In the last decade, sexual violence against minors in Spain has increased by 71% and 80% of the victims are girls and adolescent women. We can venture some hypotheses related to the convergence of three factors.
In the first place, the fact that young people prioritize the group as a setting for sexual initiation. This fact does not imply any pathology by itself, but it has all its weight when it comes to group abuse behaviors in which together they protect themselves from their inadequacies and obtain a feeling of power –and belonging– that relieves them of anguish and favors disinhibition and the transition to violent act.
Secondly, the achievement of greater levels of social equality –still insufficient– by women has encouraged misogynistic discourses that reactively promote a return to patriarchal values. The episode of the Ahuja residence hall in Madrid was a good example of how this discourse has permeated a part of the young people. While the majority of girls consider that gender violence is a serious social problem, one in five adolescents and young men between the ages of 15 and 29 believe that it does not exist and that it is just an ideological invention.
A third factor is the increase in the consumption of online porn. Already in 2015, the UN revealed that the main consumers of online porn in the world were between 12 and 17 years old. It influences the triple A: accessible, affordable and anonymous. In Spain between 60% and 70% adolescents (from 13 to 17 years old) have seen pornography (even earlier) and 85% access it voluntarily. 12% of these boys have reproduced the scenes – which they see in this especially violent and sadistic free porn – with girls without their consent. Porn serves as a protocol for their action, even though the desire of their partners is different and before that fact, they are confused and hesitant. The Pack’s video is one of the most viewed on porn pages.
Undoubtedly, starting sexually via online porn does not automatically generate sexist behaviors, since between that moment of looking at (pornography) at 8-10 years old and the moment of concluding with a sexual identity at 16-18 there is, in the interval, a time to understand, a time in which everyone consents or not to that model of enjoyment that abuse entails.
Neither judicial nor educational measures –necessary but insufficient– will spare them the exercise of living sexuality in their own bodies, with its satisfactions, but also with its discomforts. It is necessary that adults accompany them in this transition, sanctioning what is reprehensible and giving direct testimony of their own passage. Digital reality can also help: influencers like Raquel Graña ( Íntimas conexiones ) or websites that invite –and offer teaching materials– mothers, fathers and educators to talk about porn with children and adolescents ( Thepornconversation.org ).