A 15-year-old boy confided in me after I addressed his class at a Sydney school last year. He cried as he told me he had been using porn since the age of nine. He didn’t have a social life, had few friends, had never had a girlfriend. His life revolved around online porn. He wanted to stop, he said, but didn’t know how.
I have had similar conversations with other boys since then.
Girls also share their experiences. Of boys pressuring them to provide porn-inspired acts. Of being expected to put up with things they don’t enjoy. Of seeing sex in terms of performance. Girls as young as 12 show me the text messages they routinely receive requesting naked images.
Pornography is invading the lives of young people – 70 per cent of boys and 53.5 per cent of girls have seen porn by age 12, 100 per cent of boys and 97 per cent of girls by age 16, according to a study behind the book The Sex Lives of Australian Teenagers, by Joan Sauers.
This is an unprecedented experiment on the sexual development of young people. The Australian Medical Association says there is a strong relationship between exposure to sexually explicit material and sexual behaviour that predisposes to adverse sexual and mental health outcomes.cent of girls have seen porn by age 12, 100 per cent of boys and 97 per cent of girls by age 16, according to a study behind the book The Sex Lives of Australian Teenagers, by Joan Sauers.
The 2012 report of Britain’s Independent Parliamentary Inquiry into Online Child Protection found that exposure to porn had a negative impact on children’s attitudes to sex, relationships and body image. Cross-country studies link teens’ frequent consumption of porn with acceptance of sexual harassment and forcing someone into sex.
The globalisation of pornographic imagery has led to destructive ideas about sex. This is canvassed in the documentary Love and Sex in an Age of Pornography, which screened on SBS Two on Friday night and will be repeated on August 15 on SBS One). Co-directed by Maree Crabbe and David Corlett, the film draws on interviews with 75 young people.
It shows how healthy sexual exploration is distorted in a pornified world. The importance of consent and respect has become clouded. Boys are imitating what they see online and find that girls don’t always groan with pleasure at porn-styled sexual pounding.
According to a 2010 content analysis of the most popular porn, 88 per cent of scenes included acts of physical aggression and 48 per cent of scenes contained verbal aggression. In 94 per cent of cases, the aggression was directed towards women who were often shown enjoying it.
Jake, 18, says of his first sexual experience at 15: ”First time I had sex, because I’d watched so much porn, I thought all chicks dig this, all chicks want this done to them … all chicks love it there. So I tried all this stuff and, yeah, it turned out bad …
”When a guy watches porn: ‘that’s hot, I want to try that. You, do this, this and this,’ you know what I mean? And they will just keep pressuring and pressuring. I’ve got mates who do it. They will tell you, ‘Yeah, she didn’t want to at first but I just kept hounding her and hounding her and finally she let me …”’
The level of disempowerment in the girls is disheartening. Disconnected from their own sense of pleasure and intimacy, they often pretend to like certain acts to keep a boy happy. Often he doesn’t even ask permission.
Sara, 20, says, ”Girls, they love it in porn, so maybe boys think that girls like that and, you know, when you love someone, you know, you’re always willing to just … make them happy. [if] I’m in love, then I’ll do it for you and I’ll pretend that I like it … And in the end … I just became an object … ”
Porn has also contributed to body-image dissatisfaction. Boys think they need bigger penises. Girls have their pubic hair removed because boys who regularly consume porn think it’s disgusting. Sara says: ”[Porn stars] are really pretty … like they’ve got gigantic breasts and … perfectly moulded vaginas … my body does not look like that.”
Co-director Crabbe says what was most striking to her in making the film was the pressure porn put on young people.
”Young people are receiving very unhelpful messages about what it means to be a man, or a woman, and about sexuality,” she says. ”It’s selling sexuality short. Where do young people find mutually consenting, pleasurable experiences of sexuality in a culture in which the porn industry has such a powerful voice?”
One sign of hope is the young people who want just that. They have a desire for something better than what porn offers, a quest for authentic intimacy and love. As Joel says: ”It is all about being close to that person and showing them how much you love them.”
As published in The Sun-Herald
See also: ‘Is porn the new opium for the masses?’, Clive Hamilton, ABC Religion and Ethics, July 26, 2013
10 Responses
Thank you once again Melinda for such a spot-on, in a nutshell article. Awareness, one can only hope, brings change. As parents, we’re counting on it.
‘According to a 2010 content analysis of the most popular porn, 88 per cent of scenes included acts of physical aggression and 48 per cent of scenes contained verbal aggression. In 94 per cent of cases, the aggression was directed towards women who were often shown enjoying it.’
So which sex are the ones being filmed as they subject women and girls to sadistic sexual violence? It isn’t rocket science that it is males who are the ones being filmed by other males as these males subject women/girls to male sexual violence. The issue is to disentangle how malestream pornography continues to be widely accepted as ‘just adult fantasy’ and not deliberate sadistic male supremacist ideology, whereby as usual men proclaim women and girls aren’t human but merely exist to be males’ disposable sexual service stations.
Yes boys are socialised via malestream porn to believe mens’ misogynistic lies concerning women and girls but the issue is not about ‘selling sexuality short’ – rather it is about continuation of males’ social construction of male sexuality which is supposedly naturally aggressive; dominant and proclaims that male sexuality is sin qua of what supposedly passes for ‘human sexuality!’ Missing as usual is the fact female sexuality is not a commodity which exists merely for men as a masturbatory aid. This is what mens porn industry promotes and it is very successful because this is what men believe and will do their utmost to maintain as mens’ truth not mens’ misogynistic lies.
Where are the male voices holding the male created and male dominated porn industry to account for perpetuating mens’ misogynistic lies that male sexuality as constructed and sold by porn industry harms women and girls’ right to fundamental human dignity and respect? Nowhere because men are terrified of challenging other mens’ socio-economic power.
So we mustn’t be surprised that boys are growing up believing and enacting their male pseudo sex right to supposedly dehumanised female bodies, given any real Feminist criticism/analysis continues to be censored/erased by our wonderful so-called ‘neo-liberal male supremacist system.’ Likewise girls too are growing up believing it is a male right to have constant sexual access to their bodies and females have no right to enact ownership/control over their bodies because the male(s) does not recognise this and girls know there is nothing they can do to prevent males from enacting this male pseudo sex right to their bodies.
Remember males cannot enact their pseudo male sex right to female bodies unless there are systems and structures in place which support; condone; justify and excuse males sexually preying on females. Porn is one of the major tools of our male supremacist system because it proclaims mens’ lies concerning their 24/7 male right of sexual access to females, as truth because men claim women and girls aren’t human!
So therefore the issue is not ‘gender neutral’ rather it is all about how men continue to maintain and justify their right to dominate and control women and girls because their sex is female.
Furthermore remember the women in mens’ porn industry are real women not male created fantasies and the male pornographers are filming real male sexualised sadistic violence being inflicted on the women and girls. This is why mens’ porn industry is so powerful, because it gives men what they want – to see real filmed male sexual violence being committed against real women. We live in a male created pornified world and it is a very successful propaganda strategy whereby male domination over women is justified as ‘natural’ because the women in porn supposedly want/need to be regularly subjected to sadistic male sexualised violence and it is oh so ‘sexxy and erotic is it not?’ Except it isn’t for the women and girls being filmed by the male pornographers/male sexual predators but that isn’t relevant since only males are the supposedly default humans and therefore human dignity and respect only applies to men – never women and girls.
This is spot on. When I, and the rest of my class came of age sex was so phallic focused and almost pornographic in its nature. I remember my good friend losing her virginity on a park bench. When I asked if she enjoyed it she said ‘I don’t know – he came’. I asked if there was foreplay ‘Nup he just put it in’. When it came to my turn to lose my virginity with my boyfriend I was determined to be 16 and revolutionary – it was going to be about me too (not a thought a boy would have had, Im sure). Well it wasn’t revolutionary. He had watched porn and I had grown up on a steady diet of romantic fantasies so it was over in 2 minutes, just like in porn and the truncated stories portrayed in movies. It was completely un satisfying for me but it was novel which kept me going back for more.
Over the months he wanted to try more and more things that he’d see in porn. More and more I saw myself taking on the role of ‘socket provider’. I was there to serve. Even then it didn’t feel right but I continued to do it. More and more sex became tedious. I got nothing out of it because it always followed the pattern of tedious fellatio, sore jaw, uncomfortable penetration in weird positions and him finishing on my boobs.
Prior to losing my virginity I had such a strong sexuality. Masturbation and fantasy were so powerfully arousing to me that I would often wake from dreams climaxing. Real sex was an anti-climax for me and just became a tedious chore because it was based on porn.
20 years later in still trying to experience good sex that isn’t about the penis. I’ve never orgasmed during REAL sex, just my dreams. This strong phallic focus and porn style sex have been so damaging to me. I hate porn and mostly nowadays I don’t really enjoy sex either.
I will add, girls who have been conditioned to please and who have self-sacrifice disorder will be even more prone to filling the role of sexual server. No good ever comes of it.
As usual the peti bourgeoisie have got the donkey before the carrot (no pun intended).. Yes, attack porn, it will save you standing up and marching for workers rights, demanding open government, confronting capitalism on its global scale and the control of excesses like gene technology (who needs sex, they dont need YOU).. wow, lets focus on the genitals (who is worse, the fools who even waste their time on this or fools who let themselves be controlled by the media into believing this is the cause not the symptom) when all around you is the evidence as to why we all are becoming dysfunctional. Enjoy your porn whilst you can, fiddle with yourselves please do, you wont have much else left to play with when your left standing naked on the stage of global capitalism and unfettered consumerism culture.. Besides, experience has taught us, the greatest advocates of sexual control are also the greatest hypocrites and prone to sexual misconduct, so once again – teach your children what is right and wrong and guess what, porn wont affect them (but they might wonder about what you have done to make the world a more moral place within which to live).
@sharon “teach your children what is right and wrong and guess what, porn wont affect them”
Oh really? You think parents are more powerful than capitalist pornographers who deliberately target young people through all forms of media? How naive of you Sharon! You clearly have no idea what pornography is in 2013 and how it operates. Knowledge of “Right and wrong” does not stop children developing a natural curiosity about sex and it does not stop capitalist pornographers exploiting this curiosity through sophisticated targeting of young people.
Wow, Sharon, I’m not sure your comments betray any real feelings of solidarity with workers, let alone with women outside of paid labour. ‘Fools who waste time on this’, should just ‘fiddle with themselves’ until they get their comeuppance when capitalism finally eats them up? What about the women and children who will be the victims of pornography-fuelled crime and attitudes in the meantime? Why do we have to ignore pornography and its social devastation, even if it a ‘symptom’ of capitalistic relations, as you say? What about the alternative: that we join in struggle against the pornographers and rape culture to forge a different type of society and economy that has the value of women and children at its heart. I reckon workers would rally around this project, especially when the majority of them are women.
I wonder where this diet of hard core anything goes porn will lead our next generation. This is so sad that this has happened on our watch as grown ups. What can we do to stop this? I am terrified that one day my 9yo daughter will grow up to meet a partner who has been fed on this diet and will need to combat that. I worry for my 15yo son who may think thats normal, thats what women want. thank you Melinda for writing this article – I wonder why this is not front page of every newspaper and magazine article but alas the media is filled with other priorities like the Kardashians.
Thankyou, Melinda, for your insight into the world our children will inherit, however I don’t think their future is as dark as we may fear.
Sure, porn will always exist, just as prostitution does, where one person is willing to pay to live out their sexual fantasies, and the other is willing to rent out their body as a playing field.
We may have experienced some of this objectification in our own lives but we do not have to be enslaved by our history. Many of us have experienced similar experiences in our own youth and beyond, this story of pornography influencing sexual adventure is not new by any means.
The real power lies with us, the parents, teachers and advisors, to teach our children to respect and love the body they have been born with and to embrace others with the same integrity.
We can teach them that porn is not real, just like advertising and TV, and empower them to assert themselves in a situation where they do not feel comfortable or respected.
We have this power within each of us.
It is up to us to reclaim the future for our children.
I know we can find the strength to do this because we do care.
@ Paula
I hope the future is not as dark as we may fear. I have a 2 yo daughter and I hope that by the time she reaches her pre-teen years, progress will have been made, that the first generation who had to deal with the consequences of growing up in the age of internet porn will work in changing this. You say ‘this story of pornography influencing sexual advendure is not new by any means’. Do you really belive that accessing hardcore pornography at the age of 10-11 and consuming it through adolescence, as it is so easily accessible, is nothing new and without consequences? I live in Canada and I heard an experienced sexologist saying how the quesions he receives from teenagers today is different than the ones he used to received a decade earlier. He said that one of the most frequent question he received from young girls was if losing one’s virginity was painful. Now, young girls ask him if they have to do anal sex the first time they make love. I am 37 yo and belive me, anal sex was not on my mind, and neither on my friend’s minds, when I started dating.
Also, why the responsibility is always solely put on the parent to teach they children about valuing themselves and respecting others? Of course I’ll do so, but what would my voice worth if the rest of society sends my daughter contrary messages? We can’t dismiss the power of media and popular culture. I wish my society would back me up as a parent and not work against me while I try to instil self-esteem in my daughter. And while advertising and TV are regulated (to a certain extent – extreme violence and hate speech are not tolerated and an ad will be removed if there are complaints of such), the internet is not and sexist vile pornography as well as misogynist insults are rampant. I will support any measure to regulate accessing internet porn.