“HE went for my neck without even asking.”
It was a phrase Collective Shout co-founder Melinda Tankard-Reist had heard from young women she met through her anti-pornography advocacy work.
Choking was one of the more popular genres of pornography, she said.
It was not the only violent porn category available for consumption online.
“Ukrainian girl” had been a trending search term on the website Pornhub in recent weeks.
Ms Tankard-Reist said users had been looking for images of women being raped in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
She said pornography had “normalised and eroticised extreme torture of women, human rights violations of women have their own porn genres”.
The link between pornography and domestic violence was well-established in the research, she said.
One 2020 study from Melbourne University reported intimate partner sexual violence and pornography consumption were strongly related.
The study followed 38 women who had experienced intimate sexual partner violence and discussed the role of pornography in their relationships.
The interviews revealed one in five of the women specifically described how their partner had seen something in pornography and wanted to act it out.
Six of the women reported being forced to watch pornography despite saying they did not want to.
Many of the women in the study reported being degraded and dehumanised in ways similar to those shown in violent pornography.
The study concluded that porn had informed the abuser’s behaviours and even been used to groom the women – to make them think the deviant sex acts were normal.
Porn consumption was widespread in Australia.
About three quarters of all Australian men and 41 per cent of all women reported watching pornography in the previous year, a 2017 study conducted by the Sydney School of Public Health reported.
The overall participation rate – male and females aggregated – was about 66 per cent.
The gap between male and female consumption rates were narrowing.
Consumption rates rose in younger audiences and the studies assumed people tended to underreport their pornography consumption.
Real Talk co-founder Paul Ninnes, who also co-founded pornfreemovement.com, said porn consumption had increased markedly in Australia over the pandemic.
A study published in Nature in 2020 showed a 25 per cent increase in Pornhub traffic during the height of the global pandemic lockdowns compared to the previous four-year average.
As porn consumption increased, the national conversation in Australia had shifted to teaching children sexual consent.
“We will never effectively teach respectful relationships whilst people are consuming porn,” Mr Ninnes said.
“Lack of consent and violence against women are engrained in the porn industry.
“So long as there is a porn industry, we’re continually reinforcing damaging sexual behaviours.”
First exposure to pornography often occurred in childhood.
The Australian Institute of Family Studies reported in 2016 that nearly half of children aged nine to 16 experienced regular exposure to sexual images.
The institute found without proper sex education, pornography was a major source of education for many young people.
Ms Tankard-Reist said parents had been telling her that their children were being exposed to porn on school camps, buses and on the campus grounds.
“It’s just happening everywhere, and teachers are talking about it as well – what they’re seeing and having to deal with it in the setting of the school,” she said.
Mr Ninnes, who visits schools and gives talks about healthy relationships, said in most audiences he spoke to, teenage boys self-reported porn was impacting their attitudes towards women.
He said a number of schools had reached out to him saying porn was causing sexually aggressive behaviours in their students towards female staff and students.
“So it’s a question of what are they (young boys) consuming? They’re consuming violent, degrading non-consensual acts,” he said.
“They themselves believe it’s impacting them.”
Multiple studies showed that pornography depicting aggressive sexual behaviour was more popular.
One study from 2018 published in the Journal of Sex Research reported 88 per cent of the scenes from 50 of the most popular rental pornographic videos “contained physical aggression, almost exclusively against women”.
The study argued aggressive sexual behaviour had moved from the realm of niche genres to the mainstream.
The study means that any access of pornography means a child is more than likely to encounter aggressive sexual behaviour.
AIFS senior research fellow Dr Antonia Quadara said research showed adolescents who consumed violent pornography were six times more likely to be sexually aggressive compared to their peers.
“Male adolescents who view pornography frequently were more likely to view women as sex objects, strengthening attitudes supporting sexual violence against women,” she said.
Ms Tankard-Reist said children had to be educated because by the time they reached adulthood, it was more difficult to change behaviours and so much damage was already done to developing sexual templates, brain development as well as their relationships and understanding of their bodies.
She said from speaking to a domestic violence worker on the Gold Coast, many grown men now expected to be able to choke their partners.
“Where are they learning that? They’re learning that in pornography,” she said.
“Men expecting women to act out scenarios they’ve seen in porn.
“What does this say about humanity and human flourishing and ethics when this is how young men are learning about sexuality.
“We will see more domestic violence, there is absolutely no doubt about it.
“The harmful attitudes that already exist towards women and girls, porn puts them on steroids.”
As for the porn industry itself, she said its business model was to groom the next generation of consumers.
“It actively preys on and grooms boys especially to consume porn,” she said.
“If we’re concerned about violence against women (nationally), what happens when these boys are leaving school and end up… in positions of power themselves, how will they treat women then.”
Mr Ninnes said the harmful effects of porn on young people needed to be an election issue.
“We need to be speaking to our federal members about it,” he said.
He also wanted to encourage anyone who was consuming porn to reach out for help.
“Someone can be free of porn,” he said.
“If you are someone who uses porn, please know it’s worth fighting against and it can be done and there are people out there to help you in your struggle.
“And most of all, reach out to God, who is forgiving and loving and a healing God.”
