By Gemma Kelly, Head of Policy and Public Affairs
Much has been said and written about the Netflix series Adolescence; discussion abounds. But regardless of what people think about it – whether as a show that sparked a much-needed national debate or a show that misses key components and nuances of men’s violence against women and girls, or indeed both – it does highlight some very interesting things about pornography.
One, is that pornography is deeply normalised and ingrained in our culture and two, that many parents and adults don’t fully know what online pornography is really like.
While issues such as the manosphere, incel culture and men like Andrew Tate are portrayed as problematic, little is said about how pornography has become so normalised that nobody questions whether a 13-year-old child should be watching it.
Is this because the show’s creators didn’t want to address the issue of pornography because it is too controversial? Or conversely, is pornography so normalised that they didn’t feel the need to examine it?
Or is it because they don’t know that pornography, incel culture and the manosphere are inextricably linked? Maybe they don’t know that the vile, misogynistic, hatred of women that men like Andrew Tate spew is the same vile, misogynistic hatred directed at women in pornography.
It is entirely possible they don’t know about the extreme content and sexual violence that is endemic in the mainstream pornography that they rightly say is being watched across the country by 13-year-olds (and one in ten children aged nine years old). This is mainstream pornography that contains rape, sexual assault, coercion, depictions of incest, women being strangled, women being gang raped and other degradation that is hard to even put into words.
But this is the reality.
Children are growing up on a steady diet of hardcore pornography and we can see the impact of this all around us:
- Children are asking their teachers how to strangle their girlfriends. Young people believe that girls expect and enjoy violent sex.
- Fifty percent of all child sexual abuse is now carried out by other children, many of whom are acting out what they see in pornography.
Did Adolescence miss a trick by not zoning in on pornography and its links to violence against women and girls, incel culture and the manosphere? Yes. Did they know they were? I will never know.
But what I do know is that despite its flaws, its celebration, and its criticism, I cried at the end of Adolescence. I cried for the murdered girl, who like so many murdered girls and women is lost in the narrative. I cried for the 13-year-old murderer and his family.
And I cried because, while these characters are a work of fiction, the children effected by these issues are all too real.
Help us hold the pornography industry accountable for the harm they cause by asking your MP to support the recommendations of the Independent Pornography Review: 2025 Pornography Review