So I actually do remember the post that pear/tree is talking about they have unsurprisingly cut out a lot of the context. Cause the post in question specially mentioned a scenario where the porn was appropriately tagged with all the trigger warnings it might require. As in can’t blame it, it said what it was That sort of thing is really common on my Mastodon instance. Post: CW: Pic of my Genitals Click to See Me: *clicks* Me: Ugh I didn’t want to see this Me: Oh wait
So there was a post that said ‘if your offspring clicked on something that was clearly tagged with what it was, and they clicked on it, and were like, oh no, save me from that’, and I said something to the effect of ‘it was labeled, come on.’
There’s a difference between ‘you’re responsible for curating your experience and reading the tags on things before you click on the thing’ and ‘it’s your fault you’re upset, how dare.’
Look. I am phobic of centipedes. If I click on a link that says GIANT PICTURES OF CENTIPEDES BEHIND THIS LINK, TW CENTIPEDES, TW TOO MANY LEGS, TW VERY CREEPY THINGS, and I see centipedes and it upsets me, then yes, that’s my fault.
If a fifteen year old clicks on a link that says THERE IS PORN HERE and sees porn, that is ... not the fault of the person who posted the porn. The fault lies with either a) the parents for not supervising their kids’ internet time sufficiently or b) the kid, for clicking on the link.
The entire world is not going to make itself SFW. The entire internet is not going to be a walled garden where it’s safe for minors to do whatever they want and ignore all the warning signs that say ‘this isn’t for you, this is not intended for people under the age of eighteen, don’t click here if you’re a minor, here there be things not appropriate for children, possibly also dragons’. That’s just not going to exist, nor should it.
So, yes, in that context, that would be @mistresskabooms‘ fault... if... you know. That... ever happened. And if she were a minor. Which she isn’t. She’s an adult.
Strangely, though, we’ve never had that issue with MK. Ever. I’ve never had to deal with a situation in which MK saw disturbing porn. Possibly because we raised her to be aware of her own boundaries and to curate her own experience? Possibly because we raised her with the idea that she’s responsible for reading the warning labels on things?
Now, if back in the day when MK was a minor, if she saw porn which upset her after clicking on a clearly-labeled link, and she came to me and said ‘Hey, Mom, this happened,’ would I be like ‘lol that’s your fault’?
Of course not. She’s my daughter.
In this fictionalized incident, what I’d do is firstly comfort her and make sure she was emotionally okay. Once she was emotionally okay, I’d ask her about the situation: how did this come to pass? Where was she? How did she come across this?
After all, I came across video of the Christchurch Shooting on my Twitter feed. It was... beyond disturbing. I saw a man die outside his house of worship. It wasn’t properly tagged, obviously, because people wanted us to be assaulted with it. I managed to get it shut down quickly, but it still haunts my dreams. Literally, haunts my dreams. So I get having disturbing things (like, truly disturbing things, not ‘I’m freaked out by frogs and someone posted a picture of a frog’) popping up without warning. That’s terrible. No one should have to deal with that.
And if, after we were sure she was emotionally okay and we’d comforted her and talked through the content she saw, the situation came down to ‘I clicked on a link that said PORN IS HERE, it had lots of tags saying what it was, I saw porn, it upset me,’ then we’d have a talk about establishing your own boundaries online, and understanding that the internet is not required to be safe for minors, and how to avoid seeing unwanted content in the future. You know, establishing skills for her future, and giving her the ability to take care of her own mental and emotional well-being online.
If the porn was posted somewhere without tagging, then we’d handle that a different way, dependent on where it was posted. But... that’s not the theoretical situation, is it?
In fact, we had that kind of conversation about online responsibility and curating your online experience many times while MK was growing up, which is probably why we never had the problem of MK seeing porn that bothered her.
