sex partly from our own experiences and partly from exposure to others' real or fictional experiences. We may not even realize we've formed an expectation; we may simply think that we're responding in the "natural" way and our partner is responding in an "unnatural" way. Consider how you interpret your partner undressing before bed -- to what degree does that signal desire or readiness for sex? Is it an invitation to a particular level of foreplay? If there's a small disconnect in expectation between you and your partner, that can cascade into an attitude of "he always wants sex when I want to talk first" or "she's always leading me on and then turning me down". Every couple is going to have issues, disagreements, and disconnects large and small, which they will have to work through over the course of their relationship. Parents have the ability to make this better or worse for their children depending on what content they expose them to, under what circumstances, and what context they provide. (For the record, my parents started teaching me about sex at around age 3 and were fairly explicit as I got older. I plan to do the same with my son.)

moe 15y ago

You keep making that hand-wavy distinction, without any backup or precision. Quote (emphasis mine): You say: Some fictional violence [...] has no emotional content of note You say: Both fictional and real depictions of sexuality can carry emotional content I'll assume you're trying to make the point that fictional sex is worse than fictional violence. I further assume you don't really know why (hence your imprecise wording) but have this diffuse belly-feeling that this is how it must be, because that has always been your belly-feeling.

tedunangst 15y ago
Belly feeling is needlessly puerile.
- moe 15y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean to attack him personally but tried to point out the reasons that I suspect behind this kind of lazy arguing. These "belly-opinions" are very widespread, a more verbose description would have been: "I can't give exact reasons for my opinion but it feels like that's what my parents|peer-group|church|society|... would agree with". I felt that the verbose version would have been even less polite.. but oh well.

king_jester 15y ago

What you've said is incredibly vague. You mention "emotional content" in regards to violence and sexuality depicted through media, but there is no way to know what that means and you offer no way to define it. In my experience, this kind of rationalization comes from those who have their own discomfort on these issues and using non-specific language is way to avoid making definite statements while still affecting the outcome of a discussion. I don't mean to be harsh, but perhaps you could explain, in clear, concrete terms, why depictions of sexuality in media are of special concern compared to other depictions in media, unrealistic or not.

lotharbot 15y ago
Depictions of sexuality are of special concern (though certainly not the only area of concern) because sexuality is a deep thing, which most of us will deal with a lot in our lives, and which is easy to screw up in subtle ways. The difference between a great sex life and a mediocre one is often just a subtle shift in one's attitude in any of a multitude of ways. We form our expectations about sex partly from our own experiences and partly from exposure to others' real or fictional experiences. We may not even realize we've formed an expectation; we may simply think that we're responding in the "natural" way and our partner is responding in an "unnatural" way. Consider how you interpret your partner undressing before bed -- to what degree does that signal desire or readiness for sex? Is it an invitation to a particular level of foreplay? If there's a small disconnect in expectation between you and your partner, that can cascade into an attitude of "he always wants sex when I want to talk first" or "she's always leading me on and then turning me down". Every couple is going to have issues, disagreements, and disconnects large and small, which they will have to work through over the course of their relationship. Parents have the ability to make this better or worse for their children depending on what content they expose them to, under what circumstances, and what context they provide. (For the record, my parents started teaching me about sex at around age 3 and were fairly explicit as I got older. I plan to do the same with my son.)