Porn has warped an entire generation – it poisons young souls as alcohol does the body | UK | News
If you passed a primary school and saw boys passing around bottles of whiskey, you would grab them, go inside, and ask to speak to the principal. But this is what actually happens. However, the addictive substance is pornography. It won’t leave users with a hangover, but it will change them forever. And that distorted an entire generation. Until age verification came into effect this summer under the Online Safety Act, any child with an internet connection could find videos whose titles were too indecent to print here.
Actions now presented as “normal” would result in imprisonment in any other context. Incest, women dressed as children, strangulation and rape scenes are presented to users for the first time on the world’s largest platforms. Alarmingly, half of young men and a third of young women say pornography is their main source of sex education.
The consequences of this are everywhere; in classrooms, bedrooms and police stations. Last year the National Police Chiefs’ Council reported a 7.6% increase in child sexual abuse offenses and, for the first time, most perpetrators were under 18.
Earlier this year the Bertin Review found that 38 per cent of young women had been strangled by their partner during sex, 34 per cent had been gagged and almost 60 per cent had been slapped. Violence is no longer a deviation from sex, it is sex. Unfortunately, the Government has taken action.
Age verification isn’t perfect – kids can still access sites through VPNs or an adult’s login credentials – but it will stop much of accidental exposure, which is two-thirds’ first encounter with porn.
Figures in the Financial Times show that visits to pornography sites in the UK have fallen sharply since controls began. Traffic to Pornhub, the world’s largest free pornography site, has fallen by 77% and overall visits from the UK are down by almost a third.
VPN usage briefly doubled but quickly declined. Even Pornhub’s Canadian owner, Aylo, concedes there is no mysterious increase that would suggest Britons are hiding their location. In other words, fewer Britons and far fewer children are checking in.
This is good news. But the damage was done. While politicians hesitated, unvetted relationships, sex and health education materials told children that pornography was harmless or even “fun” or “a treat.”
As with gender ideology, so-called experts were not protecting children; they were using them to promote adults’ “gendered” agenda. Pornography has also become a staple of sexual abuse.
Some of the still-operating Pakistani grooming gangs who terrorized towns across the UK filmed their crimes and used the footage to humiliate and blackmail victims.
No doubt this material will also find its way onto mainstream sites viewed by respected members of society, from police officers to teachers and judges. Meanwhile, politicians looked the other way.
Terrified by the ghost of Mary Whitehouse, they left Silicon Valley to create a business model based on children’s curiosity and innocence. The Left was too sensitive to judge, the Right was too cowardly to regulate. They sacrificed a generation between them.
If the victims belonged to any minority group other than children, defending them would have social significance. The damage occurs not just online, but also in our moral instincts.
According to research by the Coalition to End Violence Against Women, only 42% of 18 to 24-year-olds agree that being married or in a relationship does not automatically mean consent, compared to 87% of people over 65.
For all the progressive talk about consent in schools, the generation raised on porn has more backward views on rape than their grandparents. The consequences will show up in the bodies of the vulnerable: Boys have been taught that real men hurt the women they desire, girls have been taught that pain is proof of love.
Many people don’t even notice the abuse anymore; That’s how effective our collective denial has been. The Online Safety Act is a start, but that’s only it. Pornography has already rewritten what sex means for millions of people.
Protecting children is not unchastity; This is civilization’s most basic act of kindness. But if we lose the courage to say what is right and what is wrong, pornographers will continue to teach us morality. Just as we protect young people from alcohol because it poisons the body, we must also protect them from pornography because it poisons the soul.
Josephine Bartosch is the co-author, with Robert Jessell, of Pornocracy, published today by John Wiley and Sons Ltd.
