I'm heading off to the airport in about
four hours (and afterwards will be mostly offline for
the next two weeks while away) and didn't intend to write
a blog entry today. Then, thanks to writer Neesha Meminger,
I read the following article in The Telegraph:
Malorie Blackman, young adult writer and
newly-appointed children's laureate for the United Kingdom
told the British newspaper, "I was reading an article
three weeks ago where this teenage girl was saying everything
her boyfriend knew about sex he knew from porn. He was
brutalising her, because that's what he thought sex was
about from watching online. It made me angry and it made
me sad. I thought well, this is exactly why we need not
just sex education in schools but also books that tackle
the subject of relationships and your first time. Otherwise
teens and young adults will get their information from
somewhere and in this case it was getting it from porn.
I would rather my daughter read about a loving sexual
relationship in a book—whether it works or whether
it doesn't—but in that context, than getting her
information from innuendo and from porn and the rest of
it."
I'm mentioning Malorie Blackman's stance
because as a young adult writer this subject is something
I've given a lot of thought to over the years. Shortly
after I began writing for teens I also began haunting
comprehensive sex ed website Scarleteen
to delve into how teen sexual relationships and issues
had changed since I was a young person. I also read and
continue to read as much other information on young people's
sexuality as I can—studies, articles, books like
Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High
School, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of
Masculinity, and Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women
and the Rise of Raunch Culture.
There have been some great strides made
in Canadian society since I went to high school in the
eighties. I never saw a pregnant girl at my Catholic High
school the entire time I was there. No one felt free to
be gay and out either. Unwed pregnancy and homosexuality
were generally things to be shoved into the closet. Since
then gay marriage has been legalized in Canada and several
other countries, and we've been moving away from vilifying
pregnant teenagers. There's still progress to be made
in these areas, but at least we're heading in the right
direction.
However, there are other areas of society
where this is not the case. One negative thing my generation
didn't have to deal with as teenagers was the ubiquitous
presence of hardcore pornography based on cruelty and
the humiliation of women and girls. Those hardcore materials
existed, yes, but not within easy reach and unlimited
access twenty-four hours a day. The much more common pornography
of the day was pictures of naked women in Playboy
or Penthouse magazines, exponentially tamer
stuff than the majority of pornography accessed over the
internet today.
There is evidence that suggests the developing
teenage brain is especially susceptible to some of the
long term effects of pornography. A recent Toronto Star
article called
Is pornography changing how teens view sex? cites
experts who believe the use of porn among teenagers is
impacting their notions of normal sexual behaviour and
their views on women.
But first of all, what is pornography
like today?
"In a 2010 analysis of 50 randomly selected adult films, researchers found high levels of verbal and physical aggression. Of the 304 scenes analyzed, 88 per cent contained physical aggression, including spanking, gagging and slapping, while nearly 50 per cent contained verbal abuse, particularly name-calling. In most cases, the men were dominant and the women almost always responded neutrally or with pleasure. Only 10 per cent of scenes contained positive sexual behaviour."Adolescent sexuality expert Maree Crabbe's documentary Love and Sex in an Age of Pornography interviewed 70 young Australians as well as LA-based porn performers. In the documentary, veteran porn performer, Nina Hartley, says extreme, sexual "circus acts" have become mainstream and Imre Pager, "who performs as Anthony Hardwood since 1997, says there's been a shift from 'lovey, dovey sex' to 'one girl with four guys' who 'just take over and . . . destroy her'."
"Physical aggression depicted in pornography includes gagging, choking and spanking," Crabbe says, yet "a viewer doesn't see the target reacting to the aggression, they see a woman who likes being choked, gagged and hit...Porn not only routinely portrays gender stereotypes and unequal gender relations, it says that they're sexy."Meanwhile a study of male undergraduates found that "nearly a quarter of them admitted they had acted sexually aggressively on a date, causing their date to cry, scream or plead." While official rape statistics are down in the U.S. there is some evidence to suggest that this may be due to shifting perceptions about what constitutes rape. "Almost 75% of women whose experience meets the legal definition of rape don't recognize themselves as victims. In the same survey, one in 12 men admitted to acting in ways that met the legal definition of rape or attempted rape, but 84% of them said what they did was "definitely not rape."
Robert Jensen, author of Getting Off:
Pornography and the End of Masculinity asks the question
"If contemporary porn shows scenes that are cruel,
degrading and violent to women, how does that affect the
perception of those who are raping and being raped? Do
they become more accepting of acts that would be deemed
rape years ago? It could be that porn is shifting the
way we even understand the term rape."
A three year long 2011 U.S. based study
of 10-15 year-olds showed that those who watched violent
X-rated material were six times more likely to self-report
sexually aggressive behaviour. In the United Kingdom The
National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
reports that the Number of sex offences by people under
the age of 18 has risen 38% since 2009/10. Claire Lilley,
policy adviser at the NSPCC said: 'We
hope our findings will ring alarm bells with the authorities
that this is a problem which needs urgent attention…While
more research needs to be done on this problem, we know
that technology and easy access to sexual material is
warping young people's views of what is normal or acceptable
behaviour."
Here are some quotes from fifteen and sixteen
year-old British teenage girls I pulled from a
2010 article about teenage boys and internet pornography:
* "Boys just want us to do all the stuff they see the porn stars do. It's as if we have to pretend we are in a movie. They want us to dress like porn stars in sexy underwear, have bodies that look like porn stars, and sound and behave like them too when we are alone. That's why we like to have our friends around us now."
* "It makes me feel so unhappy to be even asked about this stuff by a boy. So I try not to be alone with a boyfriend any more, to have a third wheel whenever I can."
* "I wish my parents would say I'm not allowed to be home alone with a boy. I wish they'd say boys aren't allowed in my bedroom. They make this big deal about 'trusting us', but that's not helping me. They have no idea what goes on, and I'm too embarrassed to tell them."
* [My boyfriend] even starts talking as if he's in a movie. Suddenly, when we are being intimate, he'll say something that he must have heard in a porn film. For example, he'll call me a 'bitch' and use dirty language that he'd never use normally. It's awful. It's so obvious he's copying his actions from watching porn."
There are, of course, other articles and
studies that refute hardcore pornography's influence on
teenagers. One that is often referred to is a recent study
which looked at 4,600 people 15 - 25 living in the Netherlands
and concluded that only between 0.3 percent and 4 percent
of the sexual behaviors in question could be attributed
to pornography use. If the United States, Britain
and Canada were on a par with the Netherlands regarding
sex education and positive attitudes about sexuality,
I might agree that internet pornography's influence on
young people in these countries would be similarly limited.
But in my own province of Ontario, where
sexual harassment at school is rampant, the sex ed
curriculum is fifteen
years old (shameful!).
So as things stand I'm in agreement with the article Talking to Teens about Pornography over at Everyday Health. It points out that the Netherlands, is "leaps and bounds ahead of the United States when it comes to sex education. They have a dramatically lower teen birth rate, as well as a lower abortion rate and a lower incidence of STDs. Much of this can be attributed to their behavior regarding sexuality. While our country still struggles to keep comprehensive sex education in schools, students in the Netherlands feel safe discussing sex openly with their teachers and parents. Rather than viewing sex as dirty or shameful, they tend to take a more open and positive view of their bodies and sexuality. It's a distinct cultural difference and one that should be taken into account when discussing this study and pornography, because for many American teens, pornography is all they ever learn about sex."
As hardcore pornography isn't likely to
disappear or shift away from negative images anytime soon,
it's crucial that parents and schools provide young men
and women with good progressive sex education, allowing
them to cope with the hardcore messages and images they're
inevitably exposed to (average age of first internet porn
exposure = 11), and countering those with information
on what a genuinely positive sexual relationship should
look and feel like. We can't inoculate teenagers against
the negative impact of pornography with an injection but
the Netherlands study shows that we can accomplish
that result with sex education and healthy societal views
on sex. Like Malorie Blackman, I feel young adult literature
has a responsibility here. It can and should play a role,
reflecting realistic sexual experiences, both good and
bad and thereby allowing teenagers to process aspects
of the experiences before they are ready to engage in
sex themselves. If you are writing young adult books that
don't fade to black when it comes to sex scenes and if
you're handling those scenes with honesty, without being exploitative, and neither glorifying sex nor demonizing
it, you are already personally my favourite kind of YA
writer. But more importantly, you're helping empower young
people who are living in a highly sexually charged culture.
