Statistics suggest some boys are watching porn as young as eight years of age

If you’re not going to engage in those conversations with your son or daughter, are you really in a position to criticise them for turning to pornography for guidance?

While promoting my second novel, Asking For It, I have spoken all over Ireland.

After many of these events, a middle-aged man or woman will approach me, their faces tight with apprehension. They are parenting a teenager, and are deeply worried. How can they protect their children in such a hyper sexualised environment?

And what impact do I think the increasingly easy access to pornography is having on the creation and maintenance of a rape culture?

(Rape culture, for those of you who are new to the term, is defined as ‘an environment whose prevailing social attitudes have the effect of normalising or trivialising sexual assault and abuse’ and is most clearly evidenced by the dismal rates of conviction for rape and sexual violence in this country.)

It’s a much more nuanced conversation than that and one I think we desperately need to have in Ireland.

We are the fourth highest users of porn per capita in the world, with the website, Porn Hub, reporting that usage here increased by 77% between 2010 and 2014, with the discrepancy between male and female users being less than you might assume.

I worry about statistics that suggest some boys are watching hard-core pornography as young as eight years of age, and the damage that sustained exposure to this material could do.

I am also concerned about the sort of pornography that is free and widely available, how misogynistic it can be, veering close to violent, particularly in heterosexual porn.

This kind of porn can engender wildly inaccurate expectations of what sex will or should be like, from the lack of body hair to the pneumatic body types.

People never say no in this genre of porn. Nor do they seem to acknowledge the existence of condoms or other forms of contraception.

Add in ambiguities around the emotional health of the ‘stars’ involved — have they been trafficked? Are they drug addicts? Are they participating of their own volition? — and it would seem that the case for prohibition is watertight.

But as Caroline Ryan, currently undertaking a PhD in porn and feminism said in an interview with The Journal, “porn, just like sex, is not monolithic. There are lots of different types of porn... there is misogynistic porn that is extremely problematic, just like misogyny in Hollywood, TV, music, books, news, and social media is extremely problematic... but painting all porn as such means silencing the good stuff.”

I feel conflicted about this because I consume pornography and have done so since I was a teenager. (Mom and Dad, please stop reading now.)

I moved from Louise Bagshawe novels and More magazine’s Position of the Month — I’m still not entirely sure if any of those positions are physically possible — to sneaking downstairs at 4am to read erotica using our very, very slow dial up internet.

In 2017, there is excellent feminist porn available (two words for you — Erika Lust. You can thank me later) for those who don’t want to get their sexual kicks with a side of misogyny; porn where the emphasis is on mutual pleasure, where a variety of body types are celebrated, where consent, communication, and healthy boundaries are prioritised, and where women are not objectified and treated as mere receptacles for male ejaculation.

Studies indicate that our teenagers are using pornography to educate themselves about sex. If this is the case, then surely it would be better that they have access to this type of sex-positive material than traditional porn?

There is a squeamishness around talking about sexuality in this country, no doubt a legacy of a not so distant past where sex was seen as a tool for procreation rather than a source of pleasure.

Movies, books, and video games that contain violent scenes are seen as perfectly acceptable, but a ‘parent’s advisory’ sticker is slapped on anything that dares to portray sex.

These attitudes are reflected in the woeful sex education here, something that urgently needs to be addressed.

Sex education should be mandatory in all secondary schools, regardless of religious orientation, and there has to be a shift away from unrealistically advocating abstinence or a scientific approach focusing on sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.

Students have complained that any classes they have attended are also reinforcing gender stereotypes, with women portrayed as passive participants, men the aggressors, and there is never any mention of gay or transgender sex.

Porn appears to be bridging the gap between the “how are babies made?” conversation and subsequent discussions around consent, desire, mutual respect and pleasure — and it is the latter that tends to make most parents uncomfortable.

However, if you’re not going to engage in those conversations with your teenage son or daughter, and you’re also uneasy with the idea of schools doing so, are you really in a position to criticise young people for turning to pornography for guidance?

Pornography is not a new phenomenon. Ice-age art saw depictions of female genitalia on cave walls. The Kama Sutra was said to be written in the third century.

The Venus of Willendorf, one of the earliest man-made sculptures of the naked body, is over 25,000 years old. The first book of erotic engravings was published in 1525.

1749 saw the publication of John Cleland’s erotic novel, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, and the early 1900s heralded the distribution of ‘stag films’ as part of a growing porn industry in the United States.

Whatis different in today’s society is how difficult it is to control the access to such material. I can understand why parents are so anxious but I don’t think this fear-mongering around pornography is going to help any of us, least of all the young people we’re purporting to protect.

It’s time for Ireland to grow up and start talking.