A simple guide to great sex-ed: how to talk about porn.
This is part of a wider blog series, where we explore how we all have a responsibility to have better, more open conversations about relationships and sex. Before reading this, make sure you’ve read why we think this is important, and our top tips to get you chatting. This is a blog for adults and educators.
What is porn?
When we think about porn, we might first think of PornHub: an online platform that has 10 million videos and 1.5 million hours of content freely available. But actually the definition of ‘pornography’ is much wider than that: it’s any visual or written material that depicts naked bodies or sexual activity which people consume for pleasure.
Porn has various shape-shifting and creative forms: film, imagery, art and writing. Erotic imagery stretches all the way back to 7200 BC and can be seen across history and cultures. The Greeks in particular loved to decorate their kitchenware with sexy illustrations.
Why is it important to talk about porn?
If young people aren’t learning about sex at school, or at home, lots of them turn to free porn as a source of education. And the age at which people are exposed to it is getting younger and younger, and is now at age 7. Considering that the huge amounts of free porn available on the internet are threaded with violent, misogynistic and racist content, using porn as a form of sex education does not tend to be a healthy learning experience.
The UK government spent a while playing with the idea of banning porn. But after 2 years of trying to implement the Digital Economy Act 2017, which included a ‘porn block’ with age verification, the UK government dropped the bill in 2019.
The solution here (drumroll please...) is education (you guessed it). We need honest, open conversations with young people about the realities of sex and porn. We need to equip them with criticality and self-awareness to enable them to live safe, healthy lives on the internet.
3 conversations on porn
1. “It’s not real.”
Porn is a performance carefully crafted to satisfy people’s fantasies (name an object...any object...someone will have an erotic fantasy about it).
In the same way that a Hollywood film has a set, a stylist, a make-up artist, specific camera angles, a director and actors who have spent thousands of pounds to look the way they do, so does porn. It isn’t a realistic representation of what sex is like. Alongside this, porn hardly ever includes contraception, consent or sexual health awareness, which are crucial elements of healthy sex.
It’s a multi-billion dollar industry and a completely fantasised version of sex.
2. “It can be damaging...”
Watching lots of porn can affect a young person’s expectations of sex in various different ways:
Bodies in porn are exaggerated.
In porn, the penises shown are an average of 8 inches (whereas in real life penises are actually 5 inches on average) and 80% of female porn stars have had some sort of plastic surgery. Also, most pornstars remove all pubic hair. Not because it’s ‘hotter’ or ‘more hygienic’ but because camera angles can get clearer shots of their genitals - the money shot.
Sexual performance in porn is exaggerated
Men take drugs in order to be able to have sex for a long time and women fake pleasure when something that looks pretty unpleasurable is happening to them. Both instances affect what ‘good’ sex looks like, and how young people may go on to have it.
Lots of porn is permeated with discrimination and violence.
The most common search terms on PornHub are linked to sexism, racism, incest and violence. Unsurprisingly, porn reflects the oppressive systems which play out all through society. This includes racism, ableism, fatphobia, anti-blackness to name but a few. It’s crucial to include conversations around these forms of discrimination when discussing porn.
It’s also important to understand that the way in which porn is now watched can impact sexual experience in real life, aside from skewing expectations. For example, the fact that people often switch between a number of tabs whilst watching porn, means that your brain comes to need a higher level of visual stimulation in order to feel aroused. This is why it’s important to mix it up and masturbate without porn from time to time.
3. …but lots of people watch it.
It’s crucial to get away from the stereotype that only teenage boys watch porn. This stereotype can make it feel mandatory for boys, and make girls feel ashamed if they watch it.
People of all sorts of different genders, ages, sexualities, abilities, backgrounds, jobs titles etc watch porn. It’s also a very important part of sexual experience for many who cannot, for various reasons, have sex with other people. It’s not a bad thing in itself to watch it, and it’s important to remove shame and stigma in order to have good conversations around it.
Porn performers are doing a job, as work. People should always be paid for their labour and sex workers should be respected. Ethical / feminist porn exists too, which moves away from the male gaze and has an ethical supply chain.
What next?
We’ve explored the idea that not all porn is bad in itself, but can be very damaging when ingested uncritically. Through having conversations like the above, you can help a young person build up their critical eye. This will protect them from absorbing the problematic narratives that porn can convey, and enable them to have healthy, happy sex in the future.
And remember, young people often turn to porn when they are not receiving comprehensive sex education - specifically one that includes pleasure - so the more sex-ed conversations you have, the more they will understand how porn does not reflect reality.
Please get in touch if you’ve put this into practice. Has it been useful, challenging, problematic, tough, or inspiring? We’d love to hear your feedback and experiences.
The next blog in the series will cover the topic of body image, and explore some of the most important conversations to start with young people.
If you’d rather us - at Split Banana - have these conversations then please get in touch on hello@splitbanana.co.uk. We can deliver directly to your group of young people and / or train you or your staff to do so.
For you to keep learning:
Read ‘We Need to Talk About Pornography’ by Vanessa Rogers, a book with activities that explore how porn might affect a young person.
Watch ‘The Sexy Lie’, a TED Talk by Caroline Heldman, who demonstrates how rife sexual objectification is in mainstream media and mindset.
Listen to The Butterfly Effect, a podcast by Jon Ronson, who explores the lives of real people who work in various roles in the porn industry.
For a young person to keep learning:
Read questions like ‘Why do the guys in porn last so long?’ on the FAQ section of BISH’s website.
Watch this short animation on porn from Amaze.org.
Listen to the VENT Weekly podcast from Vice, specifically this episode on porn and viagra addiction.
