It is a talk to the American Academy of Pediatrics by Professor Gail Dines, a British academic working in the US.
It lays bare the insidious change inflicted on our culture by the multi-billion dollar porn industry, aided and abetted by the big credit card companies. It highlights the heart-breaking impact this culture shift is having today on the minds of boys and girls, on their behaviour and health.
Dines says “men who rape women are not deviant but are over-conformist to societal messages coming at them”. Strong words, but taking a look at the huge rise in sex crime especially amongst young people in recent years, suggests it has to have a source. That source is the change in culture.
Human behaviour results from the interplay between the brain and the environment. The cultural environment has totally changed in the past 10 years because of the ever-increasing availability of porn videos via smartphones and tablets. Access, availability and anonymity drive its reach into the minds of young people naturally curious about sex and desperate to learn all about it so as to prepare them for adulthood. However our brains have not adapted to this tsunami of hyperstimulating material that has never before been available to human beings.
Dines highlights the physical harms brought about by porn such as the rectal prolapses from so much anal sex it necessitates permanent wearing of incontinence pads and the rise in erectile dysfunction in men under 40 from 2-5% 15 years ago to around 27-33 % today. She shows how this on tap sexual schooling initiates 11 year old boys into a world of adult sex that is about “making hate to women not love” with over 90% of the content being violent and coercive. Girls regard Miley Cyrus and the Kardashians as good role models. Girls don’t see other, better role models of how to be feminine. It’s all about being “fuckable or invisible.” The videos show women faking enjoyment of the literal ‘torture’ that is being inflicted upon them. Time to waken and react.
Join us in campaigning to bring comprehensive brain-based sex education to our schools starting in primary 7 and going right through to the end of secondary school. Help us educate parents, healthcare and criminal justice professionals to combat this full-on destructive assault on our society and allow healthy, sexual loving relationships to become the norm.
