Teens traumatised by porn - Guardian

[drhf]

Couldn’t see a thread for this already - Mixed bag piece in the Guardian with young adults powerfully and bravely describing how watching extreme porn as teens affected them - mostly very harmfully.
www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/10/readers-how-watching-porn-young-age-affected-their-life

Then this bit: “Jamie teaches sex education in an all-girls school. He said: ‘Porn doesn’t change people’s sexual behaviour in a vacuum. If a young man has been socialised into a misogynistic worldview then porn may shape it further. But I don’t agree that someone who understands consent and respect will be harmed by the porn they see. I view BDSM, which some see as extreme, and it has done no harm to me. It is also very popular. It doesn’t imply a real-life desire to hurt people. I’ve read research and found no robust evidence that porn causes harm. People who feel harmed by watching porn may be suffering because of their internalised shame. The solution is not abstinence, it is robust comprehensive sex education.’”

Then that’s the end of the piece - no comment, analysis or counter view. What is a man (if Jamie is a man) with those views doing teaching RSE in a girls’ school: “People who feel harmed by watching porn may be suffering because of their internalized shame”?

No possibility then that teenage girls could be horrified or traumatised at the thought that many potential partners expect brutalization as a routine part of sex? Or that they might feel concerned about whether the “performers” have freely consented, and be worried about their welfare? Or disgusted that sexual violence against women is so normalised that a teacher thinks girls who are distressed by it need to be educated out of their “internalized shame”?

Not sure I’ve got the stomach to read this one.

It's so terribly sad. I grew up in the 70s where "The Joy of Sex" was the popular book. And women expected to enjoy themselves and men were expected to be good lovers!
Why aren't parents instructing teen boys?
Why are they telling teen girls that boys need to be caring lovers or forget it!
Porn is evil.

Bother " why aren't they telling teen girls"

Frankly Jamie sounds to be a danger to children. There are some adults who believe that their porn soaked, sexually incontinent attitudes make them suitable to be sex educators. They get off on sharing their beliefs with children & encroaching on children's boundaries and natural cautious instincts.

But of course watching porn affects how young people view sex, especially for those (over 20% of boys in one survey) who say that they get all their sex education from watching porn.

And just think of being strangled during sex as a form of intensifying the orgasmic experience (it's called choking, but the correct term is strangling):

Many years ago I read about erotic asphyxiation online, and the references were all about men who had died accidentally doing this or about men who practised it. There wasn't a single reference to women, but suddenly it's supposed to be what men do to women in sex because women want it, and the men don't seem to want it now?

This change is due to pornography watching, and so is the view that all women should shave their pubic area. It has been done in porn for different reasons, but the fashion began there.

Every day, I hear of some new misogyny women and girls are subject to. Porn is fucking evil, and when you hear a man normalising it, you know you’ve found a porn-addicted pervert. His hard drive needs checking, as people say.

The Children's Commissioner's recent research significantly disagrees with Jamie about the harm porn is doing to children:

www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/report/a-lot-of-it-is-actually-just-abuse-young-people-and-pornography/

Well Jamie might realise the harm when he can no longer get it up in a safe, loving situation but he's alright now so who cares about anyone else, eh? What a tool.

Jamie needs sacking. I'm going to check and make sure there's not a "Jamie" working at my girl's school as he sounds like a right tosser (in every sense of the word).

I grew up in the 70s where "The Joy of Sex" was the popular book. And women expected to enjoy themselves and men were expected to be good lovers!

Me too, @QueenHippolyta. My heart bleeds for the young women facing today's porn soaked blokes.

Bollox. I've helped women traumatised by porn they saw as children in the last century on VHS.

I wouldn’t let Jamie anywhere near teenage girls if it were up to me. Let alone teaching them RSE.

Jamie is an idiot. Just because he's read some research and he hasn't managed to find any evidence of harm doesn't make it so. He is totally ignorant of the fact that his probably biased reading around this is nothing like a proper systematic review of the available research done by a proper researcher. With supervision, research methods and peer review.

But sure, let's just quote Jamie in a national newspaper without applying any critical thinking skills to what he is saying.

The Graun really is a misogynist’s dream rag these days. People think of it as a liberal left newspaper - it might lean left politically still but it’s run by a load of beardy woke bros and lead by a massive handmaiden in Kath Viner. I have zero time for it.

Didn't he. That was a very uncomfortable part to read.

I hope Jamie doesnt actually teach sex education to young girls.

Where did they get it? As you would have had to go to a special video place to ask for it and rent/buy it. And porn video places wouldn't let children in.
Unless their parents had it.

When Jamie says:
People who feel harmed by watching porn may be suffering because of their internalised shame. The solution is not abstinence, it is robust comprehensive sex education
Jamie demonstrates that it is his interests in BDSM that inform his teaching, not the children's educational needs, knowledge of sex education teaching or any trauma informed research.

It's ironic that at a time when we have trigger warnings about all sorts, people like Jamie are allowed to foist his porn informed version of "robust sex education" on unconsenting children.

Christ on an electric scooter. Nervermind red flag, that's rows and rows of bright red bunting.

Jamie has absolutely zero empathy for the girls he teaches. That he can't stretch his imagination far enough to comprehend why his young charges might be horrified by the material he uses to make his penis go hard, speaks volumes.

He should be nowhere near sex education. I dread to think what he is teaching them.

So a teacher at a girls’ school thinks it’s fine to admit to watching BDSM porn to a national newspaper?

Jamie needs more ‘internalised shame’.

It's chilling that Jamie is working in a girls school, teaching RSE. Absolutely chilling.

@QueenHippolyta it has been for a long time common in child sexual abuse, and well recognised, for people that children know to show them pornography as a way of normalising sex and compromising sexual boundaries (and/or, in neglect, not safeguarding children from watching it if it’s around).

This was well known when most porn was relatively restricted; today when it’s available everywhere via the internet, and far more hardcore than ever, the porn industry and its various apologists (like the guy in the above article), seem to want to rehabilitate porn as fantastic sexual education. When actually it’s society-wide abuse of children on a grand scale.

NomadicSpirit· Today 18:32
Jamie needs sacking. I'm going to check and make sure there's not a "Jamie" working at my girl's school as he sounds like a right tosser (in every sense of the word)

He does need sacking.

I cannot imagine why a man has been put in charge of sex education at a girls’ school anyway.

ehb102 · Today 18:56
Bollox. I've helped women traumatised by porn they saw as children in the last century on VHS.

This was in reply to the previous poster talking about the innocent days of The Joy of Sex.

You may well and it certainly was around.
But it was not exactly on 24hr intravenous supply via phone like it has been over the last fifteen years, and not every family by any means had porn videos in their house for children to find.

I also don’t think it had the same content.
Girls in real life were not ending up strangled, spat on, buggered etc.

Oddly, instead of talking about “having sex”, sex used to be called “ making love”.
That may have been a bit of a euphemism but it tells you something.

Jamie is a creep.

Who the fuck brags about their special interest in wanking to BDSM porn in a national newspaper when being interviewed due to your job as an RSE teacher at a girls school?

Jamie does.

And platformed by the Guardian.... No change there I see.