This is what American families have to deal with on cable commercials:
How to get a date, leading to getting laid or married, take your choice
For men, once you're a sexually active senior, help getting it up. This is being pushed 24/7 by a sexy blond telling you to take this pill in order to have fun with your "honey."
For women in menopause, how to keep your dry vagina lubricated so you don't experience painful intercourse.
I AM UP TO HERE WITH THIS DISGUSTING COMMERCIAL PORNOGRAPHY. I keep all cable off now when my grandsons come over because I do not want them to become curious about sex long before they should. But apparently there are absolute NO controls on what is advertised on tv anymore. The words I used in this post are what is said in these ads, and worse. 
= new reply since forum marked as read
...ah, sorry...
I bet the OP would faint watching commercials in Paris
I've wondered the same thing. Although some advertisers might really balk - how would they let people know they need to buy an engagement ring, or dog poop bags, or yogurt?
Find God's match for you, at...
While I agree that we are inundated with needless pharmaceutical commercials to the point of exhaustion, I don't see those pushing sex enhancing drugs as any worse than the latest twitchy leg drug or diabetes drug.
I never taught my kids to be disgusted with sexual related terms like vagina or penis or erection or lubricant and I would never be embarrassed, disgusted or ashamed for them to hear those words. In fact, it would be just the opposite. I would be embarrassed or ashamed if hey referred to their body parts with terms such as v-j-j or willie. 
They entered this world through one...unless they were born C-Section. They should be intimately familiar with breasts too unless there was some reason their mother didn't breastfeed them.
And don't get me started on nudity. We were all born naked. No one was born with clothes on. Why is nudity considered unwholesome?
functions or lack thereof
If some consider those commercials pornography, I can't help wondering what they consider their annual physicals to be?
Or maybe the gender neutral "naughty parts" would be better?
My grandmother and my mother were both very repressed and couldn't bring themselves to discuss sexuality openly. Most of the questions I asked were answered with, because that's how it is, or good little girls don't think about those things. Needless to say I stopped asking questions pretty darn early. If it hadn't been for my friends mom having a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves and Woman's Body: An Owner's Manual I would have been in for some major surprises later in life.
I'm blaming it on an overly uptight autocorrect moment. 
Then the kids will ask why do they have something that helps a man spank his monkey. 
Up next, Why Women Should Embrace Post Menopausal Vajayjay Dryness and Painful Intercourse....Because Think of the Children.
boys have a "wee wee"
My mother telling her the night before she got married at age 23, "Don't forget to douche after intercourse"
Yep, gotta wash that icky man-stuff out of there. Mom thought sex was nasty and guilt-tripped me about being "boy crazy" because "bad things" happen to girls that are "boy crazy". Then I finally got tired of her non-informative rant and said, "Oh, you want me to look at girls? Is that what you want?" so she shut up.
Mom actually douched with Lysol. I saw a bottle in the bathroom cabinet. I remember my sister telling mom not to douche before she went to the doctor for a pelvic exam because he needed to know if there were any germs that were not supposed to be there. Mom didn't know about the difference between normal flora and bad bugs.
I got NO sex education or information about "boy parts" or "girl parts" at all. what they told us in school in 12th grade (1972) was a joke. It was inaccurate--two virgins can give each other STDs and you can sneeze on someone and give them an STD--and didn't tell us anything we needed to know. I had no brothers and a very modest father. I saw a diagram of a flaccid penis in sagittal section in a book which told me absolutely nothing I needed to know.
All I got was the fourth grade Disney movie about menstruation and that just said "Now you're a woman and you can have children" and what pads were about so we wouldn't leave bloody trails in the school hallways. Nothing about the male's part in fertilization, nothing about actual intercourse, or why we were menstruating except to say "now you can have children". The first sentence in the little book said, "Someday you will grow up and want to have children." I thought at the age of ten, "Well, I'm not sure about that. I will have to think about it first."
The main thing I learned about menstruation was that it was messy, painful, made me miss school with disabling cramps, and I had to argue with a male teacher about going to the bathroom at noon to change a pad and being late to his class. I hated it for decades. He threatened to write me up for detention. I told him to talk to my mother about it, and he backed down. I should have thrown a bloody kotex on his desk and told him that was the reason I had to go to the bathroom. We didn't have enough time between classes to go pee because it was a huge high school and we only had 6 minutes between classes.
When I was growing up in the sixties there were no library books for me to check out or read and nobody who was a grownup would tell me anything. We had some movie with that asshole advice columnist Ann Landers telling us "do anything on a date except kiss" and "all boys want one thing from you and when they get that, they'll throw you away like kleenex."
All I got was guilt-tripping and slut-shaming if I was "boy crazy". I didn't have very many dates because I was smart, and I thought I must be ugly. I got contacts and wore makeup, and then still didn't have dates, so I decided "This whole system of dating is bullshit, because I can't get a boy to ask me out." Girls were not allowed to call boys. That was a big no-no.
When I was in high school, "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex" came out about 1971. I got a copy from my older sister. It was written by a psychiatrist and some of it was inaccurate but at least it was something with factual information. The sixties and seventies were a conspiracy of silence to keep us from knowing about our own bodies.
And no, Playboy, which I did not see until my sister got married and her husband read it, does NOT explain about sex. It is not a substitute for adequate sex education. There's a taboo against showing penises. So I was still pretty clueless. Really didn't know what the boy had to do to the girl to get her pregnant.
They didn't think about kinky people, did they???
When I went to the University of Houston (big state school) in the 1970s they had an accurate sex education booklet called "Between Your Navel and Your Knees" which had accurate information in it. But I sure didn't get any in grade school or high school.
Judging somebody by whether or not they are a virgin is damned shallow and demeaning and insulting to a person. Elizabeth Smart, the Mormon girl who was kidnaped, talked about how after she was kidnaped and raped, she figured it was OK if she died because she was worthless. I'm glad somebody talked in public about how damaging the virginity culture is.
Didn't want to hear a thing about it. In elementary school you had to have a permission slip signed from your parent or guardian in order to go to "health day." I threw it in the trash because I knew that what they were going to talk about was bad. Because I didn't have the permission slip signed (my mother never knew about it), the alternative was a silent-reading class where you brought in a book and read quietly. I was fine with that.
Then in junior high, they basically did the same thing, only you went to your homeroom and did whatever (homework, reading, nap at desk, etc. -- they didn't care as long as it was quiet), kind of like study hall. Again I threw the permission slip in the trash and didn't utter a peep to my mother. By this age she wanted to have "the talk" with me, but I usually just pretended I was sleeping or went outside to do something in the yard. Rake leaves, pull weeds, paint the flower boxes, etc. (When I was about 8 I just plugged my ears and went la-la-la-la-la. At some point she gave up and figured I just didn't want to hear about it.)
Finally, when I was in high school, we had to go to a school-wide assembly; you didn't need a permission slip if you were 16 or older, but it was announced well in advance so that you had the choice of whether to go or not (and could inform your parents, who had the authority to keep you home). I faked sick and didn't tell mom at all, so that I wouldn't have to go. Somehow or another I made it all the way through K12 without having "the talk" or learning about techniques or protection methods. I figured why should I learn about something that I know, I just know, in every fiber of my being, that I'm NEVER GOING TO USE?
I am now an 18-year-old freshman in college (yes, I grew up during the sexting era, not the fifties or sixties) and still only have a vague idea of what goes on -- and I intend to keep it that way. I know nothing about the actual process, only that "it" (the dreaded it) causes disease. I don't consider myself to be all that great at science, but I remember getting a flying-color A in biology class senior year with a science-fair project on how sex causes disease, and all the yucky, disgusting bacteria that makes pus-filled, oozing sores on your (I used the term "bathroom parts"
. I explained how disgusting it really was that the sex parts are the same areas where you go to the bathroom and even throw up.
And because of this, I like to think that I was the reason we had the most sparsely-attended prom in the entire 65 years of the school's history. Kids seeing up-close images of the disgusting creepy-crawly things that sex is associated with really makes you think twice about how "hot and heavy" or "beautiful and romantic" this whole thing really is.
To this day I have never been on a date, never had my first kiss, certainly never done the nasty in any capacity (including the Clinton position or "dancing with myself" . And again, I would like to keep it that way. I've invested myself so much in the negative aspects of sex and relationships (including having witnessed firsthand the effects of my father's booze-addled pugilism targeting my mother and sometimes little me) that I actually no longer even have the capacity to "fall in love." I even underwent MRI and EEG scans (again, as part of a science project) to ensure this, and it's true: I'm actually immune to oxytocin, the "love hormone," the "pleasure chemical." It doesn't light up no matter how many pictures of pretty-boy movie stars you put in front of me. It's dead. And I'm all the better for it.
My sex ed consisted of viewing microscope slides and graphic images of AIDS bacteria, and hearing over and over again, "Go to college and get a good job so that you can be self-sufficient and NEVER MARRY A GUY LIKE YOUR FATHER."
Never marry a guy like your father.
Never marry a guy.
Never marry.
Never. Fall. In. Love.
And I promised her that I never would. I intend to keep that promise and die a successful, unattached singleton. The one lesson she taught me, I promised to use all through my life. (I'm actually tearing up writing this.)
So my message to society is, keep your sex ed and your romance all you want. Just keep it the hell away from me. My mother had enough broken blood vessels in her eye, enough shiners, enough tearful, fearful nights to make spinsterhood look like paradise rather than the death sentence of loneliness it's been made out to be. And enough people have died of infectious diseases like AIDS and syphilis that it's a fool's errand to play Russian roulette with your immune system. There isn't enough Purell in the world that can clean that mess up either.
TL;DR: Love stinks. 
Which are mostly couples talking about dating or getting married.
I haven't seen any of those that are particularly suggestive of anything except dating.
Now, on the radio, I hear ads for "What's my price dot com" and that sounds a little like prostitution to me, but not the TV ads for the usual dating services.
I'm actually more concerned about ads and the way they portray our society giving my kids a warped view of how things 'should' be.
But then, they've got me and the husband as their reality checks!
My kids often have the TV on, but it is usually background noise while they are doing something else. The only kids I know who watch particularly intently are those who come from homes where TV isn't allowed. Explicitly forbid something and it becomes the most enticing thing possible.
Mostly, I figure they'll grow out of being picky. I have a friend who was terribly picky when we were in school together, now, she'll even eat vegetables, which she wouldn't do then!
Mostly, they are nervous about new things. At some point in their lives, clearly they got the idea that I'm trying to poison them with fruits, veggies, and spices. Sigh.
The little one won't eat cooked veggies, only raw. AND he doesn't like ketsup or ranch! He also won't eat cheese, which seems weird to me, having grown up in Wisconsin.
Sounds like you and I have similarly awesome parenting styles!
And he kept his word. Until then though, I was at his beck and call. I guess my sister got tired of hearing him yell "someone come wipe my butt" so she bought him a bell.
Often, I got the feeling that they had their fingers crossed that they would soon hear the sounds of squealing brakes and crushing bones.
My English 101 class this year has had some pretty racy stuff that I couldn't even stomach. They seem to be moving away from the more strait-laced titles of old, and pushing for more of the controversial "contemporary" ones. We had to read one of the Best American Essays books, and in it there's an article by some guy about a kinky relationship between the guy who wrote Dracula and (I believe?) Ralph Emerson.
I couldn't, I just couldn't.
After midterms we started this book House on Mango Street and it's really disgusting. I hate those coming-of-age stories that have body stuff in them. (I should have gotten the Spanish version so that I wouldn't understand it.) I'm probably going to get my worst grade ever unless the professor lightens up and stops picking on me for not wanting to read borderline porn. At the top of the semester you had to make a list of all your favorite books. He pointed out that mine were middle-grade or for children. Nobody else had Goodnight Moon or Mouse and the Motorcycle or the Corduroy Bear series on their list. They all had Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, Hunger Games -- I think the most recent one I had on there was Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I almost feel like I'm being sexually harassed having to read this disgusting stuff. I feel like I'm being singled out and made an example of.
Why shouldn't I, as a legal adult, have the choice not to read "adult" fare and stick to kid stuff that doesn't make me uncomfortable? Why do I have to read gross stuff in order to get a bachelor's degree? Is there some federal law that requires everyone go through the "rite of passage"?
He tends to spit on you if you try to play with him for a while.
J/K
What's not to like?
Seriously, though, I tolerate Hulu Plus because of its wealth of foreign TV and the Criterion Collection of classic and independent films.
but because he's a Veteran I guess that automatically puts him on the list.
When I vividly explain that my 36 y/o husband does NOT need Cialis they get off the phone pretty quickly. 
When my phone displays "unknown caller" it's a good indication to not answer it. Although it is fun to hang up on robo dialers. 
Nobody thought I needed to have a sex education discussion until I was about 10 or 11. My sex life worked out really well anyway. 
No, not like that one. My husband took it out when he remodeled the bathroom and didn't know what to do with it, so he planted it in the back yard. One of the most backward things I ever saw, but it made him happy.
Response to MoonRiver (Original post)
That women's birth control is considered a faux pas in our society, but Viagra and Cialis are openly advertised on prime time about once every 30 seconds?
Children will rationalize things they see to concepts they are comfortable with. How can you prevent curiosity though? And would you want to?
--imm
Benghazi! 
--imm
I don't think I'm the person fantasizing here. 
--imm
FYI
423,533,849 views
Lauging their asses off
I think flashing images like that can cause PTSD! 
--imm