My 12 hours watching humiliating pornography, the sordid ‘doll’ video that also haunts me and what’s actually lurking within the web’s most wicked cesspit, by JENNI MURRAY

It was in 2016 that I first became aware of how dangerous and insulting to women modern ­pornography had become. I met an American journalist, Peggy Orenstein, who’d written a book called Girls & Sex.

Her interviews with young women aged between 15 and 20 were extremely disturbing.

They all felt they were being forced by boyfriends into doing things they didn’t want to do, including shaving their pubic hair. They felt they were being coerced into performing sex acts they didn’t want to do – but went ahead ‘just to please him’.

I hadn’t seen any ‘modern’ stuff but did remember the occasional peek at a video when I was much younger and being pretty turned on by it from time to time. The scenes were scripted and acted out. Typical was the bored housewife waiting for the rather dishy plumber to turn up to fix her washing machine. There was lots of mutual flirting which invariably ended up with two rather handsome people lying naked on the sofa doing what came naturally.

It’s not like that any more, as I learned from a hideously unpleasant day researching the kind of pornography to which young people readily have access online. A colleague and I locked ourselves away at work and used an office computer to find what we had to watch. Neither wanted evidence on our own laptops or iPads.

We did most of our research on a site called Pornhub. Launched in 2007, it allows users to upload and share their own porn videos. At the time, ten years ago, it had more than 15 million monthly ­visitors and more than a third of its regular users were female. (It’s now the most visited porn site with 3.8 billion visitors a month.)

For her book, Girls & Sex, Peggy Orenstein spoke to girls and young women who felt pressured to do things for their boyfriends – from sexual acts to shaving their pubic hair

With this kind of material online, who can be surprised that a 2025 government report called violence against women and girls a ‘national emergency’, writes Jenni Murray

There appeared to be no money to pay to view page after page of sickening imagery. There were no demands for age verification (something which was only enforced by the UK government on the site last month). All a young person needed was a phone, iPad or computer, no questions asked.

We were shocked to discover how easy it was to find disturbing examples of what young people seemed to think was consensual sex. It seemed enormously sad that what they were seeing, and then thinking was the pleasurable side of sexual contact, was in fact painful, humiliating abuse.

The video that disturbed me most, and still does, was called Flexi Dolls. A man enters a hotel room carrying a large black sports bag. He unzips it and begins to unfold what looks like a mannequin. It’s not. It’s a real woman who is laid on the bed. Unspeakable things are done to her while she maintains a completely blank expression. Remember, this was ten years ago.

I have not had the stomach to repeat the experiment but I know from reading reports that things have got much worse, with porn sites selling strangulation, rape and even child abuse as entertainment. What it really is, of course, is violent, cruel, misogynist and in some cases criminal.

With this kind of material online, who can be surprised that a 2025 government report called violence against women and girls a ‘national emergency’, with it making up almost 20 per cent of all recorded crime in England and Wales.

After witnessing that truly awful material, I was in no doubt that all online porn should be banned – and to my relief I now discover I am not alone in that view.

The British Board of Film Classification has no power over online porn but last year found that more than half of adults who had recently viewed it on the web were concerned about the levels of violence and abuse they saw. And, at last, ministers are planning to ban violent and degrading pornography online.

In amendments to the Crime And Policing Bill set out in the Lords this week, material appearing on websites will be held to the same standard as pornographic videos sold in sex shops. Sites will be forced to remove illegal, harmful or abusive content, including depictions of incest and so-called ‘barely legal’ content.

Ministers are expected to ‘accept as a point of principle’ that rules which apply offline must also apply online. This goes further than the existing bill, expected to come into force later this year, which already bans strangulation and suffocation porn. (The horror of ‘rape pornography’ has been illegal since 2015, though still circulates illegally.)

I doubt forcing online sites to obey the same rules as offline shops will be an easy task but it’s surely essential that a government which claims to protect women and girls from misogyny and violence strives to do exactly that. What’s the point of letting men and boys see coercion or strangulation, even if it’s simulated? And as for putting ideas into the minds of violent men, that makes no sense at all.

My hero in what’s been a ten-year struggle for my view to be accepted is Baroness Bertin. With her in-depth review of the regulation of online pornography, published last year, she has led the campaign to change the law. She agrees with me that, for too long, we’ve had a pornography landscape where we knew this was a problem but did nothing about it. This changes that.

She hopes other countries will look at our law and follow Britain’s lead. Her review found a clear link between extreme pornography and harmful sexual attitudes in the real world. She found the use of such pornography was associated with men viewing women as sex objects and an increased acceptance of sexual aggression towards women.

I’m no prude – and a handsome washing machine fixer easing a bored woman’s tedium is fine by me – as long as his ‘fun’ doesn’t involve her degradation.

Is it really worth it, Madonna?

Oh Madonna, how exhausting it must be to be you. Black underwear instead of a frock, sheer black tights, blue gloves that look good for washing up – and big black glasses in the dark. Madonna, you’re 67, only eight years younger than me. I hate to say this to another woman, but might it be time to act your age?

Proof age-gap couples CAN work

Remember the fuss when actor Harrison Ford married Calista Flockhart in 2010? ‘He’s 67, she’s only 45. Two decades! She’ll end up caring for an old man.’

Does anyone still think 22 years is too big a gap? If so, look at them together at the SAG Awards. He’s 83 and still gorgeous, as is she at 61 but, most importantly, they clearly still love each other.

Receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award, Ford praised Flockhart’s beauty, talent and support. An example to us all.

I have proof to support the news that dogs are helpful to their human in trouble. This week I lost my phone. Rushing around in a panic, I noticed Maggie and Madge sitting outside the door to the downstairs loo. I went in. There on the shelf was my phone. Meanwhile, Suu the cat had not moved from her spot on the sofa. She couldn’t have cared less. 

No more boozy lunches for me!

How has a bottle of wine in a restaurant become so expensive? The cost of the average glass of wine has rocketed nearly 40 per cent since 2020, says the trade body UKHospitality, with many upmarket restaurant wine lists starting at £35 a bottle. Happily, my friend Sally and I don’t drink like we used to. In our Woman’s Hour days we’d merrily polish off a couple of bottles at lunch after the programme aired. Couldn’t afford to do that now. Probably just as well!