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Authors: Melinda Tankard Reist,Abigail Bray
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Law
In 1992, Natalie Nenadic returned to the University of Michigan Law School where she approached Catharine MacKinnon about representing survivors pro bono for our legal action. In early March, 1993, when Radovan Karadžić, head of the Bosnian Serbs, came to the UN in New York to participate in ‘peace talks’, US Marshalls handed him our lawsuit, charging him with sexual atrocities as acts of genocide, including mass rape, serial rape, sexual murder, forced prostitution, sexual torture and mutilation, and forced pregnancy. Karadžić fled from the US and eventually went into hiding, but he is now on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Our case went through the courts until we finally went to jury-trial in Manhattan in August, 2000, where survivors testified about the sexual and other atrocities they experienced. A judgment found for compensatory and punitive damages and an injunction to stop the genocide.
20
There was some indirect testimony at trial about pornography’s role in the genocide, but that role is not yet as explicitly recognized in international law as other sexual atrocities are.
We have some suggestions about how possibly to accomplish such a recognition which in turn could bring more recognition to the harms of pornography in peacetime. In July, 2008, around the time of Karadžić’s transfer to the ICTY at The Hague, there were reports from Bosnia-Herzegovina about the discovery of pornography in relation to him, including pornography that features him in it. However, it has been interpreted as a collection that is part of his
private
domain.
21
In other words, a traditional way of denying the reality of pornography’s harms to women as something private and harmless has also been used to dismiss pornography’s significance in this context.
We had faced a similar problem when word first started coming out about sexual atrocities as genocide in the 1990s. There too, traditional ways of denying sexual violence against women were imported to do their work of denial. So, for instance, mass rapes were referred to as ‘excesses’ and the rape concentration camps as ‘bordellos’ or ‘brothels’ and the like. Feminism gave us a way to break out of this euphemistic and obfuscating language and to name the reality of what
was taking place as genocidal sexual atrocities. This in turn made it possible for us to pursue a legal initiative that established an international precedent.
Feminism can also help us come up with a more adequate understanding of the pornography aspect of genocide. This breaks the traditional approach which hides pornography’s harms to women by miscasting those harms as private and benign. With this better conceptual framework in hand, we may bring pornography that is connected to genocide to bear on international legal proceedings, perhaps at The Hague War Crimes Tribunal, or at a case that could be brought at the International Criminal Court or in a civil suit of the kind we initiated in New York. We might thereby get pornography’s role in genocide recognized as it needs to be.
Bibliography
Anderson, Tim, <
http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/review/4501
> (accessed 4 February, 2011).
Arhiva Net (29 July, 2008) ‘Pronašli Karadžićevu pornografsku snimku’, <
http://arhiva.net.hr/vjesti/europa/page/2008/07/29/0279006.html
> (accessed 13 August, 2009).
Armanda, Asja and Natalie Nenadic (November, 1994) ‘Activists Warn Not to be Fooled by Genocide/Rape Revisionists’
Northwest Ethnic News Seattle
, p. 2.
Australian Government Classification Website, <
http://www.classification.gov.au/www/cob/find.nsf/d853f429dd038ae1ca25759b0003557c/243d814a377ff75fca2577ea0058041c?OpenDocument
> (accessed 21 February, 2011).
Bailey, Fiona (26 November, 2010) ‘
A Serbian Film
is “most cut” movie in 16 years’, <
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11846906
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
Balkaninsight (28 January, 2011) ‘Croatia Rejects Call to Withdraw Envoy to Serbia’, <
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/croatia-rejects-call-to-withdraw-envoy-to-serbia
> (accessed 29 January, 2011).
Bitel, Anton ‘Srdjan Spasojevic (uncensored)’, <
http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/feature.php?id=848
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
Brady, Tara (9 December, 2010) ‘It is hell. It is not entertainment’, <
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2010/1209/1224285096711.html?via=mr
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
Brooks, Xan (27 August, 2010) ‘A Serbian Film pulled from FrightFest’, <
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/aug/27/a-serbian-film-frightfest
> (accessed 4 February, 2011).
Brown, Todd (10 March, 2010) ‘Fantasia 2010 Announces Subversive Serbia!’, <
http://twitchfilm.com/news/2010/03/fantasia-2010-announces-subversive-serbia.php
> (accessed 7 February, 2011).
Brown, Todd (21 December, 2010) ‘A Dozen Discoveries from 2010: New Faces to Watch’, <
http://twitchfilm.com/news/2010/12/a-dozen-discoveries-from-2010.php
> (accessed 4 February, 2011).
Cashmore, Pete (28 August, 2010) ‘Will this new movie kill off torture porn for good?’, <
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/aug/28/torture-porn-frightfest-quiz
> (accessed 1 February, 2010).
Court of Bosnia & Herzegovina (2009) ‘Predrag Kujundzic found guilty of Crimes against Humanity’ 30 October, 2009, <
http://www.sudbih.gov.ba/komponente/print_vijesti.php?id=1420&jezik=e
> (accessed 29 January, 2011).
Croatian Times
(30 July, 2008) ‘Karadzic starred in his own porn movie’, <
http://croatiantimes.com/news/Around_the_World/2008-0730/639/Karadzic%20starred%20in%20his%20own%20porn%20movie
> (accessed 1 February, 2010).
Dalje (29 July, 2008) ‘Karadzic Made Porn Video’, <
http://dalje.com/en-world/karadzic-made-porn-video/167828
> (accessed 1 February, 2010).
Guardian
Film Blog (13 December, 2010) ‘
A Serbian Film
: when allegory gets nasty’, <
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/dec/13/a-serbian-film-allegorical-political
> (accessed 4 February, 2011).
Jinga Films, <
http://jingafilms.com/film_details.asp?film_id=38
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
Kadic v. Karadzic
, 70 F.3d 232, 236–237 (2d Cir. 1995).
Knowles, Harry (9 April, 2010) ‘Harry says SERBIAN FILM will be the best film you won’t likely see in Theaters this year!’, <
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/44577
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
Knowles, Harry (5 January, 2011) ‘Harry’s Top Ten films of 2010!!!’, <
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/47938
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
Lodderhose, Diana and John Hopewell (6 November, 2010) ‘Spanish court bans “A Serbian Film”’, <
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118027037?refCatId=13
> (accessed 4 February 2011).
MacKinnon, Catharine A. (1993) ‘Turning Rape into Pornography: Post-Modern Genocide’
Ms Magazine
July/August, pp. 24–30.
MacKinnon, Catharine A. (2006)
Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues
. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Movies Online
(3 December, 2010) ‘Torture Porn Redefined: Dressing Down
A Serbian Film
’, <
http://www.moviesonline.ca/2010/12/torture-porn-redefined-dressing-serbian-film/
> (accessed 1 February, 2011).
Nenadic, Natalie (2010) ‘Feminist Philosophical Intervention in Genocide’ in James R. Watson (Ed)
Metacide in the Pursuit of Perfection
. Rodopi, New York/Amsterdam.
Slobodna Dalmacija
(29 July, 2008) ‘Žalba nije stigla do suda; Dnevni avaz: Karadžić ima pornić’.
Sun
(7 September, 2011) ‘Sick Serbian film hits London’, <
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/film/3128497/Sick-Serbian-film-hits-London.html
> (accessed 4 February, 2011).
Transgressive Cinema, <
http://transgressivecinema.com/
>.
Wikipedia, <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Serbian_Film
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
Wikinoticia (5 November, 2010), <
http://en.wikinoticia.com/entertainment/Movies/64928-qa-serbian-filmq-prohibited-and-rewarded-equally
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
___________________________
1
A version of this paper was presented by Natalie Nenadic at the
International Stop Porn Culture Conference
in Boston, Wheelock College, 13 June, 2010. Thank you to Rebecca Whisnant for the opportunity to present this work and to Lierre Keith, Gail Dines, Melinda Tankard Reist and Abigail Bray. The help of R. Demirovic is also gratefully acknowledged.
2
Kadic v Karadzic
, 70 F.3d 232, 236–237 (2d Cir. 1995).
3
Asja Armanda and Natalie Nenadic (1994). See also Nenadic (2010).
4
We provided Catharine MacKinnon with these findings which she presented in MacKinnon (1993), p. 24.
5
Balkaninsight (28 January, 2011)
6
Court of Bosnia & Herzegovina (2009).
7
Diana Lodderhose and John Hopewell (6 November, 2010); Australian Government (4 December, 2010).
8
Diana Lodderhose and John Hopewell (6 November, 2010); Fiona Bailey (26 November, 2010).
9
Anton Bitel; Tim Anderson.
10
Anton Bitel;
Guardian
Film Blog (13 December, 2010);
Sun
(7 September, 2011).
11
Xan Brooks (27 August, 2010).
12
Movies Online
(3 December, 2010); Wikipedia; Transgressive Cinema.
13
Tara Brady (9 December, 2010); Tim Anderson.
14
Pete Cashmore (28 August, 2010).
15
Harry Knowles (9 April, 2010); Harry Knowles (5 January, 2011). See also Pete Cashmore (28 August, 2010).
16
Jinga Films.
17
Jinga Films.
18
Todd Brown (10 March, 2010).
19
Wikipedia; Wikinoticia (5 November, 2010).
20
The judgment was for US$745 million, though it is potentially misleading to refer to that sum without qualification as survivors have yet to see any of that money. For details of the case see MacKinnon (2006).
21
This information was first reported by the Sarajevo daily
Dnevni Avaz
in July, 2008. See also
Slobodna Dalmacija
(29 July, 2008); Arhiva Net (29 July, 2008); Dalje (29 July, 2008);
Croatian Times
(30 July, 2008).
In 1992, Natalie Nenadic returned to the University of Michigan Law School where she approached Catharine MacKinnon about representing survivors pro bono for our legal action. In early March, 1993, when Radovan Karadžić, head of the Bosnian Serbs, came to the UN in New York to participate in ‘peace talks’, US Marshalls handed him our lawsuit, charging him with sexual atrocities as acts of genocide, including mass rape, serial rape, sexual murder, forced prostitution, sexual torture and mutilation, and forced pregnancy. Karadžić fled from the US and eventually went into hiding, but he is now on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Our case went through the courts until we finally went to jury-trial in Manhattan in August, 2000, where survivors testified about the sexual and other atrocities they experienced. A judgment found for compensatory and punitive damages and an injunction to stop the genocide.
20
There was some indirect testimony at trial about pornography’s role in the genocide, but that role is not yet as explicitly recognized in international law as other sexual atrocities are.
We have some suggestions about how possibly to accomplish such a recognition which in turn could bring more recognition to the harms of pornography in peacetime. In July, 2008, around the time of Karadžić’s transfer to the ICTY at The Hague, there were reports from Bosnia-Herzegovina about the discovery of pornography in relation to him, including pornography that features him in it. However, it has been interpreted as a collection that is part of his
private
domain.
21
In other words, a traditional way of denying the reality of pornography’s harms to women as something private and harmless has also been used to dismiss pornography’s significance in this context.
We had faced a similar problem when word first started coming out about sexual atrocities as genocide in the 1990s. There too, traditional ways of denying sexual violence against women were imported to do their work of denial. So, for instance, mass rapes were referred to as ‘excesses’ and the rape concentration camps as ‘bordellos’ or ‘brothels’ and the like. Feminism gave us a way to break out of this euphemistic and obfuscating language and to name the reality of what
was taking place as genocidal sexual atrocities. This in turn made it possible for us to pursue a legal initiative that established an international precedent.
Feminism can also help us come up with a more adequate understanding of the pornography aspect of genocide. This breaks the traditional approach which hides pornography’s harms to women by miscasting those harms as private and benign. With this better conceptual framework in hand, we may bring pornography that is connected to genocide to bear on international legal proceedings, perhaps at The Hague War Crimes Tribunal, or at a case that could be brought at the International Criminal Court or in a civil suit of the kind we initiated in New York. We might thereby get pornography’s role in genocide recognized as it needs to be.
Bibliography
Anderson, Tim, <
http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/review/4501
> (accessed 4 February, 2011).
Arhiva Net (29 July, 2008) ‘Pronašli Karadžićevu pornografsku snimku’, <
http://arhiva.net.hr/vjesti/europa/page/2008/07/29/0279006.html
> (accessed 13 August, 2009).
Armanda, Asja and Natalie Nenadic (November, 1994) ‘Activists Warn Not to be Fooled by Genocide/Rape Revisionists’
Northwest Ethnic News Seattle
, p. 2.
Australian Government Classification Website, <
http://www.classification.gov.au/www/cob/find.nsf/d853f429dd038ae1ca25759b0003557c/243d814a377ff75fca2577ea0058041c?OpenDocument
> (accessed 21 February, 2011).
Bailey, Fiona (26 November, 2010) ‘
A Serbian Film
is “most cut” movie in 16 years’, <
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11846906
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
Balkaninsight (28 January, 2011) ‘Croatia Rejects Call to Withdraw Envoy to Serbia’, <
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/croatia-rejects-call-to-withdraw-envoy-to-serbia
> (accessed 29 January, 2011).
Bitel, Anton ‘Srdjan Spasojevic (uncensored)’, <
http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/feature.php?id=848
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
Brady, Tara (9 December, 2010) ‘It is hell. It is not entertainment’, <
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2010/1209/1224285096711.html?via=mr
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
Brooks, Xan (27 August, 2010) ‘A Serbian Film pulled from FrightFest’, <
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/aug/27/a-serbian-film-frightfest
> (accessed 4 February, 2011).
Brown, Todd (10 March, 2010) ‘Fantasia 2010 Announces Subversive Serbia!’, <
http://twitchfilm.com/news/2010/03/fantasia-2010-announces-subversive-serbia.php
> (accessed 7 February, 2011).
Brown, Todd (21 December, 2010) ‘A Dozen Discoveries from 2010: New Faces to Watch’, <
http://twitchfilm.com/news/2010/12/a-dozen-discoveries-from-2010.php
> (accessed 4 February, 2011).
Cashmore, Pete (28 August, 2010) ‘Will this new movie kill off torture porn for good?’, <
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/aug/28/torture-porn-frightfest-quiz
> (accessed 1 February, 2010).
Court of Bosnia & Herzegovina (2009) ‘Predrag Kujundzic found guilty of Crimes against Humanity’ 30 October, 2009, <
http://www.sudbih.gov.ba/komponente/print_vijesti.php?id=1420&jezik=e
> (accessed 29 January, 2011).
Croatian Times
(30 July, 2008) ‘Karadzic starred in his own porn movie’, <
http://croatiantimes.com/news/Around_the_World/2008-0730/639/Karadzic%20starred%20in%20his%20own%20porn%20movie
> (accessed 1 February, 2010).
Dalje (29 July, 2008) ‘Karadzic Made Porn Video’, <
http://dalje.com/en-world/karadzic-made-porn-video/167828
> (accessed 1 February, 2010).
Guardian
Film Blog (13 December, 2010) ‘
A Serbian Film
: when allegory gets nasty’, <
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/dec/13/a-serbian-film-allegorical-political
> (accessed 4 February, 2011).
Jinga Films, <
http://jingafilms.com/film_details.asp?film_id=38
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
Kadic v. Karadzic
, 70 F.3d 232, 236–237 (2d Cir. 1995).
Knowles, Harry (9 April, 2010) ‘Harry says SERBIAN FILM will be the best film you won’t likely see in Theaters this year!’, <
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/44577
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
Knowles, Harry (5 January, 2011) ‘Harry’s Top Ten films of 2010!!!’, <
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/47938
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
Lodderhose, Diana and John Hopewell (6 November, 2010) ‘Spanish court bans “A Serbian Film”’, <
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118027037?refCatId=13
> (accessed 4 February 2011).
MacKinnon, Catharine A. (1993) ‘Turning Rape into Pornography: Post-Modern Genocide’
Ms Magazine
July/August, pp. 24–30.
MacKinnon, Catharine A. (2006)
Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues
. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Movies Online
(3 December, 2010) ‘Torture Porn Redefined: Dressing Down
A Serbian Film
’, <
http://www.moviesonline.ca/2010/12/torture-porn-redefined-dressing-serbian-film/
> (accessed 1 February, 2011).
Nenadic, Natalie (2010) ‘Feminist Philosophical Intervention in Genocide’ in James R. Watson (Ed)
Metacide in the Pursuit of Perfection
. Rodopi, New York/Amsterdam.
Slobodna Dalmacija
(29 July, 2008) ‘Žalba nije stigla do suda; Dnevni avaz: Karadžić ima pornić’.
Sun
(7 September, 2011) ‘Sick Serbian film hits London’, <
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/film/3128497/Sick-Serbian-film-hits-London.html
> (accessed 4 February, 2011).
Transgressive Cinema, <
http://transgressivecinema.com/
>.
Wikipedia, <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Serbian_Film
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
Wikinoticia (5 November, 2010), <
http://en.wikinoticia.com/entertainment/Movies/64928-qa-serbian-filmq-prohibited-and-rewarded-equally
> (accessed 2 February, 2011).
___________________________
1
A version of this paper was presented by Natalie Nenadic at the
International Stop Porn Culture Conference
in Boston, Wheelock College, 13 June, 2010. Thank you to Rebecca Whisnant for the opportunity to present this work and to Lierre Keith, Gail Dines, Melinda Tankard Reist and Abigail Bray. The help of R. Demirovic is also gratefully acknowledged.
2
Kadic v Karadzic
, 70 F.3d 232, 236–237 (2d Cir. 1995).
3
Asja Armanda and Natalie Nenadic (1994). See also Nenadic (2010).
4
We provided Catharine MacKinnon with these findings which she presented in MacKinnon (1993), p. 24.
5
Balkaninsight (28 January, 2011)
6
Court of Bosnia & Herzegovina (2009).
7
Diana Lodderhose and John Hopewell (6 November, 2010); Australian Government (4 December, 2010).
8
Diana Lodderhose and John Hopewell (6 November, 2010); Fiona Bailey (26 November, 2010).
9
Anton Bitel; Tim Anderson.
10
Anton Bitel;
Guardian
Film Blog (13 December, 2010);
Sun
(7 September, 2011).
11
Xan Brooks (27 August, 2010).
12
Movies Online
(3 December, 2010); Wikipedia; Transgressive Cinema.
13
Tara Brady (9 December, 2010); Tim Anderson.
14
Pete Cashmore (28 August, 2010).
15
Harry Knowles (9 April, 2010); Harry Knowles (5 January, 2011). See also Pete Cashmore (28 August, 2010).
16
Jinga Films.
17
Jinga Films.
18
Todd Brown (10 March, 2010).
19
Wikipedia; Wikinoticia (5 November, 2010).
20
The judgment was for US$745 million, though it is potentially misleading to refer to that sum without qualification as survivors have yet to see any of that money. For details of the case see MacKinnon (2006).
21
This information was first reported by the Sarajevo daily
Dnevni Avaz
in July, 2008. See also
Slobodna Dalmacija
(29 July, 2008); Arhiva Net (29 July, 2008); Dalje (29 July, 2008);
Croatian Times
(30 July, 2008).
Ruchira Gupta
Pornography in India
“I put my dick on the mouth of her pussy and pushed my dick into it quickly. She screamed louder ahhhhhhhh ohhhhhhh and I quickly put a pillow on to her mouth so that her family member will not hear her scream” (
Indiansexstories.net
).
Indiansexstories.net
is only one among 15 million Indian porn blogs and Websites;
Savitabhabhi.com
,
BollywoodHardcore.net
,
IndianPornTube.net
,
IndianAngels.net
,
IndianSeduction.com
and
SanskritPorn.com
are some others.
A recent survey shows that Indians contribute most of the traffic to these porn Websites. Take for example,
Debonairblog.com
. A random survey shows that around 0.2% of global Internet users browsed through this site daily, and 68.8% of this traffic came from India. Before it was banned (see below),
Savitabhabhi.com
got about 60 million visitors every month with 70% of the traffic originating from India. On average, the visitors spent 10 minutes on the site.
All these sites feature hardcore porn videos, movies, and animated comic strips. Many are written in Indian languages and feature the kind of storylines below:
Galleries.exploitedindiangirls.com
.
In June 2009, using the 2000 Information Technology Act,
2
the Indian Government banned porn cartoons featuring the Internet porn star Savita Bhabhi as a result of a complaint received from a women’s group in Maharashtra who used the
Protection Against Sexual Harassment of Women Bill
(2005) as the basis of their complaint.
3
But the Government has been unable to rein in the growing pornography industry in India with new sites mushrooming daily. In 2010, India alarmingly moved into 2nd position of Internet porn users in the world, from 5th in 2005.
4
A search of the Alexa list of the Top 100 Websites of India on the ‘Web, Advertising and Technology Blog’ (
WATBlog.com
) in April, 2011, revealed that Websites like Rapidshare and MegaUpload which have links to download porn clips, are the 11th and 16th most popular Websites in India. Also ranked in the Top 100 are: at 21, Xboard – a huge majority of its user activity (90%+) comes from its Masala Videos section; 25, MasalaTalk – a forum similar to Xboard; 37, MegaShare; 41, FreeSexyIndians; 47, DaDesiForum; 74, IndianSexStories; 83,
AdultFriendFinder; 92, DesiTorrents – nearly 90% of this site’s activity is seen in the porn video section; 96, Masala4India; and at 99, ChitChatters. At number 14, DebonairBlog is perhaps the most popular blog in the country. States like Rajasthan, Delhi, Kerala and Maharashtra top the list of Internet porn users.
5
Already in 2007, WATBlogger Ekalavya Bhattacharya proclaimed: “Boasting of nearly 50 million online users, India will surely be a porn capital in the online world to come” (Bhattacharya, 2007).
Not satisfied with capturing the Internet market, the porn industry has also begun to target the mobile phone market. Rohit Srivastawa, founder of clubhack, claims that 13% of Indians sent or received X-rated material on the phone. Forty per cent of default Websites available at present on mobile phone browsers directly or indirectly take users to porn sites (in Tejaswi, 2011). Service providers are currently in the process of cultivating an appetite for pornography among very young customers so they can reap the benefits later (Tejaswi, 2011). Agreements and business contracts between telecommunication operators with porn portals and porn content providers are generating large profits in the USA and Europe. Playboy licenses pictures and content to mobile phones in Europe, while in France telecom operator Orange provides porn video clips on mobile phones from their wireless portal.
It is tragic that these new markets are targeted at teenage boys whose first introduction to sex is through pornography. In India today, 1 in 5 teenagers watch porn before the age of 13.
6
Violent 3-D animation sex video games are especially created for this young market. They start with a pop-up site in which a woman prompts the user to undress her. That act then leads to violent sex games.
Gopal, 13, of Chennai, got sucked into this world of pornography. It all started with a pop-up. It flashed a woman and prompted him to undress her. He did, and got trapped via unending windows into a Website of violent, sex-filled games. It became a habit until, one day, his father accidentally clicked the Internet history button and discovered a long list of Websites with names such as Playboy, Leisure Suit Lady, Guy Game and PC Rape. The cyber crime unit of the police traced them to the narrow lanes of Burma Bazaar and the Internet browsing centre that was beaming these Websites. K. Srinivasan, co-founder of the Cyber Crime Society of India, says: “More than 50% of the victims are young children from affluent families” (in Datta, 2011).
Boys between the ages of 8 and 16 are particularly lured to the porn sites
through ‘porn-napped’ and ‘typosquatted’
7
Websites. Figures reveal that nearly 90% of boys aged 8 to 16 who have access to the Internet, have viewed pornographic sites while doing their homework (Jayachandran, 2003). In fact, the easy accessibility of pornographic content has led to a growing interest in pornography among school-age children and urban youth who have now moved beyond simply watching pornography to shooting their own porn videos and uploading them online.
This trend becomes even clearer as mainstream news media in India keep breaking shocking stories about Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) scandals involving school children and pornographic rings being busted by police after they engaged in the filming and distribution of ‘reality’ sex videos shot with hidden cameras.
• In December 2004, the country was rocked when the news of the now infamous Delhi Public School MMS sex scandal broke. A 17-year-old schoolboy filmed his girlfriend in a sex act and made the footage into a pornographic film. The video was circulated widely online and by roadside DVD vendors.
• A girl in Siliguri committed suicide in October, 2010, after an obscene MMS clip which captured her in a compromising position was made and circulated by Anindya Garai, a fellow student at the Siliguri Polytechnic Institute.
• In October 2010, 4 students of a school in Salt Lake, Kolkata, and West Bengal sent porn MMS clips to one of their teachers – just for the fun of it.
• In November 2010, 38-year-old Sarvjit Singh, an architect, was arrested for making a MMS clip of a girl in the Dalanwala area. The girl complained to the police after being blackmailed by Singh.
• In December 2010, a woman in Murshidabad, West Bengal, had her own husband arrested for allegedly shooting their intimate moments on a cell phone and circulating it online.
• Also in 2010, the ‘North Karnataka MMS’ featured a former beauty queen from Dharwad. The clip was uploaded by her ex-boyfriend after she had dumped him.
These uncovered cases reveal a deep link between pornography and real life sexual violence. Those who frequent pornography sites are more likely to view sex as a purely physical function and to regard women as sex objects. They are
also more likely to hold such views permanently if they perceive the material as more realistic. A survey by Jochen Peter and Patti M. Valkenburg about Dutch teenagers, published in
The Journal of Communication
in 2006, has found that there is a relationship between porn use and the feeling that it is not necessary to have affection for people to have sex with them. Boys were much more likely to hold such views than girls.
The Mizoram police also found a link between the increased incidence of sexual assaults including rape and paedophilia, and the watching of pornographic tapes and videos. The Aizawl superintendent of police, Lalbiakthanga Khaingte, commented that convicted rapists and others caught for assaulting young girls and minors confessed to having watched porn videos before committing such crimes (Karmakar, 2010).
For those who cannot access the Internet, the Indian pornography industry produces ‘blue’ movies mostly in Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam and Tamil languages. Local cable networks show these pornographic films in the middle of the night. They are also sold as DVDs. Some hardcore Indian porn is available illegally in Indian markets through high-speed Solid State Drive (SSD) productions.
Earlier scripts in Indian pornography often included lengthy bathroom scenes featuring the lead actress who is later raped by 2 or 3 men simultaneously and penetrated in the mouth, vagina and anus. In more recent pornography, most of the girls depicted as ‘porn stars’ in the films seem to be in their early teens. The preference is for very young girls, especially real clips of schools students, or girls in school uniforms or frocks. A new trend is to depict the rape of tribal girls, especially from hill tribes:
• In January 2011, a porn clip of a young tribal girl being forced to disrobe and walk naked for 8 km and being molested by 100 men hit the markets as DVDs and videotapes.
• In West Bengal in July, 2010, a private tutor in Burdwan was lynched to death by a mob after a porn DVD featuring one of his students hit the market.
• In a film called
Deepa India
, a teenage girl, Deepa, is seen stripping in front of a camera before she is sexually abused. This seems to be a real life video shot of a college girl coaxed into being filmed, or filmed unknowingly.
• In
Sonia Mauled by Three Studs
, a girl dressed in a frock is forced to have violent penetrative sex with 3 youths. She is down on her knees sucking on three large Indian penises, at the same time as these boys take turns to penetrate her. They also use dildos and cucumbers whilst screaming abuse at her.
• To satisfy the demand for depicting the rape of girls from Indigenous hill tribes, pornographic films are made in Nepal’s homes. “Watch these nepali’s
[sic] bang hard in desi style”, says the cover of a DVD readily available in Kathmandu. “Exclusive Nepali sex” boasts another.
The greatest number of child pornography videos are shot in Nepal and this has attracted a large number of paedophiles from Britain, Germany and USA who now prefer Nepal over their traditional hunting grounds of Thailand and Cambodia (Mukherjee, and Basu, 2007). The most talked about scandal that attracted public notice and condemnation was the case of Irish poet, Cathal O’Searcaigh, who abused street kids and young boys in Nepal (Sarkar, 2010).
In India and Nepal, pornography filmmakers are increasing the exploitation of women as well as coercing and forcing young children into making homemade cheap pornographic videos for sale. The police suspected that Moninder Singh Pandher, accused in the Noida serial killings case, might be part of an international child pornography racket (Sinha, 2007). They seized photographs of nude children from his residence as well as pornographic literature, a laptop computer and a web cam.
In India, Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code (1860) provides protection from child pornography.
8
But Section 292 does not per se deal with obscenity online. This difficulty was solved by the insertion of Section 29A which included electronic documents also within the purview of documents thus making the law applicable to electronic media as well (see Indian Child, 2010).
Growing concerns over the pernicious effect of porn on children and adults alike, and the rise in abductions, coercion and shooting of illicit porn films without the knowledge of the victims, have finally led the Indian Government in December 2008 to pass RAID or
The Information Technology (Amendment) Bill
with 45 amendments. The law now treats both purveyors and recipients of pornography in the same manner and provides a full section subtitled “punishment for publishing or transmitting of material depicting children in sexually explicit acts, etc. in electronic format” (in Gilani, 2008).
Most pornographic ‘tableaus’ depict women as being submissive and passive. A woman undresses, assumes a number of sexual positions, the male protagonist(s) achieve(s) orgasm – this is the typical formula that the majority of porn scripts follow. Pornographers use every aspect of a woman’s body, sexualise it and find a way to dehumanise it.
Pornography in India
“I put my dick on the mouth of her pussy and pushed my dick into it quickly. She screamed louder ahhhhhhhh ohhhhhhh and I quickly put a pillow on to her mouth so that her family member will not hear her scream” (
Indiansexstories.net
).
Indiansexstories.net
is only one among 15 million Indian porn blogs and Websites;
Savitabhabhi.com
,
BollywoodHardcore.net
,
IndianPornTube.net
,
IndianAngels.net
,
IndianSeduction.com
and
SanskritPorn.com
are some others.
A recent survey shows that Indians contribute most of the traffic to these porn Websites. Take for example,
Debonairblog.com
. A random survey shows that around 0.2% of global Internet users browsed through this site daily, and 68.8% of this traffic came from India. Before it was banned (see below),
Savitabhabhi.com
got about 60 million visitors every month with 70% of the traffic originating from India. On average, the visitors spent 10 minutes on the site.
All these sites feature hardcore porn videos, movies, and animated comic strips. Many are written in Indian languages and feature the kind of storylines below:
Story 1
My Girlfriend’s Virgin Pussy
1
I kept my cock on her pussy entrance and tried to push it in. Her hole was wet but very tight. I knew that I will pain her a lot first time so I took her lips in my mouth and started kissing her and put my cock on her entrance and gave a hard push, my cock was in pain and I can also feel her pain as she bit my lips while kissing, I continued kissing her and also pressed her boobs and she was relaxed after that then I slowly pushed my cock in her pussy and started movement of too [sic] and fro, her eyes were wet with tears.
Story 2
(Hindi story)
Riya Ki Seal Tori
(The Breaking of Riya’s Seal)
Kosis ki wo phisal ke bahar aagaya fir maine dubara dalla aur mera lund ka agala hisa uski choot mein ghus gaya aur wo dard se chila rahi please gaurav jaldi nikalo nahi toh mein maar jauge. Aur uski choot se khoon nikalne laga meine apna lund nahi nikala aur mae uske hotho ko chusne laga
. (I put my penis into her anus and she started screaming with pain, please Gaurav, pull it out or I will die. She started bleeding but I did not pull out and started sucking her lips.)
Story 3
Savita is the Best Secretary Mishraji Has
Savita has taken up a job and is fucking the boss, Mishraji, to get a promotion. Before every intercourse she insists on giving a full blowjob to her boss who insists on coming in her mouth. Then he usually pulls her by her long hair and fucks her in the ‘bitch’ position.
On all of the sites, forceful sex with infliction of pain on the girl or woman is the norm. Her hair is pulled, her nipples are pinched, she is penetrated any-which way – into her mouth, anus or vagina – sometimes simultaneously. Verbal abuse is showered on her by the man (or men) as they penetrate her. Subjugation and humiliation of girls and women are depicted repeatedly. In fact, some sites blatantly advertise the abuse of girls as their drawcard and openly call themselves, for example,My Girlfriend’s Virgin Pussy
1
I kept my cock on her pussy entrance and tried to push it in. Her hole was wet but very tight. I knew that I will pain her a lot first time so I took her lips in my mouth and started kissing her and put my cock on her entrance and gave a hard push, my cock was in pain and I can also feel her pain as she bit my lips while kissing, I continued kissing her and also pressed her boobs and she was relaxed after that then I slowly pushed my cock in her pussy and started movement of too [sic] and fro, her eyes were wet with tears.
Story 2
(Hindi story)
Riya Ki Seal Tori
(The Breaking of Riya’s Seal)
Kosis ki wo phisal ke bahar aagaya fir maine dubara dalla aur mera lund ka agala hisa uski choot mein ghus gaya aur wo dard se chila rahi please gaurav jaldi nikalo nahi toh mein maar jauge. Aur uski choot se khoon nikalne laga meine apna lund nahi nikala aur mae uske hotho ko chusne laga
. (I put my penis into her anus and she started screaming with pain, please Gaurav, pull it out or I will die. She started bleeding but I did not pull out and started sucking her lips.)
Story 3
Savita is the Best Secretary Mishraji Has
Savita has taken up a job and is fucking the boss, Mishraji, to get a promotion. Before every intercourse she insists on giving a full blowjob to her boss who insists on coming in her mouth. Then he usually pulls her by her long hair and fucks her in the ‘bitch’ position.
Galleries.exploitedindiangirls.com
.
In June 2009, using the 2000 Information Technology Act,
2
the Indian Government banned porn cartoons featuring the Internet porn star Savita Bhabhi as a result of a complaint received from a women’s group in Maharashtra who used the
Protection Against Sexual Harassment of Women Bill
(2005) as the basis of their complaint.
3
But the Government has been unable to rein in the growing pornography industry in India with new sites mushrooming daily. In 2010, India alarmingly moved into 2nd position of Internet porn users in the world, from 5th in 2005.
4
A search of the Alexa list of the Top 100 Websites of India on the ‘Web, Advertising and Technology Blog’ (
WATBlog.com
) in April, 2011, revealed that Websites like Rapidshare and MegaUpload which have links to download porn clips, are the 11th and 16th most popular Websites in India. Also ranked in the Top 100 are: at 21, Xboard – a huge majority of its user activity (90%+) comes from its Masala Videos section; 25, MasalaTalk – a forum similar to Xboard; 37, MegaShare; 41, FreeSexyIndians; 47, DaDesiForum; 74, IndianSexStories; 83,
AdultFriendFinder; 92, DesiTorrents – nearly 90% of this site’s activity is seen in the porn video section; 96, Masala4India; and at 99, ChitChatters. At number 14, DebonairBlog is perhaps the most popular blog in the country. States like Rajasthan, Delhi, Kerala and Maharashtra top the list of Internet porn users.
5
Already in 2007, WATBlogger Ekalavya Bhattacharya proclaimed: “Boasting of nearly 50 million online users, India will surely be a porn capital in the online world to come” (Bhattacharya, 2007).
Not satisfied with capturing the Internet market, the porn industry has also begun to target the mobile phone market. Rohit Srivastawa, founder of clubhack, claims that 13% of Indians sent or received X-rated material on the phone. Forty per cent of default Websites available at present on mobile phone browsers directly or indirectly take users to porn sites (in Tejaswi, 2011). Service providers are currently in the process of cultivating an appetite for pornography among very young customers so they can reap the benefits later (Tejaswi, 2011). Agreements and business contracts between telecommunication operators with porn portals and porn content providers are generating large profits in the USA and Europe. Playboy licenses pictures and content to mobile phones in Europe, while in France telecom operator Orange provides porn video clips on mobile phones from their wireless portal.
It is tragic that these new markets are targeted at teenage boys whose first introduction to sex is through pornography. In India today, 1 in 5 teenagers watch porn before the age of 13.
6
Violent 3-D animation sex video games are especially created for this young market. They start with a pop-up site in which a woman prompts the user to undress her. That act then leads to violent sex games.
Gopal, 13, of Chennai, got sucked into this world of pornography. It all started with a pop-up. It flashed a woman and prompted him to undress her. He did, and got trapped via unending windows into a Website of violent, sex-filled games. It became a habit until, one day, his father accidentally clicked the Internet history button and discovered a long list of Websites with names such as Playboy, Leisure Suit Lady, Guy Game and PC Rape. The cyber crime unit of the police traced them to the narrow lanes of Burma Bazaar and the Internet browsing centre that was beaming these Websites. K. Srinivasan, co-founder of the Cyber Crime Society of India, says: “More than 50% of the victims are young children from affluent families” (in Datta, 2011).
Boys between the ages of 8 and 16 are particularly lured to the porn sites
through ‘porn-napped’ and ‘typosquatted’
7
Websites. Figures reveal that nearly 90% of boys aged 8 to 16 who have access to the Internet, have viewed pornographic sites while doing their homework (Jayachandran, 2003). In fact, the easy accessibility of pornographic content has led to a growing interest in pornography among school-age children and urban youth who have now moved beyond simply watching pornography to shooting their own porn videos and uploading them online.
This trend becomes even clearer as mainstream news media in India keep breaking shocking stories about Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) scandals involving school children and pornographic rings being busted by police after they engaged in the filming and distribution of ‘reality’ sex videos shot with hidden cameras.
• In December 2004, the country was rocked when the news of the now infamous Delhi Public School MMS sex scandal broke. A 17-year-old schoolboy filmed his girlfriend in a sex act and made the footage into a pornographic film. The video was circulated widely online and by roadside DVD vendors.
• A girl in Siliguri committed suicide in October, 2010, after an obscene MMS clip which captured her in a compromising position was made and circulated by Anindya Garai, a fellow student at the Siliguri Polytechnic Institute.
• In October 2010, 4 students of a school in Salt Lake, Kolkata, and West Bengal sent porn MMS clips to one of their teachers – just for the fun of it.
• In November 2010, 38-year-old Sarvjit Singh, an architect, was arrested for making a MMS clip of a girl in the Dalanwala area. The girl complained to the police after being blackmailed by Singh.
• In December 2010, a woman in Murshidabad, West Bengal, had her own husband arrested for allegedly shooting their intimate moments on a cell phone and circulating it online.
• Also in 2010, the ‘North Karnataka MMS’ featured a former beauty queen from Dharwad. The clip was uploaded by her ex-boyfriend after she had dumped him.
These uncovered cases reveal a deep link between pornography and real life sexual violence. Those who frequent pornography sites are more likely to view sex as a purely physical function and to regard women as sex objects. They are
also more likely to hold such views permanently if they perceive the material as more realistic. A survey by Jochen Peter and Patti M. Valkenburg about Dutch teenagers, published in
The Journal of Communication
in 2006, has found that there is a relationship between porn use and the feeling that it is not necessary to have affection for people to have sex with them. Boys were much more likely to hold such views than girls.
The Mizoram police also found a link between the increased incidence of sexual assaults including rape and paedophilia, and the watching of pornographic tapes and videos. The Aizawl superintendent of police, Lalbiakthanga Khaingte, commented that convicted rapists and others caught for assaulting young girls and minors confessed to having watched porn videos before committing such crimes (Karmakar, 2010).
For those who cannot access the Internet, the Indian pornography industry produces ‘blue’ movies mostly in Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam and Tamil languages. Local cable networks show these pornographic films in the middle of the night. They are also sold as DVDs. Some hardcore Indian porn is available illegally in Indian markets through high-speed Solid State Drive (SSD) productions.
Earlier scripts in Indian pornography often included lengthy bathroom scenes featuring the lead actress who is later raped by 2 or 3 men simultaneously and penetrated in the mouth, vagina and anus. In more recent pornography, most of the girls depicted as ‘porn stars’ in the films seem to be in their early teens. The preference is for very young girls, especially real clips of schools students, or girls in school uniforms or frocks. A new trend is to depict the rape of tribal girls, especially from hill tribes:
• In January 2011, a porn clip of a young tribal girl being forced to disrobe and walk naked for 8 km and being molested by 100 men hit the markets as DVDs and videotapes.
• In West Bengal in July, 2010, a private tutor in Burdwan was lynched to death by a mob after a porn DVD featuring one of his students hit the market.
• In a film called
Deepa India
, a teenage girl, Deepa, is seen stripping in front of a camera before she is sexually abused. This seems to be a real life video shot of a college girl coaxed into being filmed, or filmed unknowingly.
• In
Sonia Mauled by Three Studs
, a girl dressed in a frock is forced to have violent penetrative sex with 3 youths. She is down on her knees sucking on three large Indian penises, at the same time as these boys take turns to penetrate her. They also use dildos and cucumbers whilst screaming abuse at her.
• To satisfy the demand for depicting the rape of girls from Indigenous hill tribes, pornographic films are made in Nepal’s homes. “Watch these nepali’s
[sic] bang hard in desi style”, says the cover of a DVD readily available in Kathmandu. “Exclusive Nepali sex” boasts another.
The greatest number of child pornography videos are shot in Nepal and this has attracted a large number of paedophiles from Britain, Germany and USA who now prefer Nepal over their traditional hunting grounds of Thailand and Cambodia (Mukherjee, and Basu, 2007). The most talked about scandal that attracted public notice and condemnation was the case of Irish poet, Cathal O’Searcaigh, who abused street kids and young boys in Nepal (Sarkar, 2010).
In India and Nepal, pornography filmmakers are increasing the exploitation of women as well as coercing and forcing young children into making homemade cheap pornographic videos for sale. The police suspected that Moninder Singh Pandher, accused in the Noida serial killings case, might be part of an international child pornography racket (Sinha, 2007). They seized photographs of nude children from his residence as well as pornographic literature, a laptop computer and a web cam.
In India, Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code (1860) provides protection from child pornography.
8
But Section 292 does not per se deal with obscenity online. This difficulty was solved by the insertion of Section 29A which included electronic documents also within the purview of documents thus making the law applicable to electronic media as well (see Indian Child, 2010).
Growing concerns over the pernicious effect of porn on children and adults alike, and the rise in abductions, coercion and shooting of illicit porn films without the knowledge of the victims, have finally led the Indian Government in December 2008 to pass RAID or
The Information Technology (Amendment) Bill
with 45 amendments. The law now treats both purveyors and recipients of pornography in the same manner and provides a full section subtitled “punishment for publishing or transmitting of material depicting children in sexually explicit acts, etc. in electronic format” (in Gilani, 2008).
Most pornographic ‘tableaus’ depict women as being submissive and passive. A woman undresses, assumes a number of sexual positions, the male protagonist(s) achieve(s) orgasm – this is the typical formula that the majority of porn scripts follow. Pornographers use every aspect of a woman’s body, sexualise it and find a way to dehumanise it.
BOOK: Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry
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