Our supporter Dr Lynne Harne has written this critique of the Teaching Programme ‘Let’s Talk About Porn’ produced by the consultancy South West Grid for Learning.
The ‘Let’s Talk about Porn’ programme comes from the private consultancy South West Grid for Learning, whose main work is to assist schools to maintain their own online safety. This makes it even more shocking that the programme being sold to schools for years 9 upwards is not about keeping children safe from the harms of easily accessible mainstream porn online. Its main message given in the teachers’ notes and reflected in the power point presentation for children is that porn is relatively harmless, that looking at it is ‘natural’; that it is merely ‘entertainment,’ and that in some cases it can even be educative for children. This is largely justified through its history of pornography at the beginning of the teachers’ notes (lifted mainly from Wikipedia) and its contention that there is no research evidence which demonstrates the harmful impacts of watching it on children. This is an absolute falsehood as numerous international research studies demonstrate the exact opposite of this assertion.
Sexism and Misogyny
The resource provides no definition of porn and there is no acknowledgement of its obvious and blatant sexism and misogyny. It does not recognise that porn is produced largely by men for male sexual pleasure in its historical account, or in its so called Myth Busters (see below). Nor does it recognise that women are represented as mere sexual objects to be used by men for their own sexual arousal.
It pays no attention to the 90% of mainstream porn which shows the overt violence, degradation and humiliation of the women involved in making it and which can be highly distressing to the girls and young women who see it. This lack of recognition of violence towards women, which remains easily accessible to children, seems to be reflected in the statement made by the writer of the pack. She describes this misogyny as the ‘darker side of porn,’ and says ‘while this is important to be aware of and know how to report, this is not the kind of porn people are consuming everyday and it is not very common’ p. 8.
However, the research evidence indicates that this is just the kind of porn that millions are viewing every day. As the statistics show, violent porn is no longer defined as hardcore; it has become mainstream and is easily freely accessible on mainstream porn sites such as Porn Hub. [i] Porn Hub has been shown to host videos of child rape, rape of adult women, and trafficked women. [ii]
Impacts of watching Violent Porn
The resource does not acknowledge that watching such violent porn can change boys’ attitudes and behaviour towards girls, making them much more aggressive and contemptuous. The research evidence shows that watching porn can encourage boys to approve sexual violence towards girls such as rape and demand that girls submit to violent and unhealthy sexual practices. [iii] It does acknowledge that one of the impacts on boys (although not specifically named as boys) is that they can become ‘desensitised’ through watching porn, or can become addicted. But it does not state that this is through watching sexual violence towards girls. In fact, nowhere is the proliferation of mainstream porn’s representation of women experiencing physical and sexual violence and verbal humiliation discussed.
The teaching guide says that there is no evidence that children are harmed by looking at porn. At the end of the introduction for teachers it says, ‘in the news and across the media porn is often portrayed as something bad and damaging especially for children, when in fact we don’t know what the effects are as there is not enough evidence’ (p14).
It justifies this assertion by citing one piece of research which has used the charging of young males with sex crime as a measure of the association between watching pornography and male sexual crimes. This is a highly dubious measure, as sexual crime against girls and young women is vastly underreported to the police and even when it is reported no charges are usually made. A male under 18 frequently only receives a caution for sexual violence towards young women. The author of the resource clearly believes that watching porn is not harmful and has given little consideration to the wealth of evidence that shows it is.
Safeguarding children in the classroom
When discussing pornography, teachers need to be aware that there will be children in the class who are currently or have previously suffered sexual abuse, rape, and Child Sexual Exploitation, and that these children may not be known to teaching staff. The teacher should have a strategy in place that acknowledges this and be watching children closely for distress; ideally there should be two members of staff, one to take the lesson and one to watch students for reactions. Prior to teaching the lesson, the teacher should have alerted the DSL that the lesson is taking place and they need to be on standby. There may be girls in the class who justifiably fear that they feature in ‘porn’ which may be watched by an unknown number of people. There may be girls who have already experienced sexual abuse or sexual harassment from their male peers as a consequence of watching porn.
The teaching notes do not acknowledge any of these issues or make teachers aware of their safeguarding responsibilities, including around disclosures. Teachers need to consider whether their approach to teaching about porn will make it more or less likely that a child feels able to disclose abuse. Normalising the consumption of women’s bodies for sexual pleasure as normal and harmless may reduce the likelihood of girls feeling able to seek help.
‘Myth Busters’
Its main messages are contained in so called ‘myth busters’ to be discussed with the class. In myth buster 2, it does make some acknowledgement of how girls’ body image can be affected by looking at the bodies of female ‘porn stars’ who are often portrayed as having perfect female bodies but with enormous surgically reconstructed breasts and bottoms. In myth buster 4 it recognises that female sexual pleasure is not represented in porn, as ‘porn stars’ only pretend to have orgasms, but this section is quite limited. Although it says that many women cannot orgasm just through penetration, it does not mention the clitoris as the site of female sexual pleasure. The only sexual practice it does critique is anal sex for heterosexuals and it does give some information about how it can physically harm female bodies and increase the transmission of sexual infectious diseases for girls and boys (myth buster 6). It also addresses some of the health issues represented in the making of porn, such as the non-use of condoms and the misrepresentation of the size of men’s penises (Myth busters 7 and 8).
Myth buster 3 is the most harmful since it states that porn being mainly for men and for heterosexuals is not true and it rationalises this statement by saying there is now porn for all diverse groups. These are listed as gay men, lesbians, trans and disabled people.
But in fact, all this ‘diverse’ porn is focused on male sexual pleasure. Lesbian porn for example has been specifically produced to arouse male excitement.’[iv]
Myth buster 9 acknowledges that porn is racist but doesn’t link this to the additional dehumanisation of black and ethnic minority women. There is no acknowledgement that the porn category ‘interracial’ is actually made for white men to watch and reproduces highly racist oversexualised stereotypes of black men and black women. [v]
Legality of porn
The section on the legality of porn is unclear and misleading. It does not recognise that much of what is defined as illegal porn in the UK is now mainstream porn.
“A brief history of porn”
In the very poor history section, nudity and porn are simply conflated. This includes ancient figurines of goddess worship, which show women giving birth and go back to a time before patriarchy was fully established when people did worship women’s fertility. At the end of the history section, it says that ‘from this history I think we can conclude that it has always been part of human nature to be interested in porn.’
Porn is described throughout as something that is harmless fun; those who object to it or limit it through law are described as ‘haters’ (p5)
The abuse of an under-age (under 18) teenager in pornographic films in 1987 is described in lighthearted terms as a ‘scandal!’ (p6).
The resource makes several arguments against government attempts to reduce children’s access to viewing porn, with little attempt to balance this view (p8). This puts the concerns of adult consumers of porn (not to have their viewing exposed or have details hacked) above the safeguarding needs of children to be protected from exposure to it.
In conclusion this pack this does not address the safeguarding of children as its primary goal in its messages and cannot and should not be used as a teaching material.
[ii] www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55333403
[iii] https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/about/about-us/
[iv] See the porn site called ‘wild girls’
[v] https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/07/pornhub-black-lives-matter-genre-racism.html