Very sad article about porn and how it affects relationships for young women

[Italiangreyhound]

Interesting and deeply saddening article about porn and how it affects relationships for young women.

fightthenewdrug.org/sex-before-kissing-15-year-old-girls-dealing-with-boys/

Both young men and young women need to be educated. If boys learn about loving relationships and girls learn that they can say no, then progress will be made. If boys heard the word no, they would start to rethink their position as it is not getting them anywhere.

I am very aware of the pressures these young people are under - I have talked to one 13 year old boy who is incredibly naive and totally confused about some of the pictures (from girls aged about 12) that arrive on his phone. It is so hard for young men to find their way, plotting a path that respects women and results in happy relationships and families.

Yep, I agree with you there

But the first lesson for young men surely is that they are responsible for their own behaviour

Not that they can be excused because the women let them do it

My generation of boys were quite embarrassed about watching porn, it had a bit of a sad loser image, real life sex was the pinnacle.

My generation of men were more concerned with lasting longer and making sure their partner orgasmed. It's so sad that they men have regressed like this.

There was also a man I met online who told me he was much younger than I think he probably was when I was about 14. He had me sending him photos, which started with quite 'tame' photos (bra on etc) which turned into completely explicit photos as he blackmailed me, he set up a fake social media profile and posted two photos to warn me when i tried to stop sending him photos. i felt so, so ashamed- i felt it was all my fault and there was no way i could tell anyone. It has completely messed me up. All of it. This is such an important topic. Sorry I feel im probably not making much sense but it is good to write it down anyway.

Oh Ave

I feel like what I can learn from is the fact that I never, ever questioned their behaviour- the culture children and young people are growing up in is so, so sexualised and objectification is the norm. It's horrific.

Yes, it is horrific. Ave, forgive me for asking but where were your parents when this was happening to you ?

My parents were quite distant- they loved me but my siblings had lots of problems, and these things just weren't spoken about. It was horrific, and isolating, and no one has ever heard any of this. it's slightly surreal to be typing it

I think they let you down, Ave

i find that really difficult :(

Aveiam, I think you have hit the nail on the head when you say that you never questioned their behaviour because of the culture surrounding you.

It is this whole normalisation of porn and the perceived inevitability that men will look at women this way.

It's very depressing. It reminds me of this question put to the Muslim leader Zakir Naik. The idea that men look at women as sex objects seems to be universal. In Islamic cultures the answer seems to be to "protect" women from it which effectively results in their exclusion from many things. Here the answer seems to be to exploit women and call it "empowerment". They are two sides of the same coin and it is always women who suffer.

Yes

I hope the model of enthusiastic consent will help to tackle these attitudes. And that people are teaching children that it is totally normal to enjoy sex and want to have sex and it is totally normal to feel nervous about sex and want to take things slowly and take your time and say no. But I feel like at the moment only the first part of that message is getting through so girls think they have to have sex to be normal

i feel like it's only going to get worse. It's completely ingrained in culture and not enough people care to tackle it and change it.

I'm only 22 so it wasn't too long ago that I was a teenager at school. The vast majority of the teenage boys I knew watched porn, and the majority of those that didn't want to were exposed to it anyway and/or would lie that they did.The boys that didn't watch porn were generally villified amongst boys; the girls that admitted to watching it were villified amongst girls (only a very small amount of them though I imagine others did who wouldn't admit to it). There was definitely an obsession with sex with a lot of the people I knew as a teenager. I would say me and my little 'group' of friends largely escaped that climate and were not really that interested for the most part but I think we may have been the exception rather than the rule to be honest (we were an alternative, nerdy bunch lol). DH said he first watched porn when he was 11; now that his cousin is turning 13 and still seems like such a little child, he feels really sad and weird about it.

On the question of education and blackmailing I think generally children should be taught how to deal with a blackmailer.

" Yes , I took my top off , so that makes me foolish but you are a criminal"

"Yes I nicked stuff from Topshop- I am going to own up and you are still a criminal"

I totally agree Lass. I was so ill equipped to deal with the blackmail. Had no idea that the police would have taken it seriously at all. Thought I would be in tonnes of trouble (which I would have from my parents which is wrong in itself) so I said nothing. It lasted at least 2 years. I'm very badly damaged by it and it's so common and unspoken about

Why DO girls do it?

I never had a boyfriend as teenager. I didn't particularly want one, and was not interested in the boys I knew, anyway, so I cannot quite understand it.

If you're in love as a teenager, is the need to be loved back so great that you endure such humiliations?

Is the porn so normalized that a demand to imitate it is seen as justified?

Of course we all want to be loved, but it's not really love if you have to have sex to get kisses, is it? I just don't understand where this desperation comes from, that will settle for a poor imitation of love and reenact porn to pay for it.

My hope is not consent culture (as girls could still be coerced to "consent"), my hope is that girls will be independent enough to just say "Nope" if they're asked to prostitute themselves for a bit of faked affection.
Though I don't know what is needed for that. Why ARE girls so dependent on boys?

I have no idea but it was a real thing for me; I didn't feel i had a choice.
I was definitely looking for someone to love me but it's just so much more complex than that

Sex education should include more about female pleasure imo. Not just more about consent and boundaries and safety.

I have experienced the power of the need to be "polite" myself, and that's how I got molested that one time. Though for me, I only went along with seemingly innocent things; and was just shocked when it turned out I had gotten into a dangerous situation because of that.

That's definitely one factor. Maybe there's also the "frog in boiling water" factor, where things get worse gradually so that you just don't notice until it's too late?

It is very complex, yes. I whould like to understand it better, to be able to avoid it. That situation I mentioned above was so creepy in hindsight, I just knew I acted against my better judgement, like I was being mind-controlled.

In the end, the only one to blame is the man who did it, but sometimes you can't get antibiotics and just have to strengthen your immune system.

Meeep there was a prog on channel 4 last year where a woman did a pilot project to teach sex education in a different way .....including teaching what pleasure women could get out of it.

A couple of the teachers were embarrassed and couldnt seem to handle it when the word clitoris was mentioned.

And the father of one of the teenage girls complained.

BadDo the stuff in bold is one of the saddest things ive ever read.

Im in my early 40s and glad i am the age i am now.

Ave