Sex Porn and Teenagers 8pm Monday 4/10 BBC Radio 4

[LadyBiscuit]

That's in 5 mins :)

From the BBC website:

" "Shag bands" are thin coloured rubber bracelets, indicating how far the wearer will go sexually if the band is broken.

Purple for a kiss or yellow for a hug may seem comparatively harmless but some of the other colours such as black for full intercourse or blue for oral sex ring alarm bells.

A Wakefield MP recently campaigned to stop shops selling them after complaints from parents including a mother who innocently bought some for her 6-year old's party bag. Elsewhere schools have banned "shag bands" after finding pupils wearing them.

Part of playground culture, they're often worn innocently or in a show of bravado but there is a darker side where early sexual exploration strays into the easily accessible world of internet porn. Where children once passed notes, they now use their mobile phones to share explicit images and there's peer pressure through social networking sites.

Presenter Miranda Sawyer, herself a mother, investigates whether society and parents are aware of just what their children are getting up to and asks how concerned should we be about the sexualisation of children in media, advertising and fashion such as sale of padded bras for pre-pubescent girls or sexual references on T shirts for primary-aged kids.

Even though teenage pregnancy rates are falling, Britain still has the highest rate in Western Europe. As many as 1 in 4 teenagers have underage sex with anecdotal evidence of sexual experimentation including anal sex to avoid pregnancy. However sex education is improving in schools and access to contraception and STI screening has never been better.

But there are concerns that unlike the 'dirty mags' of their parent's day, teenagers now access porn which can be addictive, desensitising and threatening to healthy relationships in the future."

Scary but essential listening I think

[HerBeatitude]

bump for anyone who has forgotten it's on (like me!)

[NormaStanleyFletcher]

I heard some of this, and thinking about my 4 year old, and what she will grow up surrounded by, well...


The saddest thing for me (not heard all of it, busy with aforementioned 4 year old) was the change in attitude, the objectification maybe.

Will have to listen again here if anyone wants to

[Sakura]

"nothing can get in the way of men's porn use, even if mass sexual abuse of children is the upshot which is basically what allowing young children access to pornography is."

Fu-cking hell, that's hit the nail on the head.
Have you read claig's point that pornography is used as a war weapon to lower the moral of the population.

[sunny2010]

Shag bands have been around for years and years. I am 26 and we had them at school when I was about 7 upwards and they were old news then already that was in the early 90s.

[AnyFucker]

does that make it right, sunny ?

[sunny2010]

Also personally I had sex underage and always used protection and personally dont see anything wrong with it. You are never going to stop underagers having sex and at my school most people had sex before 16. As long as you are educated on using protection and have thought about it then I personally dont see the problem. I would rather know that my teen was doing it than not doing it.

My mum and dad are ultra consevative and have only ever had sex with each other. It didnt stop me from having sex at 14 and the same goes for most of my peers. That is why I would rather know and educate my child as prohibiting them from doing it doesnt really work.

I agree girls look more sexual before 16 nowadays but again I dont think what they get up to has altered. In my school days we all used to be out after school in jumpers, jeans and trainers and not at all in revealing clothes but again that didnt stop any of us from having sex.

With the porn thing yes it is now accessed online but surely its up to parents to monitor computer use of their teens? I also dont see that much of a difference between this and everyone getting hold of dirty mags and bringing them in at school. Its just the more modern version.

[sunny2010]

Sorry just seen your message anyfucker. I think it is just the name though. When we were younger you had a shag band and decided who that meant you had to 'shag'. Then it would get broken and the girls would chase the boy around going blah blah has to shag you now. The boy used to run away and go 'ergh dont like girls'.

I saw a discussion on shag bands on the wright stuff a bit ago and mums were ringing in saying what if my daughter felt if it got broken she would have to actually shag the boy? Personally I thought that was funny and think those people are stupid and probably daily mail readers. I very much doubt anyone has ever shagged anyone forbreaking a shag band in RL lol

[AnyFucker]

dirty mags from our school days have no comparison with what is accessible on-line

[sunny2010]

Same as hardcore dvds we watched at school. Not much difference just a little harder to get hold of but someone always had them and everyone had still watched them and seen all the explicit stuff young.

[sunny2010]

beertricks - same as when we were at school no change at all. We used to say you have to do oral, stick it up your bum etc. It hasnt turned me in to some kind of deviant or any of my peers.

[sunny2010]

'I think we need to address basic issues like the fact that humans like to be touched: I don't mean here in a sexual way but we hug small children all the time but are less likely to do so with teenagers so they look for that contact from their peers. We need to start talking about healthy human contact like holding hands with your partner and cuddling. That sex isn't necessary in these situations.'

Steweiesmom the reason I had sex when I was young is that it was all I could think about and when you first get in to masturbating all the time etc. I think that is why you want sex and you know you can hug and kiss which is good but you want sexual pleasure. You could of told me all that but I wanted sex so it felt good and no other reason

[claig]

I'd never heard of shag bands. They even sell them on the internet with that name i.e. that is their purpose. We never had shag bands at our school, things are obviously deteriorating. What changed? why did shag bands start to be sold? why did it spread to schools when it was unheard of in the past?

This is social conditioning and puts pressure on children to think that it is the norm and that there is nothing wrong with it.

This in your face, open prevalence of porn and sex, is just like the in your face flasher. The flasher wants to intimidate, shock and demoralise. the flasher wants to aggress the victim and make them feel powerless. The spread of porn vi amobile phones etc. has the same effect as the flasher, exposing people to porn unwillingly.

[sunny2010]

How old are you claig?

[claig]

42

[claig]

we used to play kiss chase, not stick it up your bum and shag band games. We were working class, nothing unusual. Things have obviously changed for the worse in my opinion.

[sunny2010]

They have been around for at least 15 years if not longer so they arent a new thing. They are nowhere near as big a deal as the media makes them out as usual it has been completely exagerated. No one takes them seriously its just a game like kiss chase. It is mostly the girls doing it to the boys and the boys saying its disgusting, they dont like girls etc. It never used to be the boys who started it.

[Sakura]

I've never heard of them, either. Spin the bottle, meet behind the skips at lunchtime, but not shag bands.

sunny, I was the exact opposite to you. I became sexually active at 14, but the absolute best part for me was anything but intercourse at that age. I was lucky enough to have had two wonderful boyfriends in my teen years who weren't bothered one way or another. At 16 I used to stop the night at my BF's house. We used our imagination. INtercourse was not a given, it depended how we felt.

In today's porn culture, I reckon loads of boys expect intercourse.

[claig]

that shows how far the decline has gone. Games like these have a subliminal effect, they are giving young children the message that shagging is the norm. They will have a pressurising effect on some children, they are like conditioning so that young people see nothing wrong with these messages. No wonder that the UK has a higher incidence of underage pregnancy than the rest of Europe, if shops openly advertise and sell shag bands to children.

[Malificence]

I'm 44 and my DD who is now 20 didn't wear them , nor did her mates.
I'd never heard of them until a couple of years ago. So they weren't mainstream in the 90's or early 2000's Sunny, not here in Staffordshire anyway.

Why on earth would people let their primary age children wear them?

Exposing children to hardcore porn is abuse, it is wrong that it's so freely available on the net, the selling of misspelt website names should be stopped as a matter of course - no-one should be able to just stumble across it when searching for something innocent.

[LadyBiscuit]

sunny2010 - did you listen to the programme? Because I think you're oversimplifying things.

I think the issue nowadays is that children's sexual growth is framed by porn rather than porn being an adjunct to it. And that is an issue. It puts huge pressure on young women on how to feel, look and behave and 'choice' doesn't come into it for a lot of them.