In 1983, Andrea Dworkin and I proposed a civil law that would empower anyone who could prove they are hurt through pornography to sue the pornographers for human rights violations. We defined pornography as what it is – graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and words that also includes specified presentations – and defined causes of action for coercion, force, assault and trafficking. We documented its effects and predicted its impact if nothing was done. Our law was found unconstitutional in the USA in a ruling that held that pornography had to be protected as ‘speech’ because it is so effective in doing the harm that the opinion conceded it does. Since then, although the law could have been re-passed and this blatantly wrong and arguably illegal ruling challenged, pornography has not only exploded, it has changed the world around us. Even the determinedly blinkered cannot evade noticing. It is colonising the globe.
The pornography industry is a lot bigger, more powerful, more legitimate, more in everyone’s face today than it was a quarter of a century ago. To the
degree that it cannot exist without doing real damage, it could still be stopped in its tracks anywhere by this law. Sexual objectification and violation does not happen all by itself. Real social institutions drive it. Pornography does, powerfully, in capitalist mass-mediated cultures.
If nothing is done, the results will keep getting worse. We told you so.
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1
This is an edited version of ‘X underrated’ published in the UK
Times Higher Education
, .
Maggie Hamilton
Groomed to Consume Porn: How Sexualised Marketing Targets Children
The pornification of our children and teenagers is a dark tale of greed, exploitation, and corporate muscle, orchestrated by those whose sole focus is on how much money they can make from our kids. Little or no thought is given to the devastating impact this trend has on them.
The level of exposure of children to porn, and the young age at which many are viewing this material – accidentally or otherwise – is cause for grave concern. Symantec’s 2009 study of children online revealed the word ‘porn’ ranked as the fourth most popular search word for children aged 7 and younger, and was in the top 5 words googled by children under 18 (Campbell, 2010).
The explosion of new technologies gives children access to the best and worst of online content. Aside from home computers, pornographic content is now accessible to kids on their mobile phones. They may view porn at their friends’ place or at less than vigilant Internet cafes. The advent of wireless technologies also means that as long as they can get a connection, children can download porn on buses or trains, in parks, out with friends, or wherever they choose. The presence of porn in our children’s lives has happened in a few short years, and is radically changing childhood and teenage life. When we fail to come to terms with this changing landscape, we leave children vulnerable in ways never-before-experienced.
Less obvious, but of equal concern, is the direct link between the increasing sexualisation of girls and boys, and their interest in and exposure to porn. The fallout from the countless sexual images seen in ads, on TV screens, posters and billboards, in MTV clips, movies, video games and sitcoms, on clothing and accessories, and on the Internet, is real and impacting. This constant stream of hypersexualised imagery and sexual expression that boys and girls are subjected to daily lowers their inhibitions, discourages empathy towards others, and reshapes their sexual aspirations and expression often in risky, violent or unhelpful ways.
Whether or not the use of sexual images and messages to market products is intended to prepare children for the consumption of porn, this is one of the most concerning outcomes. When the intense sexualised marketing to children
is put under the microscope, we see that the methods corporations use to reach children are the very same techniques employed by sexual predators to home in on unsuspecting kids, as they meticulously groom them for their own ends. Like the sexual predator, corporations market their products to young people by pretending to be their friend. Using the same techniques as a predator, they work hard at cultivating a one-on-one relationship with our children, offering gifts and incentives, flattering them, talking in their language, and assuring kids that they understand. Like the sexual predator, corporations deliberately use sexualised content in their products and/or advertising, because they know how irresistible sexualised material can be. And, like the sexual predator, corporations actively ramp up the sexualised images and products they use, to lower kids’ inhibitions around sex, to get them to do what they want.
Perhaps most insidious of all is the way a predator works to separate a child victim from his/her parents and other gatekeepers, leaving them isolated and vulnerable. Again, corporations use this same technique. So even though increasing numbers of parents complain about the sexy tops and skirts, padded bras and sexy underwear available to young kids, still the corporations rule. Sexualised marketing is now so prevalent among manufacturers of teen products most of us scarcely give it a thought. What would have been inconceivable a decade ago has very quickly become an integral part of teenagers’ lives. As noted media critic Professor Mark Crispin Miller puts it, “The official advertising worldview is that your parents are creeps, teachers are nerds and idiots, authority figures are laughable, nobody can really understand kids except the corporate sponsor” (Miller, PBS, undated).
When a girl or boy grows up in a toxic sexual atmosphere, their inhibitions are lowered to the point that accessing porn seems a natural progression. The sexualised climate our children are growing up in is a
manufactured
process, not an organic one. The sexualised landscape children are now forced to inhabit reshapes their attitudes to sex and their desires, and it starts long before they learn to read or write. During my research for
What’s Happening to Our Girls?
and the subsequent presentation of this material to thousands of parents, so many voiced their concern at the sexualised behaviour and language they are seeing in children aged 3 and up. Jacki, a health professional and mother of a 5-year-old boy, spoke with concern at her son talking of ‘sexing’ girls, when referring to girls he liked, after day care (Hamilton, 2008/2009, p. 19). Gemma, also a mum and kindergarten teacher, talked of the level of sexualised behaviour she was seeing, to the point that she and other teachers were having to be extra vigilant around the toilets and out-of-the-way parts of the pre-school grounds
(Hamilton, 2008/2009, p. 19). Another grandmother was worried to find her young granddaughter accessing porn sites on her computer when she stayed over. It transpired that the little girl had been told about these sites by a friend at school (Hamilton, 2008/2009, p. 52).
Whether intentional or not, the sexualised marketing to children is negatively impacting their lives, attuning them to pornographic themes and behaviour. Alongside relatively innocuous online games, such as
Club Penguin
, young boys can now access the Play Games Club, for example, which in amongst action games offers boys such raunchy games as
Hot Gllrs
, where the screen explodes with large-breasted young girls. There’s
Naughty Classroom
and
Naughty Office
where points are awarded for a variety of moves including players viewing women’s panties and breasts. There’s also the
Funny Red Carpet
game where boys have to join various objects together. Their reward? To systematically strip the girls of their clothes. These games encourage boys to be voyeuristic, to have denigrating attitudes towards girls and women. And having sampled this kind of material, young boys could be forgiven for assuming porn is the ‘natural’ next step.
One of the many concerns around this active sexualising of small children is their desire to re-enact the scenarios they’ve been exposed to on their peers, creating a new level of child abuse. Add to this the plethora of sexualised images on billboards and in ads, and MTV clips and it’s not hard to see how their attitudes are being shaped in unhealthy ways as they are actively encouraged to take part in predatory and/or risky behaviour. This early sexualisation of little boys is nothing short of abusive. It collapses vital parts of their humanity and erodes their ability to connect meaningfully with others. As professor of nursing, Ann Burgess from the University of Pennsylvania, reminds us that the formation of sexual identity is a gradual process that develops through the childhood and adolescent years. Left to their childhood, boys and girls generally do not have a
natural
sexual sense until they are between 10 and 12 years old. Previously, most children came to understand the sexual landscape and their own emerging sexuality in age-appropriate stages, which are now hastened and distorted by the sexualised climate our children are immersed in. According to Burgess, this leaves boys and girls “confused, changed, and damaged” (Burgess, 1997).
Rowan, a youth worker, told me: “We are now seeing children grooming younger kids for sex, there’s a real seduction pattern going on” (in Hamilton, 2010, p. 64).
We’re now seeing kids sexually active way under 10, because of access to porn or their parents’ own behaviour. I’ve seen many cases where porn is readily left around the home, where it’s part of the family culture. Then you’ve got parents who carefully stash their porn away, and kids have a way of finding it (in Hamilton, 2010 p. 68).
These incidents are happening in homes across the socio-economic spectrum.
As boys grow, so does the desensitisation. The challenge for boys in the popular
Grand Theft Auto
is to progress as far as they can in the world of organised crime. To win, boys have to commit a range of crimes from killing cops to getting involved in prostitution. In the Microsoft and console versions of the
San Andreas
game there’s a sex mini-game, the ‘hot coffee mod’, where players can have sex with their online girlfriend. In the fantasy and science fiction online games MUDs (multiple user dungeon virtual games), and MMORPGs (massively multiple player online role-playing games) such as
Rune Scape
, there are opportunities for any boy able to find his way around this game to take part in virtual sex or cybering. Here, their avatars (online personas) can simulate sex with other consenting avatars. Those in the know can also highjack someone else’s avatars and use them in violent or sexual ways (Hamilton, 2010, p. 162). While some games have an MA15+ classification, there is nothing to prevent younger children in Australia purchasing and playing these games as long as they have a parent’s consent.
In virtual worlds such as
Second Life
, there are thousands of sex workers willing to perform virtual sex for ‘Lindens’ (Second Life currency) or for real money. Other sites have been set up purely to offer virtual sex (Ruberg, 2007). On YouTube there are several highly lucrative porn equivalents. Here millions of viewers can watch endless video clips of live sex. Some videos are professional, many homemade. While some content is free, others charge people to view every sexual act imaginable. Children and teenagers are accessing virtual sex sites, viewing live sex via web cams and chat roulette, amateur porn through such sites as redtube (one of a number of YouTube porn sites), and sharing sexual images on mobile phones and through email.
A Canadian study of 13 to 14-year-old boys in urban and rural areas revealed that more than a third of these boys viewed pornographic movies and DVDs ‘too many times to count’. Just over 7 out of 10 of these boys accessed pornography on the Net. More than half saw it on a specialty TV channel. In this same study 2 out of 10 boys viewed porn at the home of a friend (Betkowski, 2007).
In a few short years, porn has become a ‘natural’ part of teen life for a significant number of boys. This was borne out in my research for
What’s Happening To Our Boys?
As Hunter, 18, explained, “Porno is so easy to access now with technology, to access and to buy” (in Hamilton, 2010, p. 221). Harrison, 15, agreed:
There’s the porno aspect of the Internet now. Kids don’t have to buy it off older boys like they used to do. It’s readily accessible too. Some boys use it quite regularly. There’s quite a culture of it. Inside jokes and words. A lot of boys talk about it in an open and relaxed manner. Most
of my peer group admit to doing it. It can change the way boys talk in groups (in Hamilton, 2010, p. 222).
The boys I spoke with were very relaxed when talking about their experiences around porn. They had no sense that this mass access is a new phenomenon.
Dr Michael Flood, who headed up the Violence Against Women Program, a partnership between VicHealth and Latrobe University from 2008 to 2010, points out that the Internet is an ideal medium for boys wanting to access porn, as there’s an almost endless amount of material they can view anonymously, customise, and store for on-going access (Flood, 2007, p. 48). Like many professionals, he is at pains to emphasise that pornography is a poor sex educator (Flood, 2007, p. 58). Porn shuts down a boy’s natural feeling, as it places little value on intimacy, empathy or respect of partners in pornographic material. A growing body of research also shows that viewing porn is likely to make boys more sexually aggressive, to do whatever they feel they can get away with, and to want to act out what they have seen (Flood, 2009, p. 390). One Canadian study of teen boys revealed that those who regularly accessed porn tended to think it was okay to hold a girl down and force her to have sex (Wellard, 2001, pp. 26–27). A 2008 White Ribbon Foundation report found 1 in 7 boys thought it was OK to force a girl to have sex if she had been ‘flirting’ with him (Flood and Fergus, 2008, p. 24).
Educators are very aware of the fallout from porn and the wider hypersexualised landscape boys now inhabit. “It all starts with the language – how sex is referred to. Young boys talking about ‘fucking a girl’, ‘having a fuck’,” Sara, a young high school teacher, told me. “They wander around the school grounds saying ‘I’d tap that’, or ‘I wouldn’t tap that’. Or they talk openly about ‘fingering her’. It’s this grotesque, yet casual way they talk in a demeaning way about girls as sex objects” (Hamilton, 2008/2009, pp. 207–208). This exposure can impact a boy’s life in ways it’s hard to retreat from. Bryan Duke, himself a dad, who runs a juvenile regional mentoring program for young men and boys, has real concerns about porn.
It awakens boys too soon to respond in a healthy way to sexual situations. They’re too young to make commonsense decisions. It’s like kids who have suffered sexual abuse. Their sexual experiences come out in their drawings, their thinking, their perspective. Sex is now part of the perspective of a growing number of kids 10, 11 and 12 (Hamilton, 2010, p. 69).
Studies back this up, showing that children who view porn on the Net become desensitised to this material and may then become sexually abusive towards others (Flood, 2009, p. 393).
Academic and activist, Gail Dines, reminds us of the impact on women and girls as well. “Porn culture doesn’t only affect men. It also changes the way women and girls think about their bodies, their sexuality and their relationships” (in Bindel, 2010). This was evident in my research for
What’s Happening to Our Girls?
Many professionals expressed their concerns at the level at which girls are now objectifying themselves. “When you talk to girls about sex, they don’t have sex for pleasure or because they’ve got a special boyfriend,” one high school teacher told me. “Most of the time it’s just spread your legs for a boy” (Hamilton, 2008/2009 p. 158). Under-age girls were engaging in oral and anal sex, threesomes and group sex. One of the most poignant stories one teacher told was of an at-risk girl who was having a great deal of difficulty holding things together. Eventually the girl opened up, talking of her many sexual encounters with boys and with her stepfather. As she talked about her life, she had no sense of being violated in any way.