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.
First of all, the fact that young people prioritize the group as a setting for sexual initiation. This fact does not in itself imply any pathology, 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 of belonging – that relieves them of the ‘anxiety and favors disinhibition and the move to violent action.
Secondly, the achievement of more levels of social equality – still insufficient – ??by women has encouraged misogynistic discourses that promote, reactively, a return to patriarchal values. The episode of the Ahuja High School in Madrid was a good example of how this discourse has taken root in a section of young people. While the majority of girls believe that gender-based violence is a serious social problem, one in five teenagers and young males aged 15-29 believe that it does not exist and that it is just an ideological invention.
A third factor is the increase in online porn consumption. As early as 2015, the UN revealed that the world’s top online porn consumers were between 12 and 17 years old. Influence the triple A: accessible, affordable and anonymous. In Spain between 60% and 70% of teenagers (aged 13 to 17) have seen pornography (even earlier) and 85% access it voluntarily. 12% of these boys have reproduced the scenes – which they see in this free pornography as particularly violent and sadistic – with girls without their consent. Porn serves as a protocol for them to act, even though the desire of their partners is different and that is why they are confused and hesitant. La Manada’s video is one of the most viewed on porn sites.
Undoubtedly, being sexually initiated via online porn does not automatically generate sexist behaviors, given that between this moment of looking (pornography) at the age of 8-10 and the moment of concluding with a sexual identity at the age of 16-18 there is, in the ‘interval, a time to understand, time in which each one consents or not to this model of pleasure that the abuse entails.
Neither judicial nor educational measures – necessary but insufficient – ??will spare them the exercise of experiencing sexuality in their own bodies, with its satisfactions, but also with its discomforts. Adults need to accompany them in this transit, sanctioning what is reprehensible and giving direct witness to their own passage. Digital reality can also help: influencers like Raquel Graña ( Íntimas connexions ) or websites that invite – and offer didactic materials – mothers, fathers and educators to talk about porn with children and teenagers ( Thepornconversation.org ).
