BBC Radio 4 recently broadcast a half hour documentary called ‘Sex, Porn and Teenagers’, which is still available to listen again to here for a few more days. Below are a few notes I took of the most salient points:
The teenage girls being interviewed seemed to be pretty savvy when it came to sex, porn and relationships:
“The more you watch it, the less shocking it becomes”
“They’re like robots [...] it’s just emotionless and sex is all about relationships and being close with someone, and like sharing each other, it’s not about ‘Oh, we’re having sex and we’re not smiling [or] showing any facial expression, and I’ve got no pubic hair’ [...] I think it’s so much more than porn.
A psychosexual therapist who treats porn addiction said that viewing porn causes the objectification of sexuality, and causes feeling and excitement to split off from each other, and it’s difficult to put them back together. Excitement alone requires more and more extreme images. She said “girls disassociate from their feelings so they can actually act out sexually.”
An advisor from the Brooks Advisory service said that they were receiving more calls about teenagers making – with or without consent – their own porn and distributing it among their peers.
One of the solutions offered was more, better and earlier (age-appropriate) sex education, including relationship education, starting in primary schools.
There were still old-fashioned gender divides being enforced – with girls being labelled as slags.
The presenter, Miranda Sawyer, gave a very good pro-sex summation:
“The easy availability of hard core porn is changing everyone’s sexual attitudes, including teenagers, and we, as adults, should be aware of this, and help them deal with the modern day consequences. Otherwise more and more teens will end up feeling used by sex, rather than feeling able to use it for themselves, safely and happily, to enhance their lives.”
Nor must we forget that teen and pre-teen boys viewing porn will grow up believing women and girls solely exist to be men’s sexual service stations. Women’s sexual autonomy – not if boys and men continue to view porn – then there will only be the continuance of male sexual violence against women and girls because porn tells the lie women and girls are dehumanised sexualised commodites – use ‘em, abuse ‘em and then dispose of ‘em!