Pornography presents women as live sex toys, and men as wild and predatory animals. It makes the abuse of women inviting and erotic. Pornography's scripts ('command the bitches') are being acted out in real life in Australian cities and towns, involving younger and younger boys and girls. We are seeing more and more of the male sexual bonding rituals in which girls are seen as conquests, there to be degraded.
In July 2007, a thirteen year old girl was assaulted in toilet blocks and a rooftop in a Sydney suburb. She was penetrated vaginally and orally by SEVEN boys. The course taken by the assault followed the classic plot line of an average porn film in which one girl is surrounded by many men in a planned attack; it was as if the boys had taken their instructions directly from porn. The boys had cameras at the ready to record the violation and to post on YouTube as home made porn: after all, what's the use of assaulting a woman if you can't brag about your conquest later? Too many young men have become not only consumed by porn but have even taken to manufacturing it at home using their mobiles and computers.
The boys waiting their 'turn' in this attack told the girl to 'smile like you're enjoying it,' just as women in porn are told to look like they are having the time of their lives.
One report of the attack claimed that the boys forced the girl to 'take off her clothes and watched one another violate her, causing her to bleed'
The lawyer suggested that it was a 'lack of sex education'
However, it wasn't a lack of sex education that was at work here; rather, the actions of the boys suggest that their sex education through porn was very thorough indeed. What they lacked was an education in humanity, common decency and respect. It's as if we are witnessing the death of feeling or empathy for another's suffering.
(Melinda Tankard Reist: Getting Real- Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls.p24)
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