“Gay Porn Is Better Than Sex Ed”

Posted August 27, 2013 10:54 AM by with 6 comments

In response to a British proposal to block porn sites, youth advocate Simon Blake argues that porn may be the best sex ed gays have.

About a month ago, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced that internet subscribers would need to “opt-in” if they wanted to be able to access porn sites. (That is, you’d have to call your cable operator and request specific permission to read this.) Free speech advocates were outraged — after all, porn filters catch a lot more than porn in their nets.

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But Simon Blake, an advocate for sex ed, may have the best argument against the ban: for gay youth, porn is often the only place they can see gay sex portrayed positively. In an editorial in the UK’s Pink Paper, he says that while it’s not ideal, porn is often better than the available sex ed:

We know, of course, that for some gay boys and girls their Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) is woefully inadequate. As a result pornography may be, for some, one of the first places they see their sexuality represented positively or that they learn about same-sex relationships…

So should we really be concerned about pornography? It is clear from the young people visiting our services that more and more are seeing pornography. But most can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. And if we were to say, “we need to improve the online safety of children and young people”, would anyone argue the reverse?

When it comes to the proposal for internet safety filters to be activated as a default, there are many people who think this is sensible, reasonable and proportionate. One person’s perfectly reasonable suggestion – say, that “adult” material should be filtered out by internet service providers – is another person’s creeping censorship. …

Last week I appeared on Newsnight as part of a panel discussing the effects of easily available porn. One of the other people on the show, Tom, talked about how finding gay porn online “was something of a comfort” for him. As a young gay man who had been brought up in a place where sexuality wasn’t discussed it helped him realise he wasn’t “some sort of a freak”.

Or, perhaps more to the point: that being some sort of freak can be a good thing.

Just so long as it doesn’t lead them to Fraternity X.

Porn or Better Sex Education? (Pink News)

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6 responses to “Gay Porn Is Better Than Sex Ed”

  1. EdWoody August 27th, 2013 at 12:00 PM

    That is precisely why I abhor the increasing acceptance of unsafe sex in gay porn. It is the only sex education these boys have, and if they see a dick going in an ass without a condom, that’s what they’ll do.

    Reply

    • James August 30th, 2013 at 10:31 PM

      I agree, but none of this means the government should try to censor the internet.

      Reply

  2. Casey August 28th, 2013 at 7:49 AM

    ^^^^^ what he said. HIV infections among people below 25 are on the rise. Where do you think this stems from?

    Reply

    • Mike August 28th, 2013 at 10:25 AM

      I don’t know — I’ve never been a huge media effects guy. I think it stems more from the lack of discussion about HIV in gay culture — or in popular culture in general. When I was coming of age, there was a tremendous awareness of the risks of HIV. The side effect of the cocktail was that it made it invisible, and for the past ten to fifteen years, we haven’t really talked about it. David Weissman (of We Were Here) talked about it as a sort of post-traumatic stress. After the darkest days were over, people wanted to move on and, to some extent, forget. I think that, more than bareback porn, is causing the rise.

      I see plenty of things in movies — stuntmen jumping off of buildings, car chases, blackmail — that I would never attempt in real life. While I don’t think that bareback porn helps at all, I don’t think it’s the major causal factor in this but rather, symptomatic.

      Reply

      • Casey August 29th, 2013 at 6:43 AM

        I think a mix of both might be the case, and I’d also note the generational distance in the gay community in general. There are now many gay men who have never known anyone who died of AIDS. This is a good thing, but it also creates a denial of the ongoing issue of HIV.

        I’ve heard the comparison between performing stunts in commercial films and having bareback sex, and frankly it’s ludicrous. A stunt is faked. Sex in porn is genuine, “the frenzy of the visible” as Williams so accurately puts it. Additionally, because porn actually is a kind of sex education tool for a number of its viewers, as Blake asserts, it is clearly not the same thing as watching a box office blockbuster for other entertainment purposes.

        And let’s not dismiss the media as having no effect on its audience. That’s the entire point of media. Other media effects include teenage girls trying to get pregnant to become stars on MTV’s “Teen Mom” and idiots braining themselves in stupid stunts to be the next “Jackass”. Notice the recurring factor in these instances is the age of the audience, young minds still developing and making stupid decisions. These stupid decisions no doubt include having bareback sex after seeing it in porn.

        Reply

        • Mike August 29th, 2013 at 9:17 AM

          I think you’re welcome to object to the stunt/bareback comparison, but I wouldn’t call it ludicrous. The sex that happens on set is carefully scripted and (often) with precautions like testing and discussions over HIV status that may not go on in private experience. What is fake about jumping off a building? That an actor lands on a mattress? The action is genuine — it’s what happens out of frame that changes things.

          There are always a handful of idiots who will imitate Jackass, or Beavis and Butthead, or Teen Mom, but it’s a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of viewers. It makes good headline copy in the Post, but it’s hardly something you could call an epidemic. In fact, if that same percentage of bareback porn viewers is acting out as Teen Moms, we’re very lucky indeed. So it’s not that I’m claiming media is without effect, it’s just that it’s effect is limited. Media’s a complex ecosystem. It’s possible that the presence of bareback porn actually stimulates discussion and thinking about HIV in a way that an exclusively condomed world would not, since there’d be nothing to debate. Bareback porn is, in fact, one of the few places left where gay culture still argues openly about HIV transmission.

          You’re right on the generational disconnect, and I think we can add in youth invincibility, poor sex ed, the transition to chronic disease status, the general annoyance of condoms, and plenty of other factors into the mix. Bareback porn, in my opinion, is closer to epiphenomenal than causal.

          I don’t mean to come across as a bareback apologist — I think there’s a lot of scumbags out there, and I think there’s plenty that can be done — just think the place to attack it is from a worker’s rights vantage point, rather than media effects.

          Reply

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