"The kids are always going to cross with porn, you have to train them so that they know how to manage what they are going to find"

José Luis García has been entangled in porn for more than four decades. In how porn entangles the lives of teenagers and adults, but especially of the former. In how it paralyzes it, changes it and sometimes even cancels it. In how it is seeping into the sexual lives of boys and girls, and how it goes through sexual violence, increasingly frequentamong younger people. He has worked since his practice as a clinical psychologist, and also in the health system of Navarra for 36 years, five of them as director of the Family Planning and Sex Education Centers of that community. He has also done it from auditoriums, classrooms of schools, institutes and universities. He is now co-director of the first Expert course in Prevention of the Effects of Pornography on Affective-Sexual Health taught by a Spanish university, Rey Juan Carlos, in Madrid. On the phone from Navarra, where he lives, he talks about what he has seen in recent decades, an "abysmal change" in how we grow, interact and socialize with porn. Also of the idea, "innocent", of proposing to "end" pornography. And of a certainty: "We have to talk about porn [with minors], precisely because it is not going to disappear. It will only do so when it stops being consumed."

Question. And regulate it?

Answer. For that, the internet would have to be regulated so that violent porn cannot exist. It is a very complicated task that I do not know if it would be possible. I would say it is impossible. There are millions of websites in different countries, you can mess with one and the next day ten more come out, they are very powerful companies.

Q. You know the day-to-day life of minors in this sense: how they see it, from what devices, what relationship they have with pornography ... don't you think there is a way to moderate?

A. Any child with a mobile phone will stumble upon porn. Yes or yes. Obviously, something must be done from the legal point of view, to influence to put infinite obstacles to minors, to find a way to control access. It cannot be that any minor can, without any control, access millions of films in which many extreme violence is represented, with the negative future in sex-affective education that entails.

Q. But he is not in favor of banning it, or trying.

A. No, because I do not see it feasible in the short or medium term. In addition, history has shown us that the prohibition of drugs, for example, increases the consumption of what you want to prohibit and porn is a very powerful drug since it stimulates sexual desire, and free.

The clinical psychologist and sex educator José Luis García.PABLO LASAOSA

Q. And what are you in favor of?

A. Of sex education. Train boys or girls from an early age to learn to make decisions. Talk about what porn is, teach them what it reflects, argue why it is not emotionally healthy, and explain that if they have sexual interests, there are other nonviolent alternatives. The human being has always sought sexual stimuli and we know that the audiovisual environment is the one that arrives with the most impact to our brain, the fastest. The reaction of pleasure and well-being are very fast, especially in an adolescent brain that is under construction. Therefore, if they are going to watch porn, they will have to be trained so that their health and the sexual health of those with whom they interact has the highest possible quality. I give many courses with kids and parents and when we talk about alcohol or tobacco we say the same thing: they will find it and we must train them to decide, so that they know how to manage that type of realities that they are going to find. The problem is that we don't have those erotic films to compete with.

Q. Do you think that families, teachers, educators, are willing to do it?

A. Well, I have been doing it intensely and passionately for 45 yearsand it has brought me many difficulties. More and more. We are going further back and there are fewer and fewer professionals interested in this topic. 30 years ago the atmosphere was very favorable, and now you don't see that attitude in a generalized way.

Q. What do you see?

A. In education there are a lot of difficulties, the family environment does not favor much either. Who sets it in motion? There are many teachers who do not want to get into this garden: either because parents complain, or because they are not trained, or because it is not included in the salary. And there are many parents who don't even want to hear about doing it at school and believe it's just home, private. And it is not, but nobody wants to get into this garden and it is the only alternative. I'm a bit pessimistic.

Q. Despite progress?

A. The laws of Sexual Freedom and the abortion reform are, but they have to be made effective [both have included compulsory affective-sexual education throughout the educational curriculum], develop them and provide them economically, because if we do not train teachers, in a broad, systematic and scientific way, we will not do anything. Catalonia, the Basque Country and Navarre have proposed various alternatives. Even so, what I know does not reach all educational levels or reach all places. If we want it to arrive and be efficient, that the kids can decide what kind of porn they watch, or if they watch it or not, it is not a matter of a day or a talk. There is the example of the condom, because a boy or girl knows what it is and what it is for does not mean that they buy it or carry it in their pocket or put it on systematically, its use requires preparation, knowledge, information, awareness of responsible sex.

Q. There aren't many condoms in porn.

A. They are invisible. What there are are still unwanted pregnancies and an unchecked increase in sexually transmitted infections and too much sexual violence for a decade.

Q. Does it relate it directly?

A. There is enough scientific evidence to do so. Porn is the model they follow for their relationships, it is the only instruction manual they have, so it is feasible that it is related. We have a generation of pornographic children, who have been trained in sex-affective issues fundamentally taking violent porn as a reference, seeing how a man mistreats a woman, excited and feeling pleasure. It is a model that transmits values and attitudes. And there are studies that tell us that 25% before the age of 20 would have seen between 1,000 and 5,000 hours of porn. Therefore, if a 20-second ad influences behavior, how can that enormous amount of dopamine generated by its viewing not influence?

José Luis García, clinical psychologist and sex educator. PAUL LASAOSA

Q. What consequences have you perceived throughout your career?

A. Children very active sexually, precocious in their relationships, different disorders of alcohol and drug use, alterations in the brain, mental health problems, problems with partners because he will propose to do things that she does not want or does not want, hence it can lead to resorting to prostitution, the sexual exploitation of poor and vulnerable women. There are also terrible cases of girls who have carried out sexual practices that they do not want, such as anal penetration or suffocation, who do not have the knowledge to do it but do it because their boyfriend asks her in love or because she has seen it and "the porn girl makes it so easy and has such a good time". or because her friends have told her. And come the injuries, pain, emotional disturbances ...

Q. What about sexual violence?

A. And sexual violence. This idea of sexuality based on porn is poor and stunted. Porn is very perverse, because in porn sex is sexual violence, tolerable and acceptable. It gives the idea that it is very easy to flirt or fuck: in no video any man is left without penetrating the woman. The message is that having sex is easy, that women like to be forced and beaten and ultimately raped. That exercising violence or submitting to it is exciting. That sex always involves intercourse, without protection, and humiliating them. Porn alters the capacity for empathy and compassion of the human being.

Q. What would be an optimal model?

A. Positive sexuality, with well-being, passion, pleasure, empathy and mutual agreement. A healthy sexuality that teaches them that sex can be one of the most wonderful things in a person's life, and that whoever uses violence is actually missing out on that experience.

Q. Is it urgent that this model be imposed?

A. A lot. It is a serious and serious matter, with enough evidence to make decisions as soon as possible. If we don't, we're leaving the sexual future of our teens to pornography and we're going to have generations with a lot of problems. You have to choose: either violent porn, or mothers, fathers andteachers.

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