These Sex Educators Want to Teach Schoolkids About Porn (Vice)

Read the full article by Almaz Ohene at Vice.com/UK

You might know that a porn film is a performance, but your younger sibling probably doesn't.

On the set of a porn film, it's clear that what's happening is a performance, like a TV show or piece of choreography. But for young people whose first experiences of sexual activity come from watching porn, it can give them a false impression of what sex is actually like in real life.

Two reports published this month from the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee and digital nonprofit Internet Matters say that teens and children as young as 11 appear to be using porn to learn about their sexuality. Globally, sex educators agree that this is because comprehensive sex education doesn't go far enough in terms of teaching young people about sex-based issues such as consent, pleasure and masturbation, right to privacy, sexual identities and respectful relationships.

“In the absence of comprehensive sex education, people use porn to learn about sex – what sex looks like, who gets to have it, and what it means to be sexy,” Jiz Lee, a non-binary adult performer and sex educator, tells me. "On its own, that’s fine. But a limited example of what porn is has the danger of dictating what’s ‘normal’, raising issues in our understanding of sexual health, and also our sexual psyche.”

The UK government has attempted to legislate pornography with the introduction of age-verification under the Digital Economy Act 2017, which means all commercial providers of online pornography will be required by law to carry out robust checks on users to ensure that they are 18 or over. There is no evidence to suggest this will curb stop young people from accessing porn, and the law – originally intended to come into force in July – but has since been delayed.

"One issue we face as teachers is being familiar with the language and range of terminology and ensuring this is used accurately,” says Natasha*, a secondary school RSE (relationships and sex education) teacher from north London. “However, there can sometimes be a tendency to make incorrect assumptions that teenagers are naturally more up-to-date and more knowledgeable and comfortable with topics such as sexuality than was the case, say, ten years ago."

There's no denying that much mainstream porn replicated highly problematic tropes, but the focus on banning access overshadows conversations that seek to engage with the problem, through effective education focusing on critical engagement and open discussion. For an industry that often markets itself as being LGBTQ-friendly, it is common to see porn producers fetishising LGBTQ relationships and using seemingly innocuous terminology such as ‘interracial’ to allow consumers to pursue various combinations of racialised characters and racist scenarios.