EXPERTS say teenage girls are copying what they see in pornography and seeking treatment from family doctors for injuries sustained during “rough sex”. They believe it’s part of the dark side of the sexualisation of the internet generation.
The problem is that young people — boys and girls — are watching videos that do not reflect “normal” sexual relationships. Young men watch pornography depicting scenes of rape, bondage, torture and bestiality and expect the young women in their lives to carry out the same level of eroticism.
Susan McLean, a federal government cyber-safety adviser, told The Australianthat GPs are treating injuries that happen when children are pressured into behaving in a sexualised way.
“I’ve had GPs tell me about the injuries they are seeing in young girls when they have been forced or coerced to do what is in porn videos,’’ she said.
“They’re not watching anything within a circle of normality — they’re looking at rape, bondage, torture and bestiality. The girls in the videos all appear to like it, so girls think that’s just how sex is.’’
Police understand the dangers, too. Victoria Police supports an Australian project titled Reality and Risk that looks at the harms associated with children’s exposure to pornography.
A young woman named Sara, who told her story for the project, said: “When boys start having sex they imagine porn. Boys have their way with girls however they want. Girls love it in the porn so boys think that girls like that. They don’t want to ask (how girls like it). They just do it and hope that she takes it and I’m sure some girls would take it because it’s awkward saying no.”
Disturbing pictures emerged last week of a young woman sporting a tattoo on her stomach featuring the words “Boner Garage” and an arrow pointing down.
The crude slogan, copied from a scene of the MA-rated 2013 Jennifer Aniston movieWe’re the Millers, even has its own hashtag on Instagram, which is popular with teenage girls, according to The Australian.
A young woman shows off her tattoo. Source: Supplied
A character in “We’re the Millers”. Source: News Corp Australia
According to Reality and Risk, more than 90 per cent of boys and 60 per cent of girls have watched pornography online. Of those videos, more than 88 per cent include physical aggression.
Allison Pearson, a columnist for The Telegraph in London, wrote earlier this yearthat young women are engaging in sex that their bodies are “simply not designed for”.
She said a GP she spoke with confessed a growing number of teenage girls were being treated for internal injuries caused by frequent anal sex “not because (they) wanted to, or because (they) enjoyed it — on the contrary — because a boy expected (them) to”.
Dr Meagan Tyler, a research fellow at RMIT University, told news.com.au the industry must take most of the blame for focusing so heavily on young women.
“There’s the whole ‘barely legal’ thing where the industry focuses primarily on the age of women, not men,” she said.
“We also know that porn from the mid-to-late 1990s has become a lot more hardcore. We’re seeing the mainstreaming of choking, which a lot of young women complain about.”
Young men are forcing women to mimic what they see online, experts warn. Source: Getty Images
Dr Tyler said research shows women are suffering from faecal incontinence as a result of anal sex and that they’re “uncomfortable” with the assumption that it’s become “the norm”.
“That’s the brutal material reality for what it means for these young women’s lives.”
The harm is physical but young women are being hurt in other ways, too.
Melbourne child psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg said children still in primary school are taking and sharing pictures of their naked classmates — mimicking what they’ve seen online.
In one case, a 12-year-old boy photographed an 11-year-old girl and “sent it to 21 mates”, Mr Carr-Gregg said. He could be prosecuted for possessing and obtaining child pornography.
Dr Tyler said tackling the problem is not easy but it’s time educators had a more realistic conversation with young people about what they’re seeing online.
“You can’t pretend pornography doesn’t exist,” she said.
“I think we’re getting somewhere in that there’s more public discussion about it (but) we’re going to need to start talking about more serious and comprehensive sex education.”
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