Joe Brolly fallout: The slippery slope that leads to pornification of society

We like to think the days of reducing women to sexual objects are behind us, but recent stories are proof they are not

Joe Brolly conjured up a virtual Longford Rose to illustrate a point about Jim Gavin being too much of a shrinking violet for the presidential election, or the ‘Nasty Rose of Tralee’, as Brolly and podcast co-host Dion Fanning called it. File picture: Shane O'Neill

Last week, a Ruhama-organised conference on technology and sexual violence reported on the rising use by teenage boys of ‘AI girlfriends’. There are no age restrictions, no financial barriers, and users can upload a photo of someone they know — a classmate, neighbour, a family member — to create a virtual version of that person to act, essentially, as their sex slave.

Also last week, journalist and GAA coach Joe Brolly conjured up a virtual Longford Rose to illustrate a point about Jim Gavin being too much of a shrinking violet for the presidential election, or the ‘Nasty Rose of Tralee’, as Brolly and podcast co-host Dion Fanning called it.

It should be emphasised, as Brolly later clarified, that he did not intend to imitate any presidential candidate. Rather, Brolly was making the point that Gavin was unprepared for the uniquely rigorous questioning of a presidential election.

Bouncing up and down to simulate sexual intercourse and thrusting his tongue in his cheek to simulate oral sex, Brolly characterised one of these rigorous questions as the Longford Rose/presidential candidate being shown a video of herself performing the reverse cowgirl sex position and performing oral sex in public while answering a question about a United Ireland.

To repeat, Brolly was not imitating either Catherine Connolly or Heather Humphreys. The problem this raises is that, by not making it about any one specific woman, he inadvertently made it about women in general (and Longford Roses in particular). 

Plenty of presidential campaigns have been derailed by scandal — from David Norris’s poems to Brian Lenihan Snr’s lies about pressuring Patrick Hillery — but the first scandal for a female candidate that sprang to Brolly’s mind was one of public sexual degradation.

We like to think the days of reducing women to sexual objects are behind us, but at the same conference where AI girlfriends were discussed, the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre said it was seeing a rise of degrading, even violent sexual behaviour, such as anal rape and strangulation, which it said was directly linked to viewing extreme pornography.

It's important to note Brolly later accepted the gesture was "childish, crude and inappropriate".

This is part of what is called the ‘pornification’ of society — how pornographic behaviour and attitudes come in from the fringes and become mainstream. It’s the classic slippery slope dilemma; it was relatively harmless when the Playboy bunny logo leapt off the top shelf and onto clothing ranges and phone cases, but that had to happen for pornography to become seen as just another form of (albeit adult) entertainment, and that had to happen for teenage boys to start acting out the choking fetish scenes they see online.

Some people will say if an AI girlfriend is virtual what harm is it doing, that, basically, 'boys will be boys'. This cohort needs to realise these developments also do incredible harm to our boys.

Interestingly, the reverse cowgirl sex position, as favoured by Brolly’s fictional Longford Rose, is largely born out of pornification. Of course, our primary concern should be with the girls and women contacting the DRCC in ever greater numbers due to this pornification. 

But some people will say rape claims are exaggerated, that if an AI girlfriend is virtual what harm is it doing, that, basically, “boys will be boys”. In short, calm down, ladies. This cohort needs to realise these developments also do incredible harm to our boys.

I’ve written before in these pages about the dangers of the growing societal divide between young men and women. ‘Pornified’ social media algorithms portray girls as a commodity, something for boys to command with the push of a button, rather than fellow human beings. 

Girls, being no fools, know this is happening and understandably run the other way. The result is that a boy who might just have been too shy to talk to a girl has it confirmed to him that girls are to blame for his isolation, in turn making his behaviours and attitudes even more isolating. 

As Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly told last week’s conference, the normalisation of sexual violence, even virtually, increases the risk of boys committing these acts in real life, and therefore facing life-altering consequences. “Boys will be boys” means you’re abandoning your boys to a Wild West where your influence over them is minimised.

The porn industry is, at conservative estimates, worth $15bn a year — more than Hollywood itself. Like the tobacco industry before it, the porn industry doesn’t care about the fate of its consumers (or what age they are).

The tech moguls who now rule our world could, of course, instantly turn off the flood of sewage that pours into our boys’ brains, but they’re more interested in building a moon colony where they can live after they’ve used up this world’s resources.

“It’s never the tech,” Everyday Sexism founder Laura Bates told the Irish Examiner’s Suzanne Harrington about her investigation of AI girlfriends. “It’s the way in which the tech is deployed, and the kind of people in charge of shaping and monetising the tech. The greedy exploitation of that tech for vast profit is the root of the problem.” The AI girlfriend sector of the porn industry is valued at almost $3bn.

Is it unfair to link Brolly’s locker-room banter and sexual choking? I’m sure Brolly will feel so, as will thousands of his fellow banterists, but these things exist on a continuum. The ‘Racial and Sexual Violence Pyramid’, developed in 2019 by the Pennsylvania Coalition to Advance Respect, shows  degrading speech about women leads to degrading attitudes towards women, which leads to the degrading of long-accepted conventions forbidding violence against women, which leads to violence against women.

Tech moguls are exploiting our boys for profit, with our girls as collateral damage. There are moves at various governmental levels around the world to hold them accountable, but these are fiercely resisted, often citing ‘free speech’. In the meantime, education about media literacy can only do so much. So, as usual, the job falls to us. The dads. The uncles. The teachers. The sports coaches.

It’s up to us to model behaviour that is as respectful of our female peers as we are of our male peers, to call out behaviour that falls short and therefore endangers both boys and girls (imagine the conversation we’d be having if Dion Fanning had told Brolly to cop on), and hold ourselves properly accountable when we do the wrong thing. Show real leadership. Like, dare I say it, real men. For our boys’ sake.