Anne Robinson Had Never Watched Porn So Feminist Grace Campbell Asked Her To

'Good Heavens' Watching Anne Robinson Watch Hardcore Porn

No it’s not secret footage leaked in a cheap attempt to "ruin" her career, but this is acerbic journalist Anne Robinson watching hardcore porn for the first time in her 70 years.

Amid a series of grunts, squeals and neighing sighs, the veteran presenter gamely sat through a steamy slice of the gamut of hardcore porn footage that is just a click away from any one of us.

Robinson peers at the categories available noting “Fetish, she’s tied up, gangbang, blowjob, HD, Redhead – [raises eyebrow] maybe I should look at that?”

Journalist Anne Robinson watches porn for the first time

Aside from the obvious spectacle of watching a 70-year-old woman watch pornography for the first time, you might ask – Why?

The 5 minute clip is a video project by Grace Campbell for the Guardian, in which the 20-year-old questions whether the boom in such readily available and hardcore porn is why her generation is being confronted with unreasonable sexual expectations.

Campbell says: “Online porn is everywhere. There are at least 68 million searches for explicit content every single day.

“Almost half of the internet’s users have watched porn. I’m 20 and grew up online. In the past, teenage boys might have explored with a bit of this or that. But now, hard-core porn is instantly available.

Grace Campbell, 20, describes herself as having 'grown up online'

“Young people are supposed to learn about sex here [classroom pictured], but now they’re learning about it here [online] and this means my friends and I are dealing with sexual expectations that often seem to have stemmed from porn.

“Like being choked during sex… having not consented. When did that become normal? So there’s an issue with separating real sex from online sex. But have unrealistic expectations always been a problem, or is this unique to the internet age? I asked a journalist who has never watched any porn to have a look at what’s out there.”

Before the experiment, Campbell asks Robinson what she thinks of people who watch porn.

Despite not being a connoisseur herself, Robinson replies: “Well, I don’t have a judgment on them. If they’re not harming anyone… I like a world where there’s as few things banned as possible.”

To her credit Robinson barely raises an eyebrow, murmuring the odd: “good heavens!”, remarking “there’s a woman with absolutely ginormous breasts” and noting the general absence of pubic hair.

Robinson wryly says of one scene: “Well, the one who’s rubbing the clitoris looks like he could really be pounding some pastry."

She muses: “What puzzles me I suppose, is how people find that erotic because it seems to crude and so far away from any fantasy about a loving sexual relationship.

“The most revealing part of this is how fake it seems, and it’s difficult for me to imagine that this would excite anyone.”

Campbell opines: "The problem with porn is that women are almost always being reduced to passive roles. The female actors seem to orgasm within seconds, regardless of what is actually happening them. Although much of what Anne came across was ‘tacky, corny, predictable’, some of it was more sinister.”

The camera cuts to Robinson flinching when she comes across a clip entitled 18 Abused.

Noting how young the actress looks, she says: “I actually don’t want to watch that anymore. I’m very shocked that somebody who looks very young and underage is on a site that is accessible by simply putting porn and it being on the first page.”

Campbell closes the segment by citing recent figures which reveal a spike in physical aggression in the 50 best-selling adult videos, with 72% of those acts being perpetuated by men.

She concludes: “Porn is increasingly linking sex with violence and a generation of boys are being exposed to a warped sense of what is normal sexual behaviour – and what a woman might want.

“So what’s the solution? We can’t ban these films. I’m not even saying we should. But when 83% of young people say they aren’t getting good sex education at school, we cannot have porn taking its place.”

The influential Commons education select committee recommended children in primary schools deserve to receive compulsory sex and relationships lessons.

The latest official government guidance on sex education is 14 years old, and many people told the committee that the world is now very different - seeing changes such as the rise of social media, and new laws on same-sex marriages.

Some noted that increasingly easy access to pornography through the internet is shaping young people's behaviours, along with the rise of "sexting" and revenge porn.

Close

What's Hot