Australia's porn problem

Updated

It's increasingly violent, sometimes addictive, and we appear powerless to stop it. An ABC investigation reveals there are wildly diverse views about online porn in this country, but one thing is clear: Australia has a problem.

It was around the time Steve* tried to pressure his third girlfriend into making porn that he realised he had an issue.

He had always enjoyed watching porn, the "hardcore stuff", ever since he first found a magazine stash as a kid. The fact it was hidden gave him an extra little thrill back then.

But it's only been recently the now 31-year-old has started to think of it as unhealthy.

"In all three of my major relationships, girls have felt second to it. Some try to be involved, I guess to connect with me more when they're feeling neglected," he said.

"I would always pressure girls to do things I assume they'd have never even considered.

"It's hard to tell if they were genuinely into things or if they just put it on."

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You don't have to look far to find people concerned about a link between pornography and dangerous attitudes toward sex.

Anti-porn campaigners will tell you it is a blight on society that is being woefully mishandled by those in power. And that if you thought things were bad in the era of corner-store magazines and VHS pornos, then the internet had only fuelled our appetite for sex on film.

It certainly has for Steve.

"I have always thought I was just addicted to wanking, but I now believe it's the porn I'm hooked on and masturbation is a side effect," he said.

"I noticed my general drive was going away and sex was becoming less of a two-person thing and more of a one-person thing.

"I'm actually in the middle of trying to get rid of it completely. It 100 per cent still gives me enjoyment, I just don't think it's healthy anymore and I'm trying to stop."

Steve's cautionary tale mirrors the message educators are desperately trying to drum into teen boys and girls today: be careful where you take your sexual cues from, and don't believe everything you see online.

Preaching the perils of porn

Across Australia schools are bringing in specialist speakers to educate the kids on the perils of porn, and preach a message of safe sex.

What they're hearing, however, isn't just that porn is leading to unrealistic expectations of sex, but that we're now facing a far more dangerous situation.

Susan McLean is a cyber safety expert who advises the federal government and tours schools.

The former police officer is one of several experts who have told the ABC they are hearing an increasing number of reports of high school girls sustaining serious injuries trying to replicate things they or their boyfriend have seen in porn.

"It tends to be using objects. It does tend to be quite violent or being tied up, and the girls often feel very powerless to say no," Ms McLean said.

"They believe there's an expectation on them that they should be doing this sort of stuff."

These aren't girls who have been plucked off the street and raped, Ms McLean said, nor cornered at parties by drunken boys.

These acts are happening in bedrooms across the country where the portability of the internet has enabled kids — and adults like Steve — to load a porn video on their phone, show it to their partner and say, "Here, do this".

The ABC is aware of one case where a teen girl was hospitalised and her boyfriend prosecuted by police after their sexual exploration — believed to be inspired by porn — got out of control. Two childhoods were derailed.

In another story relayed to the ABC by an educator who speaks in schools, a 16-year-old girl was so badly injured attempting group anal sex she now needs a colostomy bag.

Driven to violence

These stories are confronting, but perhaps shouldn't be surprising if the stats are to be believed.

Sites like PornHub — one of the biggest in the world — promote their pulling power, publishing statistics that show they had 33.5 billion global visits in 2018.

Australian ranked ninth for visitors — beaten only by larger countries like the US, UK and India — and also had one of the longer average viewing times.

Porn education organisation Reality and Risk estimates more than 90 per cent of boys and 60 per cent of girls have seen online porn. And that 88 per cent of the most popular porn includes physical aggression.

This last point has been the subject of extensive research by RMIT senior lecturer Meagan Tyler, who has found pornographers overseas — most notably in the US — have made a conscious effort to make their content more violent.

"A lot of producers would say they were pushed to do that from demand of primarily male customers," she said.

"There's no debate that it's happened, that the kind of things that were seen as pushing the boundaries in the late 1990s have become very much normal and mainstream.

"So things like double and triple anal ... and things like choking as well."

Tasmanian GP and former Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president, Bastian Seidel, has seen how these activities, even when consensual, can go dangerously wrong.

He can't confirm a link between porn and injuries, because he makes a point not to question his patients lest he be seen as judgemental and scare them from seeking future treatment.

But there's no doubting the injuries are occurring, particularly because of anal sex, he said.

"It's not actually that uncommon in general practice to come across injuries that occur caused by sexual activity," he said.

"We have seen anal fissures more and more.

"I've seen that more in women, so that's caused by men having anal sex with women."

The private nature of these activities combined with doctors not being required to report injuries from "consensual" sex lead Ms McLean to fear we aren't grasping the gravity of the situation.

"I don't think there's data on this, which I would suggest makes this a very underreported issue," she said.

Then, of course, there are the non-consensual acts of sexual violence.

'I froze and clenched up'

Sarah* has experienced the horrors of porn gone wrong, twice becoming an unwilling participant in someone's quest to fulfil a fantasy.

She was just seven years old when her brother started molesting her.

He was cunning, she said, and sneaky. He was only a couple of years older than her but would go to the shops and steal the adult magazines that were sealed in plastic wrapping.

He'd pore over the pictures and then corner his sister, making their younger brother stand watch.

"He would use me to re-enact scenarios he had seen in the magazines," Sarah, now 41, recalls.

The abuse went on for years and only stopped when Sarah's mum came home one day to find her brother chasing her around the house.

He would later die in a car crash in his late teens, and it would be more than 20 years before Sarah would finally tell her parents what had actually happened.

Then in 2015 she was raped by her former boyfriend.

The sex had started consensually, but despite repeatedly telling him beforehand that she didn't want to try anal sex he forced himself upon her.

"I froze and clenched up, asked him not to do it, he did it again," she said.

"I asked him again not to do it, by which stage I was crying and frozen."

Sarah was left with nerve damage and a fear of physical contact that prevents her from even hugging her mum.

Police investigated but didn't press charges, leaving Sarah to later successfully seek compensation through the Victims of Crime Assistance Tribunal.

"In pornography, it's not how it is in real life. It's just not how it is," Sarah warned.

"It looks like they enjoy it, but it actually really hurts.

"I'm not the only person in the country who is suffering (like) this, I guarantee you I'm not the only person."

Digital age stuck with analogue laws

Currently in Australia online pornography is regulated by the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, and assessed using the same classification system that applies to films you would see in a regular cinema.

Anything classified R18+ (high-impact nudity, simulated sex) is required to be behind a restricted access system, providing a form of "age-gating". Content classified as X18+ (explicit sex) cannot be hosted in Australia.

There is a different set of rules for DVDs and magazines, but who buys porn off the shelf these days?

The clear majority is now online and hosted on overseas websites. And regulating this is a very different story.

The eSafety Commissioner has no power to issue take-down notices to foreign websites and doesn't currently direct internet services providers to block content. At best, there are a variety of optional internet filters people can buy and install on their devices.

It means Australia's regulations don't curtail violent or "objectionable" porn being watched locally, they simply stop it being hosted here.

It's an analogue law in a digital age.

Laws a challenge for pornographers too

Australian pornographer Garion Hall is something of a trailblazer in locally made porn and his story highlights the inherent paradox of Australian laws.

He founded the website Abby Winters in 2000 with a focus on real-life couples depicting what he calls "loving and caring and fun and happy" porn.

But in 2009 police raided the Melbourne office of Abby Winters and prosecuted for two porn-related offences, with its parent company later paying a fine for producing objectionable films.

In a matter of weeks Mr Hall relocated his entire operation to Amsterdam, where the domain is still hosted and continues to sign up Australian subscribers, who can freely access the site from home.

"The US has the freedom of speech rule and pornography falls under that, which pornographers in the US are obviously happy about," Mr Hall told the ABC.

"They can get away with producing some pretty extreme stuff that in Australia would never fly."

Still, Mr Hall doesn't advocate for aggressive porn and isn't convinced the industry is drifting that way, suggesting perhaps the internet has just made it easier to find for the few who want it.

He said the type of porn he created was still popular.

"We make it to be happy and consenting and really friendly and fun and engaging," he said.

To bypass local laws, Abby Winters finds Australian models then pays to fly them overseas for film shoots.

Brisbane model Lilian* has recently returned from a stint in Amsterdam, where she performed in nine shoots over three weeks, for a pay slip of about $9,000.

She describes the local porn community as supportive and nurturing, and she challenges the idea that the women involved are there as a choice of last resort.

It's a common enough assumption and one that Lilian has had to address within her own family, including from an aunt who offered to pay her to not travel to Amsterdam.

Once the situation was explained to her aunt, however, she became supportive and even encouraging.

"I have struggled with self-confidence in my body, but porn has given me so much more confidence with it," she said.

"The porn industry is always evolving and helping me with my self-confidence.

"It comes with such a gigantic culture that you can just feel welcomed and loved by everyone."

And she has a message for those who feel squeamish about the topic: "The world needs to just buck up about it."

"They need to get over the idea that people are nude, and people have vaginas and penises and they have sex," she said.

Neither Lilian nor Mr Hall shy away from the fact porn is a taboo topic for many, and that children need to be educated about it.

Mr Hall said more needed to be done to teach kids it is fantasy — not a how-to guide — in the same way a James Bond film isn't a training video about how to resolve conflict. And he said consent also needed to be part of the conversation.

"It's something that's often brushed under the carpet with porn. It's sort of assumed that consent is given," he said.

"I think it's definitely sending a dangerous message to kids who are unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy."

When it comes to who should shoulder the responsibility for this education, Mr Hall said it was a community-wide issue and parents needed to play their role.

In this he shares an unlikely alliance with the very person who would regulate his ability to host Abby Winters in Australia: the eSafety Commissioner.

The fine line between safety and censorship

Governments of all persuasions have long wrestled with how to address the rise of online porn.

As the internet spread across the country and crept from loungeroom computers to phones in the schoolyard and bedroom, lawmakers became anxious about its possible harmful effects.

Over the years various inquiries and committees have provided reams of recommendations into what can be done.

In the meantime, the eSafety Commissioner maintains parents are best placed to educate kids about online safety, and suggests interventions like internet filters could have harmful side effects.

"Parents are the frontline defence when it comes to helping children have safe online experiences — this includes engaging with them from an early age about what is and isn't appropriate," Ms Inman Grant said.

"Technological solutions alone may lead to parental complacency.

"There is no substitute for active engagement and oversight in your children's online lives."

Porn researchers like Melinda Tankard Reist are starting to lose faith that their submissions and expert analysis are being heard by government.

"I've been involved in six related inquiries over the years and nothing happens," she said.

Communications Minister Mitch Fifield announced the latest foray into the area in June, in the form of two new independent reviews into online safety.

The first will look at the powers of the eSafety Commissioner and whether they need to be expanded.

The second will examine parts of the Broadcasting Services Act that relate to online content and whether there are any possible policy measures to address — among other things — inappropriate pornography.

Mr Fifield's office did not grant an interview with the Minister on the topic, but promised the findings of these reviews would be tabled in Parliament no later than February.

The Senate last looked at the issue in a 2016 inquiry, and a spinoff expert panel submitted its policy recommendations to the Government in December 2017.

Liberal senator Jonathon Duniam was one of the members of that inquiry and admits he has no ready answers.

"It is a very difficult thing to regulate the internet," he said.

"I'm not one for censorship like they would do in China, for instance, but I am one for protecting people from materials that are, and are considered to be, quite harmful."

Despite the anomalies in our current laws, a direct regulatory approach is likely to find its own detractors.

Mandatory internet filters — the kind that could potentially block overseas pornography sites — are contentious and have proven too politically poisonous in the past. A spokesperson for Mr Fifield told the ABC the Government had no plans to impose an "opt-out" filtering system either.

Submissions to the 2016 inquiry also reveal how the idea can polarise groups, even as they jostle for the high moral ground. While one group says filters are vital to protect kids, another group cries censorship.

'You need to know what you're doing'

As for Sarah, she eventually made her peace with the brother who molested her.

"I wrote him a letter to put in his coffin saying I forgave him for what happened when we were younger," she said.

"I had to, because it had always eaten away at me."

Now she is simply hoping her story will inspire others to think about their relationships and where they are taking their sexual cues from.

"People think, 'Oh she wanted it' or all this bullshit, and it's got to stop," she said.

"If you're going to do something you need to know what you're doing. You don't just try it because you've seen it in a video."

* Names have been changed to protect privacy.

Topics: pornography, community-and-society, children, family-and-children, federal-government, womens-status

First posted