In recent times the rapid increase in sexual violence against women and children has become one of the most worrying and shameful trends in India’s society. Several factors are important for this trend. One of these is the proliferation of pornography, particularly violent pornography.
Several studies in various parts of the world have established a close link between pornography and sexual violence against women and children.
‘When watching a pornographic video, did you also want to do the same thing?’ This was the straightforward question which was put to persons accused of rape and indecent assault in a nationwide survey in Japan.
The results surprised many people. As many as 33 per cent of the respondents answered in the affirmative.
When the survey results were classified according to age of respondents, it was found that among juvenile respondents as many as 50 per cent had answered in the affirmative.
This survey had taken place in Japan at a time (in 1997–98) when concern about the correlation between proliferation of pornography and increase in sexual crimes against women and children was already growing on the basis of national crime data.
Until the middle of the 1980s, that is, before the boom in porn videos in this country, all violent crimes including sexual crimes were declining. As the spread of porn videos increased, initially the declining trend of sexual crimes weakened and then, in the 1990s, with the porn spread continuing to rise, sexual crimes started increasing instead of deceasing, even though other violent crimes continued to decrease.
However several men disagree with the results of such studies. They say that they have been comfortable with the consumption of porn for several years, have not felt any inclination for real-life forced sex. What this view ignores is that various persons can be affected in very different ways. In a big city in which about half a million men are exposed to porn, if just 10 per cent are driven towards sexual violence to a lesser or greater extent by this exposure to porn, we have a frightful situation where the susceptibility of fifty thousand males for sexual violence and forced sex is increasing.
Secondly, even those who say that they feel no such instigation at all after regular exposure to porn for years may yet be influenced in other undesirable ways; for example they may have an increasing tendency to look towards women as sexual commodities and this may impact their social interactions in very harmful ways.
To return to the Japanese study, commenting on its data, Seiya Morita, a teacher at Tokyo Metropolitan College, has written, “ Only the most bigoted person can believe that sexual crimes are unrelated to the spread of pornographic videos which eroticise any and all sexual crimes (rape, gang rape, sexual harassment, molestation, sneak shot, confinement of women, etc.) and make them entertainment for men.”
Writing in a paper titled ‘Pornography, prostitution and women’s human rights in Japan’, he has also pointed towards a lot of anecdotal evidence regarding very violent sexual crimes being related to excessive porn consumption. More specifically he says that the criminals who video-recorded their rape scenes were in most cases strongly influenced by violent pornography; indeed a lot of pornographic videos were seized from their homes.
Such anecdotal reports have been appearing in India’s media also from time to time, but unlike in the case of Japan where this led to a well-organised national survey, no comparable attempt appears to have been made in India to collect more reliable data at a national level.
According to several reports appearing recently, video clips of real life rapes and molestations are being sold in several cities in India. While one such clip may be sold for Rs 100 or so, street children are charged as much as Rs 10 to 30 for just one view. There is a lot of money in this, and some sellers are known to tell buyers on the sly that they may recognise a familiar female face in the video.
This has led to a cycle of violent porn. First, some impressionable persons are instigated to commit rape and molestation while also making videos of their victims. Then, in the second stage, clips of this are sold in the market, unfortunately creating infamy for the victim rather than for the culprits.
In India, porn dealing with children and with incest has proved the most harmful, judging from the spurt of such reported cases in recent times.
Researcher Susan S. Cole has written, “In spite of hopes to the contrary, pornography and mass culture are working to confuse sexuality with rape, reinforcing the patterns of male dominance and female submissions so that many young people believe this is simply the way sex is. This means that many of the rapists of the future will believe they are behaving within socially accepted norms.”
