Infected porn stars say the outbreak of HIV infections shows the industry needs to get serious about condoms. Porn actors Cameron Bay and her boyfriend Rod Daily, both of whom recently tested positive for HIV, held a news conference in Hollywood on Wednesday sponsored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, to speak out about the need for condoms in the industry.
Pornography being used for teens’ sex education
Pornography has become the most common form of “sex education” for teenagers – to the point where it is now dictating the way they behave in relationships, new research has found.
Acceptance of violence and extreme sex acts are also on the rise among youth, as more aggression seeps into the increasingly competitive porn market.
Figures from the research, based on academic papers and interviews with young people in Australia, showed that by age 16, 90 per cent of boys and 60 per cent of girls interviewed had encountered porn.
A content analysis showed nearly 90 per cent of scenes included acts of physical aggression – such as hitting, choking or gagging – and that in 94 per cent of cases, the aggression was directed towards women who were often shown enjoying it.
“The young people we spoke to continually described the way porn’s signature sex acts are finding their way into their own sexual activity,” said researcher Maree Crabbe.
“The young women mentioned again and again about feeling pressure from their partners . . . and feeling used and dirty and degraded.”
A documentary based on the research, which experts say would probably be mirrored if a similar study was done in New Zealand, will be screened this week as part of an $800,000 government-funded project into porn by Auckland University. Called Love and Sex in an age of Pornography, it features interviews with more than 70 young people, as well as actors, agents and directors in the porn industry, talking about the increasing aggression in sex movies and the effect it has on our view of “normal” sexual behaviour.
An 18-year-old boy tells how, during his first sexual experience, aged 15, he had “watched so much porn I thought ‘all chicks dig this, all chicks want this done to them’, so I tried all this stuff and, yeah, it turned out bad”.
A 20-year-old woman says: “Boys definitely, I think, watch porn and then expect something like that to be done in real life.”
Crabbe said there were many risks in learning from porn – and they had nothing to do with morals.
For example, porn didn’t use condoms, portrayed scenes with multiple partners and risky hygiene practices, focused on one body type and gave “problematic” messages about consent.
“But the most concerning is the message it gives about gender, power and aggression,” she said. “It eroticises women being hurt or degraded.”
“Porn not only routinely portrays this, it says that it’s sexy.”
She called for better education for youth – a plea also made by The Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England after a report it commissioned into the same issues earlier this year.
The commissioner said “urgent action” was needed to develop children’s resilience to porn and its correlations to risky behaviour.
University of Auckland associate professor of psychology, Nicola Gavey, said the issues in Australia and the UK – especially the increasingly nasty misogyny – could be found here.
Gavey, part of a team leading the Pornography in the Public Eye project which is bringing the documentary here, said although research had not been conducted among teenagers in New Zealand, local figures usually ran in parallel.
She believed a conversation was needed about education – part of the reason for their project – which aimed to get people to talk seriously about porn.
“It’s so widespread, and yet you find when you try to talk about it, it’s really hard.”
The documentary will show on Thursday at the University of Auckland.
Further information: sexualpoliticsnow.org.nz
Story by Kirsty Johnston
8 August 2013
Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/9139318/Pornography-being-used-for-teens-sex-education
Battle against child pornography is global fight without borders
IN NEW ZEALAND we are well aware that we lag behind similar developed countries in rankings for child pornography.
Our abuse figures continue to shame us. Stories of neglect and cruelty are daily media events.
But another level of abhorrence was added last week with the story of a child in California bought, adopted and traded for the purposes of satisfying paedophiles across three continents.
The perpetrators of this crime were tracked and the child rescued – with credit due to investigators at the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs, police, Customs officials and others. New Zealand is a leader in the global effort to combat activities such as this and its ugly cousin child pornography.
Our Department of Internal Affairs has been at the forefront of this worldwide effort to find and bring to account purveyors of activities that sexually exploit children.
The Innovative Super Squirrel Hunter software at Internal Affairs has been customised for more than 20 other countries and is hailed worldwide as a major tool in the campaign to free children from sexual exploitation.
In 2011, six men associated with what was described as the world’s biggest paedophile ring, were charged with child pornography offences committed in New Zealand.
At that time Detective Senior Sergeant John Michael said he believed it was likely to be the tip of the iceberg. “It’s rampant in New Zealand and if the public knew the scale of the offence here, they would be appalled.”
The attitudes and behaviour of consumers of child pornography around the world degrades and puts all children including our own, at risk.
It is a borderless crime.
Behind every single one of those images is a real child looking to the adult world to protect them. A report from Unicef in 2009 estimated millions of victims and stated that boys and girls of all ages and backgrounds and in every region of the world were subjected to this type of sexual abuse and exploitation.
The creators and clientele of the child pornography industry are unrelenting in their pursuit of victims. The child at the centre of last week’s case was a baby when he was purchased for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
Especially concerning is that in most cases no-one knows who or where these children are and rescuing them from exploitation is deeply challenging. The expertise and experience of the investigator at Internal Affairs in New Zealand was the vital connection that led to the rescue of the little boy.
But the practice will continue until there is widespread awareness and acknowledgement that wherever such images originate, children are severely harmed.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child endorsed by every country in the world, and which New Zealand signed up to in 1993, obligates our state agencies to act always in the best interests of children. Article 34 commits us to protect children from any kind of sexual abuse.
We applaud the police, Internal Affairs and Customs for their vigilance and dedication to protecting children.
We need to continue our support and investment in these programmes to ensure that the evil industry cannot flourish here in New Zealand.
Author: Barbara Lambourn, national advocacy manager, Unicef NZ.
Source: The Dominion Post. Friday, Jukly 12, 2013, p. A9
More kids committing sexual abuse due to easy access to hardcore porn
Easy access to increasingly hardcore pornography and the sexualisation of childhood are being blamed for a rise in the number of children sexually abusing each other.
Growing numbers of children and teenagers are committing acts of sexual abuse against other children every year, with some as young as 11 being prosecuted for sexual offences.
Experts are calling for compulsory cyber-education programmes in all schools from primary level to stem the impact of explicit material.
Ministry of Justice figures received under the Official Information Act show that, since 2008, there have been 1299 prosecutions for sexual offences brought against young people under the age of 18.
This has risen steadily over the past five years, with 314 prosecutions last year compared to 204 in 2008. These are for offences ranging from rape to indecent assault and sexual grooming, with victims, both male and female, under the age of 16.
The youngest offender was 11. Only one of the offenders was a girl. Police say the jump in prosecutions was due to better knowledge and increased reporting of sexual abuse, rather than a rise in incidents.
To read full story go to:
More Kids Committing Sexcual Abuse – Story by Michelle Duff
8 July 2013
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/8889144/More-kids-committing-sexual-abuse
Porn Studies whips up a storm for academics – NZ Herald
With pornography accounting for huge volumes of internet traffic, it’s a subject ripe for analysis. But a new academic journal is causing outrage among campaigners against hardcore porn, writes Carole Cadwalladr
When the Guardian announced the planned launch next year of Porn Studies, the world’s first peer-reviewed academic journal on the subject, there were more than a few guffaws. One headline suggested it was a “new discipline” for academics.
What it concealed, however, is a bitter and contentious academic war over the status and nature of porn research, a war almost as bitter and contentious as the status and nature of porn itself.
Campaigners working to amend the extreme pornography laws to include a full ban on pornographic depictions of rape, which are legal if uploaded abroad, succeeded in putting pressure on Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, who called on Google to crack down on the kind of sites that “pollute the internet”.
Google announced that it would be donating £1m ($1.96m) to the internet Watch Foundation, a body that attempts to police the internet for illegal content.
The issue of porn – what’s out there, who’s watching it, what effect it has – hasn’t been as live as this for years.
Last month, the children’s commissioner for England published a report on the effect of porn on young people, reviewing 40,000 pieces of research, and found a correlation between violent pornography and those who commit violent crimes.
For More go to:
Porn Studies whips up a storm for academics
Story by Carole Cadwalladr. 22/06/13
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/pornography/news/article.cfm?c_id=283&objectid=10892165