Ask the Sexpert: How young is too young to for children to explore sexuality?

Dear Shanna,

I found some written porn stuff (like erotica) on my 12-year-old stepdaughter’s computer. I don’t want to demonize sex, masturbation or porn, but I feel like it was not an appropriate representation of sex, especially for somebody so young. Do you have any advice?

– Sex-Positive stepmom in Golden

Dear Sex-Positive Stepmom,

Great question! It’s actually fairly usual for youth of all genders, ages 11-18 to explore pornography, and young women are sometimes more likely to search it out in the written form for a variety of reasons. Great job on working to not put sex negative feelings into it. Keep in mind that people from teens to those in their 90s read romance novels, most of which have some very juicy sex scenes. Provocative written word is pretty mainstream in our society.

I would have a conversation with her about porn and erotica, and talk about how some of it may portray women in less than stellar ways. Consider going with her to Barnes & Nobles, or another bookstore, and help her pick out some erotica anthologies, or even romance novels. Best Women’s Erotica comes out every year and is a collection of stories written by women for women. There are also straight anthologies, lesbian anthologies, etc.

By showing that it is OK to read/talk about sex with the written word, but steering her away from what can be more crass or fan-fiction like, you’re putting positive, consent- filled examples in front of her. You might also mention, in a non-fear based way, that many online porn sites are scams and some have viruses, so she might want to be careful in choosing the sites she visits, or that maybe she has to run them by you.

This is also a good time to talk about masturbation, safer sex and communication. If she gets squirmy, you can say that if she feels she’s ready to read erotica/written porn, she’s clearly ready to have more mature conversations about sex and sexuality. I might suggest buying the book I Heart Female Orgasm for her – perhaps she’s not interested in it now, but it shows that you support her having a healthy sexuality and will be open to questions when she has them later on.

Best of luck,

Shanna