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Gripping my office desk, I read the messages landing in my inbox. ‘I’m 14, and my boyfriend wants anal in a car park while people watch.”I’m scared to get strangled but everyone else is doing it.”Sex always hurts and my boyfriend doesn’t care.’ During almost every shift as an online sex and relationships adviser for young people, a teenage girl would write in, confused and upset after she’d been pressured, coerced, or forced into having sex. In particular, to have rougher and more violent sex-like the sex they said the boys were watching in online porn.
As an online sex and relationships adviser for young people, Holly Bourne frequently received messages from teenage girls who were confused and upset after they’d been pressured, coerced, or forced into having sex (stock image). I had known from my training that sexual violence would come up, but I never expected the onslaught. On a bad shift, at least half the messages would involve sexual violence. What was especially upsetting was these girls rarely realized they had just described a rape to me-they just saw non-consensual, degrading, and painful sex as a ‘normal’ part of their lives. That’s what broke me in the end-the girls not realizing. That they were feeling ashamed, confused, and upset not due to a muddled sexual encounter, but because a horrific crime had been committed against them. It was worryingly evident what early exposure to hardcore porn was doing to this generation.
I had been warned that this kind of work takes its toll, that most people can only endure two years at the most. But I was excited for this next step in my career. I’d worked as a journalist and editor at a youth charity website for three years, and they’d asked me to step into this new role. I had a no-doubt idealized concept of what it would involve and how fulfilling it would be. Two years later, however, I did indeed hand in my notice-a shell of the person I was before, one who needed counseling myself. I was permanently angry, emotional, and distrustful of men.
Six years on, I’m sad to say that things have got far worse for young people. On a particularly bad shift, at least half of the messages Holly (pictured) received would be about sexual violence. Despite an onslaught of horrifying statistics about young people and pornography-one in ten children has viewed it by the age of nine; the average age of first exposure is 12; one in five under 18s admit to having a ‘porn habit’ — we appear unable to find solutions.
Although well-meaning, those on both the Left and Right shut down conversations about the harm porn causes our teenagers, leaving them to navigate this new sexual landscape alone. From a conservative perspective, there’s an understandable worry about what type of sex and porn education is appropriate for our children, alongside a reluctance to admit how bad the problem really is. And, on the more liberal side, there’s an often too adult view of sexuality, where fears of ‘kink-shaming’ or appearing ‘sex-negative’ outweigh the urgent safeguarding required for our teens’ sexual well-being. In the meantime, children keep watching porn at increasingly younger ages, with little to no framework to contextualize the brutal image being painted. I believe the widespread consumption of hardcore pornography is now a public health emergency. Many teenagers are aware of what it’s doing to them and are desperate for help navigating the pressures they’re under, but adults can’t seem to figure out what the hell to do about it. As someone who has seen the result firsthand, it frustrates and terrifies me.
Statistics have shown that one in ten children has viewed porn by the age of nine, that the average age of first exposure is 12, and that one in five under 18s admit to having a ‘porn habit’ (stock image). When I started my new role, I considered it a privilege to be privy to young people’s sex and relationship anxieties. The fact the service was anonymous meant users felt safe to open up about their most intimate secrets. My first ever question was from somebody feeling lonely at university who didn’t know how to make friends. Next came a boy who was scared to disclose his depression to a new girlfriend in case it put her off. Common themes developed: loneliness, virginity, penis and vagina worries, uncertainty about sexuality.
Young men said they were aroused by porn not real women. Within a week, I got my first rape-related inquiry. ‘My friend walked me home from a house party then followed me into my bedroom and kept pushing me to have sex with him. ‘It was really rough and painful. Afterwards he acted like everything was normal. I’m so confused.’ I inhaled sharply and found myself shaking. We had a ‘buddy system’ where a colleague was always free during a shift in case you needed support and, for the first time, I called them over. ‘This will come up a lot,’ they said. ‘You may want to write a template answer.’ Later on, another awful message arrived. ‘I don’t know if I’m overreacting but I woke up the other morning to find my boyfriend having sex with me. ‘He thought it would be a nice ‘surprise’ to wake up to, but I don’t know . . . It’s made me feel really strange. Holly frequently responded to messages where the victim didn’t realize she had been raped. They were feeling ashamed, confused, and upset not due to a muddled sexual encounter, but because a horrific crime had been committed against them (stock image). I had to push my rage to one side and reply calmly and carefully. How do you explain to someone that they’ve technically been raped? I reworded it a dozen times before sending-telling her whatever she was feeling was valid, that there was no ‘wrong’ way to respond to this. I encouraged her to seek specialist support to talk through her next steps. After I hit send, I told my boss I needed to go for a walk. Once outside, I started crying, letting out a shriek that scared away a flock of pigeons. This was the third rape I’d responded to in my two-hour shift. Even worse, in each case the victim didn’t realize she’d been raped. I sat on a bench and pushed back the tears.
I had compulsory clinical supervisions with a psychologist every month to ensure I was safe and sane enough to do my job properly. Every session centered around the sexual violence I was witnessing. ‘I knew I would find myself supporting some victims,’ I told her, ‘but I never could’ve imagined the scale of it.’ Quite often I’d have to counsel rapists themselves. Boys would write in, describing how they’d pressured their girlfriends into doing a certain sex act ‘until they gave in,’ or had sex with them against their will, who were now seeking atonement. Sometimes they’d describe raping their girlfriend and then complain that she was ‘being weird’ with them, asking for help on how they could ‘get her over it’. I’d reply professionally and then go to scream in a toilet cubicle. ‘This job is starting to change how I feel about men,’ I told my supervisor a year into the job. ‘It’s hard not to be angry at all of them, to feel they’re all like this.’ Up to nine out of ten porn films show acts of physical and verbal violence, and women are the targets of this violence 97 percent of the time (stock image). She reassured me it was a common issue for people who work with assault victims. ‘If you worked for a charity that helped victims of dog bites, you’d soon start to feel like all dogs bite,’ she said. ‘But that doesn’t mean all dogs do.’ She suggested I find tangible ways to channel my feelings of anger and helplessness, such as creative writing, and to remind myself of the good I was doing. I was a teenager in the Noughties, and life wasn’t exactly fun back then. Drunk girls were routinely taken advantage of at house parties and I couldn’t go clubbing without getting my bottom pinched. But the sex expected of teenage girls now is far more hardcore-and the widespread access to free, violent pornography is the obvious driving force…
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