V iolence against women is never far from the news, but currently it is high on the agenda — and porn features again and again as a factor. Pybus — who was sentenced to four years and eight months last month for manslaughter after strangling a vulnerable woman during sex — was also known to use violent porn. Tackling porn culture is clearly a key part of tackling sexual violence towards women. I have campaigned to end the sex trade for decades, and am well aware of its role in the sexual exploitation of women. Last weekend, the very first virtual international conference about how to teach sex education from a feminist perspective and a porn-critical lens took place. Just as movies can sometimes contain valuable insights, so can porn. In short, it has become more sadistic and extreme.
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Michelle Samuels
Young adults ages years old in the US say that porn is their most helpful source of information about how to have sex, according to a new study led by a School of Public Health researcher and published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. In the nationally representative survey, a quarter of young adults said porn was their most helpful source of information about how to have sex. Slightly less than a quarter said sexual partners were the most helpful source, and fewer pointed to friends, parents, media, or healthcare professionals. However, female respondents were much more likely than male respondents to report that their partners were the most helpful source of information about how to have sex. Heterosexual men were most likely to say that porn was their most helpful source of information about how to have sex. Rothman and colleagues at Indiana University School of Public Health—Bloomington used data from the Indiana University—based National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior , and analyzed responses from young adults years old and adolescents years old who said that they had gotten helpful information about how to have sex. Among year-old adolescents, parents were the leading source of information, followed by friends.
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D o you ever get that thing, that slightly psychedelic thing, when you hear an idea so good that it changes how you encounter the rest of the world? When it installs itself like a migrainous aura in your vision, colouring unrelated thoughts, its simplicity offering whispered suggestions for other ways a problem might be solved? It happened for me with porn. I could not love this more. There is something about the suggestion that the very shape of our education — not just the content of lessons — must be adapted and remoulded in order to improve modern lives, that keeps speaking to me, whether in discussions about policing, the politicisation of masks or choices on what to have for lunch. And the one I keep coming back to is fertility. No, across my borough of the internet at least, there was a collective scoff so loud that I believe a couple of laptop screens shattered. It is true that fewer babies are being born. Apart from being taught how to prevent pregnancy, boys and men are encouraged to remain blissfully ignorant in matters of fertility, loud orchestral strings traditionally playing over conversations about dwindling eggs or indeed sluggish sperm, in order perhaps, to maintain the romance.
Although the study, published by the Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine , is a small one, the researchers said it offers a window into a risky sex behavior that has so far been given little legitimacy. More than half of the girls who reported experiencing group sex said they had been coerced into doing so, according to the study. Many admitted they had been "liquored up" on alcohol and drugs, often against their will. The average age of the first group-sex experience was Rothman interviewed females between the ages of 14 and 20 who had used a community or school-based health center to see if they had ever had sex with multiple partners.
