Last updated on May 10th, 2021 at 12:46 pm
Is there a correlation between the consumption of pornography – especially violent porn – and rape?
Authoritative scientific studies, both experimental and non-experimental, have long pointed this out. One of them is Pornography and attitudes supporting violence against women: revisiting the relationship in nonexperimental studies, by Gert Martin Hald, Neil M. Malamuth and Carlin Yuen, published in 2010.
The text was taken up by psychologist and university lecturer Chiara Volpato in Psychosociology of machismo published by Laterza in 2013, in which the author states that “[…] many empirical studies have provided evidence of the existence of a close link between pornography and violence. Watching pornographic material creates a climate of acceptance of sexual violence and increases prejudices related to rape, as indicated by a recent meta-analysis”. Volpato also reports the thoughts of Pietro Adamo, who teaches at the Department of Historical Studies, University of Turin, where she states that “[…] According to Pietro Adamo, ‘since the mid-1990s, hard porn has staged a powerful and overbearing iconography of violence, organized mostly on the mechanisms of explicit subordination of the female by the male.’”
Numerous other papers can be found on the National Center for Biotechnology Information website, confirming what has been said so far.
No wonder then the interview recently given to Sky News by Dandy Doherty, a young British woman who was sexually abused at 11 and raped at 15 by her peers, reveals the real indictment that brings out a further and gruesome aspect of the matter. Pornography, and especially violent porn, is increasingly within the reach of adolescents and even children.
Doherty is among the contributors of Everyone’s Invited, whose mission is stated on the home page of the website: “We are a movement committed to eradicating rape culture”. It does so, among other things, by collecting the testimonies of those it calls “survivors”. Doherty points out an obvious truth; how inappropriate it is for a 10-year-old to watch movies online which stage sexual relationships that are often violent and degrading. What’s more troubling is that given the few emotional and psychological tools available, the child thinks that what they see there is sexuality; real sexuality which should be replicated in real life, with a real person.
Children have potentially unlimited access to online pornography. And – accidentally or not – they are using it, while parental control systems are obviously of little use, or few parents activate them.
There is also a third aspect, which is in line with what has been said so far, and which iFamNews has already reported on in the past by proposing a petition requiring Netflix, the well-known paid film content platform, to remove the film Cuties – Women at First Steps from its platform. It’s not that we necessarily resort to censorship in all cases, but the hyper-sexualization of 10 year old girls is, first, a serious error from an educational point of view and, second, a revolting trend that is increasingly rampant and widespread, especially online.
Finally, a fourth point deserves to be taken into consideration for a general picture made more of questions than of answers: how much pornography is aimed at adults “interested” in children or who, in any case, make them the object of sexual fantasies?
A lot, apparently. Belle Delphine, a 21-year-old Instagrammer who put her bath water for sale online in 2019, has now moved on to shooting pornographic footage where she dresses up as a little girl in manga style, with pink and sugary childish bedroom settings. Some of her “storylines” have her kidnapped and taken to a forest by a man who rapes her, or in which she is raped by an adult disguised as a Teddy bear resting on a cot.
There has already been talk of dolls with childlike builds and features being used as sex toys, and an online petition was launched supported by the feminists of the Radfem Collective. With the hashtag #MyUniformIsNotYourCostume, it aims to stop the sale of school uniforms “modified” in sex shops.
As for Belle Delphine, the demand for the content she proposes is evidently substantial, given that last year she earned approximately $665,000 US every month. The paid platform Delphine uses, OnlyFans – dedicated purely to an “adult” audience – retains 20%.
Why did anyone think porn was free?
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