Porn and sex education, porn as sex education

Abstract

Both popular and academic discussions of pornography have explored the question of sexually explicit texts as pedagogy. While many commentators and scholars have acknowledged the educational qualities of pornography, there is no universal consensus as to what porn teaches its consumers and how it works as an educator. Pornography is increasingly itself the subject of educational texts, with ‘porn literacy’ being debated as a potential addition to the secondary state school curriculum in the United Kingdom and Australia. This article presents an overview of the field of ‘porn as pedagogy’ and pedagogy about porn. It is modest in scope, relying primarily on recent research and media reportage from Australasia, North America and the United Kingdom. These Anglophone countries have significant similarities in respect to the ways pornography is framed as a moral and/or political issue within public debate (although there are also notable differences). For this reason, the overview that follows does not seek to be globally representative, but represents a preliminary foray into a complex and diverse field.

Keywords:

• pornography
• sex education
• health promotion
• young people
• sexual health