Look Ma, this is where the porn lives now (iStockPhoto).

We’ve known for a while now that in lieu of comprehensive and frank sex education that kids just turn to porn to learn the ins and outs of it all (pun very intentional). We know that denying them access to education and/or contraception doesn’t stop them screwing each other. We know that when they are learning about sex in non educational-settings, the information is not coming with a handbook on how to engage with the material.

As any reader of this blog should know, I love pornography. There are fantastic film makers who create content that is fun to watch. There are some really amazing, inspiring and ethical pornographic films and sites out there, but that isn’t what most teens are watching. Teenagers are viewing and sharing clips from sites like Redtube and Xtube with little context to go with them. The sort of clips where very tired gender roles are overwhelmingly adhered to and the focus is almost exclusively geared towards his pleasure, not hers.

Cindy Gallop’s fantastic education project Make Love Not Porn is one of the first pro-porn educational sites for young people, and is a fantastic resource for the media-savvy generation of sexually active beings. It acknowledges that you can’t stop children from accessing pornography (even if you block it on your computer with some overpriced Internet Nannying software, you can be sure that they are seeing it on friend’s media devices or on your computer when you are not home because they know how to get around that software you place so much faith in), and doesn’t talk to them like they are idiots. Instead of infantilising these young consumers of adult media, it helps them gain critical thinking skills and teaches them a little more about mutually pleasurable sex. It is a fantastic resource and one every parent should have bookmarked.

Meanwhile, back in Australia, organisations like YEAH! do their bit with educating young people to go out into their communities and educate their peers. Which is fantastic, because kids have long gotten information on sex from their friends and classmates, so arming them with facts and teaching tools is a brilliant initiative. Really though, what I want to see is a country-wide, mandatory, pleasure-inclusive, sexual education curriculum.

According to O’ Brien, the focus of the Education Department’s new curriculum package for Year 8 and Year 9 students (13-15 year olds) is “consent, intimacy, power and respect in their personal relationships”. Fantastic. Those are four key components of healthy, mutually beneficial sexual relationships. Consent is so misunderstood that it is vital we are teaching kids what it is and how it works, but that needs to be going hand in hand with learning about the power differentials between partners and how to be respectful in our sexual interactions with people.