Holly Bourne: Porn is normalising violent sex against women. Why can’t we talk about it?

We’re doing our teenagers a disservice by refusing to have an honest conversation about porn, Holly Bourne writes

Research estimates that at least one in three popular porn videos show acts of physical aggression and violence. Women were the targets of this violence 97% of the time.

“I’m 14 and my boyfriend wants to have anal sex in a carpark. Should I do it?”

“I’m 16 and I woke up to find my boyfriend having sex with me while I slept. He doesn’t understand why I’m being weird about it.”

“Sex hurts. Is something wrong with me?”

This was just an average shift for me working as a sex and relationship advisor at a youth charity.

Since I left to become a full-time author six years ago, I fear things have only gotten worse. We can’t handle what pornography is doing to our teenagers. Despite an onslaught of horrifying statistics about young people and pornography — one in ten children have viewed it by the age of nine, the average age of first exposure is 12, and one in five under 18s admit to having a “porn habit” — we appear tongue-tied about any societal solutions.

Although well-meaning, both the left and the right shut down conversations about the harm porn causes our teenagers leaving them to navigate this new sexual landscape alone. In fact, they’re using porn as their sex education.

And, as someone who has seen the impact of this first-hand, it frustrates and terrifies me.

I’ve made a career of telling the truth to young people — working as a young adult author, and prior to that, at the charity.

With over a decade of experience, I believe the widespread consumption of free hardcore pornography is a public health emergency. Teens are aware of what it’s doing to them, and desperate to have help navigating the pressures they’re under, but adults can’t seem to figure out what the hell to do about it.

From a conservative perspective, there’s an understandable worry about what type of sex and porn education is appropriate for our children, alongside, perhaps, a reluctance to admit how bad the problem is. And, on the more liberal side, there’s an often too adult perspective on sexuality, where fears of “kink-shaming” or appearing “sex-negative” outweigh the urgent safeguarding of our teens’ sexual wellbeing.

In the meantime, teens keep watching porn at increasingly younger ages, with little to no framework to contextualise the brutal image being painted.

You Could Be So Pretty by Holly Bourne

My newest YA book, You Could Be So Pretty, explores the dystopian sexual pressures young people are under. My main character, Belle, is worried something is wrong with her because she’s repulsed and scared by the sex expected of her.

And, although it’s the most chaste teen book I’ve ever written, with technically no sex in it at all, because it’s “going there” with porn, the editorial process was complicated. A microcosm of how these vital discussions can get snuffled out before they’ve started.

I was grateful that the book went through two, brilliant, sensitivity reads, but the dance between the right and the left played out in the manuscript’s margins.

A more cautious, conservative, reading suggested I “tone down” the even-minimal descriptions of porn due to concerns around age-appropriateness and censorship, meaning I may struggle to get the book stocked in stores. A more liberal reading raised concerns about shaming teenagers who might enjoy rough sex.

In the meantime, children watch porn.

Yes, not all porn is hardcore and violent. There is ethical porn, many worthy attempts at titillating material that rejects gender inequalities and normalised sexual violence. But this isn’t the porn teens are watching.

The porn teens are consuming is the free porn, on the major websites, whose algorithms lead them down increasingly hardcore wormholes. 

Research estimates that at least one in three popular porn videos, and as many as nine out of ten pornographic scenes, show acts of physical aggression and violence. Women were the targets of this violence 97% of the time.

These studies also found that the targets of the violence were almost always portrayed as responding with pleasure or neutrality. It’s hard to quantify just how prevalent this pornography is, but, together, the top porn websites in the world account for more than six billion visits per month. In the US, these sites get more traffic than X (formerly known as Twitter), Netflix, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest combined. In the face of such global dominance, these “ethical” alternatives are like bringing rose petals to a gun fight.

Also, teens don’t have the means to pay for ethical porn, and showing it to them for educational purposes would be technically illegal, and unethical in itself due to the explicit content.

Meanwhile, hardcore porn continues to flood in and fill the gaps in their sexual education, and, by the time they’re old enough to purchase “better” porn, it’s often too late. Their sexual psyche has already been formed.

What is the harm caused by regular exposure to hardcore porn? If the content regularly shows violent and degrading sex towards women, rather than a joyful, curious and equal exploration between two consenting bodies, does that play out in our real-world sex lives? As adults, we may reassure ourselves we can distinguish between fantasy and reality (I’m aware an estimated 91.5% of men and 60.2% of women reading this article consume porn themselves), but we didn’t come of age in the porn era.

In Amis Srinivasan’s essay ‘Talking To My Students About Porn,’ the academic says “sex for my students is what porn says it is… porn is not pedagogy, yet it often functions as if it were.”

It’s therefore unsurprising that teen girls are expected to act out the now bread-and-butter of porn sex acts . The anal, the spitting, the money shots on their faces, the strangulation, and, often, the rape.

When working at the charity, I would hear daily from young girls feeling pressured and coerced into having sex they didn’t want because their boyfriends thought porn-sex was real-sex.

I’d hear a girl detail what was clearly, legally, a rape, often by their partner, but they didn’t realise that is what had happened.

Can it be true what feminist Robin Morgan said, in 1974, that “porn is the theory and rape is the practice”? Worryingly, research indicates that, at the very least, pornography contributes to larger rape culture, and, at the worst, trains its viewers to have little regard for consent in their lives.

Studies show that porn consumers are more likely to sexually objectify and dehumanise others; more likely to victim-blame survivors of assault; more likely to express an intent to rape; less likely to intervene during a sexual assault; more likely to support sexual violence against women; and more likely to commit actual acts of sexual violence.

What is the harm caused by regular exposure to hardcore porn?

And though I’d argue the harm of porn falls mostly on girls, boys too, are negatively impacted.

I’d regularly counsel boys addicted to porn, unable to be stimulated by “real” girls, and they’d have low self-esteem about their penis size or how long they could last. This isn’t just teenagers either, but adult porn consumers.

Is much of our inability to face the realities of porn due to unease in our complicity in this industry?

Or shame at our own private masturbatory habits and sex lives? Balancing shame against potential harm is a delicate business.

Porn has made “being choked” an almost expected part of sex for young girls. What is the harm of kink-shaming those who genuinely enjoy this, when set against the fact medical experts almost unanimously agree there’s no “safe” way to strangle anyone?

If it’s important to reassure people: “It’s OK to desire rough sex”, isn’t it equally important to tell them it’s OK not to want it?

Teens need to be told there’s also nothing wrong with craving connection and tenderness.

Though I’m vocally worried about pornography, I’m certainly not upset by young people having sex if it’s consenting, legal, and pleasurable.

My attitude towards porn may be considered prudish, but it’s based on a career where a “prude” wouldn’t last a day. I’ve chaired professional meetings about anal sex, was regularly sent precise penis measurements, and was nominated for a national award for an article about condom-related erectile dysfunction.

The charity I worked for was sex-positive and realistic about teen sexuality and masturbation.

Our aim was to inform young people with trusted information to empower them to make the healthiest decisions. But if we’re to understand “having sex” as consenting humans sharing their bodies for reciprocal pleasure, then I’d say porn is “sex-negative”. It’s pleasure-negative. Its “lessons” are unsafe — both physically and emotionally.

We need to have an honest conversation about porn, and we need to ask ourselves – what is the lasting damage to a generation of young women having sex that scares them, or hurts them, or makes them feel degraded?

• Holly Bourne is the Women's Aid youth ambassador for the Love Respect campaign and the author of You Should Be So Pretty, published by Usborne, out September 28