Jun 24, 2026 · 58 min · 17 segments
*This episode contains discussions of sexual violence and child sexual abuse. Listener discretion is advised.* Clare McGlynn is a professor of law at Durham University and an expert on violence…
Claire McGlynnGuestNatalieHostClaire, thank you so much for joining me today.
I'm looking forward to having this conversation with you.
Uh, can you introduce yourself and the work that you do as an expert on violence against women and girls, telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this work?
I'm Claire McGlynn, and I'm a Professor of Law at Durham University in the UK.
My expertise is around violence against women and girls, and particularly online abuse and the legal regulation of pornography.
What I've done really for the last 10 years or so is I've seen how there's so many gaps in the law, and the law just fails women so many times.
And what my work is doing is trying to identify those gaps and then work with others to strengthen the law to better protect women and girls.
Yeah.
Um, it's amazing, and this work is so needed.
In the work that we do at Fight the New Drug, educating on the harmful effects of pornography, violence against women and girls is certainly a large part of the scope that we address.
How do algorithms shape what people see on porn platforms, and why does that matter for the kind of content that becomes, quote-unquote, "normal"?
I think it's really, yeah, vital that we understand that the porn landscape today is so different from what it was 10 or 20 years ago, and the algorithms are key to that, as you say.
Because 20 years or so ago, um, an individual would maybe think about, "What sort of pornography do I want to watch?" And they'd then have to go out and find it, and it would take quite a lot of effort.
But now, the pornography that most people watch is what's fed to them by the algorithms of these big porn companies wh- and all of their aim and motivation is to make money.
So you get them trying to keep you engaged in the platform, and they do that by feeding you more extreme content, more abusive content, very different content.
And Just like with social media, this is what we get fed, so it's not necessarily an individual choice.
It's the very large companies choosing what we want to see, and then we're almost getting sucked into it.
Um, you know, but the thing is, and you've probably found this in your work, people don't really like to acknowledge that, you know? Everyone likes to think that, especially in pornography, they're looking at what they really like and what they want to see.
And, and if you say to them, "That's actually just what the big platforms are wanting you to watch," it doesn't feel, it doesn't feel right and it doesn't feel good.
Claire, thank you so much for joining me today.
I'm looking forward to having this conversation with you.
Uh, can you introduce yourself and the work that you do as an expert on violence against women and girls, telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this work?
I'm Claire McGlynn, and I'm a Professor of Law at Durham University in the UK.
My expertise is around violence against women and girls, and particularly online abuse and the legal regulation of pornography.
What I've done really for the last 10 years or so is I've seen how there's so many gaps in the law, and the law just fails women so many times.
And what my work is doing is trying to identify those gaps and then work with others to strengthen the law to better protect women and girls.
Yeah.
Um, it's amazing, and this work is so needed.
In the work that we do at Fight the New Drug, educating on the harmful effects of pornography, violence against women and girls is certainly a large part of the scope that we address.
How do algorithms shape what people see on porn platforms, and why does that matter for the kind of content that becomes, quote-unquote, "normal"?
I think it's really, yeah, vital that we understand that the porn landscape today is so different from what it was 10 or 20 years ago, and the algorithms are key to that, as you say.
Because 20 years or so ago, um, an individual would maybe think about, "What sort of pornography do I want to watch?" And they'd then have to go out and find it, and it would take quite a lot of effort.
But now, the pornography that most people watch is what's fed to them by the algorithms of these big porn companies wh- and all of their aim and motivation is to make money.
So you get them trying to keep you engaged in the platform, and they do that by feeding you more extreme content, more abusive content, very different content.
And Just like with social media, this is what we get fed, so it's not necessarily an individual choice.
It's the very large companies choosing what we want to see, and then we're almost getting sucked into it.
Um, you know, but the thing is, and you've probably found this in your work, people don't really like to acknowledge that, you know? Everyone likes to think that, especially in pornography, they're looking at what they really like and what they want to see.
And, and if you say to them, "That's actually just what the big platforms are wanting you to watch," it doesn't feel, it doesn't feel right and it doesn't feel good.
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