The first time I saw porn I was 10. It was 2003, my BFF and I Asked Jeeves to show us ‘big boobs’, and we wound up on a clunky web page full of images of busty babes. I was fascinated by it, in part because I knew it was taboo, and I went back to that website whenever I had some time alone with the family computer. Throughout my teenage years this progressed to more videos and written smut (shoutout to the spicy fanfic community). Granted, this was all pre-2007, the year Pornhub came onto the scene and changed the landscape of online porn forever, but it was still graphic stuff that had a lasting impact on me: for good, and for bad.
My experiences are similar to research in a new report which found 50% of children have seen porn before the age of 13, and that this access to porn has damaging effects on young people’s attitudes towards sex. As hardcore porn is easier to access on social media and free tube sites than ever before, it’s shaping young people’s expectations of sex in heightened ways, and we have a right to be concerned.
There’s no denying that the prevalence of hardcore mainstream porn brings up a whole host of issues in how we view ourselves and others. Violence against women, a lack of bodily autonomy & visible consent, and prescriptive body images are all present on the homepage of any free tube site. It wasn’t until my early twenties that I realised sex was for my enjoyment just as much as my (then all) male partners, because much of the porn I’d consumed had been made by and for the male gaze. It took years of unlearning to centre myself in my own sexual narrative.
And the way porn fetishises identities is incredibly problematic. We hear a lot about the way women’s bodies are objectified in mainstream porn, but the racism embedded in the porn industry is less acknowledged and equally important. Racial typecasting in porn – the submissive Asian schoolgirl, the aggressive BBC (big black cock) – is one of many examples of systemic racism prevalent in all creative industries.
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But it’s important to flag that these issues aren’t created by porn. I see porn as a looking glass, which reflects our current culture back to us. It’s easy to point the finger at mainstream porn, rather than addressing the systemic issues of inequality and prejudice that exist throughout society, which can end up in our sexual fantasies as a result.
And though there’s the potential for porn to really damage our body image, particularly when it comes to genitals, I can confidently say Hollywood and social media fucked my relationship with my body as a teen way more than porn did.
Still, it does feel like free hardcore porn does more harm than good for most young people. When almost half of young people believe girls expect sex to involve physical aggression, it’s clear we need to take action to address this.
So, what can we do about this? Well, allow me to put my sex nerd hat on for a minute.
The Online Safety Bill plans to protect young people by further regulating online platforms hosting adult content (though how they’ll actually be able to achieve this is another matter). But I believe our efforts need to focus on education and informed, open conversations, just as much as, maybe even more than, tech legislation.
When I worked for the sexual health charity Brook and taught lessons about porn in a shame-free, open way, the surprise, intrigue, and relief on young people’s faces was remarkable. We cannot underestimate the power of giving teenagers permission to talk and think critically about porn. Relationship and sex education (RSE) is an essential ingredient in helping young people foster more positive relationships with sex, intimacy, and porn.
“Nudifying” AI tools that “undress” women in photos are gaining traction.
According to the Sexual Education Forum, school is the number one place where young people want to learn about sex (above their parents or in healthcare settings). So alongside legislation like the Online Safety Bill, the government must provide adequate funding and incentives for schools to deliver high-quality RSE. I realise that’s highly unlikely with our current government, but a girl can dream.
We can’t shy away from having these conversations, even if they’re awkward. If young people are accessing porn earlier than 13, we’ve got to reach them earlier. RSE shouldn’t be trying to catch up with the reality of young people’s lives, it should be preventative, bringing topics to young people before they may be experiencing them, so they’re better equipped to navigate them when they arise.
My old college Eliza Bell from Brook’s has got my back on this. “We need to be talking to young people so that they are prepared, and if they are watching porn it can be done with a critical eye and the understanding that this is not real life," she says. "We need to create safe spaces for them to be able to find out about sex and relationships and ask questions that they want answers too.”
And a crucial part of this is incorporating pleasure into the curriculum. “If somebody is educated about pleasure and that they have a right to pleasure, they will be better equipped to navigate the type of sex they want to be having and understand they don't just need to replicate porn”.
As a sex educator I want to be nuanced in my approach to porn. There’s no denying it does some really damaging stuff, but I can also see the good in it.
I remember how layered my own teenage moments were: sure, lots of the porn I was watching fell within a very prescriptive, and sometimes downright negative, depiction of sex, but these moments were also filled with curiosity and excitement. Porn played a hugely formative role in the early explorations of my sexuality. It provided a safe space to learn new things, explore fantasies and have parts of my identity validated. It’s over-simplistic to see all porn as inherently ‘bad’.
In order to foster positive relationships with it, we have to be braver in the way we talk about porn. If I’d had access to high-quality RSE when I was younger, it would have been a game changer. That’s not to say the damaging messages would go away, because we exist in a world where they’re everywhere, not just porn, but I’d like to imagine I would have spent less of my early sexual years trying to please others and see my body and sexuality through a normative lens, and could have started to really enjoy sex sooner.
Porn isn’t a static issue. The online landscape, and porn’s place in it, is so different to when I was a teenager, and it’ll evolve even more in the coming years. We need to be ready to adapt with that change, and sure, legislation can help with that, but it starts with providing the sex ed to today’s teenagers that we were denied.
