Every day girls are being forced to have degrading, violent sex their boyfriends have seen in porn

[IwantToRetire]

Almost every shift, it would happen again. A young girl writing in, describing what was quite clearly a rape, but not fully understanding that’s what had happened to her — almost always with a boy she was in a relationship with.

Every day, young girls would describe being pressured, coerced, manipulated, and downright forced to have painful sex, degrading sex, violent sex, and sex like their boyfriends had seen in porn. This charity wasn’t a rape crisis charity, but it was becoming one. I wasn’t a rape crisis worker, but I was becoming one. Quite quickly, I started to dread my shifts. After I’d clocked out, I didn’t feel fulfilled for my altruistic contribution to the world, but a deep rage at what was happening to young girls.

The impact of pornography appeared to infiltrate every shift. It happened in overt ways, like girls worried about the safety of being choked, or being expected to have anal sex, and then there were boys writing in, getting increasingly addicted to porn, unable to be turned on by a ‘real’ girl, and worried about their penis size or how long they can last. But there was a worrying covert impact too. A mass miseducation about what sexual consent really meant, sold to a generation raised on free, explicit, violent porn where up to 90% of the content shows physical aggression or violence, and women were the targets of this violence 97% of the time. Women in porn are almost always depicted as responding to this violence with pleasure or neutrality, meaning a generation of teens are internalising assumptions and expectations about the ‘sex’ expectation of young girls.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/every-day-girls-being-forced-112806827.html

Not posted to promote a book, but to recognise that this has been discussed now for more than a few years, and if anything, it is getting worse.

Thanks for sharing.

Yes, well is anyone surprised? The policing of porn is horrendous, it is everywhere and it is horrible!

This exactly why sex education, including positions and different ways of having sex needs to be, and is being taught in schools, so that kids are being given more of a balanced education on sex and consent and what sex should be. The amount of mumsnetters who get upset about the content of their 14 year olds sex ed class live in a dream world that their child doesn't need such information yet. Of course they do, because even if by some miracle they've not become sexually active yet, when they do they need to be armed with information that isn't just to assume what they've seen, or their partner has seen in porn. It's the way of the world now unfortunately. The internet is Pandora's box.

I doubt many Mumsnetters who have 14 year old daughters live in the fantasy world you describe, @mincepieandcustard.

What they are often 'upset' or, as I'd see it, angry about is not knowing what their children are being taught about sex & relationships, with everyone concerned seemingly colluding to keep this information away from parents.

Why do they need to be instructed as to positions? They'll find that out for themselves.

I don’t think most MN denizens object to sex education as such but to the pornification of sex education.

For what it’s worth, I think focusing on ‘positions’ and ‘consent’ is a very male-centric way of looking at things (to put it crudely: ‘how can I get my penis to its desired location and how can I make sure I don’t get into trouble after’), and a stronger emphasis on selecting a good lover, pleasure and how to have an orgasm would serve young girls much better.

Non penetrative sex could be discussed more in schools.

That is actually a radical feminist position, I recently learnt. But it takes a lot of there pressure away and also, As a pp said, moved it away from being penis / male centred.

As @TheirEminence has said above 👆

Teaching girls what to say no to is never going to work when the point at which they need to put it into practice is when they’re naked and pinned underneath a much stronger male who watches violent porn and wants to sexually humiliate them.

I don’t think most MN denizens object to sex education as such but to the pornification of sex education.

Exactly. The thought process of many “sex positive” sex education organisations seems to be “kids are going to see porn at 12, so it’s best that we teach them about pegging and rimming properly“. There’s a wealth of people and organisations who seem desperate to talk to young children about such things and a paucity of people who want to help children appreciate love and relationships and healthy age appropriate sexual contact.

Most humans got safely to adulthood without knowing what “docking” is, but people want 13 year olds to - literally - roll some dice and talk about it with peers and adults.

I agree, but when I've said previously on here that sex education should focus on function, safety, health, consent, and pleasure (pitched appropriately), it was heavily implied by several posters that I was a paedophile...

Personally I think it's very male-centric that the male orgasm is mentioned without batting an eye but when you want to talk about female pleasure it's too far. In many anatomical illustrations the clitoris is left out completely.

Don’t you think they’d be better off educated on some of the points made in that article?

It isn’t that long ago that we knew men who were sexually aroused by choking women had something really wrong with them. Before you go near the fact of them being aroused watching women (trafficked) being raped.

the group behind the your brain on porn website might be able to offer something constructive, you probably not so much.

@TheresaOfAvila "the group behind the your brain on porn website might be able to offer something constructive, you probably not so much."

What on earth are you talking about? I agree with everything the article says, I also despair when I see multiple MN threads where parents don't want their child having sex Ed because they think their child doesn't need to know anything beyond "the birds and the bees". There was literally a thread within the last week where a mum didn't want her 14 year old having sex ed and a poster literally said the comment about birds and bees!
Look at previous posts of mine, I work with victims of sexual violence, every single day I speak to CHILDREN who have been raped, often by their same age boyfriend, and very often they didn't realise it was rape at the time because it wasn't until later that they'd been taught consent in school.
What do you want the sex ed lesson to look like? They have an hour or 2 to try and at least arm young people with some knowledge, while it'd be lovely to have time to go into the physiology of the effects of porn on the brain, it would be lost on most 13/14 year olds who at that stage have no sexual reference experience to understand what that actually means. And most won't have the maturity to even discuss such a complex topic, especially in front of their peers.
I'm simply saying that there is a need for sex ed beyond "this is how not to get pregnant or get a STI". So thanks very much but I think you'll find that every day I have something constructive to say as I'm literally picking up the pieces of children's lives who have been impacted in the very worst way by this very subject.

For those that haven't read it, this book is quite an eye-opener;

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pornland-How-Porn-Hijacked-Sexuality/dp/0807001546

I'm coming round to the idea that we have to tear up the current model of "consent" and rebuild it from the bottom up. Women should/must, as an absolute baseline, have the absolute right to refuse sex with any person, any time, any way etc etc. In a heterosexual context, "consent" is pretty much meaningless, as iwhen it's relativistic between a man and a woman, that simply means that women are socialised to be malleable to male desires... men can pressure, coerce, cajole, sulk, blackmail etc women into agreeing to sex. Coerced consent is not freely given and it's not consent at all in any truly meaningful sense, as articles like the above clearly illustrate. Education is a good start, that saying "NO" is possible, as well as how to do the "YES" safely, which normally just means reducing the consequentiality of sex, so the male desire urge is fully maximised and fulfilled. Maybe it's not the best model for human society to have all our limbic desires available on tap at all times, consequences have a habit of revealing themselves out of the shadows of humans' failings. And all the porn torrenting out of the internet is leading humanity to a truly dark place 😰

Its almost got to the point where there need to be two different lessons.

The first one is about consent. It shouldn't get tangled up with sex positions or porn or whatever else is being spread across the internet.

Somehow to empower young women that they do have rights. It could be expanded to include issues like coercive control.

And then a "sex education" lesson, but informed by the lesson on consent.

But as previous posters have said, by the time the lessons happen, the damage has been done. Boys and young men will have already been contaminated by porn.

I recently saw this event advertised by Culture Reframed (Gail Dines) https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-impact-of-pornography-on-young-people-research-practice-solutions-registration-711469754187

And this one, related, and I was going to say not about children, but then ...

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/breaking-the-cycle-tickets-684219929227

I think most of the outrage at sex education classes are around those that normalise the content of extreme and violent pornography.

Children don't need lessons on how to choke safely. They need lessons on it being extreme behaviour that originated from some incredibly hateful men that worked in the pornography industry.

Seems that this is now an issue that women write novels about. Not sure how helpful that is.

“Sex ed needs to cover explicit topics to reflect what young people are seeing,” says Devon. “Many kids stumble across porn on TikTok or YouTube, or a friend shows them.

“So if we don’t grow up and go: ‘We need to teach kids about things like consent’, then the internet will educate them.”

Something that schools and parents find challenging is the popularity of Andrew Tate with boys and young men. Having asked them what they find appealing about Tate, Devon explains that he makes boys “feel the enemy is female emancipation and they’d be happier if men were ‘real men’”. When she tells boys: “I don’t like him, but you’re entitled to your opinion,” it makes them stop and take stock.

Nothing will happen with violence against women and girls, Devon points out, until we bring boys and men into the conversation. “But they can get defensive hearing the term toxic masculinity. We don’t mean masculinity is toxic – we mean this idea of prescribed ways to be a man. So I challenge stereotypes and introduce boys to positive role models. There’s more than one way to do masculinity.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/09/if-we-dont-teach-kids-about-consent-the-internet-will-natasha-devon-on-the-importance-of-sex-education

I think this is not only important, but a massive topic.
I’m always suprised how little this topic sparks conversation.
And yes, I realize I haven’t said much either.

Porn / ’sex’ industry as a whole is so terrible and anti-women, it’s not even ’only’ about the pressure women have to keep up with it and to accept it in their lives and relationships.

I will never understand women who can just giggle, shrug shoulder and go ”oh well”.

Hey op!
Have you thought about posting this also on AIBU?
I think this is important topic outside of feminism too.
I do understand if you don’t want to risk the ”porn is awesome” type of comments, though.
But maybe it’s still good for parents with daughters to see, so hopefully it can open conversation between them.

and a stronger emphasis on selecting a good lover, pleasure and how to have an orgasm would serve young girls much better

Agree. But when the teachers themselves cant stop giggling at the word clitoris where do you start, this was on one of the jamies dream school type programmes on Channel 4 several years ago.

Have you thought about posting this also on AIBU?

Quite honestly no. As it is I spend far too much time here, and need to set myself a time limit!

But please post it yourself.

In fact I dont have children, but every day I am shocked by what I here is happening to young women.

And on a different level I am very concerned about the influences young men are responding to.

Its on issues like this that I start to think we need state controlled media and internet!!!!

I hated it when I was growing up thinking all these stuffy old people were writing and making tv (ie pre internet) that was so "out of date".

But this free market(?) approach to the media, and the wild west of the internet makes me think there has to be better legislation.

I'm coming round to the idea that we have to tear up the current model of "consent" and rebuild it from the bottom up. Women should/must, as an absolute baseline, have the absolute right to refuse sex with any person, any time, any way etc etc.

Do you not think we do? Or at least, in theory? Of course, we do not have it as an absolute right in practice, because men assault and rape us.

Well, of course we do, in theory, and we should, but we don't, as evidenced by the heavy prevalence of rape and the near impossibility to convict or even prosecute for it. Whilst I of course believe in consent as a necessary floor, it's treated like a sufficient ceiling, but it's not... All that means is if men can't take women cavalierly as they please without acknowledging consent, they just play games by manipulating the concept of consent... They lie, they treat consent as the start of a negotiation, they get women tipsy or paralytic, they sulk, they implicitly/explicitly promise a relationship, they sulk and withdraw affection, they bribe, they blackmail, they browbeat, they lovebomb, they breadcrumb. When consent is a moveable dynamic in the relationality between men and women, and men (as a class) have the more powerful and chthonic sex drives, women's ability to give a true meaningful consensual YES is vastly diminished. On top of that, women are socialised into agreeableness... when that meets male libidinousness head on, women's autonomy dissipates.

I've come to believe (in a both/and sense, not either/or) that we need both relativistic consent between men and women and a strong deontological ethic around sex in order to have a fully orbed framework of human sexuality in order to protect women from abuse, rape and coercion, and all the downstream consequences of unconsidered and uncommitted sex. Kind of like having 2-factor authentication set up when you log into your online banking account. One layer of protection alone isn't enough to protect against malevolent actors.

Maybe there should be a crime along the lines of “causation of sexual injuries”. If you hurt someone during sex, you’re liable. You could make it possible to have some kind of waiver, signed and witnessed, that permitted some low levels of risk, but the default should be, you hurt someone with more than a few scratches and a hickey, you’re going down. No more, she liked it rough and it went too far, I thought she liked it, etc. You leave finger marks on a neck, you do time. You leave someone with anal injures because you “slipped” and then “couldn’t stop yourself”, you do time. Place the barrier at harm, as well as consent, and we’d see a whole lot more prosecutions and a very different approach to sex from men.