Pro-porn Childline film encouraging kids to google BDSM etc

It's a red flag.

It really is

Gendered Intelligence do this a lot.

Really weird age ranges

8-15
12-23

Or similar

It's a red flag.

I have said it before on this thread, and strangely it too was left unaddressed.

If a vodka company made this video, substituting vodka and drinking themes instead of porn, it would be held accountable and probably face court and certainly the industry would react . Yet, it is entirely legal to for under 18s to drink alcohol in limited situations. So even the messaging around age could be similar and only need a tweak. For instance, ‘you only drink alcohol at the table with a meal with your family, don’t you?’.

Imagine this with smoking too?

So ASugarr. What is the difference? Would you support the same style of communication being used? Would you find it balanced?

Should a Vodka company start doing this as ‘education about the negative impacts of underage drinking’?

After all, drinking ‘is fun! And in moderation is fine!’ It is, isn’t it?

Content that is ok for 17 is not necessarily appropriate for a 12 yo.

It does feel like these wide ranging age brackets that encompass children who may not even have been through puberty yet and teenagers old enough to drive/have sex/buy their first drink, is a deliberate blurring of boundaries.

Yes this part grossed me out too.

Switch off, tune in, jack off.

Good forbid you need to use your brain.

I cant believe what an abysmal failure this whole video is and some people cant see why.

Some people cannot see why because they seem to approach porn from a ‘porn is fun and fine’ aspect.

I think we can take that any lack of engagement with the actual points of concern raised about using the different communication devices to be a lack of understanding.

I think those posters who support this video cannot (for whatever reason, emotive, time or lack of skills) dissect and analyze it. Yet they continue to double down on supporting it, and try deflection and distraction to cover their own lack of analysis.

I am increasingly concerned that safeguarding is in the hands of people who cannot critically evaluate content they wish to use in education of an extremely important, life changing subject. That front line educators put so much naive trust into the organisation putting their name and logo on resources that the educator doesn’t feel they have the confidence to do an analysis on it themselves.

Even worse, can’t be bothered, because that organisation could never get it wrong. And yet, I have a textbook full of the biggest brand names in history who have got it wrong every so often. Case study upon case study of fascinating human error.

Only this time, it is our kid’s lives and future being failed by people who are supposed to be experts.

It even says on this educational video that ‘using your imagination is too much hard work’. That is part of the banter in order to introduce the message but all the same actually it sums up a whole binge -easy addictive culture being promoted.

softcore, hardcore, lesbian, thespian, interracial, facial, alternative, conservative, hentai, Far Cry, BDSM, NEDM, amateur, mature and swan disco.

I have never watched porn. I was a child in the 70s/80s and hated the culture around page 3, and pictures of naked women you'd see in garage workshops etc.

It was obvious even as a child the demeaning objectifying nature of such pictures. I simply extended my thinking to porn, that it was not about women or their pleasure but by and for men and utterly dismissive of women.

From this thinking I have never watched porn and will not have it in my life. I hate the idea that children need men introducing them to a load of terms, which mean little to me. I hate that this is considered an essential part of education.

How are young people going to be able to develop their own sense of sexuality with all this pushed at them?

Fuck this shit.

I agree with this. The Tom Ska video is a prime example of this. It's all very "knowing" and is pitched like it assumes enough prior knowledge to put everything into context

Agree and with him adding in the genres especially the swan thing (which I like many hadnt heard of) its guaranteeing kids will look it up so as not to appear stupid if it's ever discussed among them, or to appear knowing and bring it up in a conversation at some point.
Either way its stuff that the age group this video is purportedly aimed at should not know.
I cant believe what an abysmal failure this whole video is and some people cant see why.

That's a massive misread of the point!

The point was that there's a lot of difference in maturity and knowledge and etc between an 11yo and a 17yo.

Content that is ok for 17 is not necessarily appropriate for a 12 yo.

*"Kids shouldn't be on YouTube. They should be using YouTube kids until they are 11 years old.

Um,you do realise that people don't become adults at 11 years old dont you? That they are still 'kids' until they are 18? confused"*

From what I've seen the content on "Youtube Kids" looks like cartoons and stuff for very young kids ie toddlers. I don't think a 16 or 17 year old would be interested in any stuff that's on Youtube Kids.

I also have a question, I don't know if anyone knows the answer.

Films and games and TV programs have age ratings. 12, 15, 18, whatever it is. This is to give an indication of how suitable the content is for younger viewers. I know lots of parents ignore it but the ratings are there.

When I was young porn videos were referred to as 'x rated' by people in general. It was widely accepted that they were an 18+ classification. In fact when they were literally videos I assume they were 18+.

So my assumption would be, from a common sense point of view, that watching porn is for people who are 18 and over.

Now as it's the internet, and it's short films/ clips etc, through these sites, and they are hosted around the world, there is no organisation trawling through it all and saying this is an 18, and there is not AFAIK a law about watching it. But it is illegal to show porn to a child.

So this idea and the fact that it seems to be very important to these orgs to reassure children that's it's fine to watch it, there's no age limit, is ????

It's a loophole. However no one actually thinks that in reality it's AOK for children to be watching this, especially in the form it takes these days.

So why is the message so often, it's sexy and nice and not illegal so don't worry?

Rather than, these things if categorised would be 18 and while many of you may well have seen things/ been shown things. They are not made for children and you may well find it scary/ confusing.

Most 12 yo girls would baulk at the sort of things you see being done to (and it is done to) in het porn I'm sure. Many boys would as well tbh.

The tone of so much of this stuff seems totally fucked up to me.

I agree with this. The Tom Ska video is a prime example of this. It's all very "knowing" and is pitched like it assumes enough prior knowledge to put everything into context.

The thing I really feel about many of the things aimed at children around sex, porn.

Is that they seem to be aimed at a much older audience. There seems to be an assumption that children will be pretty worldly and sexually knowledgeable. Pretty blasé about sex. A lot of things are referenced casually as if well obviously they all know this, have seen that, have heard of the other. That really bothers me for a number of reasons.

The other thing is that a lot of it to me seems to really come from a male perspective. And that also bothers me a lot for obvious reasons.

This video seems to have been made with good intentions and this Tom Ska character seems to be truly trying to reach the audience and tell them the problems with porn from his own experiences growing up having unrestricted access to this stuff.

However...

I think it woefully misses the mark with regards to the tone. It's far too chummy and trying too hard to be "down with the kids." Naming various genres of porn is truly unnecessary- the first thing a curious child is going to want to do is google these terms. When a child I work with found out that Hitler shot himself the first thing he did was google "pictures of Hitler after he shot himself." The morbid little bugger was hoping for photos of what he looked like with his brains hanging out.

I also think the video is rushed. Tom Ska talks at a hundred miles a minute. Why are they trying to condense such a weighty subject into such a short video? All this information is flung at the kids rapid fire without time to properly digest what's being said. Someone will likely say it's simply an conversation starter but I don't see why this video is necessary at all. It will only encourage children to look this stuff up.

More effort should be put in to making it as difficult as possible for children to access porn at all. Their brains are not yet equipped to deal with it.

Sorry if it has been mentioned earlier but Safe Schools Alliance have put a petition on iPetitions - search open letter to childline if anyone wants to sign. I have put a message with an actual link under the petitions thread.

Having seen Oxfam have had their funding paused again www.bbc.com/news/health-56670162 for safeguarding failings whilst instead put their energies dreaming up forms for job applications with 'Man-identified' or 'Woman-identified' without also having the options to simple be a man or a woman, and now realising the NSPCC are pushing videos that also push the concept of safeguarding to its limits, it is getting hard to know who it is safe to donate to now.

0 points for use of the term 'little darlings' by the way, yaaaaaawwwwnnnn.

It's more of the same tedium as prude and pearl clutcher. Anything to minimise the issue. (Despite the obvious error of using BDSM for kids as a threat).

Wow. Way off the mark. You have kids?

Wake up that video is not going to be the first time your little darlings hear terms like "BDSM" and if it is it's better to hear about it like that, rather than a sexual partner trying to get them to do it.

Hear about it like what?

0 points for use of the term 'little darlings' by the way, yaaaaaawwwwnnnn.

Wake up that video is not going to be the first time your little darlings hear terms like "BDSM" and if it is it's better to hear about it like that, rather than a sexual partner trying to get them to do it.

Dear lord.

If BDSM is cool enough for a Childline sponsored influencer to recommend, then why the dire warning of 'rather than a sexual partner trying to get them to do it'??

You're approving the recommendation of something you use as a threat!

Whilst using the term 'your little darlings' as though you think other people's children are somehow lesser.

Do you have any idea how that all comes across?

Wake up that video is not going to be the first time your little darlings hear terms like "BDSM" and if it is it's better to hear about it like that, rather than a sexual partner trying to get them to do it.

Right. And what is it about that video that reinforces the messaging that it is ok for a sexual partner to say no? Remembering the throw away attempts at humour, including the ‘your all over 18, right?’ complete with a very young voice answering. Remembering the discordant message of ‘it’s not real. Bodies come in all shapes etc.... but I wish I had a porn star body’.

And remember ‘porn is fun’, it is all fine in moderation. And porn and sexy and fun interspersed through out. Even after some very serious points raised.

In what way does this video give under 18s the language, and the confidence to say they don’t give consent, to that BDSM?

Or ‘our little darlings’ as you so expressively put it?

And again, we are discussing the merits of this video. We don’t disagree ‘our little darlings’ need porn to be part of a wider and very balanced discussion. Ffs.

Do you have to be a parent to grasp that adults model the world for the children they come into contact with? Whatever they see us do, we have normalized for them.

I can't believe I am having to explain why disembodied vaginas, hinted beastiality and BDSM are not suitable topics for a 'fun' video. To be used in sex education.

For children.

Especially to a supposed educator.

If this is what passes for education in KS3 4 no wonder the problems we are facing as a society.
It's really frustrating to see how lax some people take their role. You're not there to be a friend, you're there to inform and educate.

And inform means to do so to equip children to make safe choices, not hand them the keys to the porn world and say, 'help yourself'.