Porn and stuff

I was first exposed to porn at age 14, right before my Year 10 history exam. One of my male besties had left his phone at my house, and I was going to meet up with him after school to return it.

My friends and I sat outside the Whangarei Girls’ High School hall doing what any normal group of 14 year old girls would do, opening every single folder and file on the poor boy’s phone.

Eventually, we found the porn.

This is coming up 12 years ago, and I can still picture it so clearly. I’ll keep my inner E L James at bay and spare you the details, suffice to say we all sat there giggling hysterically and occasionally shrieking “oh my God!”

We were still giggling as we went in to the exam, which was not helped when one of our friends finished super early and decided to spend the last half hour trying to subtly re-enact some of the noises from the video.

How I passed Year 10 history I’ll never know.

Looking back on it now, the thing that strikes me about that day was that even back then, in 2005, at the tender age of 14, we thought porn was normal. We didn’t think for a second that it was even a little bit weird for a 14 year old boy to have videos of complete strangers having sex on his phone. It was just funny. And boys were just like that.

It wasn’t until years later, when I met my husband and his friends, I realised I was wrong. Not all boys are like that.

This week the NZ Herald published a story about how our beautiful country watches the fifth most porn in the world. It was shared by The Edge and ZM on Facebook with cry-laughing emojis and captions like “get in gurl!” Subtly sending out the exact same message to their followers that I believed when I was young. Porn is normal. Porn is funny. Porn is fine.

We talked about it in our friendship family group chat, and a friend sent though an article which contained the following quote; “Porn is here to stay, and we have to learn to negotiate it.”

My views around pornography are stronger than most due to my faith, and I’m fully aware that many people have absolutely no issue with it at all. However, the detrimental effects of pornography on relationships and human development, as well as its contribution to sex trafficking, are well established. Just because something is socially acceptable doesn’t mean it’s right, or normal, or healthy, and I don’t think everyone has to “learn to negotiate it” if they don’t want to.  

I found that Herald article really bleak, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone. So I guess I just wanted to share some of the many things that I wish I could go back and tell my 14 year old self.

1)    Not everyone watches porn. If you don’t like it, don’t settle for someone who does.

2)    Sometimes things that society accepts as normal and cool and funny are actually really lame.

3)    You get to define your normal.

In our house watching strangers (who are at best highly paid and highly surgically enhanced and at worst 14 year old sex trafficking victims from Ukraine) have sex is not and will never be normal.

As Chrystal Chenery would say, #sorrynotsorry.