As always although I don’t want to do these written pieces the process is useful. I’ve written out notes, thought about the interventions and assessed where I am and where the project is heading. It feels good to be at a turning point in the direction of the work and I’m looking forward to moving onto new areas as well as ready to leave some stuff behind.
The written piece reflecting on interventions and the project as a whole at this stage so far looks like this, although I may tweak it further before the hand in tomorrow.
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The project has reached a good turning point in the iterative process. The last intervention, a session with a CIC organisation, Dad La Soul, was delivered online, restricting conversation to written comments and taking on a more presentational/interview style. This difference meant no art work examples were used, instead creating slides with texts that supported the broader view of porn related discussions. The fact the group was one for men who wanted to participate in a ‘group think’ gathering already, meant I was hopeful that I would get more participation from them than previous dads groups. With this in mind I took the opportunity to pose more questions to the group about their own porn consumption and spend time on the topic of ethical pornography, something many of them said they didn’t know existed. I do wonder how this would have been different if it had been an in person session. The lack of male engagement in the previous workshops evidenced it was important to try more with this particular demographic since their participation, in the ultimate aim of combatting male violence and toxic masculinity, is vitally important to any kind of progress or lasting change.
All the workshops have been a resounding success, the feedback and responses continue to create demand for more and really show that there is an appetite for these kinds of useful and progressive resources and discourse. I have learned how to adapt to the audience to make the most effective use of both subject matter and art works. The fact that participants reconsidered the ethics of their choices and understood better the internalising influence porn can have is great progress. Those people then wanting to reflect upon this to have better open dialogues and positive modelling within their own families means the project is reaching its goals so far.
Ultimately the interventions are a successful way to change attitudes and stir up constructive thinking around sex ed. and porn. The aim being to close the void between educational settings and family settings that explicit online porn currently fills. Porn literacy, just like media literacy and digital citizenship, is essential to our navigation of this territory. However, doing this one parent at a time isn’t enough. The dads in particular need to step up and participate more fully in these conversations and my research has given me a much better understanding of why this is more difficult for men. Faced with a different set of trappings to those that patriarchy oppresses upon women. I have learned a lot through this process but for now I don’t think the project benefits from a continuation of this parental focus. I now have a very good understanding and practical experience of how to facilitate these conversations effectively and where parents are at in terms of knowledge and receptiveness.
I want to note at this juncture also that I recognise the importance of holding space and championing for the myriad of communities who are effected in different ways by the influence of the kind of “bad porn” we are referencing. As well as all those working to change the narratives, structures and representations within the world of sex work and pornography for the better.
However it is too early in the larger scope of this project to really dive deep into these areas. Focus remains on engaging the demographics of people who are not already having these conversations, aren’t aware of its intersections or who lie at the peripheries of normalising them. The project aims to start opening the door so we can eventually walk more niche, nuanced or taboo subjects through it later. As the demographic of the stakeholder interventions shifts going forward it will be interesting to see how the discourse reflects this.
This leads me to wonder where next. I am still fascinated by early research findings into the sheer quantity and prevalence of porn consumption, so important when we consider it is so often violent and damaging. Anything else so widely consumed would be questioned more deeply and you would hope legislated around more constructively. This is not something that just parents are considering, questioning, seeing and more often than not, experiencing the effects of also. It’s now time to explore the best strategies to effectively start and sustain these specific conversations more widely.
With the current research question asking “How can we engage people in an open conversation about our cultural relationship to porn and its wider societal effect or influence?” The project will now try to engage people who are more well versed in the language of sex and sexuality as well as beyond a parental demographic so the discourse on its wider societal effect can be extended to everyone. It’s no secret that porn exists, it is ubiquitous to online life, but a surprisingly small amount of people really know much about the ethics or intricacies of the porn world both in front of and behind the camera.
It’s hard to maintain a balanced discourse about the pornification of our sexual education and (media) representations when faced with such undeniably negative consequences. An industry completely altered by the dawn of the internet as well as being vastly unregulated.Explicit online porn use isproven to have detrimental correlations to a whole host of things from addiction and depression to a higher likelihood to commit sexual violence and more. However I am not taking an anti porn stance (sexual curiosity is normal and ‘healthy’ sex ed. can lead to ‘healthy’ sex) and I’m certainly not telling anyone what to do. Neither of which are effective in creating change or holding non-judgemental safe spaces and wouldn’t be conducive to productive discourse.
Where the project can provide counterbalance is through advocating for ethical porn, for the opportunity to make informed choices and helping to educate through porn literacy and proper sex education. It is with the success of using art imagery and creative practice in the project so far, paralleling the visual arts with the visual medium of porn, that I feel we can explore this avenue more richly. Commissioning art works and creative responses to the project and what it is exploring for an exhibition or collection of work. This could create a platform to curate and facilitate further relevant discussions. Opening up the dialogue but also helping us process different understandings, new perspectives and unfamiliar experiences. Art creates a solid foundation to which we can all tread steadily forward into this new rockier terrain.