Blindfish RSE

Today childline launched a new campaign (FAPZ) to help young people make sense of the powerful influence online porn can have on young people. I welcome any new or renewed effort to help tackle this issue. What ever adults personally think about adults consuming porn, it clearly is not meant for young people. Below is a tweet from Simon Blake (CEO of Brook) Agree @NSPCC we must talk about porn at home, school & community. Whatever you think about porn it is not place CYP should learn about sex — Simon Blake (@Simonablake) March 31, 2015 It is very worrying to hear Childline reporting high numbers of calls to their phone line where online porn is a key issue. And this will just be a tip of the iceberg of the influence porn is having. When I talk about Childline in high schools I have meet many young people who think its not for them because they aren't a child so they wont ring it. Such a shame.  However, the NSPCC could strengthen their...

Nearly 1 in 10 young people have read 50 Shades of Grey say relationships and sexual health education experts. Esteem Resource Network, a project of the charity ACET (AIDS Care, Education and Training) has more than 25 years of experience in delivering workshops to young people on issues related to self-esteem, relationships and sexual health. As part of a larger study, to be released later this year, a survey carried out by Esteem has found that almost 10% of young people report reading an explicit sex scene from 50 Shades of Grey. Unlike the adult market, this anonymous survey shows that male readership (12%) doubles that of than female readership (6%) amongst young people. More than 1,000 12-16 year olds were asked if, when and how they had encountered written and visual explicit sex scenes. The preliminary findings of the survey show that 67% of young people have seen explicit sex scenes, whilst 47% have encountered them in written form. Gareth Cheesman...

Today on BBC Three Counties Radio I heard an interview with 20 year old Grace talking about her experience of being pressured into watching pornography by her then boyfriend when she was 15 years old. She was incredibly honest and open about how she felt it had negatively impacted her. If you would like to listen to the interview it will be available for a week at the BBC , skip to 1 Hour 7mins into the programme or you can read my typed up  complete transcript of the interview. In this blog I want to pick out a few of things that Grace said.  One of the first things Grace says is  So the boy I was currently dating at the time, was obviously at that age where he had been watching it since about the age of 12 and he had heard from some of his friends that they watch it with their girlfriends. So he came up with a suggestion to me and I said no and I kept saying no and then he just kept on pushing, so I then said “well ok lets check this out, I’ve never looked a...

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