Beyond harm narratives: reimagining porn education through ‘safe uncertainty’

Contemporary UK policy and educational responses to pornography are largely organized around risk, harm, and prevention. Drawing on the UK Independent Pornography Review, this article examines how pornography is constructed as an object of governance and how this framing shapes pedagogy. While harm-prevention approaches prioritize certainty about meaning and effect, interdisciplinary research highlights young people’s interpretive diversity, ambivalence, and contextual negotiation. Pornography education is thus structured by a tension between institutional demands for clarity and the lived reality of uncertainty. To address this tension, the article develops ‘safe uncertainty’ as a pedagogical orientation that combines interpretive openness with relational and institutional safety. The article outlines how this approach can be operationalized in educational settings and considers its feasibility within current policy contexts. By reframing pornography education as engagement with uncertainty, the article contributes to debates on porn literacy, youth sexuality, and educational governance.