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What you've said is incredibly vague. You mention "emotional content" in regards to violence and sexuality depicted through media, but there is no way to know what that means and you offer no way to define it. In my experience, this kind of rationalization comes from those who have their own discomfort on these issues and using non-specific language is way to avoid making definite statements while still affecting the outcome of a discussion.

I don't mean to be harsh, but perhaps you could explain, in clear, concrete terms, why depictions of sexuality in media are of special concern compared to other depictions in media, unrealistic or not.



Depictions of sexuality are of special concern (though certainly not the only area of concern) because sexuality is a deep thing, which most of us will deal with a lot in our lives, and which is easy to screw up in subtle ways. The difference between a great sex life and a mediocre one is often just a subtle shift in one's attitude in any of a multitude of ways.

We form our expectations about sex partly from our own experiences and partly from exposure to others' real or fictional experiences. We may not even realize we've formed an expectation; we may simply think that we're responding in the "natural" way and our partner is responding in an "unnatural" way. Consider how you interpret your partner undressing before bed -- to what degree does that signal desire or readiness for sex? Is it an invitation to a particular level of foreplay? If there's a small disconnect in expectation between you and your partner, that can cascade into an attitude of "he always wants sex when I want to talk first" or "she's always leading me on and then turning me down".

Every couple is going to have issues, disagreements, and disconnects large and small, which they will have to work through over the course of their relationship. Parents have the ability to make this better or worse for their children depending on what content they expose them to, under what circumstances, and what context they provide.

(For the record, my parents started teaching me about sex at around age 3 and were fairly explicit as I got older. I plan to do the same with my son.)




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