Whether intentional or not, the sexualised marketing to children is negatively impacting their lives, attuning them to pornographic themes and behaviour. Alongside relatively innocuous online games, such as Club Penguin, young boys can now access the Play Games Club, for example, which in amongst action games offers boys such raunchy games as Hot Gllrs, where the screen explodes with large-breasted young girls. There’s Naughty Classroom and Naughty Office where points are awarded for a variety of moves including players viewing women’s panties and breasts. There’s also the Funny Red Carpet game where boys have to join various objects together. Their reward? To systematically strip the girls of their clothes. These games encourage boys to be voyeuristic, to have denigrating attitudes towards girls and women. And having sampled this kind of material, young boys could be forgiven for assuming porn is the ‘natural’ next step.
One of the many concerns around this active sexualising of small children is their desire to re-enact the scenarios they’ve been exposed to on their peers, creating a new level of child abuse. Add to this the plethora of sexualised images on billboards and in ads, and MTV clips and it’s not hard to see how their attitudes are being shaped in unhealthy ways as they are actively encouraged to take part in predatory and/or risky behaviour. This early sexualisation of little boys is nothing short of abusive. It collapses vital parts of their humanity and erodes their ability to connect meaningfully with others. As professor of nursing, Ann Burgess from the University of Pennsylvania, reminds us that the formation of sexual identity is a gradual process that develops through the childhood and adolescent years. Left to their childhood, boys and girls generally do not have a natural sexual sense until they are between 10 and 12 years old. Previously, most children came to understand the sexual landscape and their own emerging sexuality in age-appropriate stages, which are now hastened and distorted by the sexualised climate our children are immersed in. According to Burgess, this leaves boys and girls “confused, changed, and damaged” (Burgess, 1997).
Rowan, a youth worker, told me: “We are now seeing children grooming younger kids for sex, there’s a real seduction pattern going on” (in Hamilton, 2010, p. 64).
We’re now seeing kids sexually active way under 10, because of access to porn or their parents’ own behaviour. I’ve seen many cases where porn is readily left around the home, where it’s part of the family culture. Then you’ve got parents who carefully stash their porn away, and kids have a way of finding it (in Hamilton, 2010 p. 68).
These incidents are happening in homes across the socio-economic spectrum.
As boys grow, so does the desensitisation. The challenge for boys in the popular Grand Theft Auto is to progress as far as they can in the world of organised crime. To win, boys have to commit a range of crimes from killing cops to getting involved in prostitution. In the Microsoft and console versions of the San Andreas game there’s a sex mini-game, the ‘hot coffee mod’, where players can have sex with their online girlfriend. In the fantasy and science fiction online games MUDs (multiple user dungeon virtual games), and MMORPGs (massively multiple player online role-playing games) such as Rune Scape, there are opportunities for any boy able to find his way around this game to take part in virtual sex or cybering. Here, their avatars (online personas) can simulate sex with other consenting avatars. Those in the know can also highjack someone else’s avatars and use them in violent or sexual ways (Hamilton, 2010, p. 162). While some games have an MA15+ classification, there is nothing to prevent younger children in Australia purchasing and playing these games as long as they have a parent’s consent.
In virtual worlds such as Second Life, there are thousands of sex workers willing to perform virtual sex for ‘Lindens’ (Second Life currency) or for real money. Other sites have been set up purely to offer virtual sex (Ruberg, 2007). On YouTube there are several highly lucrative porn equivalents. Here millions of viewers can watch endless video clips of live sex. Some videos are professional, many homemade. While some content is free, others charge people to view every sexual act imaginable. Children and teenagers are accessing virtual sex sites, viewing live sex via web cams and chat roulette, amateur porn through such sites as redtube (one of a number of YouTube porn sites), and sharing sexual images on mobile phones and through email.
A Canadian study of 13 to 14-year-old boys in urban and rural areas revealed that more than a third of these boys viewed pornographic movies and DVDs ‘too many times to count’. Just over 7 out of 10 of these boys accessed pornography on the Net. More than half saw it on a specialty TV channel. In this same study 2 out of 10 boys viewed porn at the home of a friend (Betkowski, 2007).
In a few short years, porn has become a ‘natural’ part of teen life for a significant number of boys. This was borne out in my research for What’s Happening To Our Boys? As Hunter, 18, explained, “Porno is so easy to access now with technology, to access and to buy” (in Hamilton, 2010, p. 221). Harrison, 15, agreed:
There’s the porno aspect of the Internet now. Kids don’t have to buy it off older boys like they used to do. It’s readily accessible too. Some boys use it quite regularly. There’s quite a culture of it. Inside jokes and words. A lot of boys talk about it in an open and relaxed manner. Most of my peer group admit to doing it. It can change the way boys talk in groups (in Hamilton, 2010, p. 222).
The boys I spoke with were very relaxed when talking about their experiences around porn. They had no sense that this mass access is a new phenomenon.
Dr Michael Flood, who headed up the Violence Against Women Program, a partnership between VicHealth and Latrobe University from 2008 to 2010, points out that the Internet is an ideal medium for boys wanting to access porn, as there’s an almost endless amount of material they can view anonymously, customise, and store for on-going access (Flood, 2007, p. 48). Like many professionals, he is at pains to emphasise that pornography is a poor sex educator (Flood, 2007, p. 58). Porn shuts down a boy’s natural feeling, as it places little value on intimacy, empathy or respect of partners in pornographic material. A growing body of research also shows that viewing porn is likely to make boys more sexually aggressive, to do whatever they feel they can get away with, and to want to act out what they have seen (Flood, 2009, p. 390). One Canadian study of teen boys revealed that those who regularly accessed porn tended to think it was okay to hold a girl down and force her to have sex (Wellard, 2001, pp. 26–27). A 2008 White Ribbon Foundation report found 1 in 7 boys thought it was OK to force a girl to have sex if she had been ‘flirting’ with him (Flood and Fergus, 2008, p. 24).
Educators are very aware of the fallout from porn and the wider hypersexualised landscape boys now inhabit. “It all starts with the language – how sex is referred to. Young boys talking about ‘fucking a girl’, ‘having a fuck’,” Sara, a young high school teacher, told me. “They wander around the school grounds saying ‘I’d tap that’, or ‘I wouldn’t tap that’. Or they talk openly about ‘fingering her’. It’s this grotesque, yet casual way they talk in a demeaning way about girls as sex objects” (Hamilton, 2008/2009, pp. 207–208). This exposure can impact a boy’s life in ways it’s hard to retreat from. Bryan Duke, himself a dad, who runs a juvenile regional mentoring program for young men and boys, has real concerns about porn.
It awakens boys too soon to respond in a healthy way to sexual situations. They’re too young to make commonsense decisions. It’s like kids who have suffered sexual abuse. Their sexual experiences come out in their drawings, their thinking, their perspective. Sex is now part of the perspective of a growing number of kids 10, 11 and 12 (Hamilton, 2010, p. 69).
Studies back this up, showing that children who view porn on the Net become desensitised to this material and may then become sexually abusive towards others (Flood, 2009, p. 393).
Academic and activist, Gail Dines, reminds us of the impact on women and girls as well. “Porn culture doesn’t only affect men. It also changes the way women and girls think about their bodies, their sexuality and
their relationships” (in Bindel, 2010). This was evident in my research for What’s Happening to Our Girls? Many professionals expressed their concerns at the level at which girls are now objectifying themselves. “When you talk to girls about sex, they don’t have sex for pleasure or because they’ve got a special boyfriend,” one high school teacher told me. “Most of the time it’s just spread your legs for a boy” (Hamilton, 2008/2009 p. 158). Under-age girls were engaging in oral and anal sex, threesomes and group sex. One of the most poignant stories one teacher told was of an at-risk girl who was having a great deal of difficulty holding things together. Eventually the girl opened up, talking of her many sexual encounters with boys and with her stepfather. As she talked about her life, she had no sense of being violated in any way.
Then there are the young girls who have a ‘friend with benefits’ or a ‘f**k buddy’ – a boy they like as a friend, with whom they have no-strings-attached sex. Others are attracted to, or peer pressured into, more risky situations, such as ‘randoming’, where they see a guy they like the look of but have never met, and make a beeline for him in the expectation they’ll have casual sex.
“Rainbow kiss is an oral sex party game” explains Slight, on the Net. “All the girls put on a different shade of colorful lipstick and the guy with the most colors on his dick by the end of the night usually wins a drink or something along those lines” (Slight, 2006). There are no prizes for the girls it seems.
When Girlfriend magazine conducted an online survey into girls and sex, it revealed that 1 in 4 participants had had sex before they were 14. Twenty-eight per cent of these girls had caught sexually transmitted diseases; 58 per cent had regretted their last sexual encounter (Girlfriend, February 2007, pp. 124–130). Journalist, Caitlin Flanagan, says “[w]hat’s most worrisome about this age of blasé blowjobs isn’t what the girl may catch, it’s what the girls are most certainly losing: a healthy emotional connection to their sexuality and their own desire” (Flanagan, 2006).
With the ready access young children have to porn we’re seeing an increase in sexual predators who are the same age as their victims (Hamilton, 2010, p. 64). It’s sobering to talk with professionals counselling sexual assault victims, who are now dealing with ever more incidents amongst primary school-age children. For decades, research literature has indicated that children act out behaviours they have viewed or experienced. Sexual assault units also report that girls are presenting who have been subject to the kinds of sexual assaults previously only seen with adult women. Australian psychologist, Michael Carr-Gregg, sums up the situation when he says:
One of the greatest problems we face is that many adults lack the skills, knowledge or strategies to critically analyse and understand the longer term impacts that sexualisation/pornification have on the behaviour of boys towards girls and, eventually, men towards women. The evidence is potentially one of the most toxic elements in society and it is time that those responsible for propagating this material be held accountable. When the history of public health is written, I am sure that this battle will sit alongside the struggle against the tobacco industry, infant food formula manufacturers and elements of the alcohol industry, in significance (correspondence with Hamilton, January, 2010).
One of the many outcomes of the regular consumption of porn is that often users no longer gain the satisfaction they once did with run-of-the-mill material. In a quest to experience continued arousal they begin to seek out more deviant and violent pornographic material. Gemma, a senior clinical psychologist who heads a sexual assault support team at a major hospital, spoke of her concerns about this new climate.
We see a lot of 12-to-14 year-olds, targeted by boys 17 to 18 years. These are young girls wanting to be grown up, who’re still very young and trusting, who fall prey to pre-planned situations. They’re plied with alcohol, and possibly drugs, and often raped anally. In the past it was rape by one boy, but now it’s 2 or 3 boys, and often filmed. The severity of assaults is also growing (Hamilton, interview September, 2008).
Neuroscience pulls few punches when examining the effects of porn. As medical researcher, Norman Doidge, reminds us, “[s]oftcore pornography’s influence is now most profound because, now that it is no longer hidden, it influences young people with little sexual experience and especially plastic minds, in the process of forming their sexual tastes and desires” (Doidge, 2007, p. 103).
We have to act. As writer, TV and radio host, and former presidential speechwriter, Colleen Caroll Campbell reminds us,
[i]n a society where pornography is so pervasive, it’s intimidating to face the truth about how it endangers our children, destabilizes our families and distorts our views of sex and one another. It’s easier to shout down the occasional unexpected criticism of pornography than to ponder its validity and change behaviour accordingly (Campbell, 2010).
Mary Eberstadt, a research fellow at the Hoover Institute, describes pornography as “sexual obesity – the widespread gorging on pornographic imagery” (Eberstadt, 2010).
Surely the measure of a healthy society is the level to which it nurtures and protects its young? The current climate is abusive to boys and girls. If we don’t speak out against the corporate sexualisation of our children and teens, and fight the pornification of our communities, what will the landscape be like for our children’s children? How will this new generation fare as adults and parents? How will their relationships fare?
We need to reclaim the hearts and minds of our children, our public spaces, and control over the products, games and clothing marketed to them, so children can have healthy, stress-free childhoods, and develop a positive sense of their sexuality as teenagers. Perhaps this issue is best summed up by British philosopher and academic, Roger Scruton: “This, it seems to me, is the real risk attached to pornography. Those who become addicted to this risk-free form of sex run a risk of another and greater kind. They risk the loss of love, in a world where only love brings happiness (Scruton, 2007).
Bibliography
Betkowski, Bev (2 March, 2007) ‘Study Finds Teen Boys Most Likely To Access Pornography’ Folio, University of Alberta,
Bindel, Julie (2 July, 2010) ‘The Truth About The Porn Industry’ The Guardian.
Interview with Ann Burgess, professor of nursing, University of Pennsylvania, 15 January, 1997 on ‘Pornography – Victims and Perpetrators’, Symposium on Media Violence & Pornography, Proceedings Resource Book and Research Guide, edited by D. Scott (1984).
Campbell, Colleen Carroll (27 May, 2010) ‘Freedom From Porn’ St Louis Post-Dispatch.
Doidge, Norman (2007) The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph form the Frontiers of Brain Science. Penguin, London.
Eberstadt, Mary (June/July, 2010) ‘The Weight of Smut’ First Things,
Flanagan, Caitlin (January/February, 2006) ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Monica: How Nice Girls Got So Casual About Oral Sex’ The Atlantic Online,
Flood, Michael (2007) ‘Exposure to Pornography Among Youth in Australia’ Journal of Sociology, Vol 43 (1).
Flood, Michael (2 November, 2009) ‘The Harms of Pornography Exposure Among Children and Young People’ Child Abuse Review, Vol 1.
Flood, Michael and Lara Fergus (2008) ‘An Assault on Our Future’, A White Ribbon Foundation Report.
Girlfriend (February, 2007) ‘Girlfriends Fess Up: The Original Sealed Advice: This Month’s Hot Topic: We Explore the Risks, the Consequences and the Long-Term Effects of Being a Promiscuous Girl’.
Hamilton, Maggie (2008/2009) What’s Happening To Our Girls? Too Much, Too Soon, How Our Kids are Overstimulated, Oversold and Oversexed. Penguin, Melbourne.
Hamilton, Maggie (2010/2011) What’s Happening To Our Boys? At Risk, How the New Technologies, Drugs and Alcohol, Peer Pressure and Porn Affect Our Boys. Penguin, Melbourne.
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rk Crispin (undated) ‘Merchants of Cool’, transcript, Frontline, PBS,
Ruberg, Bonnie (28 August, 2007) ‘Peeking Up the Skirt of Online Sex Work: Topless and Proud’, villagevoice.com,
Scruton, Roger (17–19 May, 2007) ‘Profit as a By-Product Versus Profit as a Goal, Rethinking Business Management’ Witherspoon Institute Conference, Princeton University. Slight (13 November, 2006),
Wellard, Sally (15–21 March, 2001) ‘Cause and Effect’ Community Care, pp. 26–27.
Robert Jensen
Stories of a Rape Culture: Pornography as Propaganda1
We live in a pornography-saturated culture in which women are routinely targets of sexual violence and intrusion. We live in a rape culture that is increasingly pornified. Pornography is a form of propaganda for a rape culture.
But wait – we can hear voices rising up immediately to object that pornography does not cause rape.
In simplistic terms, pornography does not cause rape. There are men who use pornography and don’t rape. There are men who rape and don’t use pornography. There was rape before pornography was widely available, and there would be rape if pornography magically disappeared tomorrow.
Pornography doesn’t cause rape, if by ‘cause’ we mean that a specific man’s specific act of sexual violence can be established as the direct result of pornography use and would not have happened if he had not used pornography.
Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry Page 7