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).