The perception of professionals in the non-profit sector about the impact of pornography inyoung people's relationship in Sweden : Sexual violence, human rights, consent and gender

The thesis of this essay explores if there is a causation in youth (15-25 years) partnerrelationships between pornography consumption and sexual violence. The analysis includedperspectives of human rights, gender and consent. It has also been examined how to counteractthese issues and who’s responsibility it is to do so. These questions have been asked to sevenprofessionals in non-profit organizations through an interview study. A survey with 19-yearolds in high school about their experiences with pornography and sexual violence was alsomade. Because of low participation in the survey only part of it will be shown in the analysis.To process all the data of the studies, theories of gender and consent have been used. The resultsshowed that youths that contacts the non-profit organisations feel that they need to do whateversexual act that their partner wants them to. They could not always see themselves thatpornography was affecting their relationships and that the acts they were forced to do wasinspired from pornography. The questions asked to the youths played a role in how much of acausation the organisations could see. Pornography is not the only reason that sexual violencehas increased among youths, there are other things contributing, like how the whole society isvery sexualized and is very tolerant to violence in general. The youths had a hard timedetermining what sexual violence is and how complex consent is. Gender norms put pressureon them to act a certain way in their partner relationships and talk a special way about violence,sex and pornography. To see the causation, you need to have the knowledge about violence,gender and how to talk to youths. We cannot stop the use of pornography, but we can learn howto talk to young people about it and work pre-emptive to prevent more issues to evolve. Sexualviolence is a rights issue, but those rights that protect you from violence is not helpful inrestricting pornography. Conventions can be used to put more pressure on the state of Swedento act against these issues. Harmful standards must be prevented and there needs to be supportand openness to talk to youths about these issues