On July 30 this year, Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) published a report on pornography. Citing a study, the report revealed people of different ages download pornographic contents worth Tk3 crore from cyber cafes in Dhaka every month. It was more shocking to know from the report that 77% of porn viewers are children while teenage boys and girls as well as students of schools and colleges are the biggest victims of porn addiction.
Professor Matt Field, an adolescent addiction psychologist at University of Liverpool, expresses the same concern and told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper that adolescents are particularly vulnerable to developing addictions and that’s because of how their brains are developing. This write-up intends to dig deep into the ins and outs of this sensitive issue.
How porn was born
A precise definition of pornography has been debated, albeit a nearly unanimous definition says it is the depiction and portrayal of sex and sexual activities that are solely designed for sexual arousal. Fanny Hill is considered the first-ever book that gave pornography the form of a novel. Published in 1748 and authored by John Cleland, the erotic novel, also one of the most banned books in history, was first published in England as “Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.”
However, pornography emerged as an industry in the latter half of the twentieth century as production, distribution and consumption of pornographic materials gradually rose before marking a considerable boom worldwide with the advent of internet. Size of the industry is difficult to determine. One estimate says global revenues reached $20bn in 2007, with as much as $10bn in just the US.
Sexual desire and pornography: Why people watch porn
Let’s first take a look at what sexual desire is. In a 2006 study titled “Sex differences and similarities in frequency and intensity of sexual desire,” Pamela C Regan and Leah Atkins from California State University concluded that robust sex differences notwithstanding, sexual desire may be the single most common sexual event in the lives of men and women.
The study was carried out on an ethnically diverse sample of 676 people (335 men and 341 women) and virtually every participant reported that they have experienced sexual desire, also known as libido, on a regular basis.
That’s how it becomes lucid that human beings and libido are inextricably linked. But how does pornography serve that desire?
Erick Janssen, PhD, is associate scientist at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University. He says porn can be a substitute or proxy for “real” sex.
“But it also is a world of fantasy sex, a place where people can safely dream about things they would not want to have happen or do in real life (just as we may like movies that present us with worlds we would not want to live in),” Janssen says, adding: “In the end it seems that it is not one’s bodily reactions but one’s emotional liking or disliking of porn that will determine whether or not one wants to use it.”
This gives us clue to the fact behind why viewers looking at porn stars is principally ruled by their imagination.
Sometimes people seek out porn simply because it feels good to be in a state of sexual excitement, according to Janssen who goes on to say that sometimes people use it to be entertained, or to be distracted from work or other activities.
“More often than perhaps assumed, people don’t use it because it feels good, but because it makes them feel better; a subtle distinction.”
Men watch porn more than women
Janssen also refers to evolutionary psychologists who argue that ancestral men, to spread their genes, had much to gain from having sex with as many women as possible. This helped men evolve a sexual psychology that makes sex with new women exciting both to imagine and to engage in which made men especially responsive to visual signals of sex. In a 2004 study titled “Adult social bonds and use of internet pornography,” it was revealed that men are 543% more likely to view pornography than females.
Prevalence of porn
Because of easy access these days, porn is watched by millions of people. A few statistics will help us comprehend the extent.
A study titled “Generation XXX: Pornography acceptance and use among emerging adults” was conducted on 813 school students in the US and the results were published in 2008. It found 31% of young women view porn while 21.3% of young men said they view porn every day or almost every day. The study also found 66.5% of young men and 48.7% of young women saying that watching pornographic materials is an acceptable way to express sexuality.
In 2009, another survey titled “Porn university: What college students are really saying about sex on campus” was carried out on 29,000 individuals in North American universities. The results revealed 51% of male students and 32% of female students first viewed pornography before their teenage years.
Much alarming information was revealed in a recent study of 177 people (aged 16-20) conducted by University of East London. The study found 20% of boys are dependent on porn while one-fifth of them said pornography was prerequisite for them to get sexually stimulated. Nearly a quarter of boys and 8% of girls said they have tried to give up the habit of watching pornography but to no avail.
Porn addiction resembles drug addiction
In another recent study, Cambridge University researcher Dr Valerie Voon conducted brain scans of men aged 19 to 34 who had tried to give up porn but eventually failed. He found that their neuroscans resemble those of alcohol or heroin addicts.
Just like drug addicts who need harder and harder material over time to get the same “high,” the University of East London survey revealed 13% of boys and 10% of girls had said their online habits became “more and more extreme.”
History and extent of the addiction in Bangladesh
Presumably, small books containing erotic stories (some with graphical illustrations) were the first form of pornography that reached Bangladeshis. These books, popularly known as choti (erotic books), were mostly sold by street vendors. I first became familiar with the word choti through one of my intimate friends who bought such a book for Tk20 back in 1998. Then there were videotapes that first brought porn on TV screen.
After that, the era of personal computers and CDs emerged. At that time, cyber cafes were particularly the place where viewers would go to quench their thirst for porn as computers were yet to get widespread popularity like the present time.
The opportunity to browse the web for a small amount of money made cyber cafes the ideal choice. According to the aforementioned BSS report, cyber cafes are still popular with school students and even children throng there just to watch porn videos.
Progressively, personal computers became more like household items in the country. That’s when pornography began travelling from hard disks to hard disks through pen drives. Viewers were then watching those materials on computer screens. It was way more convenient than chotis, videocassettes and cyber cafes.
As can be guessed, spread of porn witnessed a surge following availability of broadband and mobile-based internet services. These days, pornography seems to be everywhere. Viewers don’t even need a computer or laptop now to watch porn. They are getting access to such contents through high-end and sophisticated mobile phones.
Sharing pornographic videos and images through multimedia-enabled phones have now reached epidemic proportions. And that’s how more and more viewers, mostly youngsters, are being exposed to these contents every day.
Because of internet and mobile phones, an overwhelming number of amateur pornographies (featuring both consensual and non-consensual sex and mostly filmed using secret cameras) are being created and subsequently shared with millions in Bangladesh.
Perpetrators even burn those videos on CDs and DVDs and then sell them. We are receiving such disquieting reports almost every day from around the country. These personal videos are also being put up on different websites and thus are being shared with the rest of the world.
In a nutshell, when it comes to porn, internet and mobile phone rule at this moment in Bangladesh. Don’t take my word for it, Google will spill the beans. Everyone using Google knows about auto-complete, a feature where users are suggested words predicted by the search engine that might be similar to the topic being searched for.
If you happen to type the word “Bangladesh” or “Bangla” either in English or Bengali within the search box on Google, you will be disturbed by the words the search engine will offer you. Do it and see the results yourself if you haven’t already seen it. And don’t just blame Google for it.
It doesn’t predict those obscene words on its own. The search queries that you see as part of auto-complete are a reflection of the search activity of all web users and the content of web pages indexed by Google. What does it mean? It means those are words used by all users on a regular basis and hence the auto-complete feature predicts those!
What the law says
According to Pornography Control Act 2012, production, marketing, conservation, supply, display, filming, purchase and sales of pornographic materials are prohibited. Anyone breaching this Act will be sentenced to 2 to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment and will also be fined Tk1 lakh to Tk5 lakh.
The BSS report, however, highlights that a quarter of unscrupulous people have defied the Act because of lack of enforcement and they are actively engaged in production and distribution of porn. Worse, law enforcers are struggling to nab the miscreants as the latter resort to newer technologies to carry on with their hard-to-check acts almost every day. The whole thing has gone haywire.
Degrading effects of porn
The bad effects of porn could be summarised as follows:
It increases callousness toward women, facilitates formation of distorted perceptions about sexuality, devalues the importance of monogamy, results in decreased satisfaction with partner’s sexual performance, affection, and appearance.
The list of disadvantages of pornography is so large that it is possible to write an entire book where pages could be filled with innumerable information (backed by scientific research and real life case studies) on how porn is stealthily taking a heavy toll on viewers.
Anyone interested in knowing more about different aspects of pornography should download and read a report titled “Pornography statistics 2013” that was released by Covenant Eyes, a company that helps people protect themselves and their families from online dangers. The report contains detailed information on 128 studies that could literally blow the reader’s mind.
What actually is porn? Confession of an erstwhile porn star
When viewers watch porn films, they instantly fall for the idea that whatever the actors and actresses are doing is real and they are doing it happily and consensually. People do believe the activities are real.
But are porn performances real? Shelley Lubben is an American author, singer, motivational and former porn actress who brands porn as “the greatest illusion on earth.”
In a confessional essay titled “The truth behind the fantasy of porn,” Lubben digs deep into backstage stories of this industry. She confesses that she herself did it for the lust of power and love of money and never enjoyed sex with strangers who, she said, care nothing about female porn stars. As would be expected, Lubben asserts performers are paid to fake it, though the industry wants viewers to think and believe that female performers love the whole thing (with their evocative smile, lascivious outfits and carefully measured body movements, who wouldn’t want to believe that?). She asserts female performers are manipulated, coerced and even threatened to give in to producers’ demands.
Stating that porn is all a lie, she ends her essay this way: “So don’t believe the lie anymore. Porn is nothing more than fake sex and lies on videotape. Trust me, I know.”
After leaving the porn industry, Lubben began working as an anti-porn activist and established Pink Cross Foundation, an organisation that helps and supports porn performers wishing to say goodbye to the profession. The organisation also reaches out to porn addicts to help them kick the habit.
If it is all lies and fakes, why the craving?
Remember Pandora’s box? It was the beautiful jar containing all the evils of the world and was given to Pandora by Zeus who strictly asked her not to open it under any circumstances. Pandora, however, failed to abide by that restriction and the evils got out and spread all over the world. Why couldn’t Pandora refrain from defying Zeus’ order? It’s because of her curiosity which she received from the gods.
Same thing is true in case of porn. By nature, human beings are driven by intense inquisitiveness and when it comes to sex, it seems we just can’t remain lax! It’s all about the biological aspect of our existence. As professor Laura Kipnis at Northwestern University opines, porn should interest us because it’s intensely and relentlessly about us. She further says porn’s greatest pleasure is to locate each and every one of a society’s taboos, prohibitions, and proprieties, and systematically transgress them, one by one.
Is there any way out?
It needs no repetition that as a nation we are conservative and for a nation that is as conservative as ours, it is quite challenging for us to openly talk about this issue, let alone waging a war on such a disease that is silently attacking millions every single day. But we can’t just leave the issue on the table for the sake of conservativeness and in the meantime see the vulnerable group getting affected and degraded gradually to an irrecoverable state.
The conservative Bangladeshis have already encountered campaigns where they have been advised not to have unprotected sex with multiple partners as that might lead to a deadly disease like AIDS. One might argue that AIDS is an issue that involves sky-high significance and it’s completely true. But isn’t campaign and activism against pornography significant? Or are we reluctant to acknowledge that because of our conservativeness?
If Lubben can get herself out of this horrendous industry and take on the role to educate people on the obnoxious stories viewers aren’t aware of, why can’t we? The time to execute rigorous campaigns and programmes against pornography came long ago but we are yet to be in massive action.
One last thought: will it sound absurd if I say that the time has come for conservative Bangladeshi parents, guardians and superiors to break the silence on pornography by talking with children freely about this issue at a very early age? It’s the children whose lives are at stake and it’s their parents whose actions are needed straight away.
