Spanking
Caning
Aggressive whipping
Penetration by any object "associated with violence"
Physical or verbal abuse (regardless of if consensual)
Urolagnia (known as "water sports")
Role-playing as non-adults
Physical restraint
Humiliation
Female ejaculation
Strangulation
Facesitting
Fisting
With the last three being classified by the BBFC as 'potentially life endangering'.
As one might expect, there has been an outcry from many corners about this. The 'nanny state' telling us what is 'nice' sex and what is not, the fact that at least one of the banned acts is something that involves female pleasure and all the other objections you might expect. What has surprised me is that there doesn't seem to be much discussion here of what is the real, underlying issue.
It's no secret that in the modern age, where any kid with a smartphone (and most seem to have them) can access the whole of that wonderful behemoth known as The Internet at their leisure, that kids are watching more porn. That in and of itself isn't really all that worrying. I saw my first 'rhythm magazine' before I was into double digits, age wise, and it didn't leave me with any lasting scars or any kind of odd attitudes towards women or sex. But the point is, the vast majority of kids in the UK are still getting most of their information about sex from the playground and from porn. Sex education in the UK is woefully inadequate to task, and more worryingly, the very parents who seem content to blame schools for lacking in their educational provision don't seem to be talking all that much to their kids about sex either.
Sex in the UK remains one of those things that simply isn't discussed in polite company. Oh sure, we TALK about it. God alone knows that we never seem to shut up about it, from Cosmo to Heat, from the Tabloids to TV shows covering Dogging, wife swapping and even kids going abroad to simply get laid. It's in our advertising, in our movies, on our brands and on our cinema screens. Endless 'edgy' pop stars warble about it in increasingly inane ways and the whole world throws its hands up in despair at anyone unhip enough to not 'get it'.
And yet, we don't ever really speak about sex. We talk loudly about the idealised picture of it Young women (and men) are intimidated by the images of perfect sexuality that are rammed into their eyeballs from every direction. They are told simply what the mechanics of sexual intercourse are at school, and how it can lead to pregnancy, but if they get more than a glance at techniques, or anything that suggests sex might be recreational as well as procreational, then they're doing bloody well. No, We simply tell them what the mechanics are, tell them they should wait until they are much older when they will understand better, and then leave them to it. Is it any wonder then, that they turn to the most readily available sources of education in these matters that they can find?
And herein lies the issue with certain types of pornography. If young person sees a film in which a woman is humiliated and debased, or has stuff shoved into her that you might not normally expect a woman to have shoved into her, they don't have the contextual experience or education to know that this might be a 'niche' thing dependent on taste. They may (and often do) simply assume that what they are seeing is just par for the course. This may terrify them, as they look at something which doesn't do anything for them (and it follows that if we are defending people's right to be into whatever sexual practices they like then we must similarly defend people's right not to be as well) or it may cause them to simply assume that they can do things to people rather than with them. It can lead, in short, to a very warped point of view with regards to sex.
I'm not saying that we need to ban any kind of pornography - what people want to do and watch is entirely down to them, though there is plenty of suggestion that those involved in performing in these movies can often suffer, both emotionally and physically, from the extremes of demand that are placed on them and the frequency with which this is done. I'd like to think that if we could get over the prevailing attitude in the western world that sex is some kind of inherently shameful and harmful thing that we must protect the masses from as much as possible that this is another issue that might be addressed, but that's not really the topic for today.
But what we do need to do is stop hiding sex away from kids. Again, I get that it's in their faces plenty in terms of TV and magazines, but it also isn't. We don't take the time to explain to young people that there are different kinds of sexual activity, that some people like stuff which is very specific and which isn't for everyone. We don't take the time to encourage them to explore this in a healthy and consensual way - we just hide any evidence of it from them because it might be 'harmful', we ban pornography, we shame those who engage in practices that are outside the normal, and we create and perpetuate the very problems that we then attempt, inadequately to address.
Don't get me wrong - I don't think that primary school kids need to know about bondage and S&M. They don't NEED to know much, other than the basic mechanics required to satiate the inherent curiosity that drives every small child to ask, at some point, where babies come from. But kids at secondary school, kids who are hitting puberty and experiencing all sorts of new and bewildering feelings and have no real idea of how to act on them - these are the kids that we should be educating. Don't show them porn, but make them aware that sex isn't just some single track, vanilla thing. Let them know that it's an infinite variety of orientations and tastes, and that the most important thing that they can bear in mind is respect for the other person/people they embark on that journey with.
If we could do that, then maybe we could create a world in which sex wasn't such a big and awkward issue. And maybe then nobody would have to ban anybody's porn, which lets face it, is not that many steps removed from the police standing in your bedroom making sure that you're only having 'nice and appropriate' sex. And who wants that?
No comments:
Post a Comment