Today we have with us Gemma Aitchison from our team at FiLiA podcasts who will be interviewing Jo Bartosch from Click Off. Gemma Aitchison’s sister Sasha Marsden, who was 16 at the time was raped and murdered by David Minto, the man who she went to meet for a job interview at a local hotel that day on January 31st, 2013.

 Determined to address the issues underlying, Gemma went on to found Yes Matters the same year. Yes Matters is a community group using youth work framework and ethics to raise awareness of gender stereotype damage, education around consent and victim blaming and prevent sexual objectification.

Jo Bartosch is a writer whose works have been published on various online platforms. And she founded Click Off in 2019 in order to raise awareness about the harms of pornography, to share the learning drawn from the research and experience of feminists, with legislators and build a movement against pornography in the UK.

Thank you both for being with us today and please take it away. 

Gemma: To avoid legal snags, you are being recorded right now. I'm recording you for a FiLiA podcast. So consider yourself informed. Informed, which is important in consent, boys and girls. By boys and girls, I mean boys, because you know, we know who does it now don't we? 

So I wanted to do a podcast with you today. So we're doing all these podcasts about all these brilliant women doing brilliant things because we're all stuck at home feeling pretty weird about the current situation feeling pretty down and almost in a way, because we're sort of being told we have to stay inside almost like our voices we're being proactive, sort of being we're held a little bit because we have to stay inside.

So, our solution to this is to do podcasts on to the internet instead of just in the real world. I wanted to have a chat with you and to hear about the trouble that you are causing, which is brilliant. And so, first of all, how are you doing in the current COVID lockdown situation?

Jo: To be honest, I'm not finding it too bad, but then I've got a couple of cats and a partner. So I haven't got any men in the house. I feel kind of a bit guilty saying it, but I'm quite enjoying having a bit of time to not have to respond to social invitations and be antisocial without feeling guilty. It's brilliant. 

Gemma: Yeah, you don't have to make up an excuse. I'm watching grass. That's it. 

Jo: Yeah. It's kind of freeing really well in a whole stay-at-home way. 

Gemma: What do you think about the whole stuff around the fact that, you know, it's 70% of women doing all the responses, doing all of the work, mostly unpaid work, the most dangerous work and of course we have the domestic violence situation, which the government isn't really responding to and just generally the situation for women in this weird situation. 

Jo: Yeah. It is a weird situation and I guess as well, it's really made it obvious how much work goes unrewarded and isn't counted as part of the economy, but who is it who's doing the volunteering? Who's doing most of the household chores, who's doing all those things that are sneered at and not even considered work, but you know, everyone's going on about keeping the economy going? Well, actually it's women that are keeping everything going. 

My main concern, obviously, is the impact of pornography during this time, because I think finally government is starting to become aware, well, they're not doing much about it, but you know, it's gaining media traction that there's an issue with domestic violence, but there are at the moment, 120 million people logging on just to one porn site and that's PornHub across the world.

And if you think about the impact on young people who are developing their sexuality, who aren't going be able to go out and pass a note to somebody they fancy. What they're going see when they look for what they think might be to do with relationships or sex, it's going to be violence. And I think that's massively important and just kind of isn't being spoken about at the moment.

Gemma: I completely agree. It's that reinforcing of sexual objectification, isn't it. There have been a few online things at the moment about PornHub and about how people's abuse is being put on there. So as we're seeing arising domestic abuse and things like that in situations where people can't escape, and also victims of CSE and child sexual abuse, when it tends to be a family member or a family friend, can also be in those situations, if you're trapped with a perpetrator, if they film that abuse, it becomes entertainment. 

Jo: Yes, absolutely. And I think there's a really good petition going around at the moment, which has been set up by Leila, the founder of Exodus that's to hold the executives of PornHub to account.

But I think domestically, there was so much we can do in terms of contacting MPs. There's a template letter on the Click Off website to try and basically make sure that the dots are joined up between violence and pornography, because I mean, I think rape pornography is a form of violence because I mean, if what you watch didn't have any impact, then adverts wouldn't be a thing.

I mean, of course it has an impact. And particularly when there's effectively like a reward cycle when men, let's be honest it's mainly men, masturbate over watching images of abuse, it tends to not only is it addictive, and we know that, I think it's around 10% of 12 year olds fear that they're addicted to pornography. It it's just such a huge problem. 

Part of how it works is that you tend to seek out more and more extreme imagery. So even when people sort of talk about ethical porn, which I don't believe is a thing, there is no such thing as ethical porn as far as I'm concerned, but even that will lead to more and more extreme content.

And of course that's brilliant for pornographers because if they can stop you being able to relate or have any sort of intimacy with other people, then they've got a captive market. So I really, really just wish it was taken more seriously but I feel there's this like dual thing of it being laughed off and little bit too embarrassing to talk about.

So I've been desperately trying to get MPs or people with a bit of clout on board. Nobody wants to know. I mean, even like feminist MPs, like Jess Phillips, who I've emailed, I've written to, I've got her constituents to get in touch with her, doesn't want to know, and it just feels like somehow it's too extreme to be opposed to pornography.

To be honest, I think it's far more extreme to be okay with abuse. And if people want to call me a prude, fine, I would far rather be considered a prude than be okay with abuse. 

Gemma: Well, it's interesting. Isn't it? On the one hand people try and say, oh, it's a healthy, normal thing to do. But then on the other hand, they're using it as a defence for murder.

So, which is it? Which one? 

So you mentioned things on the Click Off website, people on the podcast might not know about Click Off and how you started it. Tell us all about that. 

Jo: The scale of what we're up against is just overwhelming. It is massive. It is, I think the biggest industry in the world, and I will qualify by that by saying it's in on everybody's, you know, access to pornography is on everybody's phone. Everybody's laptop, everybody's iPad. It is everywhere across the globe. And, you know, PornHub, is the world's biggest online pornography provider platform and has more visits each day than Netflix, Amazon, and Facebook combined. It's massive. 

So I think it's quite an overwhelming task to take on something that, frankly, I'm never going even dent much, but it doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. I don't think I could live with myself if I didn't just try. So we've got some brilliant women supporting us, yourself included and FiLiA and Yes Matters. And we've got Heather Brunskell-Evans. We've got Sheila Jeffries. We've got Kathleen Richardson who runs the campaign against sex robots, which I must admit when I first heard about it, I thought sounded bonkers. And actually, oh my God, she was just ahead of the curve. It's happening.

And why I started it, I guess was because there's just a lack of understanding. We've got record numbers of peer on peer abuse amongst children. We've got girls turning up in doctor surgeries with pretty extreme injuries due to brutal anal sex in particular, which is obviously being popularised by porn.

It's changing how people think, how they relate to one another in quite palpable ways. I mean, even if you have a look at say Game of Thrones or just kind of mainstream TV, it's hugely influenced by pornography. So it's just clear that it's seeping into everybody's minds, everybody's consciousness, and it's almost like the frog and water thing, you don't notice you're boiling until it's too late. So it's just all around us. When you take a step back, it's really quite chilling. 

One of the first campaigns that Click Off got involved with was when Warwickshire put out some sex and relationships education guidance. And I've always been massively in favour of good quality sex education. It's absolutely essential, particularly around consent and all the rest of it. But what absolutely chilled me was realising frankly, how many dodgy opportunists there are out there who set themselves up as sex educators and are teaching that porn is okay. And Warwickshire was one of the counties that had what was called Respect Yourself. They've now pulled it after a campaign by us and the Safer Schools Alliance. It had information on cock and ball torture. It had information on bukkake and it was normalising it as well. It wasn't saying, you know, hey kids, this is out there, be careful. It was, you know, Hey, we can't judge. And I was like, well, actually you're an adult. Yeah, you can.  It's kind of your job to protect kids from that and be a bit judgy, sod it, do it. You're a grown up. 

I guess seeing sort of how the pornography industry has colonised everything from newspapers, television, even sex education was a bit of a wake-up call because I don't have kids.

And I kind of had this nice fluffy notion that, you know, they'd be told to be careful online and all the rest of it, not have quite niche and harmful sexual and degrading sexual practices explained to them in detail. So that was a real wake up call. And that was one of our first campaigns. 

We've got the support of the new leader of the Scottish Labour Party, which is fantastic and we're going to try and push to get a bit more support at the political level and Tanni Grey-Thompson as well, she's on board. So really pleased about that. 

Next year we're going to be building up to a proper launch in Parliament but obviously this year, it's just kind of all gone a bit by the wayside, but something everyone can do is to go to our website. We've got a little fact sheet, which is quite useful and we've got a template letter. So just copy that. There's a link if you don’t know who your MP is, so you can find out and just email your MP and then get back to us and let us know what they say. 

And we've got some quite simple demands about making sure that when somebody is convicted of a crime of violence against women. Well, let's face it, when a man is convicted of a crime of violence against women, that his pornography use is taken into account because it routinely is when there are cases of child abuse, but it isn't with adults. And actually, I think that's something that could make a huge difference quite quickly, because it's very difficult to do any research into pornography because ethics boards at universities tend to reject it. And I think that's both because there a lot of frankly, dodgy academics out there that are probably getting a fair bit of cash and also because obviously it's harmful and you can't say to anyone who's taking part in the experiment, they’re going to be harmed by it.

So there's actually, even though it's bloody obvious that no woman voluntarily decides to rip out her pubes, that's clearly something that's been inspired by porn. So even though the impact of it is quite obvious in many different ways, to prove it and to prove the link between, particularly sort of violence and abuse and watching pornography, is quite difficult.

Gemma: It’s strange because there's so much research out there about the link of objectification and violence. And pornography is quite literally sexual objectification. If it had a label on it, that’s what it would say. 

There's also the links between pornography and paedophilia which is something that is, perhaps to women in the feminist circles, quite obvious to them. But you know, perhaps outside of that, maybe not, for instance, it was one of those talent shows X Factor, Pop Idol/ Talent, whatever they're called. It was one of those and the Pussycat Dolls came on and what they did essentially was a burlesque adult, not wearing very much, sexualized dance. If that was in a burlesque club where adults were choosing to access, that would arguably be one thing, but it was on this family show, pre-watershed thing. So then all these little girls were like, oh yeah, we really like because everyone's cheering for them. And then obviously they copy the music videos and then a couple years down the line, well, what did you expect, your honour? She was doing this. It seems like corporate grooming. Already their defence is right there. 

Jo: It is. It is. Again, it's that thing, isn't it with the whole kind of cultural landscape. We are so saturated in porn that it is just seeping out. There's no way of containing it and it's terrifying. And I can understand why young women and girls are going to think that objectifying themselves is empowering. It isn’t, it's entirely hollow, but it’s been done before. It's so easy to fall into when that's what surrounds you. That's what you're for. So I kind of completely understand the appeal in a way. But it's just so enmeshed with other issues as well. It's really difficult to unpick.

Gemma: Yeah. But when you tell the woman advertising the pole dancing class for little girls, you are the prudish one. 

Jo: Oh yeah, yeah, totally, totally. And I think it was Chief of Sussex Police who mentioned recently that there's been a huge surge in demand for child pornography or indeed images of childhood sexual abuse particularly among young men.

And it is clearly young men who have gone through all the porn they can find with adults and are getting a bit bored and they're going on to look at children. And I think that's a really obvious progression. 

Gemma: Because we infantilise women to make the men look good. It all goes back to the gender stereotypes. The man has to be the big one, the controlling one, the dominant, the strong one. And the woman is to be obedient and small and submissive.

Jo: And feminine and dominated. 

Gemma: Makes some interesting first date chat that I always bring it up.

I always just ask if, well, I'm bisexual, so if I'm on a date with a man I'll ask. If I'm on a date with a woman, I don't feel I need to worry about that so much. Don’t know why, probably crime statistics and history and shit. 

Jo: It’s 98% of men compared to women. 

Gemma: Well, I have to make them cry on the date because otherwise, what would I wash my face with to stay young forever, obviously.

At the moment you're like very vocal on Twitter I've seen, which is awesome. 

I have such a shy, retiring Twitter feed. There can be an echo chamber sort of thing sometimes within feminism. Well, I guess within most movements, not just feminism because people get burnt out and sometimes it's exhausting just to have to explain the water is wet and sometimes you're just like, I just can't deal with it. But you are everywhere. You're just everywhere. 

I've seen you discussed in primary school education groups. I've seen you discussed in secondary school education groups in new policy stuff and new stuff you everywhere, which is brilliant.

So what plans can we help with as you take over the world, which is essential. 

Jo: My plan. I think something just as I say, in addition to contacting your MP, just speaking to people about pornography, asking them, I guess just asking really simple questions about how do you know somebody wants to do what they're doing and whether they're being forced. Ask perhaps what the differences between prostitution and pornography, because essentially pornography is filmed prostitution, and I think people are far more at ease accepting the idea of pornography as something almost victimless without really realising that that's real people and they are real women with real stories and real lives, many of whom have got quite tragic lives. To be honest, when you, when you look into it.

And when you look at that history of some of the most famous porn stars, porn, actresses, like Jemma Jameson, there's often a history of abuse, so it's not like it's a choice that's made in a vacuum. There's clearly the issue of trauma bonding and those sorts of things. 

Let's say when it comes to the idea of feminist porn or ethical porn, I think it's worth reminding ourselves that, for example, James Dean, one of the most famous male pornographers called himself a feminist and was lauded all over social media for being a feminist. And he's been accused of rape now by multiple women. I think that's, that's worth bearing in mind.

As for what people can do to support. We have got a podcast. We haven't done one for a few months actually. but we have got a podcast, we've got fact sheets, please distribute them and if you could let us know as well what's going on at your kid's school with regards to PHSE education, that's really helpful because I have yet to find a provider that doesn't essentially say porn's okay, which is terrifying.

Just start those conversations and start people sort of thinking about the links between pornography and violence. 

Gemma: That’s essentially what I do on a Tuesday anyway, but, I think it is really important to keep having these conversations because at the moment within feminism, there's a lot of stuff going on and quite a lot of division. And I think sometimes it's important to talk about this stuff, because it's like it's sneaking in, it's almost kind of like the 50 Shades generation. We were supposed to accept it to go to strip clubs and you were a prude if you don't accept that and now it's kind of porn and copying what porn does and accepting him slapping you and hitting you. The reality is now, that if you wanted a one-night stand, you need to seriously think about whether you are going to live after having that one-night stand. 

Jo: I think the We Can't Consent to This campaign has done amazing work to raise awareness of the issue with strangulation in particular, which again is something that's new and an extreme practice that's been normalised by pornography and is now almost expected. 

Gemma: Teen Vogue and Cosmo not done so much a good job of that.

So the other thing, I guess I wanted to ask your thoughts on was, how can I put this in a way where I don't sound smug.  I don't think I can. Isn't it hilarious that Mother Nature has decided that men who watch a lot of porn, their dicks don't work anymore. Isn’t that great? I mean, 

Jo: Poor loves. 

Round about a third of them, I think now are experiencing porn induced erectile dysfunction. That's a third of young men between the ages of 18 and 45, I believe. 

Gemma: Is it time for us all to start getting shares in Viagra, from that we can build armies. 

Bless their little cotton socks that a woman probably made and he didn't even say thank you.

I think when you're talking to like a young person audience, it's sort of a way to go well boys did you know this? Because it's something that affects them because again, because of the sexual objectification, because they don't see girls or women as needing consideration because they’re objects to be used for the subject, they're not really that bothered about how it's affecting women and girls. 

Jo: I really struggle with messaging. I have got that on my fact sheet and clearly it's an issue, but at the same time, I kind of think, wow serves you right. I'm much more concerned about the harm to women and girls, but yeah.

Gemma: A guy with such hope standing morals can't breed though, and spread his influence onto another generation. 

I don’t know why men think I hate them?  

Essentially what I would say is we need to all get together behind this. And one thing that's come across is you've mentioned two other campaigns that are sort of shouting about similar things to you. And it's really noticeable that you support each other. Because you’re essentially shouting together to be heard. And saying that it is important. It is a serious issue and that's just brilliant because there needs to be more standing together and shouting together. 

Jo: It can be quite isolating as well to feel like you're going mad when you switch on the TV and essentially see a soft core porn routine on a Saturday night.

So it can make you feel like you're going mad when you get kind of say ignored by politicians or sort of rebuffed by local authorities when you complain about their guidance. It can feel like you’re banging your head against a brick wall sometimes. So I think absolutely just for your own sanity, linking up with other women who get it is brilliant.

Gemma: I imagine you get a load of, as lovely as the men on Twitter are, I imagine you get a bit of, shall we call it grief?  Is it useful to have those other women to sort of come and help you battle with that a little bit sometimes? 

Jo: Yeah. I mean, for the most part, if I get hassle I am terrible at keeping my temper and I have been banned from Twitter before so I just tend to ignore them now. So I can leave them. I'll just mute them. And then I'd rather enjoy the idea of them ranting into the void. I think the ones that I find most depressing are young women who decide to tell me they love being choked and slapped and called a whore, because you know, that's empowering. I find that really depressing, but to be honest, I haven't got the time. I just mute them. 

Gemma: Yeah.  I tend to put a Handmaid's Tale GIF underneath and then mute them and they might not get it. But I think I'm hilarious. So that's all that matters, isn't it?  It must be though in all seriousness, it must be quite difficult sometimes because you are fighting a really important fight, but there will be times where you're feeling burnt out and being sick of, well, essentially trying to be shut down and told what you can and can't be angry about. 

Jo: Yeah. I'm a writer as well. I must admit something I find really hard is just getting through to editors to get stories placed that are critical of pornography is so difficult. So I had one recently it came out on Tuesday and it's in the Morning Star. I'm really pleased that they publish it, but to be honest, it wouldn't be my first choice. I tried, I think it four, five different editors at the Telegraph. Same at The Independent, same at the Guardian. Same at Unherd. Same at The Economist. I tried every single mainstream paper. I quite like writing, but my God, it's hard to try and get your work out there. Totally ignored. Nothing.

Yet the Independent today ran a story on taking nude selfies to raise money to support frontline, NHS workers, and then you'd lose all of your rights to the photo. They're happy to run stories like that. 

Gemma: It reminds me of the Sun’s CoppaFeel thing and using that that sort of the same tactic that Jimmy Saville used. Like, just because you're doing a charity thing, doesn't mean that the other stuff is good, it’s still not good. I can't punch a kitten in the face and then go, oh, here's a cake.

Jo: Something I find really bizarre as well is when you, you look at the content of pornography and when you look at the searches that are trending. So for example, teen is like always in the top five searches for about the past 10 years in PornHub. And yet people are outraged when it comes to Epstein or Prince Andrew or anything. Well, hang on a minute. Pretty much a considerable number of men across the world are getting off to essentially teens. So double standard much, of course. It drives me mad 

Gemma: Yeah. They can be all judgy about the child bride people over there, but they're perfectly fine with step dad taking stepdaughter, blah, blah, blah. Oh, that's totally fine. 

Jo: I mean that tells you something else as well. When you look at the language used, it's always, you know, ‘destroys’ it's never sort of, you know, has his cock mangled.  It's always about the man dominating and hurting the woman. And then it’s ‘are there any dominatrixes?’, Yeah, there are a few. But you know, I think in the grand scheme of things, it is just kind of mainstream and normal to use really violent language about destroying pussies and crap like that. And you just never have it the other way around. Not that I think you should either. I just think it's really illustrative of the fact that this is pretty much a one-way street. 

Gemma: It is. And it's again, part in the gender stereotypes. I'd really like to see something like, you know, man gets made to pay child support.

Or Crystal Maze version. But instead of looking for crystals have to look for the clitoris.  I mean, it would never end, there would never be a winner. 

Even like the gay porn is made for men and the lesbian porn is made for men. I mean, even just by the nails alone, you can tell that.

Jo: It's no wonder as well that so few young women want to call themselves lesbians because what is lesbian now? It's just genre of porn. 

Gemma: What I find striking, if I could call it striking, is that essentially pornography is essentially our abuse categories.  

Jo: People go mental about the most minor infraction of what seemed to be constantly shifting PC codes sometimes entirely fair enough. And yet you literally have racist categories to delineate what sort of porn you’re into, and apparently that's fine. It's mad. 

Gemma: I think that the issue there is that men get to decide who gets the good man badge. We don't get to decide. They get to decide. So as long as they get to decide that, they'll just give it to anyone, won't they really, so many nice guys, so little time.

 But yeah, I think you're right to bring that up. There's a lot of stuff around race. There's a lot of stuff around class as well and around age. But essentially what it is, is reinforcing those gender stereotypes and sexual objectification over and over again, more and more and more extreme. And as you say, seeping into all sorts of programmes.

There was some really interesting concepts for shows like Westworld and even the Game of Throne things without all the stuff that goes on and the new program, the Witcher. I couldn't get through the first episode of it. I couldn't even get into the plot of it because they just put, not only sexualisation of women in there, but complete degrading of the female characters in there. All the time. 

And people are quick to justify it as some sort of like ‘oh no, but the character, this and the character that’. Oh, but it's historical context. It's realistic. 

First of all, the lady with a pet dragon had no hairs on her legs, got nothing to do with being realistic. 

One of the Game of Thrones things it was all about, oh yeah, ‘but in those times it was rape.’  First of all, it hasn't gone. Okay, second of all, so the pet dragon had highlighter and had to move under arms.

Don't try and tell me it was real. It's not documentary.

Jo: To be honest, if something were to be really inventive and imaginative, surely it wants perhaps to break away, be a bit more ground-breaking, not just, ugh. 

Gemma:  I think women are beautiful. I've got no problem with women, you know, being beautiful. But I'd like to watch an advert where there wasn't, you know, tits involved you know?  Even on the side of buses and people giving up smoking, there's a suggestive lip thing and it's just absolutely everywhere. 

Jo: Yeah. It's got to like remind women that what we're there for.

And it's difficult because it does get inside your head as well. Men internalise it. 

Gemma: Yeah. I mean, on average we get 20,000 messages a day if we just watch TV, that's not including internet and stuff and I found it interesting that most advertisements aimed at women and most magazines and things aimed at women are ‘be thinner’, ‘get this makeup so you can cover this up’. Essentially it's going ‘you are a bit shit but if you try this, you can be better like you should be.’

 And yet one Gillette advert for blokes that isn't like you are so great, you're so strong. Try this gel to be more manly, like one advert, remotely criticizes them …And they call us emotional. 

Jo: They’re just little petals aren't they. 

Gemma: Oh, they're like a snowflake in the summer breeze that’s how delicate they are. 

Jo: Yeah, totally. Well, I guess that's what advertising does, doesn't it, it creates a problem and then sells you the solution. And I guess the continuous unending source of funds is going to be manufacturing women’s self-hatred. 

Gemma: Gender stereotypes and sexual objectification, they're profitable things, of course they are, but they don't take accountability for, you know, what happens because of that message. If a random person was to show a child sexual images twice they get done for grooming.

 So it's interesting that these corporations and pornography sites and things it's interesting that they don't get into trouble for that, like how they escape these rules. Maybe that would be something that we could look into in the future. 

How do you feel about the fight that you're fighting, do you feel confident in it or do you feel a bit like, there's just been an earthquake and you've got one dust pan and brush? 

Jo:  That's quite a good analogy. I like that. 

To be honest, I don't feel about it. It just needs to be done. I don't think there's any point sort of looking at the scale of it. It is what it is and if people don't stand up, it's not going to get any better. So it's worth doing. 

Gemma: Oh, that's so awesome. Well, I, I hope and suspect that there will be young people, specifically young women, who will see your stuff on Twitter and will have a think about what it is that your stuff says and it's just sort of planting that seed, planting that seed of doubt. 

Jo: I really hope so. 

Gemma: The last thing I have to ask you, which is the most important is what's your favourite cake and why? 

Jo: Cakes are kind of a waste of time and gets in the way of chocolate. 

(Incredulous in-take of breath from Gemma)

 You could have a yummy chocolate bar or kind of essentially something that isn't quite as nice, but that's more of it. I just go for, yeah, chocolate, chocolate. Yeah, sod the cake, chocolate every time. I do like a moose though. 

Gemma: Well, I have now officially decided that whatever sort of meal we do together, I will sit next to you because I will be allowed to have your cake. 

Jo: You're welcome to my cake. Oh, actually scones. I do like a scone. 

Gemma: A scone is not a cake. 

Jo: It’s kind of cake-like.  It’s in the cake ballpark.

Gemma: I'm not sure that a scone would pass. 

Thank you so much for talking to us today or to me, well, say us because Poppy unfortunately contributed, take care. And as always, if you ever need any backup or need me to share anything, you know where I am, if you just want me. You know, crush somebody's dreams, or if someone sends you a Dick pick, I can like find their mum and their boss and stuff, and I can send it to them.

Jo: I love you. So that's brilliant.  

Gemma: I'm not that skilled at many things, but I have a very particular set of skills. That's what he says in the movie, isn't it? Take care, you and your lovely self, take care of each other as I'm sure you will and we'll keep fighting together.