teenage girls under massive pressure to do anal :(

[GinAndSonic]

Article may upset some people. Saw this www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/11554595/Pornography-has-changed-the-landscape-of-adolescence-beyond-all-recognition.html in chat and thought it was something important to discuss, in particular this about teenages and anal Sex - "Moreover, both genders expected males to find pleasure in the act whereas females were mostly expected to “endure the negative aspects such as pain or a damaged reputation”."

Im not surprised by this sadly, as i was anally raped by my boyfriend as a teen over 10 years ago and pornification is only getting worse. What can we do, other thab talk to our kids? Can we do anything on a bigger scale to fix the problem, not just try to help our kids survive the shit storm?

The sexual coercion of teenage girls is something that needs to be eliminated, of course, but yet another article going 'Waaah Blame Everything On The Internet and Internet Porn' isn't going to fix things.

Sex education here and in the US has been utterly disastrous for decades. It's either all about disease and preventing pregnancy, or it's about fetishizing virginity in a way which spreads the idea that only PIV sex is SEX. Which means a lot of teenagers and young people, over the decades, have done anal on the grounds that a) you can do anal and still be a 'virgin' and of course b) anal sex does not lead to pregancy. The fact that it's often painful and not much fun for women and girls (especially if penetration is being achieved by a clumsy, inexperienced and over-enthusiastic teenage boy) has been a matter of shoulder-shrugging indifference for centuries in a culture that regards sex as something men do to/get from women, whose role is to hold out for marriage/commitment and whose pleasure is irrelevant.

And the old 'Waah Blame The Internet' sections about social media leading to insecurity is a bit suspect, as well. It wasn't the internet that started a whole genre of entertainment which features people begging for popular acceptance and being repeatedly humiliated. It wasn't the internet that started the practice of reporting any and every incident involving a woman or a girl by including a description of how 'attractive' the women or girls concerned are.

There is still a fairly strong desire among many politicians to be able to spy on and regulate internet use, and the easiest way to achieve public support for net censorship is to shock and frighten the public with InternetPornMostEvilThingEver type stories.
Funnily enough, there wasn't any internet porn when Jimmy Savile and Granville Jenner and all those other rich, powerful, white, well-connected men were raping and assaulting all those children...

The fact that internet porn is completely accessible to teenagers on their phones and utterly skews their perceptions of sex appears to be matter of shoulder shrugging indifference to porn apologists everywhere too................

Porn has been around long before the internet, yes, but the internet makes it much easier to access and by a much younger audience. The internet might not have started the popularity of porn, but I think it does contribute.

Nicked i agree with your point but also see what Gin means. IMO there is not one single contributing factor to this issue. Although as images are so easily availlable it seems to make it more acceptable .I have overheard teenage girls I work with over the last couple of years talking about it in my classroom quite unembarrassed.This would not have happened before such easy access.

Before there was porn, there were toxic attitudes: girls were either sluts or prudes, sex was currency, being raped was your own fault. Etc. Stamping and shrieking about porn is a way to not fix the corrosive problems of bad sex education and bad sex culture.

Isn't internet porn part of a bad sex culture?

For every single one of the billions of people on this planet there is a woman who spent months of her life in danger, discomfort and worry to grow them. Every single person put a woman in danger to be born. It is amazing that women do that, that they give up their bodily autonomy, and their safety to carry on the human race.

Cailindana, I never looked at it like this before and am entranced. thank you.

But if porn is where a lot of young people are learning/ forming ideas about sex, then doesn't that make porn a part of the bad sex education? Not the only part but a significant part imo.

I don't think it's about stamping and shrieking about porn, it's more about accepting that it's going to be around, it's highly likely our teenagers are going to access it, and finding a way to combat the negative influence it can have.

I want to post more but my battery is going flat, it takes me so long to put my words together so that I make (what I hope) is sense, that if I attempt another paragraph my device will go flat.

"Before there was porn, there were toxic attitudes: girls were either sluts or prudes, sex was currency, being raped was your own fault."

And now there is porn those attitudes are even more entrenched that ever. And come with pictures.

"Stamping and shrieking about porn is a way to not fix the corrosive problems of bad sex education and bad sex culture."

Nobody is "stamping and shrieking". That's the sort of thing apologists say to try to diminish anyone who speaks up against something. Remind me, SGB, do you have a personal involvement with pornography?

Yy cailin.

Yes, I work in the porn industry, which is why I have a problem with porn being used as a convenient scapegoat for longstanding negative attitudes towards women and sex. Focussing on porn, particularly internet porn, as The Thing That's Doing All The harm, keeps the authorities happy - not only does it help them bring in heavier censorship and intrusive surveillance of the internet, but it takes the heat off the awful mix of malice and sentimentality peddled by the mainstream press to manipulate behaviour, as well as various well-connected sexual predators who would prefer everything to be blamed on the internet rather than their own longstanding sense of entitlement.

A friend of mine used to work in the PR department of British American Tobacco. She could believe 3 impossible things before breakfast too.

Interestingly, she used to talk about the "hysteria" around smoking.........

LOL porn workers coming in to tell us about how porn isn't the problem. In the US, we get Walmart PR shills coming into anti-Walmart threads saying they are "walmart workers." According to them, Walmart's employees are well-paid and happy, never exploited!

SGB, can you remind me as I forget, are you a woman or a man?

Massive global industries are a form of coercion and authority in contemporary capitalism. Many industries have more power than nations, and governments elected by people through democratic means often struggle when they try to go up against these industries.

The porn industry is a form of authority. I'm sick of the narrative that it is some bunch of freedom fighters going up against the big, bad government. It isn't. It is the Macdonalds of sex.

I'm also sick of this whole idea that everyone (or at least all men, or all teen boys) need porn, look at porn, must have porn, and if you don't you are a prude and if you say your male partner doesn't you are delusional.

More people visit greetings cards sites than porn sites. It isn't as ubiquitous as people would have you believe.

Can we stop with the nastiness towards someone who works in the porn industry. SGB is a woman, she has over many years offered invaluable advice on the relationships board to women trying to escape absuive relationships, she is not a troll and should not be treated as such. I happen to disagree with her in that IMO a substantial amount of filmed pornography is produced under coercive and abusive conditions and is in fact filmed evidence of sexual assault - and the important thing - the end user cannot tell the difference. Porn does not come with a "fair trade" stamp. SGB believes it is possible to have "ethical porn" produced by consenting workers such as herself - I don't think, under present social conditions, this is possible without giving the green light to the wankers who want to produce the exploitative type, and for this reason I disagree with her. But it's an honest disgreement, with both of us coming from a starting point of concern for women.

And I am inclined to agree with her that misogyny creates abusive porn rather than vice versa (though it is a two way process - abusive porn then validates abusive men in their misogynistic world view in a very immediate and visceral way, by creating an almost pavlovian response whereby misogyny gets tied up with the reward centres in the brain). But she's right - misogyny, rape and the rest predate the internet.

What we do need (going back to the starting point of this thread) is a strategy for improving sex education so that children in their early teens are not forming their picture of what constitutes socially acceptable sexual behaviour from violent and abusive porn online. And I honestly think the main burden for doing this lies with people like me - parents of boys. I need to get across concepts of consent and bodily autonomy and integrity and respect for other people now - aged 5, 6, 7 - way before my DS gets interested in sex, through things like "It's only a game if everyone's smiling," "If someone asks you to stop tickling/playfighting, you stop," and the like.

I wasn't being nasty. But I don't recognise many of you here, so it was a genuine question.

Lurcio, nobody has suggested SGB is a troll. If you think people are troll hunters, take it up with MN.

And SGB is an employer in the sex industry and a pornographer. It is bizarre for you to refer to her solely as a worker.

"Can we stop with the nastiness towards someone who works in the porn industry. SGB is a woman, she has over many years offered invaluable advice on the relationships board to women trying to escape absuive relationships, she is not a troll and should not be treated as such."

I agree. I was not being nasty or treating her like a troll. I was treating her like an apologist for the porn industry. Which she is, in this particular context. I would be the first to cheer her on in other contexts.

Almondcakes: I do not employ anyone. I am self-employed. I have formerly been an employee. I was, at one point, a manager of a text-sex-chat service but still an employee.

I agree with Hakluyt. This forum is not a popularity contest. I agree with SGB on other issues which she is often great on, but she is an apologist for porn.

And I disagree that the burden mostly rests on parents of boys (who of course are mostly women). It rests on everyone in society and their toxic attitudes to women (especially teenage girls) and sex. Society always wants to dump everything on parents, as if we can educate young people to be all sunshine and rainbows and that will prepare them for a dog eat dog society that everyone else is not changing.

Sorry SGB. I was under the impression you have made films and hired other people to work on them.

I've read this thread with great interest. I've really enjoyed your posts Cailin.

This article has made me consider what current sex education looks like nationally and in my DD's particular schools. If anyone is looking for a way to actually do something, I found the Sex Education Forum. (which you might all be aware of, but I wasn't) www.sexeducationforum.org.uk/its-my-right

Almondcakes: No. (I'm not offended BTW just being clear). In some previous MN thread about porn a few years ago someone got hold of the idea that I am Anna Span, but I'm not, though I do know her - through feminist anti-censorship activism. I was a 'production assistant' (ie general dogsbody) on a shoot once or twice about 20 years ago, but that didn't involve being in charge of any hiring.