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Call me crazy, but are there any studies that show exposure to genitalia during childhood leads to psychological damage of any kind? I suspect there isn't, and

Call me crazy, but are there any studies that show exposure to genitalia during childhood leads to psychological damage of any kind? I suspect there isn't, and that this social taboo is, to some degree, absurd. Seems like this social taboo leads to a lot of damage and cost, while likely being unwarranted. I mean, I suspect people in general don't want to see dongs in Lego Universe or really any non-sexual game, so efforts should be taken to prevent it. But it shouldn't need to go beyond normal moderation. The only reason Lego feels the need to go beyond that is because of the social taboo. In what I imagine a "normal" society to be, dongs in LU would just be laughed off as a joke, and the builder banned for breaking the rules. Nothing more.

catshirt 11y ago
this is really not my area of expertise but you pose a great question that I'm trying to justify for myself: perhaps Lego has legal responsibilities? you know, the same way I have legal responsibilities not to expose kids to genetalia. for instance, if user of age shows a pornographic picture to a minor in minecraft, what are the legal implications? edit: another comment suggests minecraft handles exactly this by not running their own servers. let's say for the sake of argument they didn't.
- facepalm 11y ago
  I am trying to think of an age where kids would not be exposed to genitalia. When they are little, we let them run around naked anyway. When they are older, they might take up some sports and be exposed in the changing room. What I mean is: I doubt there is a legal responsibility to prevent kids from seeing genitalia. Porn is something different.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Have a look at the English legislation for an idea of how this is handled by criminal law. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/12 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/12 If you are over 18 and if you show an image of sexual activity to a child (someone under 16 that you don't believe is over 16; or someone under 13) then you've committed an offence. Running a server in which other people show children images of sexual activity doesn't count. It's unlikely that Minecraft dong-towers would count. I'm also a bit wary of removing parental responsibility. Depending on the age and maturity of the child you should probably be monitoring their first interactions and giving calm safety advice. Suggesting that the providing company takes all that responsibility is odd.
userbinator 11y ago
I have a feeling that the sort of "psychological damage" they're worrying about is precisely the fact that "exposure to genitalia" makes kids more likely to violate the social taboo and show their own genitalia, and that makes the anti-pedophile groups (and others of prudish nature) horrified. The reason that kids are building dongs is because they know it's a taboo. If the reaction of others upon seeing it was not shock but a mere "Oh, a penis. So what?", I doubt they would be doing it.
- danellis 11y ago
  > the fact that "exposure to genitalia" makes kids more likely to violate the social taboo and show their own genitalia How is that a fact? Is there evidence to support it? Looking at less prudish countries, it doesn't seem to be the case.
  - alan_cx 11y ago
    She/He never said it was. It is being suggested that, er, enthusiastic anti pedophile groups think that. I think that its implied that its a dubious argument at best. None of us can answer for the flawed logic of campaigners with tunnel vision.
- smcl 11y ago
  Funny thing us that I bet the kids probably wouldn't really comprehend what they were seeing in most Lego-dong cases. I remember walking past some fairly prominent "8===D" style graffitti each day in my school when I was a kid (I was <10yrs) and thinking it was someone's hasty attempt at a "flipping the bird" gesture :D
  - nekopa 11y ago
    Great, now you've posted that Lego will have to ban any text messaging features.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      They won't ban it, they'll have to hire more people to form Second Penis Prevention Brigade to monitor and censor all the messages in real-time.
zak_mc_kracken 11y ago
> this social taboo is, to some degree, absurd This social taboo is pretty much exclusively limited to the US. The rest of the world is a lot less freaked out about genitalia in general.
- curiously 11y ago
  And breast feeding, nudity. But then I guess other countries have their own weird little taboo's. More and more I see America having a lot of Puritan values, which is spreading. Even countries who wouldn't have freaked about penis or saying fuck on tv, suddenly find themselves adding pixelation and muted audio to their native language
  - jsmthrowaway 11y ago
    We are getting far more socially liberal in general. I've noticed a shift even in the last decade. Those of us in America who would identify as socially liberal know where the puritanical values are, and those places are becoming less and less able to generate a national uproar over family values as time goes on and liberal youth get older. Compare American television from even the late 90s to now. It's absolutely night and day. We have a long way to go on chilling out about sex (it's a weird line to draw given our fetish for violence), but the trend is definitely in that direction. The problem with America is that we are really eight or nine different nations stitched together, and it shows not only in our divisions on family values in different parts of the country but also our growing inability to agree.
    - mratzloff 11y ago
      Just in the last few years the word "shit" started to be acceptable on television. A single usage on TV in the 1990s or 2000s would have been a local news segment. Now, no one cares. It's changing, but slowly.
      - curiously 11y ago
        would love to know more about how tv changed during past few decades. There is definitely a change but hard to put in to words.
blazespin 11y ago
It has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with perception and the damage to the brand.
legohead 11y ago
I found it kind of silly how the poster alludes to this being an issue with the success of the game (operational costs, don't let execs try again), but really, the game was simply boring to begin with. You have something as amazing as lego, and you don't design your game around the concept of building whatever you want...
Confusion 11y ago
are there any studies that show exposure to genitalia during childhood leads to psychological damage of any kind No, none at all. If that were so, many generations before us, and most European generations, would be quite damaged. The epidemiological evidence speaks for itself. and that this social taboo is, to some degree, absurd Completely absurd, period. It's confusing genitalia with sexual activity, completely disregarding context.
- kpil 11y ago
  There are some studies done in Denmark in the seventies, where small children were shown danish soft-porn movies, and a control group were shown 'Bambi' If I remember correctly, the kids where not reacting in any special way to the porn, and thought it was nonsensical or plain boring, except the humorous segments (think Benny Hill but naked, typical of danish pornography of that era) which they laughed at. However, a large percentage of the kids in the control group reported nightmares from Bambi, and many children reacted badly to the death of Bambi's mother and other dramatic events, and it occupied their mind for a long time after they watched the movie. Edit: On the other hand, 95% of the internet porn of today is probably not good for anyone to watch, and especially young people seems to have a rather bent view of sexuality and especially women's sexuality. But seeing naked people, can't possibly be damaging for anyone.
  - dmichulke 11y ago
    Add a spoiler warning please! (Seriously, I didn't know this would happen)
    - krallja 11y ago
      Bambi is 73 years old. If you haven't seen it yet, you aren't going to.
      - FroshKiller 11y ago
        New people are born every day. The age of the movie is irrelevant.
belorn 11y ago
The first thing about social taboos is that they are culture specific. Sweden for example in the late 90s had a strong censorship regarding violence, while nudity was mostly ignored and quite common in movies made for kids and on family prime time on TV. As two examples of this, Darkwing Duck was banned since people believed it would cause children to kill other children in the play ground. However during similar prime time hours on TV, a other show called "Bullen" (euphemism for female genitalia) was on, and was about teenage relationships with a large focus on sex education. They address topics like masturbation, homosexuality, and relationship advice in the form of viewer mails being illustrated by actors. Now days, the Swedish taboo culture has changed to mimic the American one, but one notice remnants always pop up when people suddenly feels that Astrid Lindgren movie adaptations should suddenly be censored since they got naked scenes in them.
- mikro2nd 11y ago
  I, too, would ban Darkwing Duck; but for simply being terminally irritating, rather than any supposed incitement to kill. Or maybe it would incite people to want to kill Darkwing Duck...
- tim333 11y ago
  >culture specific Bhutan is covered in dick paintings for example and the kids seem fine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_paintings_in_Bhutan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_paintings_in_Bhutan
- rmc 11y ago
  Recently there was a children's cartoon about penises and vaginas in sweden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx08UWxXJkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx08UWxXJkI (contains cartoon gentilia).
- anentropic 11y ago
  Sweden sounds so sane
- tripzilch 11y ago
  In the Netherlands something similar, who remembers the cartoon "Purno de Purno"? :-) It was glorious, made on a pixelated Amiga, many boobs and sexual innuendo (that went straight past me as a kid), and pretty absurd plotlines (which is why I loved it).
facepalm 11y ago
I suspect how society reacts to it plays a big part. Kids exposed to genitalia might be sent to therapy sessions and only considered "cured" when they accept that they have been traumatized...
benihana 11y ago
I feel like the opposite is happening: By making penises something vulgar and taboo and to be constantly protected against, we're telling boys that a very important part of their body is ugly, dirty, gross and wrong. And that they should feel gross for having one.
- kpil 11y ago
  Even more so for small girls.
  - copsarebastards 11y ago
    I disagree. If anything, we put too much value on a woman's vagina--to the point that it's taken to be her greatest asset. Too often a woman is valued for her body parts rather than her ideas or her abilities. Virginity is overvalued and "slut shaming" is applied to women who have sex because girls are encouraged to conserve and maintain the value of their resource, while men are lauded for being able to obtain access to vaginas. Rather than being vulgar, wrong, taboo, dirty, gross, vaginas are seen as beautiful, valuable commodities. Which comes with its own set of problems, but different problems from those young boys have. I don't see any value in this sort of one-upsmanship, where every time a boy's problem is brought up, people say, "But it's even worse for girls." That both downplays the problems of boys and misunderstands the problems of girls. I'm not saying you do this all the time, I'm just saying I see this all too frequently.
wobbleblob 11y ago
"Call me crazy, but are there any studies that show exposure to genitalia during childhood leads to psychological damage of any kind?" The vast majority of convicted murderers and pedophiles have seen genitalia at least once during childhood.
- iopq 11y ago
  Everyone's seen genitalia at least once during childhood.
- NietTim 11y ago
  They've also all drank water at some point during their lives. Do we need to ban water?! More at 7.
  - wobbleblob 11y ago
    I thought it was a funny joke :|
FLUX-YOU 11y ago
>The only reason Lego feels the need to go beyond that is because of the social taboo The OP mentions COPPA and brand trust with parents, so I think there's more to it. Less "protect the kids", more "don't get sued" and "don't lose customers".
tomjen3 11y ago
>Call me crazy, but are there any studies that show exposure to genitalia during childhood leads to psychological damage of any kind? That is a brilliant question, we could actually find out: substantially every danish school kid has showed in communal showers after gym class. This, I think, is not nearly as common in the US. If exposure to genitalia caused psychological damage then we should see a greater incident of this in Danes than Americans. My hunch is that such a difference, if found at all, would not pass statistical significance.
- palmer_eldritch 11y ago
  Hey, maybe we'd find that not seeing enough genitalia during childhood leads to psychological damage and that people damaged by it tend to reproduce the same abuse on their own progeny.

catshirt 11y ago

this is really not my area of expertise but you pose a great question that I'm trying to justify for myself: perhaps Lego has legal responsibilities? you know, the same way I have legal responsibilities not to expose kids to genetalia. for instance, if user of age shows a pornographic picture to a minor in minecraft, what are the legal implications? edit: another comment suggests minecraft handles exactly this by not running their own servers. let's say for the sake of argument they didn't.

facepalm 11y ago
I am trying to think of an age where kids would not be exposed to genitalia. When they are little, we let them run around naked anyway. When they are older, they might take up some sports and be exposed in the changing room. What I mean is: I doubt there is a legal responsibility to prevent kids from seeing genitalia. Porn is something different.
DanBC 11y ago
Have a look at the English legislation for an idea of how this is handled by criminal law. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/12 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/12 If you are over 18 and if you show an image of sexual activity to a child (someone under 16 that you don't believe is over 16; or someone under 13) then you've committed an offence. Running a server in which other people show children images of sexual activity doesn't count. It's unlikely that Minecraft dong-towers would count. I'm also a bit wary of removing parental responsibility. Depending on the age and maturity of the child you should probably be monitoring their first interactions and giving calm safety advice. Suggesting that the providing company takes all that responsibility is odd.

userbinator 11y ago

I have a feeling that the sort of "psychological damage" they're worrying about is precisely the fact that "exposure to genitalia" makes kids more likely to violate the social taboo and show their own genitalia, and that makes the anti-pedophile groups (and others of prudish nature) horrified. The reason that kids are building dongs is because they know it's a taboo. If the reaction of others upon seeing it was not shock but a mere "Oh, a penis. So what?", I doubt they would be doing it.

danellis 11y ago
> the fact that "exposure to genitalia" makes kids more likely to violate the social taboo and show their own genitalia How is that a fact? Is there evidence to support it? Looking at less prudish countries, it doesn't seem to be the case.
- alan_cx 11y ago
  She/He never said it was. It is being suggested that, er, enthusiastic anti pedophile groups think that. I think that its implied that its a dubious argument at best. None of us can answer for the flawed logic of campaigners with tunnel vision.
smcl 11y ago
Funny thing us that I bet the kids probably wouldn't really comprehend what they were seeing in most Lego-dong cases. I remember walking past some fairly prominent "8===D" style graffitti each day in my school when I was a kid (I was <10yrs) and thinking it was someone's hasty attempt at a "flipping the bird" gesture :D
- nekopa 11y ago
  Great, now you've posted that Lego will have to ban any text messaging features.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    They won't ban it, they'll have to hire more people to form Second Penis Prevention Brigade to monitor and censor all the messages in real-time.

zak_mc_kracken 11y ago

> this social taboo is, to some degree, absurd This social taboo is pretty much exclusively limited to the US. The rest of the world is a lot less freaked out about genitalia in general.

curiously 11y ago
And breast feeding, nudity. But then I guess other countries have their own weird little taboo's. More and more I see America having a lot of Puritan values, which is spreading. Even countries who wouldn't have freaked about penis or saying fuck on tv, suddenly find themselves adding pixelation and muted audio to their native language
- jsmthrowaway 11y ago
  We are getting far more socially liberal in general. I've noticed a shift even in the last decade. Those of us in America who would identify as socially liberal know where the puritanical values are, and those places are becoming less and less able to generate a national uproar over family values as time goes on and liberal youth get older. Compare American television from even the late 90s to now. It's absolutely night and day. We have a long way to go on chilling out about sex (it's a weird line to draw given our fetish for violence), but the trend is definitely in that direction. The problem with America is that we are really eight or nine different nations stitched together, and it shows not only in our divisions on family values in different parts of the country but also our growing inability to agree.
  - mratzloff 11y ago
    Just in the last few years the word "shit" started to be acceptable on television. A single usage on TV in the 1990s or 2000s would have been a local news segment. Now, no one cares. It's changing, but slowly.
    - curiously 11y ago
      would love to know more about how tv changed during past few decades. There is definitely a change but hard to put in to words.

blazespin 11y ago

It has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with perception and the damage to the brand.

legohead 11y ago

I found it kind of silly how the poster alludes to this being an issue with the success of the game (operational costs, don't let execs try again), but really, the game was simply boring to begin with. You have something as amazing as lego, and you don't design your game around the concept of building whatever you want...

Confusion 11y ago

are there any studies that show exposure to genitalia during childhood leads to psychological damage of any kind No, none at all. If that were so, many generations before us, and most European generations, would be quite damaged. The epidemiological evidence speaks for itself. and that this social taboo is, to some degree, absurd Completely absurd, period. It's confusing genitalia with sexual activity, completely disregarding context.

kpil 11y ago
There are some studies done in Denmark in the seventies, where small children were shown danish soft-porn movies, and a control group were shown 'Bambi' If I remember correctly, the kids where not reacting in any special way to the porn, and thought it was nonsensical or plain boring, except the humorous segments (think Benny Hill but naked, typical of danish pornography of that era) which they laughed at. However, a large percentage of the kids in the control group reported nightmares from Bambi, and many children reacted badly to the death of Bambi's mother and other dramatic events, and it occupied their mind for a long time after they watched the movie. Edit: On the other hand, 95% of the internet porn of today is probably not good for anyone to watch, and especially young people seems to have a rather bent view of sexuality and especially women's sexuality. But seeing naked people, can't possibly be damaging for anyone.
- dmichulke 11y ago
  Add a spoiler warning please! (Seriously, I didn't know this would happen)
  - krallja 11y ago
    Bambi is 73 years old. If you haven't seen it yet, you aren't going to.
    - FroshKiller 11y ago
      New people are born every day. The age of the movie is irrelevant.

belorn 11y ago

The first thing about social taboos is that they are culture specific. Sweden for example in the late 90s had a strong censorship regarding violence, while nudity was mostly ignored and quite common in movies made for kids and on family prime time on TV. As two examples of this, Darkwing Duck was banned since people believed it would cause children to kill other children in the play ground. However during similar prime time hours on TV, a other show called "Bullen" (euphemism for female genitalia) was on, and was about teenage relationships with a large focus on sex education. They address topics like masturbation, homosexuality, and relationship advice in the form of viewer mails being illustrated by actors. Now days, the Swedish taboo culture has changed to mimic the American one, but one notice remnants always pop up when people suddenly feels that Astrid Lindgren movie adaptations should suddenly be censored since they got naked scenes in them.

mikro2nd 11y ago
I, too, would ban Darkwing Duck; but for simply being terminally irritating, rather than any supposed incitement to kill. Or maybe it would incite people to want to kill Darkwing Duck...
tim333 11y ago
>culture specific Bhutan is covered in dick paintings for example and the kids seem fine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_paintings_in_Bhutan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_paintings_in_Bhutan
rmc 11y ago
Recently there was a children's cartoon about penises and vaginas in sweden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx08UWxXJkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx08UWxXJkI (contains cartoon gentilia).
anentropic 11y ago
Sweden sounds so sane
tripzilch 11y ago
In the Netherlands something similar, who remembers the cartoon "Purno de Purno"? :-) It was glorious, made on a pixelated Amiga, many boobs and sexual innuendo (that went straight past me as a kid), and pretty absurd plotlines (which is why I loved it).

facepalm 11y ago

I suspect how society reacts to it plays a big part. Kids exposed to genitalia might be sent to therapy sessions and only considered "cured" when they accept that they have been traumatized...

benihana 11y ago

I feel like the opposite is happening: By making penises something vulgar and taboo and to be constantly protected against, we're telling boys that a very important part of their body is ugly, dirty, gross and wrong. And that they should feel gross for having one.

kpil 11y ago
Even more so for small girls.
- copsarebastards 11y ago
  I disagree. If anything, we put too much value on a woman's vagina--to the point that it's taken to be her greatest asset. Too often a woman is valued for her body parts rather than her ideas or her abilities. Virginity is overvalued and "slut shaming" is applied to women who have sex because girls are encouraged to conserve and maintain the value of their resource, while men are lauded for being able to obtain access to vaginas. Rather than being vulgar, wrong, taboo, dirty, gross, vaginas are seen as beautiful, valuable commodities. Which comes with its own set of problems, but different problems from those young boys have. I don't see any value in this sort of one-upsmanship, where every time a boy's problem is brought up, people say, "But it's even worse for girls." That both downplays the problems of boys and misunderstands the problems of girls. I'm not saying you do this all the time, I'm just saying I see this all too frequently.

wobbleblob 11y ago

"Call me crazy, but are there any studies that show exposure to genitalia during childhood leads to psychological damage of any kind?" The vast majority of convicted murderers and pedophiles have seen genitalia at least once during childhood.

iopq 11y ago
Everyone's seen genitalia at least once during childhood.
NietTim 11y ago
They've also all drank water at some point during their lives. Do we need to ban water?! More at 7.
- wobbleblob 11y ago
  I thought it was a funny joke :|

FLUX-YOU 11y ago

>The only reason Lego feels the need to go beyond that is because of the social taboo The OP mentions COPPA and brand trust with parents, so I think there's more to it. Less "protect the kids", more "don't get sued" and "don't lose customers".

tomjen3 11y ago

>Call me crazy, but are there any studies that show exposure to genitalia during childhood leads to psychological damage of any kind? That is a brilliant question, we could actually find out: substantially every danish school kid has showed in communal showers after gym class. This, I think, is not nearly as common in the US. If exposure to genitalia caused psychological damage then we should see a greater incident of this in Danes than Americans. My hunch is that such a difference, if found at all, would not pass statistical significance.

palmer_eldritch 11y ago
Hey, maybe we'd find that not seeing enough genitalia during childhood leads to psychological damage and that people damaged by it tend to reproduce the same abuse on their own progeny.