The masculinity crisis is a porn crisis

When isn’t masculinity in crisis? The panic about the nation’s boys is perpetual. Conservatives blame the feminisation of schools or family breakdown, while the left frets about the manosphere and President Trump. But to point the finger at pornography is to confront a truth many would prefer to ignore, one that carries an unspoken accusation. In this respect, it has become the newest taboo: not because it is on the fringes, but because it is too familiar to be comfortably examined.

The latest organisation to sound the alarm about boys without daring to mention the “p word” is the NASUWT. Matt Wrack, the teaching union’s general secretary, has warned of a “masculinity crisis brewing in our schools”, a “ticking time bomb” that will detonate without urgent action. By “masculinity” it seems fair to assume Wrack means misogyny. And the crisis is clearly for the women and girls around these boys. Female teachers describe their authority being flouted, their images turned into AI deepfakes, and classrooms in which boys test how far they can push brazen sexism. One respondent told the BBC that in her school: “Boys have confronted me, shouted at me. I’ve had boys joke about raping girls in front of me and laughed about it when challenged.”

What, precisely, are those phones delivering into the minds of school students that’s stopping them from accepting women’s authority, or indeed personhood

This is often framed as a problem of discipline or disaffection. NASUWT highlights “the influence of right wing online personas like Andrew Tate and Donald Trump.” The solution proposed by the union is to back bans on phones in schools and restrictions on under-16s using social media. Laudable, certainly. But it ducks the obvious question: what, precisely, are those phones delivering into the minds of school students that’s stopping them from accepting women’s authority, or indeed personhood? In a word, it’s pornography.

Given that some 13 million Britons visit pornography sites each month, this coyness is not accidental. It is easier to wag the finger at Andrew Tate — who incidentally built his financial empire through exploiting women on OnlyFans — than to confront an industry so ubiquitous it implicates almost everyone.

But the power of pornography is impossible to deny. The lessons it teaches are not only reinforced by orgasm, they are delivered by some of the world’s most accomplished engineers. An army of technologists is employed to keep users’ eyes fixed on the screen by serving up a steady diet of increasing extremity. In doing so, they mould not only expectations of sex, but attitudes towards the sexes themselves. While legislators may be only now slowly waking up to this, digital natives are already beginning to see through the lies of pornography, and to question what it taught them about sex.

The online magazine Ladbible, which is aimed primarily at young men, can hardly be accused of having a radical feminist agenda. Yet in 2025 the outlet commissioned a survey of more than 5,000 Gen Z respondents to examine attitudes to pornography and its effects. The researchers found that 77 per cent consume pornography regularly, while around half say it’s their main source of information about sex.

The behavioural impact is clear. Seventy-six per cent of users said they had wanted to try something they had seen in porn. Women, in particular, registered a shift in attitude; 36 per cent say pornography reinforces aggression or violence, while others described pressure to perform. “I still play up to trying to act like a pornstar,” admits one of those quoted.

Consequently, despite education programmes with an emphasis on consent, young people’s attitudes toward sex stereotypes and sexual violence make Jim Davidson look like Germaine Greer.

A 2024 survey of more than 3,000 UK adults found that while 74 per cent overall recognised that rape can occur without physical resistance, this fell to just 53 per cent among those aged 18 to 24. Understanding that consent cannot be assumed within a relationship dropped from 87 per cent among the over 65s to 42 per cent among the youngest group. Today, younger people are more sexist than their grandparents. These digital natives are victims of both the technologists’ “move fast and break things” approach and the insouciance of older generations.

The introduction of age verification for pornography sites last summer was welcome, but it arrived late and landed lightly. Gen Z has already come of age, many are raising children of their own. The pornified norms they grew up with are now being woven into institutions.

Ofcom, tasked with enforcing the Online Safety Act, has treated representatives of the sex industry as legitimate stakeholders. Politicians working to tackle online harms have consulted with pornographers. In schools, meanwhile, the prevailing orthodoxy is not to criticise pornography as a whole. UNESCO guidance asserts that “children and young people are sexual beings from birth” who should be encouraged to explore and express their sexuality in positive and pleasurable ways. Bodies such as the Sex Education Forum warn of a “disconnect” between what children say they want from relationships and sex education and what adults believe they need, urging professionals to “challenge their own and each other’s assumptions” in order to close the gap. The protection of children seems to be less of a priority than taking a sex positive approach.

From teaching unions like NASUWT to RSE providers, pornography is not named as a force to be interrogated but absorbed into a language of “choice” and “preference”. Within the classroom, behaviours lifted directly from porn are presented as options to be navigated, not norms to be questioned. No one wishes to appear judgemental or prudish. 

This is how pornography secures its authority. It does not need to be defended if it is never properly confronted. Instead, it is smuggled into sex education as background noise — quietly setting the terms by which relationships are understood. The result are lessons that emphasise the need to obtain consent, while leaving untouched the culture that has already rewritten what sex even is.

If there is a masculinity crisis, it is not (only) because boys lack role models or discipline, but because we have outsourced their education to some of the most powerful technological systems ever created. Boys raised on this material are not simply misbehaving, they are acting out the scripts they have been given.

The refusal to name this is not oversight but cowardice. Phones can be confiscated, apps banned, the names of influencers struck from the classroom, but unless the material shaping their minds is confronted, the culture will remain unchanged. A pornographic education will continue to outstrip anything a teacher can offer.