Opinion Breach of trust,not pornography

The recent “Jawaharlal University porn clip” issue too raked similar concerns. A police complaint,the hunt for a spy camera,the university’s expulsion of two accused students,and an announcement of curfew time after which girls should not visit boys’ hostels. And,the hue and cry about the siege over personal freedom in a liberated campus.

Yet a disturbing nuance got overlooked. This is an issue of violation of trust and privacy. But by defining the crime as “pornography”,a serious error in the use of language by the media and its carriage by the University and the police,the girl has been converted into a sexual performer instead of a victim. It may not change the way the case will be handled,investigated and charged. But it does change the perception of the girl’s accidental involvement in it. She was not even aware that she was being secretly filmed. “It is clearly an act of breach of trust,” Dr Shekhar Seshadri,Professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Nimhans,Bangalore,who works extensively with gender,sexuality and trauma told me. “Labelling it as pornography creates secondary trauma for the girl who has already been victimised by the leak of a private act,” he says.

Pornography is loosely defined as X-rated movie or adult material. Among synonyms that surface for it are bawdiness,erotica,filth,indecency,obscene materials,skin flick,smut,stag film. Every text or research on pornography asserts that it is an industry which consists of manufacturers,performers and consumers. It is also defined as explicit matter for the purpose of sexual excitement and erotic satisfaction and derives from Greek words “porne”,which mean prostitute and “graph” means to record or illustrate. The fundamental notion of prostitution in all its linguistic derivations immediately associates the sexual act with commerce. In the JNU case,the girl was certainly not doing any business. Which is why,there is a strong need to differentiate these crimes from the industry of porn. Particularly,because in the last decade the porn industry became robust with online publishing platforms like YouPorn and endless amateur galleries. Even though some women watch pornography,it is essentially a male market.

The JNU girl had no agency in the act. So when incidents like this of sexual exploitation betrayal,or an intimate sex act are put on MMS (even if filmed with the consent of both partners) are leaked out without the knowledge of one partner and are then reported as pornography,a criminal offence is seen as a sexual performance.