Where is the joy in porn?

It’s estimated nearly half of Australian children aged between nine and 16 have experienced regular exposure to sexual images. Picture: iStock

Warning. The following may be harmful or traumatising for some readers.

“I got the shit kicked out of me. I was told before the video – and they said this very proudly – that in this line most of the girls start crying because they’re hurting so bad … I couldn’t breathe. I was being hit and choked. I was really upset, and they didn’t stop. They kept filming. You can hear me say, ‘Turn the f..king camera off,’ and they kept going.”

Thank you, porn participant Regan Starr. How illuminating this distressing explanation is about the dynamics of power, control and humiliation in that industry. It’s almost unbearable to read, because of what it says about the human condition. Women seen as objects. Little more than animals. But would we treat animals so cruelly?

What exactly is porn teaching impressionable young boys – and girls – about human relations? It’s estimated nearly half of Australian children aged between nine and 16 have experienced regular exposure to sexual images. They’re consuming gendered violence, sexual violence, masquerading as porn. It’s instructing young people that this is what men, and women, want. Warping them, catastrophically. What they’re learning from is not about sexual pleasure, tenderness or empowered consent.

The French are so disturbed by this that they’ve taken a bold new step into the future. From September they’re introducing a “porn passport”. Those who want to access sexually explicit websites will have to download a government app first, proving they’re over 18. President Macron made protecting children from porn a priority during his re-election bid last year, and his minister for digital transition, Jean-Noel Barrot, is now following through.
“I plan to put an end to this scandal,” he’s declared. It’s a world first.

This, from the land that gave us the Marquis de Sade and Story of O, Anaïs Nin and Catherine Millet. If the sex-relaxed French are so concerned about the effect of porn on their nation’s young, shouldn’t we, perhaps, be considering similar measures? What of porn’s addictive qualities that drive consumers into seeking out ever more degrading content? “Michael” is living proof of that. He recently spoke to The Sunday Times about his extreme addiction. “You get desensitised because you’re seeing so many images so quickly,” he explained. “You need something more edgy to get the same level of arousal. So you find yourself watching really degrading things, completely detached from your innate, actual desires. It hijacks you.”

Young men worldwide have lapped up Andrew Tate’s destructive messages about women. Picture: Twitter

We’re seeing a generation of young people being hijacked by porn’s very problematic take on sexual relations and gendered power dynamics, so readily accessible on phones. We’re seeing the creepy allure of choking and hitting with no context. If a woman is with a man who is aroused by her pain (and there’s no sign she’s consenting to it) then there’s something deeply wrong. Sex should not be about women wanting something that makes them feel lesser. Grubby, humiliated, worthless. We shouldn’t want something we don’t even like. “Internet pornography is the greatest untested social experiment in history,” Vanessa Morse, the chief executive of Britain’s Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation, said recently.

And what are the consequences of this great experiment? Unknown, to a large extent. Quite possibly it’s creating a generation of damaged men who may assume that women exist to have their needs met; who are conditioned by other men into valuing male domination. A view championed by the likes of the alleged pimp Andrew Tate, who brands women with “Owned by Tate” tattoos. Young men worldwide have lapped up his destructive messages – just ask any high school teacher of boys in Australia.