Good News. Bad News. 31•1•26

This is the first of our weekly articles to highlight two of the things we've learned over the last week from the edges of the news. One is to be celebrated because we need all the joy we can squeeze out of the world at the moment and the other is something the matriarchs need to know and take direct action on and this week's subject is close to home.

The Good News

Giant pandas are no longer classified as endangered. After decades of habitat protection, long-term conservation planning, and patient, unglamorous work, panda populations have recovered enough to be downgraded to vulnerable. This happened because humans decided to take responsibility over time. It is proof that when we commit to repair rather than extraction, recovery is possible.

The Bad News

Girls are facing a quiet crisis in their earliest relationships. Recent research shows that girls and young women are disproportionately experiencing coercive control, emotional abuse, and sexual pressure, with girls aged 16 to 19 among the most likely to be in relationships marked by control rather than care. This extends into the 16–25 age group, where young women are also at the highest risk of sexual violence, including pressure, coercion, and assault by partners or people they know. Technology has made this worse, not better: tracking, monitoring, constant messaging, image-sharing demands, and sexual compliance are increasingly normalised as 'love', blurring the line between intimacy and violation.

What Can We Do?

As mothers, grandmothers, aunts, bosses, community leaders and sisters we have a duty to ensure our young people know what we think about relationships, sex and intimacy. Because if we don't talk about it who will they learn from? Andrew Tate?

And this week's stories are intertwined; pandas survived because adults intervened early, set limits, and protected what was vulnerable. Girls are not getting the same level of collective care. We are responding late, quietly, and often only after harm has already taken root.

The first thing we need to understand is that young people are not entering relationships slowly anymore. They are entering them fully mediated. Porn, social media, constant contact, location tracking, performative intimacy, and peer surveillance are now baked in from the start. What used to unfold over years now arrives all at once, without context, language, or adult framing.

Our role is not to protect them from relationships. It is to help them recognise reality early.

Start with one essential reframe.

Many young people believe discomfort is a personal failure. We can help them understand it as information. We can normalise checking in with the body and nervous system before analysing feelings away. If something feels wrong early, that matters more than whether it looks 'fine' on the surface.

Teach the difference between intimacy and access.

This is non-negotiable now. Phones, passwords, photos, constant availability, sexual acts learned from porn — these are not milestones of closeness. They are forms of access. A matriarch helps young people practise saying no to access without apologising, and recognising when access is being demanded as proof of love.

Name coercive control plainly, early, and without drama.

Checking messages. Tracking location. Sulking when boundaries are set. Sexual pressure framed as expectation. Isolation disguised as exclusivity. These behaviours are common now — and therefore dangerous. When we name them calmly and clearly, young people are far more likely to recognise them in real time rather than retrospectively.

Do not over-focus on 'red flags'. Focus on patterns.

Young people are overwhelmed with online advice about warning signs. What they need is help spotting patterns over time. Does this relationship make life smaller or bigger? Is there fear around displeasing? Is disagreement safe? We can help them zoom out.

This is where Make Love Not Porn Academy matters deeply

Porn has become the default sex educator, and it is a catastrophic teacher. The Academy, founded by Cindy Gallop, offers something rare and essential: sex education rooted in consent, communication, mutual pleasure, and realism. Not shame. Not abstinence. Not fantasy.

All of us should actively point young people* towards this work — we wouldn’t expect teenagers to drive without instruction, we cannot expect them to navigate intimacy without tools. Cindy Gallop’s work reframes sex as something done with someone, not to someone, and that distinction alone can change trajectories.

*And your local politician to get this taught in schools!

Talk about porn without panic or moralising

The goal is not prohibition. It is context. Matriarchs explain that porn is performance, not instruction. That it trains expectations without accountability. That it centres male gratification and erases consequence. And crucially — that real intimacy looks and feels different, slower, and more negotiated.

Model leaving early, not enduring bravely

Young people still absorb the idea that relationships are something to 'work through' at all costs. We can counter this by sharing stories of leaving early, choosing peace, or ending things without catastrophe. We normalise walking away as a skill, not a failure.

Keep the door open — always

Matriarchs don’t interrogate. We stay available. We don’t demand disclosure and make it clear that nothing will shock us! This is how young people speak before harm escalates.

As always in this crazy world of constant noise, pressure, and distorted norms, the presence of a calm, clear woman who names reality without fear is one of the strongest protective forces there is.