Norwegian students fight against porn
23-12-2021
Northern Europe
CNE.news
Pornography is doing something with your mind. Photo RD, Sjaak Verboom
Northern Europe
Porn destroys lives, 18-year-old Isak Gjøtterud knows. That is why he founded the newly started organisation “Porn vs Love” to fight pornography.
“Not only do people not know that pornography is harmful, most people even think it is healthy”, says Gjøtterud to Norwegian daily Dagen. Gjøtterud is one of four students in Agder who have joined the newly started organisation «Porn vs Love» to fight against pornography.
The idea for the organisation came when Gjøtterud and his friend Fredrik Johan Aanstad Olsen sat and talked about pornography one November evening last year. “Pornography has infiltrated our society in a whole new way, and it is available like never before.”
Gjøtterud and his friend tried to understand how widespread pornography use is among Norwegian youth. The numbers they found shocked them. “We came across the Norwegian Media Authority’s report from 2020, which shows that 75 per cent of Norwegian boys between the ages of 13 and 18 and 39 per cent of girls between the ages of 17 and 18 have watched porn. And it only increases. Only from 2018 to 2020, Norwegian porn use increased by 14.2 per cent”, says Gjøtterud.
Those numbers were the reason Gjøtterud and his friend decided to fight back.
Forbidden in France
In France, the public authority for audiovisual regulation (CSA) has ordered five porn sites to block their access to minors.
The sites are summoned to prevent minors from accessing their content within 15 days, under penalty of being blocked by judicial decision.
The CSA made this decision after being informed at the end of November 2020 by three associations: the Observatory for parenthood and digital education (Open), the National Union of Family Associations (Unaf) and the French Council of Associations for children’s rights (Cofrade). This is reported by the French news site RCF Radio.
“We adults must protect children and measure the consequences of these images on their mind”, said Martine Brousse. She is president of the Voice of the Child, an association for the defence of children.
In Dagen, Gjøtterud is open about himself struggling with pornography. “I was probably never addicted, but I had started to notice what effect it had on my brain”, says Gjøtterud. “It affected the way I thought and how social I was”, he adds.
Porn becomes ordinary
One of Porn vs Love ambitions is to become Norway’s most extensive base with information on the effects of pornography. “We want people to be able to read about studies on the effect of pornography and what science says about what porn does to the brain and heart”, says Gjøtterud.
Gjøtterud thinks that pornography has become too ordinary in Norway. “In many high schools, students are told that it is perfectly normal to watch pornography and that it is healthy to explore oneself sexually. In the minds of young people, it is the same as encouraging the use of porn”, Gjøtterud believes.
Pizza and porn
Porn vs Love is actively trying to increase awareness of pornography. Earlier this year, the organisation invited people for an information gathering at a high school.
Thin line
Porn does not only have psychological consequences for viewers. According to a New York Times op-ed, one of the most popular porn websites in the multi-billion-dollar industry is “infested” with videos of people being sexually assaulted.
Although the author, Nicholas Kristof, does not necessarily want to stop porn itself, he warns that the line between porn and sexual assault is thin. “With Pornhub, we have Jeffrey Epstein times 1,000.”
According to a victim, an assault eventually ends, but porn sites render the suffering interminable. “It’s never going to end”, a victim said to Kristof. “They’re getting so much money from our trauma.”
Under the heading “Pizza and porn”, the organisation invited its first information gathering earlier this year. The meeting was held at a high school in the region of Sørlandet. Around 150 people showed up at the ‘Pizza and Porn’ gathering. “We served pizza and gave a short lecture. Furthermore, we showed a documentary about the effects of pornography from Fight the New Drug (FTND)”, says Gjøtterud. FTND is an American non-profit organisation that describes pornography as analogous to a drug and argues that it is a public health issue.
According to Gjøtterud, the response was positive. “Several of the students came up to us afterwards and asked how they could give money to support us as an organisation.”
Porn vs Love plans to participate in the public discourse in the long run. “We also want pornography addiction to be defined as an addiction on an equal footing with, for example, gambling addiction or addiction to drugs”, says Gjøtterud.
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