On June 20th, 2024, Twitter user Phelgmbuoy responded to a tweet by user CeramicToast which stated “Minors do not get opinions on pornography. Bc minors shouldn’t be watching porn.” with a quote retweet: “This is actually fucking stupid. ‘Minors shouldn’t be looking at porn’ they should if they fucking want, and they also get to have an opinion ESPECIALLY if said porn sexualizes THEM?!” [sic]. The ratio as of writing this was 519 quote retweets and 144 likes (incidentally a “gross,” which I thought was very appropriate). They went on to state that “Porn is rotten in the way it exists right now. It also has the potential to be one of the safest ways minors get to explore their sexuality.” and “Minors WILL watch porn. Which is WHY we need porn that doesn’t sexualize minors, and porn that isn’t infested by the most patriarchal, racist and otherwise broken aspects of our society by default.” Unfortunately, it becomes confusing for what Phlegmbuoy is advocating, as they manage to make a small backpedal later on in their tweet thread claiming that watching porn “with fucked up elements” isn’t necessarily bad but that porn “requires critique” like any other media…which is really just a manner of saying “I don’t want to alienate you, I just want to purge your freak ass shit from the internet” in a mealy-mouth cowardly kind of way.
This argument is more complex than it seems at first. Mostly because it’s a knee-jerk reaction to say “Minors should absolutely not be looking at pornography.” What we really mean by that is “Minors should not be engaging with pornographic communities of adults” because in reality we’re not all against minors sneaking into places they’re not supposed to be and playing disc jockey over Penthouse pussy or the Sears underwear catalogue (yes I know, very different things but to kids it’s all porn). Anecdotally, my sister and I separately found Dad’s Penthouse Letters mags at 11 years old and discovered all kinds of neato burrito things for a puberty-infested mini-gooner (as most of us were) and look at us, we turned out great. Porn itself inherently isn’t that big of a deal. Penthouse had all kinds of weird shit in it from feet, to pissing, to butt stuff, to swinging, to object insertion, to step siblings… And you know what I did as a kid when I found something that didn’t vibe with the ol’ bean? I just didn’t fucking read it. And who knew I was reading this stuff? Nobody. It took over 20 years for my sister and I to confess to each other that we had both known exactly where the porno mags were hidden and were both taking full advantage of it around the same time frame as she’s only two years older than me. Remember secrets? Ahh…if only those still existed.
So if Phlegmbuoy and I agree on the fact that kids shouldn’t necessarily be forced to stare at a blank wall all day in the hopes that they remain pure and unadulterated by pornography (someone’s definitely got a wall fetish from their mother doing that at the gooner-formation time of puberty), we’re going to have to go into the “sanitation” part of their argument. Imagine if it was possible to drop a little tablet into any pornography and remove the “problematic” parts of it the same way dropping a bleach tablet into your toilet would kill off a whole shitload of bacteria. Bloop! Your interrogation fetish scene with a Nazi and a Soviet featuring torture, humiliation, homosexual doggie-style anal sex, and boot licking becomes…
Heterosexual penis-in-vagina.
Oh? Phlegmbuoy didn’t mean that? Are we sure? Oh right, because their bio says “Anarchist. Faggot. make a new world here, now. Brown immigrant, Bacheh Tehran. they/it/she=neopronouns in that order.” [sic] But if we take critique to its natural end-point in the culture we have today (because I’m sorry to the “anarchist” but you’re still working under a flawed cultural system and you will not change it in your lifetime), we’re going to alter each element by itself until we reach the “goal” of sanitized sex. In our modern culture that looks like this:
Nix the “play” scene. Everything must be portrayed in a bed as sex belongs beyond any eyes in a bedroom only. No voyeurs, no public sex, nothing that would violate any consent whatsoever.
Absolutely no questionable elements or power dynamics. Everything must be as expected meaning the two partners must “match” each other in terms of background, status, and respectability. This means no interracial couples as that could create a fetish (ie “Jungle Fever”) or any “cross-breeding” between the rich and the poor. Each person must be distinctly unrelated and of the same race.
Homosexual sex is “unnatural,” one must be a woman to coincide with cultural norms and prevent the “fetishization” of homosexuals by the opposite gender. Transgender is only okay if it’s T for T and man/woman, as anything otherwise might create a fetishization issue. The man/woman must conform to gender standards and have completed all surgeries as to avoid creating “unrealistic” expectations in regards to genitalia or appearance.
Doggie-Style and anything other than missionary is problematic as it mimics bestiality and might give children unsavory ideas about animals which must be avoided at all cost.
The man must be at least 5’5” tall and his body must have all body hair including legs, chest, armpits, pubic area, and facial hair. The woman must be at least 5’5” and must retain pubic hair. Both parties must be and appear over the age of 27 in order to nix any potential cases of neotany that could create the illusion of pedophilia or hebephilia.
No disabilities. This could create a fetishization of disability or power dynamics related to them.
Dialogue limited to casual confirmations that position/actions feel good to the partner. Anything beyond these have the possibility to create undue fantasies in the viewer. Absolutely no “good girl” or other dialogue that may place any power structures or praise-related fetishization.
Though Phlegmbuoy might claim that this small sampling of rules doesn’t relate at all to what they meant to say, it does actually address all the things they brought up in their tweet thread. Elements of their argument included the fetishization of nonwhite and trans people: that’s been taken care of. Step siblings and fathers? Gone! Porn that isn’t reinforcing hierarchies: got you, fam. Can’t reinforce a hierarchy when you’re making good old fashioned feminist heterosexual porn without even a little “good girl” thrown in the middle. We’ve destroyed the patriarchy! We’ve ended the racism! We’ve fixed the broken! We’ve healed the “rotten” by…
Cutting it all out like a festering sore of freakish degeneracy brought upon us by diversity and inclusion.
[stares at the camera and screams internally]
As we’ve mentioned before in this substack, you don’t get to have your cake and eat it too. If you want to make kiddie pool porn you have to come up with a realistic representation of what that would even look like before you can start preaching because without an end point that is clear, concise, and reasonable, you will end up here in the fucking hell of fascist porno propaganda. And if you’re screaming “think of the children” in communities that are based around pornography and encouraging children to engage in those communities then you clearly have an agenda here. Why do you want to talk to children about porn?! Children might see porn—not the worst thing that’s ever happened in the world, after all my Nazisploitation fetish came from a completely non-pornography source (hello Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) and that can happen to just about anyone with anything. But children talking about porn to adults they don’t know on the internet isn’t kosher…even if the porn is sanitized. I think we can all agree that it’s quite a difference to have a kid sneak into your study and straight up jork it over your old Hot Shots that you first found in your formative years versus handing them a magazine detailing PIV missionary complete with close up and internals before looming over them and asking “Well? What do you think? Is that hot? Did you like that? Make your tum tum tingle? Tell me about your sexuality. What did that do to your no-no bits? Not your cuppa? Well that’s too bad, that’s all you’re allowed now. Tell me all about it.”
You do this to kids, they’re going to find what they really like just like I did from Indiana Jones. They’re gonna watch Disney movies and develop fetishes from those. They’re going to see R-Rated movies like The Terminator and get the ookie-wookie nice feelings from ultra-hottie Linda Hamilton all sweaty and badass. They’re gonna join Disney fandoms and develop Disneyfied fetishes whether you like it or not. Because you’re right, Phlegmbuoy, children are going to see porn. It’s all around us. It’s what causes friction. The things that get our little tum tums happy aren’t always tiddies and penors. Sometimes porn is just Hexxus from FernGully and you really can’t control that. Once you’ve sanitized all the adult pornography, you’re going to find that kids were lusting over a gooey skeleton possessing a monsterous caution-yellow lumber harvester the whole time and now you’ve just done all the fascist water-carrying for nothing.
Stop fucking doing this. You’re annoying and nobody likes you. Stop talking to kids about porn and basing your entire conception of pornography on what someone who has no business with it has to say.