Letter to Bean: What is Porno?
/Dearest Bean,
I was closing up the kitchen before heading down to brush my teeth and corral you and your brother into bed. Bending over the couch to turn off a light, I hear your voice from the kitchen.
“Mom, what is porno?”
What the FUCK?!
“Where did you learn that word?”
“It is right here - in the table of contents of your book.”
Oh shit. Dammit dammit. I haven’t even opened This is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained since it arrived from the library. There is a chapter on porno?!
“Oh wow, okay. That is a word I am going to need digest a bit before I answer you. Let me just finish up here and I will come to your room.”
Please let her Cory Silverberg book have a chapter on porn, please please please.
I walked into Bean’s room. “Did you brush your teeth?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay, I will do some research before I answer your very good question.” Shit shit shit, please have a chapter on porn. My default answer right now is “Porn is why you are not allowed to be on the internet without supervision.”
I shuffled through your bookshelves until I found the thick cheerfully colored You Know, Sex book - its title facing away from the room.
Please please please.
And right there, in the table of contents, eight pages on pornography.
Thank gawd.
So I settled into read while you brushed your teeth. And then we read through the pages together. Here are my favorite quotes from Silverberg’s wonderful book (page 360):
*Porn is made for adults… specifically, it’s made for people who already have some experience with their bodies, joy, consent, relationships, and sex. But a lot of us see porn before we experience puberty, before we get sex education, and before we have our own sexual experiences.
*What we see matters… When we see something that’s cute or joyful it can stay with us, making us feel happy or relaxed for days, weeks, or years. When we see something that feels like harm it also stays with us. We can replay it and wish we could unsee it.
Seeing isn’t neutral. Even if we don’t feel it right away, when we see something, we become a witness to it. It affects us, it changes how we think and how we feel.
I am so in love with the way Silverberg frames this fraught topic. Seeing isn’t neutral. When I was five years old I remember seeing the policemen come to the door after our house was burgled. I remember first time I saw pornography - indelible images are carved into my brain. I remember the first time I saw you emerging from the birth canal.
Seeing isn’t neutral. It is not like tasting a stinky cheese and then choosing not to have more. What we take in through our eyeballs can stick with us - for years.
Which is exactly how we finished the conversation in your room that night. “So, porn is people being paid to have sex and then recorded for other’s titillation. In other words, it is why we are careful with what you have access to on the internet. Because certain things in life, you can’t unsee.”
Fingers crossed porn - actual porn - not just the concept - crosses your path after you have more years under your belt.
My beloved curious Bean. It is such a joy to do this life with you. I love you.
