‘My friend is big into porn, but he can’t talk to girls’
Both were highly enjoyable encounters where I once again got really embarrassed at how badly teenagers are portrayed in the media: yes they binge drink, yes they look at porn, yes they are having sex. But they are also clever, technologically sophisticated and well-informed individuals who want to have fun.
I walked away from the second encounter, a little bit shocked at the contrast between the two sexes. The 17-year-old girls had a fierce intelligence, sharp analytical skills and it’s obvious that they love to talk to yap: most of the subjects we breached had clearly already been thrashed out by them on phones, Facebook and Twitter. They were strikingly opinionated.
In contrast, the 16-year-old boys were less judgemental, more forgiving and far warier of labelling. The boys talked freely on most topics but when it came to porn, there was a reticence. They may be watching it online but it is not a conversation that they are used to having with strangers — and possibly not even among themselves.
Far from slut-shaming or scoffing, the boys felt sorry for the 17-year-old from the West of Ireland who was caught on camera having oral sex with two different boys. “I think it kind of happens all the time. Just that time, she got caught,” said one. “I think she was kind of unlucky.”
“So many people would have done that, she just got caught. She got caught on video so it got blown up,” said another.
“I’d say she was really drunk. You know people do lots of things that they are ashamed of when they are drunk.”
“Yeah, most people that do it would probably be really drunk,” said a second.
“Two different guys made it worse as well,” quipped his friend. “If she wasn’t drunk, she probably wouldn’t have done it. If you’re drunk all sense goes out the window and you don’t care about anything.”
“If there was no social media, I wouldn’t be, would I?,” said one 16-year-old. “Everyone wouldn’t be going on about it as it wouldn’t have been filmed.”
“That it was in such an open place didn’t make it any better but she wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Social media is more to blame there,” said a third. “It’s not like nothing like that didn’t happen before. But then because there’s so many people on Twitter and Facebook, everyone is talking about it.”
“They were probably all drunk too,” said a boy as the others nodded. “By the looks of it, she was really bad from drink and they didn’t know where she went.”
“Yeah, well I saw afterwards that her friends were making appeals for people to delete it,” said one of the boys.
“You try to look after your friends. You stop your friends from doing something stupid on a night out.”
“A lot,” says one. “You can’t escape it.”
“I’ve seen it but I don’t watch it all the time,” said another.
“I think there’s so much nowadays that no one is going to stop watching it but they shouldn’t be as young as 12.”
“You can’t really escape sex, though, now. Say if you went to watch a movie and it was anything over 15, you will see some kind of sex. It’s not just the internet.”
“You can’t get away from it, those chat up lines and you’re watching telly with your parents?”
All the boys laugh.
“I have a friend who is big into porn but he’s not great at talking to girls. He’s all fine when he’s at a disco and it’s all loud music and dark, but in public no. He looks at it a lot.”
“Yeah, well there is nobody our age really bad about racism but back in the day there were loads of people doing that, we’re not that bad,” said one of the boys.
“Every parent gives out about the next generation. The past generation probably did the exact same stuff but they’re older now so they feel the responsibility to look after us”
“We’re doing the same things as they did, but some are doing it through social media and they’re getting caught.”
“A lot of the social media thing is sensationalism and the other media love it and think we’re all doing the same. It’s one person, one teenager.”
“It’s hard to call her a slut as she was obviously drunk. But it was her fault if she couldn’t handle her drink then.”
“If a boy does it he’s known as a lad. I remember there was a photo of the European Championships, and there was this Irish guy caught in a picture with this half undressed woman and he was a lad, but she was bad because girls are expected to have higher standards.”
“Girls are also known as more respectable and more mannerly than guys. It’s not fair at all but it’s the way our generation is,” said another.
“I think it’s more that the girls do it to each other, the calling a slut; a guy wouldn’t really call a girl a slut. Girls are far more bitchy.”
“Girls are way more bitchy than guys, they overblow everything. If a guy was with a girl and he went with her girlfriend, the two girls would have war over it. We take it easier on them.”
“No, I don’t think she had any awareness of what she did. She was so badly drunk — or whatever she was on,” said a fourth.
When asking about the rumoured incident where a friend of a woman who had sex with two rugby players put footage of the encounter online, I get a resounding condemnation of such indiscretion from the ‘friend’.
“She had a threesome because she wanted to. Her friends should not have left everyone know.”
“Well, he’s not going to say no.”
“Also when he’s drunk he mightn’t have the cop on to think this is bad.”
“Most girls have more cop-on than to do that in public,” says one of the boys.
“There’s the select group that don’t have cop-on. They won’t think anything bad about what they do, even though everyone knows what they do and everyone talks about it.”
“Some of those girls don’t care what anyone thinks except their friends.”
“Basically some people would do it for the attention,” said another.
“It wouldn’t be the main thing. You wouldn’t be cautious of that, you’d be cautious of them getting in trouble and stuff, that wouldn’t be in your mind,” says one.
“It’s not really that, it’s nearly just stopping your friend getting too drunk, you don’t want them to do something stupid.”
“It could go on social media, there is that bit of it as well, but it’s more just stopping them.”
“It’s about more than social media, it’s teach your children responsibility, take responsibility,” is one of the other suggestions.
“I’d say some guys just think ‘Oh I could get something off her’.”
“I think they want to brand themselves that way because of what they do, if they go off with four or five guys, they’re deemed a slut. They wouldn’t brag about it but they know it would get out.”
“You wouldn’t see those girls in a long-thinking plan, you wouldn’t want to either.”
“If she’s done stuff with other people I’m not going to want to keep her.”
Webwise is an internet safety awareness initiative, developed by the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE). The main objective of this initiative is to promote the safe use of the internet among school children (ages 4-18), their parents and teachers.
* www.webwise.com
The hotline.ie service is managed by the Internet Services Providers Association of Ireland and provides an anonymous facility for the public to report suspected illegal content encountered on the internet, in a secure and confidential way.
* www.hotline.ie
Provides information on IT security risks online.
* www.makeitsecure.org
Advice on managing children’s profiles on social networking websites.
* www.watchyourspace.ie
Popular parenting website that examines issues facing Irish parents.
* www.rollercoaster.ie
also offers a phone helpline to parents on any kind of parenting issue. They can be contacted at lo-call 1890-927277 or 01-8733500.
* www.parentline.ie
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