The report “Mum witnessed sexual assault of daughter, but did not report son” (Jan 17), which involved a single parent failing to guide a child negatively impacted by early exposure to pornography, is not the first time young sexual offenders have been featured in the news.

It was previously reported that there had been a rising number of young people who committed outrage of modesty and rape offences from 2018 to 2021 (School counsellors will be trained to prevent sexual offending among youth, among other measures, Sept 27, 2023).

These reports might just be representative of a bigger malaise. Porn may not be the root cause; it might merely be an expression of sexual misinformation afflicting our increasingly sexualised society.

Society seems to deal with the topic of sex in different ways. On the one hand, nudity, vulgarity and promiscuity have become commonplace and even hip in popular culture, the arts and daily conversations. On the other hand, the effects of pornography’s misleading depiction of sex are little known, sexual dissatisfaction in marriage is often swept under the carpet, and sexual harassment concerns are still routinely hushed up.

In short, serious conversations on sexual issues and the deliberate study of sexual knowledge are not the norm here, even among married couples. Despite our displays of sexual bravado, we are prudish as far as dealing with real-life sexual relationships is concerned.

This enduring mindset that treats sex as a taboo subject is perpetuating a vicious circle of ignorance, misinformation and abuse. A whole-of-society effort is required to break this taboo, so that knowledge-based sexual discourse can replace the pornification of sex in the public sphere.

And the biggest irony is that if decent members of society discourage public sexual education efforts on grounds of modesty, privacy or personal boundaries, they then risk perpetuating the vicious circle of misinformation, causing more harm.

Osman Sidek