The UK has a porn problem
Meet the women fighting back against ‘the pornography gap’
TW: this blog includes mentions of pornography and sexual assault.
To say that porn is a problem in our society is a little like saying the grass is green. We know that mainstream pornography is sabotaging relationships, normalising sexual violence, exploiting women, and traumatising children. But - as with the cocktail of miseries society is dealing with at the moment - it can be hard to know exactly what to do about it.
In fact, research by the sex education platform MakeLoveNotPorn has found that 43% of parents say they feel ‘powerless’ when it comes to controlling the content their child can access online, and almost half (46%) don’t feel confident speaking to their children about pornography and its potential harms. Similarly, last year, a report by the Children’s Commissioner for England and former head teacher, Dame Rachel de Souza, found that one in ten children have watched pornography by the time they are nine years old, and four out of five (79%) have seen pornography involving violence by the age of eighteen.
But with sexual violence against women and girls on the rise and a rapist back in the White House, if we want to repair some of the cultural damage porn has done and better educate people on healthy, happy, consensual sex, it’s time to pull our heads out of the sand and get active. This is exactly what the brains behind MakeLoveNotPorn’s latest endeavour hope to achieve.
For this week’s edition of SILT, I sat down with MakeLoveNotPorn’s PR and Founder of What Follows,
, to chat about the campaign she and her team have been running to raise awareness of MakeLoveNotPorn Academy, a forthcoming sex education platform created by MakeLoveNotPorn’s founder .Hi Hannah! Can you give us a brief overview of what you mean by ‘the pornography gap’ and what the team at MakeLoveNotPorn is doing to close it?
We’re talking about the difference between pornography and real-world sex. In the absence of decent sex education and conversations about sex, many of us learn about sex and intimacy through porn. There’s never been more porn and it's never been easier to access.
The thing about pornography is that we’re all watching it. 20% of all internet traffic goes to porn sites - that’s more clicks than the BBC - and studies suggest children as young as six are coming across it. We can’t just rely on teachers to do the work, and we certainly can’t trust social media platforms to mitigate the risks of online harms. What MakeLoveNotPorn is doing by launching MakeLoveNotPorn Academy is giving parents, educators, and curious adults a place to access age-appropriate, inclusive, and expert-led sex education—filling the gap of poor - and in many cases completely absent - sex education.
It matters because pornography is tainting our own experiences of real-world sex. I think most of us can relate to having sex with a new person and thinking, “Well, you learned that move from Pornhub.” Mainstream pornography makes sex performative and gives us unrealistic ideals of what’s ‘normal’. A man can maintain an erection for four hours. A woman reaches orgasm with no warm-up within two minutes of penetration. I mean, come on…
That’s not to say that I, nor Cindy and team, are anti-pornography. I’m anti-anything that is racist, sexist, or homophobic and, unfortunately, that’s a lot of the mainstream porn industry. But I admire directors like Erika Lust and her team who are creating pornography that is written, produced, and shot through the female gaze. There’s so much more emphasis on the small subtleties of eroticism—the ripples of muscle on the back, close-up shots of hands and moments of touch. It’s playful, fun and beautifully shot.
The campaign that my team and I have been pushing these past few weeks, ‘In Sex, Education Matters’, is not about shaming or eradicating pornography, but rather advocating for better sex education to teach young people the difference between the two.
You recently held a sell-out event with the likes of Cindy Gallop, and as speakers. Can you tell us a bit more about it, as well as what was discussed?
What a dream panel! On 30th October, we hosted the panel ‘In Sex, Education Matters’ at Second Home in Spitalfields to raise awareness of the forthcoming MakeLoveNotPorn Academy and its mission. There is so much noise online and little opportunity to get deeper into the topic in a way that a live panel allows. We wanted to create the space for a critically needed conversation about sex education and young people in a room full of campaigners, education media, and the general public. It was a diverse space in every sense, and it made for an evening of confronting, insightful - and at times moving - conversations about sex, consent, and education. No PR lines or marketing spiel, it was a true and honest look into one of the most taboo topic areas that exists: SEX!
The panellists discussed a range of topics including the role of pornography in shaping our experiences and understanding of sex and intimacy, the absence of disability sex education in the curriculum, and the rise of misogynistic influencers. And the conversations continued long into the night and online in the days following the panel. It was incredible to be a part of it.
MakeLoveNotPorn is proudly ‘pro-sex’ and ‘pro-porn’. How does its version of porn differ from the more mainstream providers?
The major thing to note is that MakeLoveNotPorn - as the name suggests - isn’t a porn site, it's a social sex platform. Porn is performative, produced, and scripted entertainment. On MakeLoveNotPorn, everyone who’s uploaded a video is a real-life person, having real-life consensual sex in all its messy, loving, beautiful glory. Unlike the mainstream porn sites, all of the 4,000 videos on the site are 100% human-vetted, so there’s no risk of watching any content that is racist, homophobic, non-consensual or abusive (a far cry from Pornhub, for example). It’s genius, it’s empowering and, beyond everything, goddamn sexy.
Having worked with the MakeLoveNotPorn team for a few months now and getting an insight into the backend of the business, I was struck by just how much red tape exists for MakeLoveNotPorn compared to mainstream businesses. Cindy spoke about this on the panel, but the team isn’t allowed to advertise on social media and couldn’t get banked for the first four years of business.
What’s more, only 1.7% of all venture capital funding went to female-owned businesses last year, which is why crowdfunding campaigns are urgently needed. For anyone who can invest (from £70, so first-time investors are very welcome), please visit the MakeLoveNotPorn WeFunder. It’s incredible what MakeLoveNotPorn have created over the past 15 years with the small team they have, and so many barriers in their way. Imagine what they could do with the support of a community of investors…
When it comes to educating the UK public (and the rest of the world) about sex, what are some core lessons we need to be learning ourselves, as well as teaching our children?
One of the things that stuck out to me from the panel was a point Cindy Gallop made about the importance of ‘sexual values’. She noted that she often asks people what theirs are, and they can rarely answer. Why aren’t we taught to be kind, communicative, generous, and curious in the bedroom?! I’ve since written down my sexual values, and it will now be an essential vehicle through which to filter my future partners. Thanks, Cindy.
Freddie Feltham, a journalist who had investigated the influence of Andrew Tate on young men, also spoke about the desire young men have to learn about sex. He noted that all boys his age had learned about sex through pornography. Talking about the role of sex education in building sexual confidence, he said, “Guys want to be good at this stuff, they want to be good at sex”.
Consent also came up a lot. We did some research as part of the campaign into the sex education adults received. 85% of the adults we spoke to were not taught about consent in their sex education as a young person. Jameela had a great point on this. She spoke about the importance of “enthusiastic consent” as the standard. A recent report found that 50% of men believe silence is consent. There’s much work to do in educating everyone on the very basics about consent, speaking up when it doesn’t feel right, and generally being well-behaved lovers in the bedroom. This conversation should start in childhood. As Jameela noted, there’s far less room for predators if the child knows it's okay to say no.
To keep up to date with MakeLoveNotPorn’s initiatives, events, and insights, you can follow MakeLoveNotPorn, Cindy Gallop and Hannah Martin on Instagram. Please also consider investing in MakeLoveNotPorn Academy.
The point about consent not being taught in sex education is so interesting. I remember the sexed being this awkward class where we were mostly taught about anatomy and condoms. There is so much room to talk more about consent there for sure!
Interesting. Porn definitely destroys character.