Think about the first time you saw images or videos that were sexual in nature. If you’re part of Gen X or a millennial, perhaps it was in the ‘lads’ mags’ that lived on the top shelves in newsagents or The Sun’s infamous ‘Page 3’. For Gen Z, it’s likely your first exposure to sexual content was either on social media or porn sites, thanks to the boom in smartphone ownership.

But, as porn magazines and video cassettes gave way to the emergence of thousands of ‘tube sites’ on the internet, something changed: the type of content that people consume and how it’s affecting their sex lives. Over the past few years, there’s been a worrying trend emerging in the UK whereby aggression and violence are being normalised during sex. In 2023, a landmark report by the Children’s Commissioner’s office found that almost eight in 10 young people aged 18 to 21 report having seen pornography involving sexual violence before turning 18 – with female actors in adult films being over two times more likely than their male counterparts to be the target of sexual violence.

Given that 72% of young people also said that viewing porn affects expectations around real-life sex and relationships, a question arises around whether young women in the UK today are feeling pressured into having sex that involves physical aggression. Terrifyingly, the Children’s Commissioner’s report found that this may well be the case, with nearly half of young people surveyed assuming that girls ‘expect’ or ‘enjoy’ sex that involves physical aggression, such as airway restriction.

So, is the expectation that sex for young women should involve aggression being influenced by porn alone, or are there other factors? And what can be done – if anything – to combat this and promote healthy, consensual sex lives for women in the UK?

“Women believe that this is how they should be treated during sex” – is porn pressurising young women to expect sex that involves physical aggression?