7 days ago
Pornography 'in children's pockets and in their bedrooms' and 'finding them when they go online'
Pornography is 'in children's pockets and in their bedrooms', and is presenting itself to children online without them having to go looking for it, according to the chief executive of Women's Aid.
Sarah Benson was speaking ahead of a two-day strategic convention on the issue, beginning on Thursday in Athlone. The event, organised by Women's Aid and the Community Foundation of Ireland, will examine how society can reduce and prevent the harms of pornography 'on gender equality, healthy sexual development and online safety'.
Ms Benson said Women's Aid commissioned a Red C survey in 2022 on public attitudes around pornography.
'We further commissioned a piece of research which was undertaken by the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy Institute which was published in November of last year.'
That research found much of what features in mainstream pornography constitutes sexual violence, including the strangling of women during sex.
Ms Benson said pornography could 'no longer remain the elephant in the room', adding it is a multi-billion euro 'broadly unregulated industry' which 'is on every smartphone, is on every social media app, in children's pockets and in their bedrooms, it is in the bedrooms of young people and adults alike, coming between positive sexual intimacy'.
She warned: 'We now have the rise of AI and deep fake, so online safety, gender equality, sexual violence, healthy sexuality, children's exposure — it [pornography] is in too many spaces and places.
"This is us convening, in a closed session, a wide group of experts who work on many different things but have that one thread of shared concern. Together, what we hope to be able to arrive at is some sort of strategy for action, whereby we can bring that to the general public, perhaps bring it to legislation.
We are not talking about children accessing Pornhub — we are talking about porn finding them when they go online. We have to assume that they will be exposed to it, and not hope that they won't.
She said a platform for action was what was now needed to tackle the harmful impact.
Current gender adviser to the G7 and former tánaiste and MEP Frances Fitzgerald will chair the event. More than 50 delegates will include representatives from a range of areas including domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, men's leadership and development, children's rights and children's safety, education, online safety, consent programmes, youth organisations, migrant rights agencies and researchers.
