Should We Blame It on Porn?

Is porn to blame?

Is it to blame for this, reported by Allison Pearson in the London Telegraph:

A friend’s daughter recently started at a highly regarded boarding school. When her mother asked how she was enjoying the mixed-sex environment, the girl said quietly: “You have to give the boys oral sex or they get cross.” Reeling with shock, the mum protested that her darling daughter did not have to do anything of the sort. “Oh yes you do,” replied the girl. “And you have to shave down there or the boys don’t like it.”

The daughter is 14 years old.

Pornography is the young generation’s sex education. We have been hearing from educators that it is essential for children to learn about sex, to explore their sexuality and to experience the full enjoyment that comes with it.

The result: fourteen year old girls are being coerced into offering oral sex.

Surely, the easy availability of pornography is not a good thing. Learning about sex from porn is not a good thing. Trying to mimic what one sees in porn because one has seen it in porn is not a good thing. Sexting pornographic images of oneself is not a good thing, either.

Then again, nothing in porn obliges girls to offer oral sex? Nothing about porn obliges girls to engage in anal sex?

So, we need to address the more important issue: why do these girls feel obliged to go along.

One reason is fairly clear: these children are largely unsupervised. Or else, their parents have a highly permissive attitude toward adolescent sexuality.

When you read the paragraph I quoted you were surely thinking what I was thinking: Did this 14 year old’s mother pull her out of the school?

Since nothing in the article suggests that she did, I will assume that she did not. Since Pearson recommends that parents be more vigilant and protective toward their children, it seems clear that this mother, and the girl’s father, have not been doing their job.

Her daughter is confiding something that is clearly embarrassing. To me, she seems to be asking for help. By allowing her to stay in school, her mother is not only refusing to help, she is condoning what is happening.

I am not familiar with the intricacies of British mores or libel law, but why did Pearson fail to name the school? What if other girls have been coerced into performing oral sex and are not telling their mothers. Don’t the parents have a right to know? Shouldn’t the school administration have to answer for what is happening to the children in their charge?

And then, consider that this mother told her daughter that she did not “have to do anything of the sort.”

Apparently, the message did not get through, because her darling daughter replied that, Yes, she did.

Not to quibble too much, but don’t you think that the mother should have told her daughter categorically that she should not be doing it? Telling her that she did not have to do it is like telling her that she might reasonably choose to do it.

Sometimes children need a more firm set of rules and stricter guidance.

True, today’s parents need to be especially protective of their children. Yet, how many parents still command their children’s respect? How many are sufficiently confident in their judgment to set down clear rules? How many are afraid that they are going to make their children unpopular and sexually repressed? How many can still exercise moral authority?

We, as a culture, have been teaching children to be independent, autonomous and to be rebellious. Children are constantly told not to heed the advice of their superannuated parental units.

Why are we surprised to see that these same children have no way to defend themselves against the siren song of their peer culture?

As for the idea of protection, the only kind of protection that our culture recommends is: a condom. In the past fathers have been charged with the role of protecting their families. Now, no one is allowed to define men as protectors of breadwinners. Thus, condoms notwithstanding, children are not being protected.

And then there’s this: girls today are brought up to believe that they can and should do anything that a boy can do, reality be damned. The American government has just decided, as a matter of policy, that the military should not distinguish between men and women. Even if women cannot pass the tests, they will be sent into combat anyway.

We know that boys very rarely say No to an opportunity for “free love,” so why should girls, who are told to act like boys, feel that they should be the ones who are charged with saying No?

Wouldn't that represent gender discrimination, a throwback to the days when girls were supposed to be virgins on their wedding night?

Many feminists are horrified by the proliferation of pornography, but  these same feminists have been insisting that women should be doing anything that a man can do, and that women enjoy sex just as much as men .

In the feminist manual girls do not need protection; they can defend themselves. They are supposed to be developing as independent and autonomous persons, unfettered by repressive patriarchal authority.

To be fair, Pearson explains that  some “liberal” parents are not quite as horrified as are she and her friend:

Mainstream media has made porn-inspired sex seem compulsory for girls at ever younger ages. “So what?” says the liberal parent who doesn’t think it’s cool to challenge their child’s lifestyle choices, and may secretly envy them. 

If enough liberal parents grant their children permission to have sex at age 14 this will create a cultural norm that is very difficult for other children to resist.