A 14-year-old girl is choked during her first kiss. A 15-year-old boy didn’t stop when she started crying because he thought it was “normal for girls to cry during sex”. Pupils in classrooms are making jokes about “raping their friend’s sisters and mums”, calling girls “sluts and slags”.
This is just some of what we often hear from pupils when we run our sessions in schools — porn and misogynist influencers are major contributing factors. As philosopher Amia Srinivasan says, “sex is what porn says it is”, showing us that porn consumed online is the main sex educator for young people, modelling sexual violence, oppression, dehumanisation and objectification as the norm in sex.
Having safe and inclusive spaces where individuals feel confident to share is the bedrock of the Everyone’s Invited preventative education programme that we started two years ago and now run in 100 schools in the UK, including 30 across London.
The result is young people telling us “having sex is cool but being in a relationship is embarrassing”, that some boys feel “no one would care if we cried” and “it means you are strong if you keep things to yourself”.
Young people need spaces to think about pornography and how mainstreaming of hardcore porn has dictated their sexual lives and experiences
Everyone’s Invited is working hard in schools to expose and eradicate rape culture. Our workshops address the pressures of the modern sexual landscape… the pressures faced on social media, the gender stereotypes that make boys feel they have to be tough like Andrew Tate and girls feel they have to be submissive, the extreme online misogyny, and alpha-male influencers promoting violent models of masculinity. Young people need spaces to think about pornography and how mainstreaming of hardcore porn has dictated their sexual lives and experiences.
So, when I sit quietly at the back of the room in an inner London school, observing chattering Year 10s (age 14/15), I am extremely proud we are tackling this issue and hugely concerned because we cannot do this alone. That is why I am delighted to back the Evening Standard’s Show Respect campaign, which has raised £500,000 to fund healthy relationships workshops in schools across the capital, reaching an additional 15,000 teenagers. Given that the evidence from the Government-backed Youth Endowment Fund shows this sort of intervention works, it would be great if the Government could now step up and back this work with hard cash.
At Everyone’s Invited, the sessions are packed with information on the prevalence of sexual violence, backed with case studies and statistics. Our talks help to eliminate shame and stigma, often prompting private disclosures about past experiences that have never been shared before.
There is still so much work to be done. Like when we asked pupils where they think women belong, one boy shouted back “on all fours”. Our female facilitators are trained to deal with being ignored, talked over and shouted at during sessions while male facilitators are readily listened to. In some schools, female staff feel nervous going into classrooms and don’t want to be alone in corridors, fearing harassment from pupils.
Back in 2021, Everyone’s Invited exposed rape culture in UK schools. Thousands of young people shared their stories, bravely speaking out about misogyny, sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools. The 2021 Ofsted report reinforced this, finding that nine out of 10 girls received unsolicited “dick pics” and experienced sexist name-calling.
There is still a crisis in our schools that must be urgently addressed.
