sex or violence- which is worse? - Page 2

[I STIK M]

i meantioned the "liberated jew" because that is the context of how the subject came up. he had been to his temple of the liberated judism debating on weather the church should put the violence or the sex in mivies and media first, as in which to focus on, talk about, teach against. i do not know why they would not choose both. i understand that this man and his fellow liberated jews are non violent, dont believer is fighting of any sort or guns, and only have sex, or make love to thier one spouse, and they do not divorce or remarry. that is what i gather, i dont ask many questions, mainly listen. i realize it was a oversimplified question/ vague/ unspecific, i just found it interesting. i dont expect any one to feel they have to really choose in reality, it was a lesser of two evils question- wait!i dont mean to say either is evil!LOL! suffice to say this man got me thinking a bit and i thought i would bounce it off my fellow mommas-thankyou for your comments, allways interesting, blessings.

[Periwinkle]

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[doula and mom]

Well, personally, my parents let me watch wayyyyy too much TV when I was a kid, especially sexually inappropriate TV. Without getting into too much detail, I think it really affected me in many ways.

So although I do not allow my kids to see either, I'd pick sex as worse than violence.

[mamawanabe]

I have problems with the porn industry, so porn is off teh table. But I'd rather my kids watch the kind of sex in rated r movies than the kind of violence in rated r movies. Ditto with rated pg-13. And I'd rather have them watch the sexual content allowed on network TV than the violent content allowed. (and all the sex I am refering to is sex without violence/threat of violence, of course - I'm surprised how often they are linked -- reenactments on prime-time crime shows etc)

[CryPixie83]

If porn actually depicted love making, or even just-for-fun sex I'd definately pick the porn. Trouble is, I've seen a lot of porn and i know it's often neither of those. Of course, I've also seen movies with violent scenes that I would pick over sex. Generally speaking violence is far, far worse than sex. Sex can (and should) be a positive expression of one's emotions, but I have yet to see violence be a positive expression of emotions. That being said, when flipping through the cable channels I will quickly skip any violent scenes (I'll even skip the violent parts in DVDs) but I'm not so worried about dd seeing love scenes.

Also, sex has always been openly discussed in my family and never talked about like it was wrong or dirty.

[MotherWhimsey]

That is a really hard question. I've never seen a porn but I can imagine that they can be really degrading. I think though that it would be worse to become jaded to violence. But then again I don't really konw that much about porn.

[EnviroBecca]

At this point I try to avoid having my child see any TV or movies regardless of content. As he gets older, my answer to this question is pretty much the same regardless of the "degree" of content, as long as the two things being compared are at about the same level:

Would I rather have my child see people making out or football players smashing each other? People making out.

Would I rather have my child see an R-rated sex scene or an R-rated murder scene? Sex.

Would I rather have my child see a typical tawdry nonviolent porn movie or a graphic violent movie with spurting blood and screams of pain? Porn.

I'd prefer that he not see either thing at each of these levels until he's old enough to understand the difference between fiction and reality and not to be damaged by seeing them. But I feel that sexual imagery is much less damaging than equivalently graphic violent imagery. I think it's absurd that sex in which you can actually see genitals is almost completely banned from standard theatrical movies, but horrific violence is allowed even in PG-13 movies and gets a huge amount of screentime in many R movies.

[ChasingPeace]

I think it would depend on the age of the child. My ds is not even 2, and I'm already appalled at the violence in so much of the programming marketed to kids. And at ds' age, he likes to imitate what he sees on TV. I watch a lot of TV, and usually ds doesn't pay much attention, but if something violent comes on, he's mesmerized. I remember one day I was in the middle of doing something when "Smallville" came on (something I think is too violent for ds to be exposed to). Before I could get to the TV, there was a fist fight on the show that my ds witnessed. Ds immediately came over and hit me. I was mortified! Of course, I wouldn't want him watching graphic adult scenes at this age either, but he's less interested in that than violence.

With older children (teenagers), I think a moderate amount of either violence or adult content is OK as long as a parent talks with them about what they're seeing. However, I don't have a teenager yet, so I might learn something that changes my opinion as ds gets older!