Pornography & Relationships
Where to start? Perhaps with the fact that, when I was first researching all this, and wondering if any mothers had got together to fight the tide of porn that our children are seeing, I did a search for ‘mums against porn’. The top result? ‘Mom f***ed against her will.’ And so on down the whole page.
Was I being naïve to think the first results might not have been pornographic? Maybe.
Let’s not be naïve, porn is corrupting our children and damaging their chances of mutually enjoyable sex as they come of age. Worse, it is leading to an increase in sexual violence primarily against women and girls.
We’ve allowed this to happen.
They see it in corridors, in bathrooms, on the bus: UK schools’ porn crisis
Published in The Guardian 2021
Sarah, child sexual abuse expert, comments:
'“I started out as a primary school teacher eight years ago, and I’ve been worried about children seeing porn ever since. Children don’t have to be able to type to see porn – it can be sent to them or shown to them on someone else’s phone. They see it at school, in the corridors, in the bathrooms, on the bus. There is just no censor on any of it – one video leads to another. If you can imagine it, it exists as porn, and children are seeing it."
She is particularly concerned, as are her colleagues, about the increasingly extreme nature of the porn freely available on mainstream sites.
“A common role play theme on porn sites is intra-familial abuse – on mainstream sites you will see fetishisation of grandad and granddaughter sex, or stepfathers and stepdaughters. This may lead to a young person not disclosing or getting the support they need. From both angles it is dangerous; it puts the child at risk and encourages the perpetrator."'
Search results
In case you were wondering what a curious child might come across when doing a search for, an example, ‘anal sex’, here’s a small sample from xvideos.com, with viewer figures at the time of writing. (If in doubt, just don’t look at this stuff, it’s foul.)
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EXTREME SCREAMING PAINFUL ANAL DESTRUCTION AGAINST HER WILL!!!!
3,998,899 views
No mercy for this tight teenager’s ass!!! Too painful crying anal! Enjoy watching her painal expressions and enjoy hearing her scream. Keywords include: homemadetiny-teen-destroyedtoo-painful-cryinganal-destroyedamateur-anal-homemadebreaks-downanal-expression
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How nice it is to hear your girlfriend smaller than you screaming in pain. 6,572,824 views
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Real amateur first time ANAL virgin FAILED Defloration: it HURTS like a knife in the ass
13,975,899 views
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REAL ANGER SEX- ANGRY SEX sexhate-fucking
15,494,948 views
Novelty & curiosity
Remembering the hard-wired human appetite for novelty, which of course includes the perfectly natural curiosity of children, where better to find an endless supply of ever weirder novelty than online porn sites?
Here are just a few niche interests that children may stumble upon that you may not have heard of:
Dacryphilia – Arousal caused by someone’s tears.
Blumpkin - Blowjob performed on a man sitting on the toilet while he is defecating.
Bukkake - A type of porn genre of Japanese origin where someone (typically a woman) is covered in semen by a group of male participants ejaculating on her, often in a circular formation. It can also be done in an all-woman iteration featuring female ejaculation.
DDLG - Short for “daddy dom/little girl,” DDLG is a dom/sub dynamic that fits into an incest-kink themed subcategory of BDSM where a typically older man and younger woman will engage in sex acts that incorporate elements of a father-daughter relationship.
Donkey Punch - Punching a woman in the back of her head while having anal sex.
Futanari - Often abbreviated as “futa,” this is a Japanese term for animated porn featuring women with large penises.
And so on.
‘Sex games gone wrong’ Really?
https://wecantconsenttothis.uk/
Read this if you can bear to – is the ubiquity of violent online porn contributing? Is this a case of Aiken’s ‘cybermigration?’ Probably. Is this problem going to get worse with growing numbers of kids looking at porn? I wish I could say no.
And here’s a summary taken from their home page if you’d rather avoid the details:
"This is a response to the increasing use of ‘rough sex’ defences to the killing or violent injury of women and girls. There are at least 60 UK women killed and many more injured. We are extremely concerned by normalised violence against women in sex.”
Please read this: https://objectnow.org/pornography/
This 2020 Times article by Janice Turner tells of convicted Andy Anokye’s ‘catch me, rape me’ sex ‘games’. It’s chilling reading. She writes:
“38 per cent of British women under 40 report being choked, hit or spat on in otherwise ordinary sexual encounters.” And that, “Porn-raised young men are led to believe that physical abuse is not just permissible but what girls want. Young women, ever eager to please, yearn to be popular and desirable. So they’d better not ‘kink shame’ a guy who wants to try what he saw online. Even if it hurts.”
And if you’re wondering what ‘breath-play’ (basically strangulation during sex) can lead to, Turner writes in the same piece about British women who have died this way.
Mary Aiken in The Cyber Effect writes, “The illusion is that the cyber world is safer than real life – and connecting with other people online somehow carries fewer risks than face-to-face contact. But our instincts were trained and honed for the real world, and in the absence of real-world clues and other subtle pieces of information – facial expressions, body language, physical spaces – we aren’t able to make fully informed decisions.”
And later, “we can feel freed up and emboldened online.” Presumably in the case of children and teens, even more so.
Find out more here about the online dishinbition effect.
This Durham University study found
Sexually violent pornography regularly advertised to first time users
Over a six-month period, researchers from our Department of Sociology and Law School analysed over 150,000 video titles appearing on the front page of the three most popular porn sites in the UK. They found that 1 in every 8 titles advertised to first time users in the UK describes sexually violent, coercive or non-consensual content.
Far from being hidden away on the dark web, content describing criminal acts, such as rape, up-skirting and incest, is actively showcased on the home pages of major pornography platforms.
The research, led by Dr Fiona Vera-Gray and Professor Clare McGlynn, argues that “the easy access of such content is distorting the boundary between sexual pleasure and sexual violence, feeding a culture in which non-consent and sexual violence are not taken seriously.”
Impact
In The Times, Billie Eilish, the American singer, has said that being exposed to pornography at the age of 11 “destroyed” her brain and gave her nightmares. The Grammy Award-winning star described being left “devastated” after viewing “abusive” material as a child.
Schools are doing their best with PHSE. Some parents are also trying to have conversations. In the meantime, we give our kids phones, which can access porn, we see ‘rape culture’ proliferating, and wring our hands. It would be sensible to conclude that conversations in school and at home about sex, relationships and consent etc aren’t working.
Everyone’s Invited has testimonies by children and young people. The trigger warning on the survivor testimonies gives you an idea of what’s there:
Rape and sexual assault, abuse (physical, mental, emotional, verbal, sexual), eating disorders, self-harm, suicide or suicidal ideation, violence, child abuse/paedophilia.
The testimonies are anonymous. If you’re wondering if there are any from your child’s school, here is a list of schools involved.
Harassment is now the norm in our schools
Of course technology isn’t wholly to blame here but according to this 2021 article in the Times, Ofsted is warning that “harassment is now the norm in our schools.”
The article goes on, “Boys are sharing nude photos ‘like collection cards,’ and sexual harassment has become normalised in schools, Ofsted announces in a report today.”
“Ofsted’s Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman, ‘said she was shocked by the findings and that all head teachers should assume such incidents were happening in their schools. Inspectors spoke to 900 pupils at 32 state and private schools, and their staff.”
“According to the report, around ‘nine in ten girls reported incidents of sexist name-calling and being sent unwanted pornographic images, and these had also been sent to half of boys. They also came under pressure to send nude photos to classmates.”
Look up @screengrabthem on Instagram.
This is “a movement tackling rape culture in education. Exposing online harassment, misogyny, coercion through picture evidence & tagging schools.”
The messages you’ll see are deeply unpleasant. And yes, you read that right, “rape culture in education.”
NSPC: Child sex offences are rising
According to this NSPCC report, child sex offences are rising.
There were 73,518 recorded offences including rape, online grooming and sexual assault against children in the UK in 2019/20 – up 57% in the 5 years since 2014/152.
Much of this is sadly committed by known family members or 'friends'. However some starts with online grooming. As outlined by the NSPCC, this can happen via
social media networks
text messages and messaging apps, like Whatsapp
email
text, voice and video chats in forums, games and apps.
Find out more about grooming here.
Read more here in this report (2020): How safe are our children in which Peter Wanless, Chief Executive of the NSPCC, states, “The risks children face when enjoying the benefits of the online world, to communicate, socialise and, increasingly, to receive education, are unacceptable and preventable.”
Useful stats here thanks to American organisation Fight the New Drug
“‘Teen’ is one of the most consistently popular porn themes, and research shows that this theme is
1) becoming increasingly popular, and
2) includes the portrayal of underage characters.”
“Survey results show that one in four 18 to 24-year-olds (24.5%) listed pornography as the most helpful source to learn how to have sex.”
In Man Disconnected: How Technology Has Sabotaged What It Means To Be Male by Philip Zimbardo, Zimbardo categorises excessive Internet use, excessive gaming, and pornography consumption as “arousal addictions,” and says “with drug addiction, you want more. Arousal addiction you want different – you need novelty.”
He estimates that an average boy watches 50 pornography videos a week.
Most viewed porn categories 2018
(Thanks for this, Esquire) included:
‘Gangbang’ at number nineteen. Fifth most viewed was ‘anal’ and fourth was ‘Hentai’. Having no idea what the latter was, I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, this means 'an abnormal sexual desire or act, as an abbreviation of hentai seiyoku.
I do a quick search (yes I disable my family settings to do so). Page 1 gives me ‘Hentai rape tube’.
Imagining myself in the shoes of a curious young person, I click on this and find cartoon and real images of children.
There are further categories here like ‘petite’ and ‘young’. I get the hell out.
Any child on a smart phone who has no restrictions in place, or has found a way around them, can see this kind of thing and show their friends. And in case you were wondering, yes, there are also war crime rape videos to be found online.
1 in 8 porn videos contains sexual violence
In case you weren’t convinced yet, according to this 2021 BBC article, ‘Vanessa Morse, head of the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation, said there was a "wealth of evidence" to show that viewing pornography led to harmful sexual attitudes and behaviours.
"The government's own research, which it published this year, showed an association between porn consumption and real-world violence against women. It's no surprise considering one in eight porn videos contains sexual violence," she said. "Pornography has made violent acts in sex completely normalised."’
BBFC studies pornography viewing in the UK
A study was done by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) in 2019, which found that “Children are stumbling upon pornography online from as young as seven.”
It states that “The majority of young people's first time watching pornography was accidental, with 62% of 11–13-year-olds who had seen pornography reporting that they stumbled across it unintentionally. Children described feeling ‘grossed out’ and ‘confused,’ particularly those who had seen pornography when they were under the age of 10.”
BBFC chief executive David Austin, said of its findings: "Pornography is currently one click away for children of all ages in the UK, and this research supports the growing body of evidence that it is affecting the way young people understand healthy relationships, sex, body image and consent.’ Adding, "The research also shows that when young children - in some cases as young as seven or eight years old - first see pornography online, it is most commonly not on purpose."
Another BBFC report completed in 2020, titled Young People, Pornography & Age-Verification found that:
“45% of those (children) surveyed who watched pornography intentionally had done so, at least in part, to ‘learn’ about sex.”
And that, “Most boys and girls across the sample indicated they had seen content they found upsetting or disturbing at some point, usually relating to ‘violent’ or ‘aggressive’ pornography. Often, they were first exposed to this type of content accidentally.”
And that, “Some felt pornography had affected their expectations and behaviour during sex, particularly in the copying of rough or forceful sex, as well as replicating the noises and positions that they had seen in pornography.”
Porn usually first seen at home
The NSPCC and the Children’s Commissioner asked Middlesex University to look into how many children have been exposed to pornography and the impact for them of viewing such content.
Findings include that “The majority of the respondents first saw online pornography at home.”
And that “Repeated viewing of online pornography may have a desensitising effect with young people feeling less negative over time and generally less anxious or disgusted by what they are seeing. Just under half of the stage 2 sample had been exposed to online pornography; of those who had seen it, 94% were exposed by age 14.”
Yubo
See this 2022 article in The Times about Yubo, aka ‘Tinder for teens’
It states that Yubo “has been linked to a string of criminal cases involving teenagers being groomed.”
It tells of how “Rhys Stone, 21, was jailed at Cardiff crown court after he locked a 17-year-old in his car and subjected her to a sexual attack as she screamed and begged him to stop. He had met the victim hours before on a Yubo livestream.”
There are other teen dating apps, and there will always be sexual predators. Mortal risks aside, do we really want to get our children swiping each other? It’s been well publicised that online dating can wreck the mental health of adults, so…
Read this
The Cyber Effect by Mary Aiken
“Once behaviour mutates in cyberspace, where a significant number of people participate, it can double back around and become a norm in everyday life, something I call cyber-migration. This means that the implications of the online experience and environment are ever evolving and profound, and impact us all – no matter where we live or spend time.”
Normalisation
Here’s one example of porn culture migrating, taken from the kids section, yes, Kids T-shirts section, of Teepublic — 'Choke me like you hate me'
There are hoodies, mugs, masks, iphone cases, stickers and babygros for sale with these same words on them. That’s right, babygros.
Another design features a half obscured lower face, with a neck made of a network of large veins, as though after a violent act.
Another t-shirt, found on Etsy, says on the front, 'FUCK ME IN MY ASS & CHOKE ME DADDY. The t-shirt is cropped to show the stomach of the young girl modelling it.
Metaverse app allows kids into virtual strip clubs
Read this 2022 BBC article about the virtual reality metaverse if you want something else to worry about.
It states that “A researcher posing as a 13-year-old girl witnessed grooming, sexual material, racist insults and a rape threat in the virtual-reality world.”
Head of online child safety policy Andy Burrows said the investigation had found "a toxic combination of risks".’