By PJ Bedwell

I read a news story earlier this year about a prestigious Australian boys school.

It opened by outlining sexual harassment received by female teachers from students including one teacher being blackmailed to send nude images and a warning that the school was a “boys club” with “a women problem.”

The women problem assessment fitted nicely with the broader narrative the article, based on a four corners investigation, was telling about the culture and corporate treatment of female teachers at this school.

But I was surprised that it completely overlooked an obvious elephant in the room.

This school has a porn problem.

But this shouldn’t be a particularly controversial accusation because I’d suggest every Australian senior school has a porn problem (and perhaps more primary schools then we’d want to imagine).

It often feels like no one wants to make the obvious connection.

The school with a porn problem is in every Australian community.

We know the consumption of porn has exploded with the rise of high speed internet and smartphones. It’s become ubiquitous, with almost all teen boys having received some exposure to it to the point where viewing porn has largely become normalised in popular culture.

And it’s not just the boys. A recent study cited a pornography consumption rate of 97% for males ages 12-18, and 78% for girls in the same age bracket.

And we also know there are significant issues facing our culture with the behaviour of boys and men and their treatment of women. Particular violence and sexual harrasment against women.

Yet it often feels like no one wants to make the obvious connection.

Another news article this year explored the "widespread experience of sexual harassment, sexism, and misogyny perpetrated by boys towards women teachers” in Australian classrooms. One teacher was reported as saying, “Most of what was happening in my experience was of a sexual nature … Students making moaning noises in my classes, asking me inappropriate questions, asking personal questions about my age or my appearance."

Another school with a porn problem.

But instead the article centred its narrative on the problem of Andrew Tate, a controversial male influencer, as the driving force behind the ”widespread experience of sexual harassment, sexism, and misogyny perpetrated by boys towards women teachers.” Porn didn’t get a mention.

In fact sometimes porn isn’t just tolerated, it’s glorified: we regularly hear reports from the public school system where PDHPE teachers explain to young students how watching pornography can be a healthy and normal part of developing sexuality.

Whether intended or not, a society where porn is normalised is one that teaches our youth to de-value others, particularly women. Through habitual behaviour and cultural reinforcement a boy can quickly be conditioned to view women as sexual objects, existing to fulfill their desires.

It’s time we addressed the underlying scourge of pornography in our society and how it’s altering the minds and behaviour of our children.

An even more disturbing news article this year reported on the shocking discovery of explicit AI (artificial intelligence) generated fake nude images of students at a private school.

Yet another school with an obvious porn problem.

This time there was plenty of deserved outrage and a discussion about how to curtail this developing problem of “deepfake porn”.

While this is needed, it’s applying a bandaid to a symptom of the deeper disease.

It’s time we addressed the underlying scourge of pornography in our society and how it’s altering the minds and behaviour of our children. We need to do all we can to challenge and change what has become a “porn normal” culture.

Any nation that sincerely wants to end violence against women must forfeit its love of pornography.

Christians too must realise and address the destructive impact of porn within our churches. It’s a common struggle amongst both male and females that too often remains hidden and unspoken.

If you have any influence over young Christians I really encourage you to find a way to allow them to feel comfortable enough to be really honest, and you can do that by sharing openly yourself. Time and time again, breaking the ice reveals that there are problems that no one has been talking about.

At the start of this year I was with a group of around 20 young Christian men where we created space to be vulnerable with one another. With perhaps one exception everyone admitted to some form of past or ongoing struggle with a pornified culture and its effects both on them and others in their life.

These were Christian men who could see the harm, wanted to walk free and together were encouraging one another higher.

You can imagine within a school yard environment, raging hormones, a culture saturated by porn and no moral compass to suggest porn could possibly be wrong or harmful, how teenagers in this environment could be encouraging each other in the opposite direction.

When boys are growing up with porn shaping their worldview we have a major problem.

So what do we do?

Any nation that sincerely wants to end violence against women must forfeit its love of pornography.

I don’t have all the answers but I do know we can not keep ignoring or avoiding the elephant in the room.

We need to be shining the light on this dark and ugly problem. And we need to start the difficult conversations - in our homes, in our schools, in our churches, in our communities and across our nation.

We need to see the battle for sexual purity as the battle of a young Christian’s life. Not a sideline issue where anyone who admits to having a problem feels like they’re a misfit. When we fight together, we will win. When we remain isolated and hidden in the dark, we continue losing.

Of course conversation without action has the potential to further normalise a behaviour.

As Christians, we need to be authentic and honest, while calling each other into the freedom that is possible in Christ.

And as a nation we need to start taking measures to curtail the unrestricted access our children have to porn.

PJ Bedwell is the director of What’s Normal, a video based resource for Christian schools, churches and individuals to start the conversation, challenge the status quo and help young people walk in the freedom and purpose found in Jesus.