Porn, Penthouse, and Sex Ed

Recently, I’ve been collecting old magazines. I’ve been paying close attention to sexually explicit media like Playboy and Penthouse because I want to understand America’s past rhetoric in regards to sex. I happened to pick up a Penthouse magazine from 1982 this past weekend that featured an article on how to tape your own homemade porn.

They talk about using a VCR recorder. The VCR came out in 1977, just five years before this article came out. That access to technology opened up a whole new world of sexual experimentation for people. And videotaping sex has become even more accessible now that smartphones are commonplace (93.25 million in the U.S have access to Snapchat).

So what does this mean? Now that smartphones and internet access have become so integral to our daily lives, more people than ever are watching porn. Porn takes up a huge percentage of Internet bandwidth. In fact, 30 percent of all data transferred across the Internet is porn. (and that was referenced from an article in 2013, I can only imagine the numbers have increased).

Herein lies the problem: Millions of people are watching porn, but porn is NOT a substitute for comprehensive sex education.

In the podcast Crazy/Genius by the Atlantic, they discuss the effects porn can have on our sex lives. There is a broad group of academics and advocates who are deeply split on whether pornography amounts to a public-health crisis, or whether it’s an often harmless outlet and a common scapegoat for dissatisfied couples. I want to look at the role porn has played in teaching/influencing attitudes people have about sex because it has become the primary form of sex education for many Americans.

Here is a list of some of the concerning sexually violent messages that people can get from porn:

• Images of violence
• Callous sex
• The belief that women like certain things that women actually hate
• Degrading behaviors
• Judgment towards partners
• Increasingly engaging in non-consenting sex
• Normalization of sexual harassment

My very broad goal with my senior capstone is to reduce harm. I don’t want these sexually violent messages to be perpetrated and acted on. I want the cycle of misinformation to end. I hope that through some sort of design intervention I’m able to plant the seed in young people’s mind that will promote healthy sexual behavior and patterns. Below is a sketch of what I’ve deemed the “three main ways” children/youth in the U.S. come in contact with some form of sex education.

I’m thinking that I can intervene with a design solution in between these key touchpoints. (no pun intended)

The goal:
A) To counteract potential false information
B) Educate with real facts