Experts say the removal of porn sites due to new age verification laws has reignited the conversation about sex education in schools, and raises concerns for sex workers and data privacy.
New online safety codes require sites providing explicit content to verify users are over the age of 18, and to blur pornographic or extremely violent material in search results.
The codes were approved by eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to limit the unintentional exposure of young children to pornography and other graphic content.
The Age-Restricted Material Codes took effect on March 9, but sites such as Pornhub, RedTube, YouPorn and Tune8 blocked Australian users from accessing the sites on March 6.
Chief executive officer of the Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association, Mish Pony says the ban comes at risk of a loss of income for sex workers, and an invasion of privacy for adults.
Pony says the ban could send those seeking pornography to non-compliant sites that scrape other sites, essentially stealing content from sex workers who will lose the chance to profit off their work.
They say Australian sex workers who have clips on Pornhub will lose a client base, and receive less earnings from their clips.
“There are alternatives to age verification in order to prevent unintentional exposure, such as the pop-ups that exist on all reputable porn sites already, warning a user about the nature of the content that they are going to see if they click through,” they say.
“This is extremely privacy-invasive, and we know from the government’s own age verification pilot that these age verification companies hold onto the data for much longer than they should, and there are numerous examples of privacy breaches where people’s photos and identity documents have been hacked.”
Sexologist and ECU lecturer Giselle Woodley says although it is good children will be prevented from accessing pornography, the ban will only make pornographic content more alluring to older teens.
“Young people, especially those that are queer, have relayed that it’s a really important source of information for them. And we know that the majority of them can’t go to their parents.”
She says pornography is incredibly diverse, and there is nothing wrong with consenting adults having sex, being filmed, or viewing sexual content.
“A lot of the teens we speak to don’t necessarily see pornography as harmful, or at the very least, they feel that they know it’s fantasy and they know it’s not replica, you know, it doesn’t imitate real life and that real sex is different.
“Porn gives them great representation of bodies and sex, while schools are growingly not providing information about ‘gender ideology’.”
Dr Woodley says parents should have direct conversations about porn earlier.
“If parents or schools had brought up discussions of pornography, it was often far too late. It had been several years after their first engagement or interaction with sexual content, whether that was an unsolicited dick pic or a pornography pop up that they had seen.”
Dr Giselle Woodley
“I think a lot of parents think if you’re going to talk about porn, then they’ll want to go look at it, but that’s not the case. It just would make sure that they were prepared when they did see it.”
She says people have to be careful with claims pornography promotes sexual violence, when in reality, it’s very individual and very context-specific.
“It’s probably harmful in promoting sexual violence for some, but for a lot, it’s actually probably reducing it.”
“When we ban porn or when pornography is blocked, it actually has very serious inadvertent outcomes that might not be intended or we might not be aware of, because we’re so hung up on pinning it as a scapegoat for all our society’s problems, when in reality, it probably has some very beneficial effects as well.”
Dr Giselle Woodley
Curtin Associate Professor Madeleine Dobson researches early childhood education, children’s rights and social justice across education contexts.
She says our conversations and our attention need to shift towards how we keep children safe in a climate where they may sometimes access materials and resources they may not fully understand.
“Luckily relationships and sexuality education can be a powerful resource for supporting children from even a very young age to understand their place in the world, their rights, their needs, and how to communicate in a way where they can set boundaries, ask for help, ask for guidance, and look for intervention and protection when they need it.”
Associate Professor Madeleine Dobson
Mish Pony says it’s important to acknowledge the positive role porn can play, particularly for people exploring sexuality and gender identity.
“Explicit media is actually the only way that we can discover that we’re queer,” they say.
“For trans and gender diverse people, porn has long been leading the vanguard in terms of representation. I’m not saying that it’s always been the best type of representation, but porn has included trans and gender diverse bodies long before we were represented meaningfully in mainstream media.”
Mish Pony, Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association
They say education is the best mechanism to address these concerns rather than bans or age verification systems, with young people seeking out porn often to answer questions about sex that are not being answered by schools or parents.
“We believe that porn literacy should be a component of broader media literacy education, and that effective relationship sexuality education would provide young people with critical thinking skills and knowledge to understand porn as a form of media and not a how-to guide for relationships and sex,” Pony says.
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