Porn. Pornography. Do the very words make you uncomfortable? There is something very British about the way we discuss sex: nervous laughter and raised eyebrows, the reflex to turn seriousness into innuendo.
It is a national tic – and, increasingly, a problem. Because, while this tone remains stuck between sniggering schoolboy and disapproving headteacher, our reality has moved on. This week, MP Samantha Niblett and Cindy Gallop, a sex educator, attempted to drag that reality into the open. Their newly launched campaign, “Yes Sex Please, We’re British!”, calls for something both radical and entirely obvious: lifelong sex education, embedded not just in schools but across the span of adult life. Parliament will debate this in the autumn.
It is a belated acknowledgement of how people encounter sex today. As Niblett put it, the aim is to help people understand consent and healthy relationships: from adolescence to menopause and beyond.
The urgency is real. This is a huge problem for young people and it will affect them like a virus not just now, but for the rest of their lives. Research has repeatedly shown that many children now encounter pornography before their teenage years, sometimes as young as primary school. Worse, much of what they view is violent and extraordinarily explicit. That represents a profound shift from the analogue era Niblett herself describes: a time of magazines glimpsed (in my case: via a secret clearing through the broken fence in the woods around school) and VHS videos shared – with access limited by both embarrassment and availability. Today, the internet has democratised that access. The furtive and rare is now everyday and often extreme.
Yet, our response remains oddly frozen in time. There is a way to fight back, if only we would take it seriously. Instead, the reaction to this new initiative was wearyingly predictable: eye-rolling mockery and the suggestion that talking openly about sex is somehow unserious.
As one commentator noted, the inability to discuss the subject “without stupid jokes” remains stubbornly intact. When politicians like Kemi Badenoch treat the issue dismissively, it speaks to a deeper discomfort: a cultural squeamishness. It’s unhelpful and damaging.
The alternative to the proper education this campaign is arguing for is as bad as it gets. Cindy Gallop has long argued that pornography becomes the default sex education for young people. The extra-worrying problem is that it is consumed without context or discussion and without contradiction – often featuring strangulation and more. Gallop gave a famous, much-watched TED talk in which she revealed just how ubiquitous pornography affects the way young men and women believe sex should be.
That is the gap lifelong sex education is designed to fill. Crucially, it is not just about the young. One of the more quietly radical aspects of Niblett and Gallop’s campaign is its insistence that education does not end at 16 or 18, or even 25. Adults, too, navigate relationships shaped by technology, misinformation and silence. We also benefit from clearer conversations about consent and expectation. The idea that sex education is a one-off, vaguely embarrassing school-based rite of passage belongs to another era before smartphones, algorithms and the integration of explicit content into everyday digital life.
We no longer live in that analogue world. We may not be comfortable talking about sex, but we should be clear about the consequences of not doing so. Niblett and Gallop’s campaign may provoke laughter in puerile Westminster corridors. However, beneath the branding and headlines lies a serious, evidence-based proposition: that in a world where exposure is early, unavoidable and often unhealthily violent, education must be continuous and grown-up. The only truly naive position is to pretend otherwise.
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