
While Jameela has “adult friends” who use porn (which, thank Christ, she “doesn’t have a problem with”), she doesn’t know much about porn herself, so sets out to find some. In doing so, she becomes quite possibly the first person in the world to search for online porn by actually typing “Porn” into Google. It felt a bit like an investigation into porn on a Blue Peter special.She’s immediately disgusted, which makes you wonder just what it is she’s looking at, because I just searched porn on Google images and found pictures of men putting their penises inside women’s vaginas. What exactly is degrading about that? If parents don’t want their kids to see that sort of thing they should put porn filters on and take their phones off them till they’re 16. Sorry kids, I’d hate me for suggesting that too, but it needs saying and no one bothered to say it in the documentary.I’m not surprised that Jameela was surprised by her porn search, but I am surprised that she was asked to front a documentary about porn. This is in no way a personal attack on her – she seems like a lovely girl and I've seen her do fine work on other TV shows – but the idea of prudes judging porn doesn't make a lot of sense; it's like cat lovers judging dog shows. Which meant that, at best, the show felt like a guide for parents into an unknown world of horror.That said, when she visited the Internet Watch Foundation – an organisation that monitors the internet for images or videos of child abuse – and got upset by the awful but important work they do, I teared up with her. Her doc also raises some important points, like the fact we need better sex ed in schools. We see teenagers learning that vulvas come in all different shapes and sizes and that’s good, because porn really can give us unrealistic ideas of what natural human bodies look like.
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Some other people who are annoyed at the patronising way porn is dealt with in the mainstream media are the ones who run BadSexMediaBingo.com. They gave Porn On the Brain lots of "bingo points" because it featured lots of tired shock doc tropes like:– Porn rewires your brain.
– Sex science = brain scans and lab coats.
– All porn is bad (or good) – 1970s and 80s porn was presented as entirely fun and light-hearted, and current internet porn as all dangerous and bad.
– Sex addiction is real.
– Complex topic oversimplified.
– Kink is weird, strange or dangerous – lots of referring to anything other than images of naked women as NOT NORMAL.
– "Sex ed not good enough" – complaining, not doing.
– Zomg! Teens! Internet! Sexualisation! STI rates!
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Porno docs are interesting and, sometimes, entertaining – maybe even thought provoking. I wouldn’t take them as educational tools, though, and I recommend googling “female ejaculation” if you’re bored and have time to kill (like you've never done that anyway). Or – so long as you can confirm you are legally old enough according to the laws and customs of your region – go watch some dirty hot cucumber porn.@ParisLeesPreviously – My Love for the Naked McDonald's Rampage Woman