Wake up, Generation P is here: The truth behind Bangalore rape story

By Sangeeth Sebastian

Last week, a woman in Bangalore was allegedly raped by a cable TV operator to fulfill his 25-year-old wife’s porn fantasy. The news may seem disturbing to many.

But shock apart, what the incident really brings to the fore is the disconnect between Generation P, children of liberalisation raised on a staple diet of coke and porn and their parents who often cringe at the prospect of any open discussion on sex. The rift is as deep as the metaphorical divide between India and Bharat.

Today, unless you are an avid porn watcher, it is a safe bet to say that you have no idea what’s out there on the web and how easy it is to watch. All you need to know is just a few key words and the digital search engine genie will fulfill your wish in seconds. Just type ‘porn’ into Google and you get 36, 70, 00,000 results in 0.38 seconds including hard core videos that cater to all conceivable perversions and pleasures.

But does that make all those who watch porn a potential rapist? Human behaviour is far too diverse for such simplistic generalisations. Yet there is a growing body of evidence that watching porn right from a young age can alter children’s attitude towards sex and sexuality. (All the more reason to commission a study on the influence of porn on young minds in India and make sex education a compulsory part of the school curriculum.)

The accused woman in the Bangalore rape case reportedly wanted her husband to satisfy her desire to watch ‘live sex’ by seducing her best friend who stayed next door.

The truth is women too now get turned on by explicit sexual representations, not just romance novels. No where was this more evident than in the overwhelming popularity of E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey, which dealt with coercive sexual fantasies. The international bestseller, which emerged from the fan fiction community, known for its wide variety of non-consensual sex fetishes, was a favourite Metro read for many Indian women during their office commutes. So are porn sites such as Nofauxx, East Van Porn Collective and Cash Pad series that purportedly cater to the needs of their “growing women audience.”

But as the story of the Bangalore woman, who is now cooling her heels behind bars along with her husband on charges of abetting rape and being present when the incident occurred, shows, getting excited by a fantasy is one thing and wanting it in real life is another. Arousal is not consent.