Violence against Women and Girls: Pornography Prostitution Debate
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Jess Asato
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Violence against Women and Girls: Pornography Prostitution
Jess Asato Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Joani Reid
Again, I agree with my hon. Friend’s point. I am delighted that the Government have brought forward plans to ban strangulation in pornography, but there is a whole host of behaviours within pornography that we know affect real-life abuse.
Jess Asato (Lowestoft) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does she agree that, having created the ban on non-fatal strangulation in pornography, the Government now also need to ban depictions in pornography that encourage a sexual interest in children—so-called paedophilic-adjacent porn—as well as depictions of step-family incest?
Joani Reid
Let me take the opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend on the work that she did with other members of the APPG to get the Government to make that commitment around strangulation. Yes, I think it should extend to those categories as well. We have to tackle pornography that normalises and glamourises child abuse. It is not niche; we know from the work that we have done and through the Bertin review that, on Pornhub, incest porn is a main category. It is absolutely repugnant and should be tackled through Government intervention.
The impact extends into the behaviours of children and young people: eight in 10 children have seen violent pornography by the age of 18. Increasingly, children’s first exposure to sex is not a healthy relationship but online abuse marketed as entertainment.