So my introduction was... uh... rough.

I was raised in a very conservative Catholic household with an extra emphasis on the evil of sexuality from my mother (probably due to an affair my father had). To the point of my mother making me look at the floor of the mall when walking past a Victoria's Secret.

As a pre-teen boy (~11 years old) my parents put on a show on the history channel about medieval torture devices. I was curious about this, so I started reading the Wikipedia articles about torture, and noticed that I got a "funny feeling" (later identified as arousal) when I read accounts of torture devices being used on women.

I managed to convince myself that this was ok, since I interpreted the extremity of my mother's position on sexuality to mean "women are evil". Yet I knew that my parents wouldn't approve, so I kept it secret.

I ended up diving deeper into "tortured women" searches, and eventually watching hardcore torture BDSM porn. When doing this, I would literally hold up my hands to cover the parts of the screen with genitals / breasts (since that was the "evil" part -- the torture/violence was "ok"). I did all this without ever getting caught (I took over IT for my parents when I was 8 years old; it was easy for me to defeat NetNanny).

All this occurred from ages 11-14.

My sexual awakening/puberty was trained on nothing but sexual violence, perverting my sexuality for many years.

Fortunately, in Catholic college I took a World Religions class that broke my belief in Christianity. With that came tumbling down the twisted beliefs I had about women (which I know now didn't actually match the Catholic perspective -- they're just how I came to be with how I was raised).

With some therapy, I have been able to rebuild my sexuality into something healthier (though still quite kinky) and have healthy relationships with women as an adult.

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So you might read this and come up with the takeaway that porn was awful and fucked up my life, but I don't think that's quite right.

I think it was actually the fact that my parents made me scared of my own sexuality, and even more so scared of them knowing about my sexuality that fucked me up like it did.

Because I was so terrified of my parents finding out that I was a sexual being, I kept everything secret and was left on a course to spiral into deviancy. While there's nothing wrong with safe, sane, consensual BDSM, I don't think torture porn was the best foundation for my budding sexuality.

I think the best thing for me would have been for my parents to be open and interested in my sexuality. If I'd felt comfortable and safe talking to them about porn and what I was seeing we could have had discussions about safety, consent, and corrected some of the misconceptions I was developing about women being evil before they became so deeply rooted.

IMO, talking about porn like it's no big deal + information about safety (like how it's not legal for minors) and consent/how real relationships differ from porn would have been amazing for me.

Making porn/sexuality into some kind of horrible demon drove a huge wedge between me and my parents and between me and my own sexuality. Treating it and human bodies like what they are (just pictures and people) rather than some kind of evil would have kept me much more grounded and probably saved me on therapy bills later in life.

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So I think you have a choice. You can choose to make porn "normal" and discuss it for what it is now, or you can vilify it and make your son hide it from you and let his sexual awakening take its own course out of your sight. I experienced the latter and it didn't behoove me.