Children as young as 11 who demonstrate misogynistic behaviour will be taught the difference between pornography and real relationships, as part of a multimillion-pound investment to tackle misogyny in England’s schools, the Guardian understands.

On the eve of the government publishing its long-awaited strategy to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) in a decade, David Lammy told the Guardian that the battle “begins with how we raise our boys”, adding that toxic masculinity and keeping girls and women safe were “bound together”.

As part of the government’s flagship strategy, which was initially expected in the spring, teachers will be able to send young people at risk of causing harm on behavioural courses, and will be trained to intervene if they witness disturbing or worrying behaviour.

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[–] 186 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Waaay better than the porn bans and online age verification schemes, honestly.

I question why this is just for "children who show mysoginistic behavior", though. Sex ed should be universal, and this should be a major part of sex ed.

I assume the fear here is parents complaining about their kids being talked about porn, which may end up being a larger underlying issue than the porn itself. I guess you just have to trust that education professionals handle the opportunity well and this doesn't become a stern talking to for problem kids, which is likely to do as much as stern talking tos have done historically.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    I question why this is just for “children who show mysoginistic behavior”, though. Sex ed should be universal, and this should be a major part of sex ed.

    It's because the goal here is for this be punitive, not educational. If the goal here was for valuable principles to be learned then it would be taught to everybody.

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago

    This isn’t about sex ed, it’s about behavioural courses, which wouldn’t be appropriate for most children, just as it wouldn’t be appropriate to send every child who does something wrong to a referral unit.

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    [–] 21 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    “Can’t talk now lads, I’m off to porn class!”

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  • [–] 36 points 10 months ago* (11 children)

    might as well tell them about the pickup artist grifters too, these are probably the primary source of that misogyny, i feel like porn is adjacent to this.

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  • [–] 22 points 10 months ago (10 children)

    I personally feel that porn more than likely has fuck all to do with it and that this is part of a broader crusade against sex by the British government.

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Children as young as 11 who demonstrate misogynistic behaviour will be taught the difference between pornography and...

    You are correct sir.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    American here but I first saw a porn magazine at 8 or 9 years old. My friend would steal them from his older brother. 11 years old is not unreasonably young to have been impacted by porn, if that's what you're implying.

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  • [–] 15 points 10 months ago (7 children)

    trying to deflect from the actual sources, the right wing grifters, and pickupartists, if you go back far enough it ends up with foreign individual funding all of this and any right wing legislation.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    Not shocked.

    One day porn addiction was a thing suffered by... no one? A very small group of people? However many people there were that legitimately gooned such that their life was negatively impacted and couldn't stop.

    Then it was fucking everyone, everywhere, and watching porn at all meant you were a depraved addict. And deviation from the sexual norm for a man - porn addict. Any non vanilla sex interests? Porn addict. Difficulty orgasming? Porn addict.

    It came out of fucking nowhere. Nobody sees the agenda behind this shit, they just accept it. Media literacy is borderline nonexistent.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    It didn't come out of fucking nowhere. It (to the degree we see it today) came out of social isolation caused by the pandemic, at least in the US and Europe. Japan kind of already had the phenomenon even before COVID.

    And AI on top of that is like an adult equivalent of the wire monkey experiment, except the wire monkey is adequately-convincing for many people and tells you whatever you want to hear.

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

    I think anyone millennial or older can attest that access to porn has changed drastically in the past 2 decades. In the pre-youtube era video porn required physical media. Most teens were fapping to static images or soft core feature length films.

    I do think getting access to the smorgasbord of pornography available these days at too young an age does short circuit the natural transition from boyish curiosity to healthy sexual interest.

    Skipping over the phase where boobs is all it took and going straight to deepthroat anal gaping seems like a recipe for problems afaic. It's like having absinth for your first alcohol instead of a beer.

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 child)

    Bro, when I was like 9 my friend was like: "oh cool, the internet, go to shiteaters.com and I was like: that's a reasonable request, and it was exactly what you'd think it was.

    I was using a 28k modem which was pretty good for the time.

    Like. These days my ass.

    Before all the tube sites there was limewire et al. And the tube sites are MUCH better in terms of the kind of content they freely offer, believe me.

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  • [–] 36 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I mean this sounds entirely sensible.

    But I do worry what a bureaucratic system is likely to decide a normal relationship looks like won't capture reality either.

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  • [–] 18 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Hopefully they use it as a lesson in consent. And leave it at that.

    I don't know enough about England's politics to form an opinion on how they will actually end up botching it, but I feel like it's going to be botched.

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago

    Hate to say it, but this reminds me of that Monty python Meaning of Life sketch about the John Cleese teaching bored kids about sex

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  • [–] 14 points 10 months ago*

    I think the problem is not just porn...... Maybe... Also society, systemically? Maybe also the parents? Television, Internet culture, business culture, religion, oh yeah, also RELIGION.

    You know what stops misogyny? Education and real leadership. Not blaming pornography and kids not knowing the difference between music movies videogames porn and reality.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    The healthiest thing is a decent sexual education to tackle all the topics rather than only this issue in these cases... but very welcome anyway

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  • [–] 31 points 10 months ago (20 children)

    This is going to backfire hard. Kids aren't stupid, they know when they're looked down upon. These classes are going to be rejected by the boys who end up taking them, and they'll resent what it stands for.

    It reminds me of the US back in the 80s when schools pushed abstinence extremely hard. That didn't stop kids from having sex, and this won't stop misogyny.

    The only way schools can contribute meaningfully to ending sexism is by providing a safe environment that requires young boys and girls to actually interact with each other in natural and healthy ways outside of class time.

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 child)

    yep. nothing makes kids resent you more than being condescending to them or telling them something is horrible and bad and will corrupt them.

    this puritanism nonsense makes zero sense. sex education should be about the facts of sex. not value judgements about waht is 'good' porn or not. and female students should be included. this notion that 'women don't watch porn' is completely nonsense.

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago (13 children)

    After reading the article, it seems like there's a lot more to this than just classes for boys. I struggle to draw the same comparison to 80s abstinence-only sex education, and I think schools can contribute in more ways than the one you listed, like the ones mentioned in the article.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago

    Are we reading the same things? Here are some quotes from the article that I found problematic:

    Children as young as 11 who demonstrate misogynistic behaviour will be taught the difference between pornography and real relationships

    They're trying to pin porn as the cause of misogyny and that's really stupid for a variety of reasons.

    As part of the government’s flagship strategy, which was initially expected in the spring, teachers will be able to send young people at risk of causing harm on behavioural courses, and will be trained to intervene if they witness disturbing or worrying behaviour.

    See, these classes are not meant to be a part of the normal sex ed curriculum where they're taught to everybody because the information is valuable. They're specifically meant to be punitive. The idea is to signal out kids and force them to take these classes as a consequence.

    To out of touch activists, this sounds good, but in reality the kids who are being sent there are going to feel humiliated in front of their peers, and they're going to resent both the material being taught and the system that put them through it.

    Keir Starmer, announcing the strategy, said: “Every parent should be able to trust that their daughter is safe at school, online and in her relationships. But too often toxic ideas are taking hold early and going unchallenged.”

    This is a theme that's echoed in the entire article, and it is also reflected in the actual strategy. I could've quoted a bunch of different statements, but I specifically chose this one because it's coming from the top. You have the PM here pushing the false idea that only girls can be victims and that boys are the problem.

    The much-trailed strategy is expected to focus on three pillars:

    • Preventing young men being harmed by “manosphere” influencers such as Andrew Tate.

    Are you kidding me? The "manosphere" is an online slang term, Andrew Tate is a meme. How can you possibly draft policies in general, let alone ones about education, on something so vague, unsubstantiated, and unacademic?

    The point is that if the entire curriculum was taught like normal sex ed where it's apolitical, fact based, and required to be taken by all students because it contains useful information that they need to know then there wouldn't be an issue. However, that's not the case. It is narrative driven, it is not entirely fact based, and it's not applied to all students across the board. The whole thing just seems unprincipled and poorly thought out. This strategy looks like something planned by radfem weirdos on Reddit, not by people who are in charge of the education system of an entire country.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (11 children)

    Schools should focus on facts. Not political narratives about the evils of pornography necessarily leading to misogyny and sexual assault or that they are all 'manosphere influenced' until prove otherwise. that kind of mentality is some witch-hunt bullshit.

    Porn is also incredibly diverse its content. Like video games, or comics, it's treated as if it was this singular mass of crassness and crudeness and could never have any redemptive value. There is a vast difference between sexual assault fetish commercially produced porn and a loving couple who just wants to share tehir passion for sexual pleasure with each other with the world and make a few bucks on onlyfans. And the former is a dying breed.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (10 children)

    You're focusing specifically on porn, but the plan in the article doesn't. The plan isn't to tell boys to "just say no" to porn.

    You'll find no disagreements from me that porn isn't necessarily the root cause of misogyny, but I don't think anything in the article suggests that.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (5 children)

    no i'm focusing on value judgement crap that assumes boys are all evil unless educated otherwise, and seeks to socially isolate them to 're-educate' them.

    this is the type of plan that is likely to backfire, and will probably introduce potential abusers to the tools to become better abusers. The average boy has no knowledge or interest in any of these things. it's punishing the majority rather than addressing a minority.

    also what are the specific criteria that identity a boy as a proto-misogynist? interesting how that isn't mentioned. nor what 'healthy relationships' means. will this program be espousing traditional sexist gender values as 'healthy' ones? as if those values were not misogynistic?

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    I think you're making some leaps here. Nothing in the article is suggesting that all boys are evil, or that they're going to be socially isolated. Granted, the article doesn't exactly give specifics about how it'll be enacted, but I feel like you're filling in the gaps with the worst stuff you can imagine, and then getting mad at that.

    From my reading of the article, it seems like they're just adding topics like pornography, deep-fake/image abuse, consent, coercion, peer-pressure, online abuse, etc. to the curriculum, coupled with training for teachers to be able to recognize and address misogynistic behaviors. Again, I'll grant that the article is missing some important details like how they're going to teach those various topics, how they're going to empower teachers to identify problems, the checks and balances they'll use to prevent teachers abusing the system, what they're defining as misogyny, etc. But I feel like those details are a little too in-the-weeds for this type of overview article, and until we do know what those details are, I don't think filling those gaps by assuming the worst is productive.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    If this was based on scientific research, you bet that the creators would be pushing the academics that formed the policy to endorse this. This is just junk pseudo-science. Serious researchers would do small sample testing before rolling out a wide program, especially for something like this

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

    No, the policy/program makes that assumption. Guilty, until proven innocent.

    the article says they will be specifically targeted for being 'misogynists' but says nothing about what determines that qualification.

    And if it's like any other government education program, it will produce solely negative and crappy results and just be weaponized against students and teachers both, preventing free and educational discussions of these topics and teaching them according to some illiberal and idiotic stereotypical standards the know-nothing government officials have made out of ignorance and blanket determinations of what these things 'are'.

    I'm no in the UK but I'm well aware of how horribly the USA education system deals with these topics, and how all the schools take a HR approach to the topic rather than an educational one. We weren't even allowed to ask questions about sex or relationships and it was taught from a narrow and ignorant perspective that ignored all the insights of modern science and social science.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    And if it's like any other government education program, it will produce solely negative and crappy results and just be weaponized against students and teachers both

    This is how I know you're just being grumpy to be grumpy. This is extreme hyperbole at best. No public education system is perfect, far from it, but to claim every government education system ever has only produced negative results is insane.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    Any large scale plan, involving teachers, and students needs to be boiled down to extremely simple concepts that can be taught in a few words. Most kids have a hard time with subtraction and division. This will become simplified and resented.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    bingo. that's the fundamental flaw.

    sex and sexuality is incredibly complex, subjective, and nuanced. the government can't even teach kids the basics of math and reading... and thinks it's somehow going to teaching 11 year olds about sex is going to magically reduce violence... 11 year olds for most of whom sex is a foreign concept and will be until for another 4-6 years of their lives.

    it's political grandstanding really. they are doing this to score points with the public at the expense of school children.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Why so negative? I'm too lazy to read the article, but are you commenting on actual lesson plans, or on what you assume the classes will be like? It doesn't seem like a stretch to me that this could work for some kids, especially for those whose behavior is the result of exposure to porn at too young an age.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    Yeah, for those of us whose school-provided sex education was actually informative, including puberty and sexual health units in mandatory health class in multiple different grades, I don't see why this would have to be inherently badly taught.

    It's a weird "oh it's impossible to teach anything properly so let's not try" attitude that applies to a lot of discussions about education, even core academic subjects like math and science and history.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    I recommend you read the article, it's a pretty quick read. The way that this is planned sets it up for failure. This sounds more like something some politicians came up with to appease the activists in their base than something made by actual experts in the field who have the kids' best interests in mind.

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  • [–] 15 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    I don’t think porn is to blame for that, rather social media but at least there’s learning.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (3 children)

    I'd like to know, what's your opinion on banning social media for minors?

    I used to be all against it but now i see the point in it. It should be done at the device-level though, not website's responsibility.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I think parents should be responsible for keeping an eye on what their kids are doing online. There are already a myriad of tools available to facilitate that. The government doesn't need to be involved and sites certainly shouldn't be collecting IDs from people unless absolutely necessary for some business/official reason to know who that person is.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    If we could leave it up to them then we wouldn’t have any kids on social media. Having this conversation proves it’s not able to be left up to the parents.

    But device locks already exist as you said, the proposal is to have them on by default.

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