GAVAN REILLY: The first step to equality is admitting the extent of our porn problem

The horrific murder of Ashling Murphy has, rightly, brought society to a halt and reminded everyone of just had a vulnerable life can be, and of the understated and persistent every day dangers face by women in our society.

There is, naturally, a demand that misogyny and gender based violence are eliminated completely. It is a good natured, legitimate, and entirely understandable demand. It is also, unfortunately, almost inevitable to fail.

It is only a little over two years since two teenagers were convicted of murdering Ana Kriégel at a derelict farmhouse in Lucan. The trial of those two boys – not men, boys – was perhaps the last time society was so stunned by the depravity of some attitudes held by men against women. It was evident that Boy A had already developed a twisted and warped sense of sexual fulfilment, and evidently thought his intentions for Ana were within society’s acceptable norms.

You’d think the natural fallout from such an apparent crime, and a trial which heard such horrific evidence, would be for a major societal shift in how we approach the teaching of sex and sexuality in Ireland. It ought to have been seen as a national imperative that our impressionable young men be reminded of what a healthy sexual interaction entails; what consent is and how it is expressed; and ultimately to treat others - both with, and without, a sexual lens - as being equal and worthy of respect and dignity.

Perhaps the deaths of Ana Kriégel and Ashling Murphy are unconnected - maybe by the time you read this, more may have emerged to explain exactly why Ashling was attacked on the side of a busy canal in broad daylight, and the differences between the two cases may then be more manifest. But both crimes entailed the objectification of women, and occurred against the same backdrop, in which the powers-that-be are asleep at the wheel in the midst of what will eventually be recognised as an enormous societal crisis.

I still remember the time in 5th Class, in early 1998, when a schoolmate arrived with the explosive news that there was a webpage on which you could see a prominent actress’s naked breasts. Quite why this was so significant, I don’t know. None of us had hit puberty, or had any real experience of sexual attraction. (So naive we were, we even left school a year later without getting the ‘birds and the bees’ chat.) No matter: such was the novelty of this development, the name of the webpage is burned into my memory.

Nudity is hardly so exotic now. Every 11-year-old with a smartphone now has free access to the largest collection of pornography ever assembled in human civilisation. And whether their parents know it or endorse it or not, the chances are that many of them have already started watching it. Where boys once snuck peeks at an older cousin’s Lads Mags, now nudity is only a Google away.

The consequence is that, before they ever see a naked body in the flesh, many boys will have seen one on a screen hundreds of times. They will come to see women’s bodies as something available on demand, and they will come to perceive sex as something – as it’s always portrayed on screen – the woman always wants, whether she openly says so or not.

One need only look at the violence perpetrated elsewhere by ‘incels’ - people who have no consensual partners, and who therefore believe the world owes them some sex - to see how this plays out.

This may all seem a world removed from last Wednesday’s events in Tullamore but the culture is the same: the view that women exist only to decorate the world of men, and that they can be demeaned, disregarded and disposed of if they can’t fulfil this purpose.

Ana died because nobody stepped in to teach young men that what they see on screen is fiction, role-playing, and that the real world doesn’t look like that. But since the trial of her teenage killers, what has changed? What societal shifts have begun to address the entitled worldviews of tomorrow’s men - let alone today’s?

If Ashling Murphy’s death is not to be repeated then we have to at least start by recognising the world as it is. We have to get to grips with how young boys are presented with a view of women through the black mirror of a smartphone screen, long before a parent can sit them down for The Talk.

It’s not the only thing we must do. We must also tackle misogynist comments in WhatsApp groups, in pubs, in changing rooms, and learn that a woman can dress and post pictures celebrating her body without inviting a man’s proposition.

But, before anything else, the first step is admitting we have a problem.

Gavan Reilly is Political Correspondent with Virgin Media News and Political Columnist with the Meath Chronicle