“Sexual violence” march ahead of Boobs on Bikes

Tomorrow’s controversial Boobs on Bikes march, led by pornographer Steve Crow and featuring international porn stars, will be preceded by a sexual violence and harms of pornography march organised by advocacy group Stop Demand Foundation.

The march will be joined by representatives of MASsiVe (Men Against Sexual Violence, an initiative of MP Kelvin Davis), sex offender clinicians, and a group from Kaikohe – a community that is saying a loud “No More” to sexual violence, incest and pornography.

Tomorrow’s march will not focus directly on Boobs on Bikes or the Erotica Expo. Stop Demand founder, Denise Ritchie, says “Both events are using international porn stars as a drawcard. The organiser is a renowned pornographer. We are simply using the Boobs on Bikes audience for our messages about hard-core pornography and its links to sexual violence and harm.”

Russell Smith, a sex offender clinician with Korowai Tumanako, will be amongst those fronting tomorrow’s march. Smith says, “Pornography is a part of a sex offender’s diet. It increases their level of arousal. It increases their level of harm to others, and to themselves. We know that some of the offenders have forced their partners into committing sexual acts that they see in pornography, without consent, and try to minimise that harm.” Smith adds, “Porn has a way of affecting the developing mind like no other drug.”

Kaikohe community leader Mike Shaw agrees. He says, “To not see the link between pornography and sexual violence is to be in a state of denial. Pornography is warping the minds of our youth and our men in how they view and treat women. It needs to be addressed.”

Kaikohe is looking at educating its youth on the harms of porn, through it schools. Meantime, the community has taken steps to encourage dairies, supermarkets and garages to be ‘porn-free’. “Kaikohe could well be New Zealand’s first commercial-porn free town,” says Shaw.

A timely programme broadcast on nationwide television last night, “Is free pornography destroying our brains?” highlighted that the average age New Zealand children are exposed to internet porn is 10 and what porn users “see on the screen is what they want in the bedroom”.

The Max Planck Institute in Germany identified that changes in the brains of internet porn users include a rewiring of the frontal lobe, possible brain shrinkage, and that “the more porn you watch, the more extreme your brain wants it to be.” A world-renowned brain expert stated that “our brains want to learn and we need new, and [in porn] new is aggression, new is younger.”

The programme identified the urgent need for more conversations around pornography. Stop Demand says that is exactly what tomorrow’s march is designed to generate – conversations.

Tomorrow’s march will depart from the corner of Mayoral Drive and Queen St at 12:15 pm.

Stop Demand Foundation calls for action to stop sexual violence, sexual exploitation and sexual denigration of women and children www.stopdemand.org

ENDS

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