So yesterday I was having major wobbles about what I am doing. I’ve been interviewing parents, asking anyone who will listen about my ideas for the project and trying to work out what it is they want and how they would want this delivered but they all want bloody different things. Some want podcast and a way to have info to digest in their own time, many will read a book but only something quite punchy and not too wordy. Others want practical help, workshops, chat rooms/groups, maybe some social media account they can follow as well. This has led me to go round in circles. I feel quite frustrated too. I often see a disparity between what people feel they are prepared for or how they see these difficult convos going and then what actually happens or how they really handle them. More than that sometimes I just get overwhelmed with house fucking ridiculous people are. How naive and uninformed about stuff that is so important and I just think it’s all too much or I get angry at people for being stupid!! . There are too many people, too much info and way too much bad shit in this area of work let alone on a more general level, that I just can’t take it all on.
I have to step back and remind myself that actually for once the MAAI insistence on getting specific is helpful and that I can hone in on one element to stop being so overwhelmed. I’m gonna use porn as my way in and see where that takes me. I know the format I create can be adapted to further conversations, I’ve at least been through that part of this (or any) process before.
I have been thinking a lot about the nature of the project being reactive or active though too. When it comes to tackling Rape Culture (yes I am the idiot who has basically chosen an entire cultural epidemic to try and smash) there is an argument for making something active – trying to cut things down at the source as it were – but also reactive – breaking shit down takes time, this stuff is essential generational and what do we do to protect tweens, girls especially, in the mean time? Yes they shouldn’t have to adjust their behaviour but they should also be able to exist in the world safely too.
I have both an active idea and a reactive idea. I am pursuing the active idea, trying to break down conversations about porn into learning opportunities, getting people comfortable enough to talk about vagina’s without dying of embarrassment or smirking like the pathetic Tory MP in charge of sex education in this country in a channel 4 doc I watched recently who literally couldn’t tell us what a clitoris is (his poor wife). Every time I tell anyone that the average age for seeing hardcore porn in this country for the first time is 9-11 years old people have a visceral reaction, they’re horrified and rightly so. They balk at the fact a child can go from typing “boobies” to watching hardcore anal in less than 6 clicks.
Porn, wait I should rephrase this, hardcore internet BAD porn, is a $100 billion industry, it is an industry with enough power to make child porn essentially legal, it has enough power to enable sex trafficking and child sexual abuse to go on completely untethered and it has enough power to keep all this going on a global scale. The internet is the unregulated Wild West and there is nothing I can do about that. And, I’m not against porn really, there is a small world of really sex positive, feminist, ethical porn out there that is a completely different animal. What if that was what those kids found when they were trying to answer the questions they are too embarrassed to ask by googling stuff. If porn is sex education, how do we make porn sex education? This may be my final question but I am not sure yet.
I need to also make a quick comment here about the fact that parental controls whilst helping a small bit are basically useless. There are apps being developed just as fast to help secretly circumnavigate parental controls and frankly in my experience they’re all shit. Not only are they fundamentally flawed by not actually working because a companies bottom line is to sell you shit so they still allow lots of loopholes for ads and purchases etc but they also breed a attitude of mistrust and sneaking around that I am not crazy about. If we are trying to create safe and honest spaces for safe and honest dialogue I’m not sure if they really help build that foundation.
I was gonna talk about my reactive idea but this post is too long and I need to go read bedtime stories to my girls so I’ll save it for another post.