India once more makes the headlines since the latest Google Trends data shows that 6 of the top 10 cities in the world keying in ‘porn’ on the search engine are in India.
New Delhi, followed by Pune, Mumbai, Howrah, Unnao, Kuala Lumpur, and Bangalore, in that order, lead the porn surfers brigade.
According to the results, since 2008, the most number of ‘animal porn’ searches were from Pune, followed by New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. ‘Rape porn’ is a widely searched term with Kolkata, Howrah, New Delhi, Ahmedabad and Pune accounting for the highest use of these keywords. Unnao, a small town in Uttar Pradesh, has most searches for ‘child sex’.
Again Indians are getting a bad name for data that needs to be nuanced. Once you actually break down the numbers and the data, we see Indians aren’t really worse or more perverted than anyone else. So India is getting a bad reputation because of trends that aren’t false, but also because there is data missing on a lot of countries, and because the numbers are based on Google Trending. In comparative terms, looking only at Google Trends is a pretty narrow interpretation of trends, especially when comparing countries. In other countries, like the US or UK, netizens use other search engines as well, which means we’re missing a lot of data. Plus the data in this report doesn’t convey absolute search volume. This goes to show, once more, that media conclusions and headlines should be taken with a grain of salt.
Not too mention that maybe the reason numbers are so high in India for key words search results of the word ‘porn’ may be due to high digital illiteracy. Indians are searching for the word ‘porn’, when other users in other countries access porn website directly. That would show high key words search without actually accounting for what other users in other countries are looking for and the websites they access.
That being said- it doesn’t mean it isn’t abhorrent that such a large numbers of Indians search for ‘rape sex’ and ‘child sex’. There is no excuse for the search for rape and children pornography. It is a problem that needs to be addressed, and it is alarming that the trend is toward violent non-consensual sex. However, we need to be careful when ranking and interpreting data.
These trends point to the need for sex education, better access to information, because less information leads to very problematic attitudes, sex practices, and in the extreme, crime, in the case of rape and child sex. Sex with children and rape are crimes.
It is clear India is in dire need of sex education on consensual sex, safe sex, and sex positive attitudes. Pretending sex doesn’t exist and banning access to porn, and information doesn’t lead to healthier sex lives or better morals; instead it leads to people accessing the wrong information. Being curious should not be sanctioned, on the contrary, restricting questions leads to practices which are not acceptable, harmful, and violent, and to misinformation. When people have access to these violent images and so on, and when those images aren’t explained, they lead to attitudes and actions that are violent and harmful. Rape culture is not a myth.
So let’s be nuanced when we see numbers and headlines, but not naïve. Numbers still reflect a trend of Indian net users searching for porn, and not just porn but hardcore violent porn.
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