By Tara Kennedy and Monica Doumit
Hearings have begun in a New South Wales inquiry into the impacts of pornography on mental, emotional, and physical health.
A parliamentary committee is reviewing 79 submissions from the community, including from the Catholic Women’s League NSW, the Council of Catholic School Parents, and Collective Shout.
Representing the CWL NSW, Dr Deirdre Little told the inquiry the organisation regarded all forms of pornography as harmful and that “so-called ‘standard, non-violent pornography’ is not harmless.”
She said that “children are immersed in increasingly sexually explicit media,” which may contribute to the normalisation of pornography in Australia more broadly.
“In a home where there is repeated exposure to even non-violent, standard pornography, it is associated with reduced valuation of marriage regarding extra-marital affairs as normal, associated with mounting use to addiction, associated with escalation to more deviant pornography, the trivialisation of rape and behavioural aggression,” Little said.
Catherine Garrett-Jones, Executive Director of the Council of Catholic School Parents, noted the role of parents as first educators of their children in protecting their children from the dangers of pornography.
Garrett-Jones highlighted the problem of educating parents who are not engaged with what is happening with their kids.
“We can preach to the converted all we want, but what we’re really concerned about is that segment of parents who are not engaged,” she said.
She also said that from the survey of parents conducted by CCSP, there was clear support for further government regulation around access, commenting that this stemmed from “parents’ own feelings of inadequacy around how to manage social media [because] it is growing at a pace faster than they can understand.”
Collective Shout’s Managing Director Melissa Tankard-Reist spoke at the inquiry, echoing her organisation’s beliefs about stopping the sexualisation and degradation of women in media.
It came in the same week US pop star Sabrina Carpenter made global headlines with a lewd display at a concert in France.
During her song “Juno,” Carpenter simulated an explicit sexual act for the audience, many of whom were young girls.
“My message has always been clear—if you can’t handle a girl who is confident in her own sexuality, then don’t come to my shows,” she said, responding to her critics.
Tankard-Reist sees it differently, saying Carpenter’s displays are teaching young girls harmful messages about sex and relationships.
“Carpenter is just the latest example of the mainstreaming of porn culture,” she told The Catholic Weekly.
Tankard-Reist said Carpenter was part of a “profit-driven industry” which does not display authentic sexuality, as the singer claims, but instead “reinforces limited ideas about female sexuality and how it should be expressed publicly.”
“Boys are being educated to view women in limited ways,” she said.
“A giant marketing machine capitalises on porn culture then fem-washes the final product by slapping ‘feminist’, ‘empowering’ and ‘liberating’ on it.”
“This is about the grooming of a generation of young girls—who comprise her massive fan base—taught from the earliest ages that their sole value lies in their sexual availability and public display of it,” she said.
“Even if parents don’t take their child to her concerts, they are still impacted by the broader pornified culture—we all have to live in it and try to raise our kids in it.”
