We’re teenage girls fighting to ban the use of school uniform in porn. Why have you left it up to us?
In the Little Feminist Book Club, we don’t read a lot of books. The group, set up by former students at our school, is more about reading poems and articles, analysing song lyrics, discussing the issues that matter to us and, most importantly, campaigning.
Our current campaign – the one you might have heard of – is to ban school uniform from pornographic content. Simply put, we want to end the depiction of school uniform in pornography to ensure that minors are not viewed as anything other than what they are: children. We were shocked when we realised that this content is currently legal – most of the adults we’ve spoken to agree that it is wrong. But apparently it falls to us – students aged 14 and 15 – to take action.
A new law, due to come into force on 6 November, will ban pornography that shows sexual activity involving anyone pretending to be under 16. But it won’t outlaw the depiction of adults dressed as older schoolchildren. We want to remove this grey area in order to stop normalising the sexualisation of school uniforms. We believe children and children’s clothing should not be associated with sexual acts. Therefore, we believe that school uniform should not be shown as something “sexy”, regardless of the actual age of the person wearing it.
Previous members of the Little Feminist Book Club, working with Tools for Change, successfully campaigned for better access to period products in our school. We then heard about........
