Councillor Anna Wright

PORNOGRAPHY which shows women being strangled and degraded has become sex education by default and is contributing towards violence against women and girls, a council meeting heard on Monday.

Speakers discussed the role of the sex film industry in normalising abuse of women and misogyny. Concerns were flagged over the impact it is having on youngsters in schools.

Labour councillor Anna Wright said: “Pornography is not entertainment, promoting sexual liberation, free choice and free expression. It’s a global campaign for the promotion of male power over women. misogyny, and inequality.

“We hear from our young men here in Camden – students at our Camden schools – so damaged by pornography that they can’t achieve sexual satisfaction
without simulating strangulation of their girlfriends during sex.

“And our girls, by the same token, again are going to pornography to learn what’s expected of them sexually. We have all been groomed whether we know it or not by exposure to pornography. But we don’t even say it. We don’t name it.”

A report by national schools inspectorate Ofsted in June found that pupils were often sent solicited or unsolicited porn on the internet – with girls often sent sexual images, coerced into sharing images themselves or then having those images reshared.

Leah Jewitt

Evidence suggests that nearly half of 11-16 year olds in the UK have viewed pornography, with boys twice as likely as girls to have searched for it. Alarmingly, 60 per cent of 11 to 13-year-olds said their viewing was mostly unintentional.

Leah Jewitt, who founded Outspoken Sex Ed, a social enterprise that aims to get parents talking to their children about sex and relationships said the problem had already become established and it had become the conventional way for people to learn about sex.

She told the meeting: “There’s a couple of factors. 88 per cent [of pornography] is said to be violent or degrading towards women, and how it might influence children and young people’s sexual development, attitudes and behaviour.

“I believe that the accessibility of porn is the genie out of the bottle that has sparked people the world over to acknowl­edge that porn is sex education by default. The answer is critical thinking and talking openly.”