No. 17 Autumn 2022

Hello, everyone, welcome to the Autumn 2022 TRF newsletter. What’s new? Find out the latest about the Online Safety Bill. Learn about our updated lesson plans for schools, key research on sexual attitudes and an interesting new book. There is also a surprise announcement. Enjoy!

Mary Sharpe, CEO

What does the latest news that the government has axed the plan in the Online Safety Bill to make Big Tech remove ‘harmful but legal content’ mean for families and users? Watch this excellent interview on Sky News with our colleague and child online safety expert John Carr OBE for details.

Also, FYI, John Carr produces a first-rate blog called Desiderata that keeps everyone aware of the developments in the UK, across Europe, and US on this important area. Another excellent blog on developments in the UK Parliament is by the wellbeing trust Carnegie UK. They focus on the Online Safety Bill (previously known as Online Harms Bill). They do a useful analysis and send out updates on a regular basis in their newsletter. You can sign up here for it here.

Our seven free lesson plans have been updated. They include new research and videos of actual brain cells joining with others to form a new pathway. There are more The Scottish government’s unit for sex education encouraged us to make our lessons align better with the LGBTQ+ agenda. We were LGB conformant ok, just not TQ+ enough. This is a highly controversial area.

According to a review by Pornhub, the largest provider of pornography in the UK and well known to most pupils, people who identify as bisexual, for instance, are on average more frequent users of pornography. We also know that pornography use helps shape sexual tastes, often in a direction away from a person’s original sexual identity. To that extent, users may want to be aware of these possible changes to the brain and the additional risks to mental and physical health as a result of heavy use over time.

The Relation of Sexual Attitudes to Hypersexuality and Problematic Pornography Use. (2022)

In this paper researchers investigated four dimensions of sexual attitudes. These were Permissiveness, Birth Control, Communion and Instrumentality. They look at how they contribute to problematic pornography use (PPU) and hypersexual disorder (HD) symptoms, controlling for religiosity, sex, age and relationship status…

They found that, “Permissiveness was the strongest and most consistent positive predictor of HD [hypersexual disorder] and PPU out of the four analyzed sexual attitude dimensions …”

“…the association is unique and not explained by religious attitudes, which were previously studied in this context—this is the most important theoretical contribution of the current study.”

The reason this is important is because there has been an attempt in recent years by researchers close to the porn industry to distract attention from porn use itself as the cause of a variety of mental and physical harms.

One of their main talking points is that problematic porn use is all due to religious or moral incongruence. That is the notion that if users are experiencing problems, they just feel shame or moral panic due to religious beliefs.  This flies in the face of the tens of thousands of people seeking treatment who are atheists or have no religious background. There are many forms of shame, not only those induced by religion. For example, shame that can arise from an inability to quit a habit, despite its negative consequences.

This research shows that religious attitudes were not a factor in the finding on problematic porn use and hyper sexual disorder.

If you or those close to you are confused about sexual attitudes and sexual relationships today, you will find a lot of fascinating material to enlighten you in this new book “The Case against the Sexual Revolution – a New Guide to Sex in the 21^st century” by the young, but well-informed journalist Louise Perry.

Louise Perry unpacks many of the root causes of issues affecting women in particular today. At the same time she doesn’t ignore the negative influences on men too. She covers sexual violence, some of which certain groups of women actively seek out. Perry looks at the difference between sex and gender issues; attitudes between the old-style radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin who were against pornography for objectifying women for male pleasure and the modern liberal feminists who wrongly, in the author’s opinion, regard porn as a form of sexual liberation and empowerment.

She backs up her thesis with excellent research and heart-rending stories of exploitation. Perry puts her faith in traditional forms of union like marriage. She sees it to be the best way to protect women in relationships, especially if children are involved. Well worth a read.

As Autumn moves into Winter we are hoping to bring you two surprises in the next edition, which may come out sooner than usual. We will re-launch our new website. It is still experiencing technical glitches. The other is something that I hope you will help us celebrate when it arrives. No, it is not a baby, but a new project. More anon.

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