On Wednesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a $925 million initiative to help people flee abusive relationships after a recent uptick in violence against women in Australia. State, territory and federal leaders, who met for an urgent national cabinet meeting following nationwide rallies, also committed to implementing a series of interventions to address young people’s access to extreme online misogyny; which specifically cited ‘violent pornography’.As a sex worker, the most concerning part of this conversation is the use of the sex industry as a political scapegoat for men’s violence. Let’s be clear: the porn industry was never created to provide sex education to children. But let’s also be honest: if your child is actively seeking out pornography, or so-called ‘violent pornography’, perhaps there’s a gap in their learning about sex and sexuality that the education system or a guardian has failed to fill. To prioritise limiting young people’s access to pornography and framing certain categories as ‘violent’ shows how quickly Australian politicians, educators and parents position themselves as the moral arbiters of sex work, rather than having honest and brave conversations with their kids about consent and sex. Not only do these sentiments perpetuate vilifying and victimising narratives about sex workers, they also simultaneously shift the responsibility of teaching young people about boundaries onto the very pornographers they claim to exhibit ‘violence’. Pornography can be a way for young people to learn and explore their sexuality in ways the current education system and discussions with their peers do not allow. This is not an endorsement, but it should be an opportunity to work out where we are letting children down on their journeys to self-discovery.Additionally, blanket views that all adult content is harmful or has harmful potential, and attempting to restrict young people’s access to it, often results in more barriers for sex workers online. Anti-trafficking laws that hold porn websites liable for promoting or facilitating sex work and trafficking introduced in the US in 2018 have been criticised for endangering sex workers further. The UK’s implementation of age-verification systems online has also been slammed by the sex work industry for over-regulation. Can I suggest just getting better parental controls on your devices?This is not the first time the responsibility of shaping well-behaved young men has been put on the sex industry. Last year, senior Liberal Party member Sussan Ley suggested a “pause” on the opening of new strip clubs, citing concerns over the roles theses premises have in influencing young men’s attitudes towards women. But Ley’s attitude ignores the involvement of an autonomous, consenting person in the scenario.I argue to Sussan Ley that any man who attends strip clubs as a ritualistic baptism into manhood will learn lifelong lessons about boundaries should they ever touch a dancer in a place they haven’t consented to.The sex industry is not a handbook to intimacy that your child is a perceived victim of, and we should not be enabling men to blame their bad behaviour on porn consumption. All Australians, not just sex workers, should be mature enough to educate themselves and their children that the adult industry and porn are built on fantasy, and that’s okay. When looking at men’s violence against women – very much a reality – let’s look at real solutions. The $925 million pledge over five years, while frontline services are desperate for funding, is seriously inadequate. And the cost of living is continuously rising – making financial hardship a major contributing factor to women’s inability to escape violent relationships. Meanwhile, the government also pledged a $50 billion boost to defence over the next decade and Australia’s own parliament can’t even get its sexual misconduct problem under control. So who really is to blame?Darcy Deviant is a sex worker and writer based in Melbourne. Follow Darcy on Instagram here.
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