“Hi, my name’s Martin, and I’m a wanker.” It’s the blunt opening gambit from a speech on pornography I’ve now delivered to many hundreds of teenage British school children, parents, teachers, heads, regional health education specialists and community practitioners – even purse-lipped Home Office staff.
I say this not only because it is patently true, but because for eight years I edited lads’ mag Loaded. During that time, I was often vocally accused of being a pornographer – so when I left the mag after becoming a dad, I decided to put my hands-on experience to good use.
That process started immediately after a speech I gave defending porn at the Women of the World festival in 2012, when a young woman approached me and said: “You could put your knowledge to positive use. Young men might listen to you.” I began to question my role in the porn matrix, and in 2013 decided to tackle the “porn panic” that was sweeping Britain, thanks to David Cameron and the Daily Mail declaring that porn was “corroding childhood”.
To find out more, I spent six months making Porn on the Brain for Channel 4, and as well as global experts spoke to 23 young men who felt their porn use was spiralling out of control. One had flunked his exams. One had lost his job. Some had divorced. One had a criminal record (after police caught him masturbating in a car near a school). One teenage lad relieved himself 28 times a day until it felt like he’d been “kicked in the bollocks”. Another spent £52,000 on escorts he found on porn sites. Clearly these people are extreme examples – but they have cautionary tales that we can learn from.
My take on porn is like my take on alcohol: prohibition will always fail, but it’s similarly risky to hand kids the keys to the drinks cabinet. Instead, we need to encourage responsible and critical consumption – and those conversations need to happen in schools and at home.
With porn, I urge teenagers to question what they see, rather than accepting it as true. Not all men have penises like draught excluders. You don’t have to shave yourself bald: not everybody likes it like that. If you see something in porn and you want to try it in the real world – always ask first. And if the person says no, then no always means no.
When I was seven, my dad pointed out battered women we’d occasionally see on the streets of Nottingham, where I grew up, and say: “We don’t do it like that, son. Real men don’t do it like that.” Now I try to take perhaps the most uncomfortable stimulus of our time into British schools and turn it into a positive springboard for a 21st century conversation about sex and consent. The kids, and especially the lads, listen to me, as my perhaps dubious CV gives me credibility. They know I won’t judge them and, vitally, I’m not there the next day to make them feel uncomfortable.
This is when the real conversations start – with teachers, their parents, and, hopefully, the most importantly people of all: their future sexual partners.
As a committee member of the Being A Man festival I’ll be talking this weekend about what I’ve learnt in a fast-moving year. Once again I’ll admit I’m a wanker. But then you already know that.
• Martin Daubney is speaking at the Being A Man Festival, in London’s Southbank Centre, on 28 November. The full festival takes place on 27-29 November. Visit southbankcentre.co.uk/bam
