Accessed
5th September 2013
Thursday 5
September 2013
Porn is no substitute for good sex
education
Girls are
learning their sexuality is something they perform for
others, instead of something they own
others, instead of something they own
A study by the
NSPCC has found that porn is negatively impacting young people – especially
girls.
The study found that nearly a third of pupils (aged 11-18)
surveyed said porn “dictates how people should behave in a relationship,” and
32 per cent said it “affects how they act” with their partner. But the
most troublesome finding is summarised by the NSPCC’s Claire Lilley, who warns
porn is teaching “boys that girls are for sexual gratification, whilst girls
feel they have to look and perform like ‘porn stars’ to be liked and valued by
boys.”
As people
react to the study, the focus, as usual, ends up being on porn itself (“Can
porn be feminist?” “Why are we so squeamish about porn?” “I like pornand I’m a good person!”), but the porn debate isn’t the
point. The point, according to this study, is that because of whatever porn
they are watching, too many girls are learning
sex is about impressing boys – as opposed to, say, having a good orgasm. Girls
are learning their sexuality is something they perform for others, instead of
something they own. They are learning that sex is about being an object, not an
agent.
Feminists get asked about objectification a lot. Or to put it
more accurately, we get a lot of sneering assertions that objectification
doesn’t exist, usually in the same breath as unashamed ignorance about what the
word actually means.
Porn isn’t new but young people having this level of access to
it is, and the line between porn and other media has become so blurred it isn’t
always clear to adults, let alone kids, which is which. Porn and the pornified
entertainment industry are taking the place of informed sex and relationship
education.
The NSPCC
survey found young people are three times more likely to seek out their sexual
education online than to ask questions of their teachers, parents, or carers.
How curious that the people who call us prudes or sex-haters for questioning
whether a sex education that consists of face-spunking and songs about bubble
butts really gives the healthiest understanding of sexual consent are so often
the same people to reach for the smelling salts when we suggest the radical
idea that parents make sure they discuss sex properly with their own kids.
Of course, not all parents will, which is why all this needs to
be part of the school curriculum, too. And by “all this” I mean SRE that
includes not just saying yes and saying no, but also hearing and accepting both
yes and no, without judgment. SRE that includes enthusiastic consent, pleasure,
and the importance of the clitoris. Again, there may or may not be porn like
that. But that’s not what young people are watching, and it’s not the message
they’re taking from what they do watch.
This survey by
NSPCC – a children’s charity, by the way, with no particular axe to grind
against porn in general - shows that young people are learning objectification.
Objectification isn’t about sex or nudity. The difference between being an
object and an agent is the difference between Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines
video and the Ask First
(Consent is Sexy) riposte.
Objectification isn’t actually a tough concept. You know what an object is.
Perhaps you are one of these people who thinks it’s about wanting women to be
chaste or cover up? That inability to distinguish between a culture that nearly
always shows women posing for you to look at, and a culture that embraces women
expressing our own sexualities perfectly exemplifies the mess we’re in.
Before you leap into the “porn debate” to talk about how the
only alternative to mainstream, repeated conflation of sex with objectification
is covering women from head to toe and calling us sluts, remember that the
NSPCC didn’t find girls are becoming more sexually liberated, or enjoying more
sexual pleasure. They didn’t find that girls are no longer shamed as “sluts”
because porn broadens everyone’s minds.
They found
that girls “feel they have to look and act like porn stars”, for the pleasure
of boys. In fact, if anything, the consumers of porn, lads’ mags and strip
clubs are often the worst offenders for calling women “sluts” and “whores”. If
that surprises you, it shouldn’t –after all, “slut” is just the other side of the
same sexist coin that calls women “frigid” or “prude”. And if young people pick
up the message that there’s an automatic correlation between consuming porn and taking
a progressive attitude to sex, if young people get the impression that sexism
and objectification are an essential, normal part of sex, that’s not surprising
either. They’re getting those ideas directly from us.
