Often it is told that womanhood comes to full circle when a
woman becomes a mother. Being a mother either
biologically or by way of adoption is indeed a unique experience because it not
only gives the joy of nurturing another life, it may make the woman more
responsible in every sense. For every
woman the phases of motherhood bring special moments. For some, these phases
may start right from the day of conceiving, for some it may start when she
decides to adopt a baby, for some it may start right from the moment of the
birth of the baby. In this digital era many couples (especially women) like to
capture the moments of motherhood by making digital photo albums or vlogs . In
India this phenomena is rapidly catching up. Pregnancy photo shoots, baby
birthing photos and videos, new born photo shoots etc are trending now a days. YouTube and Instagram are chosen platforms to upload
such videos or images. YouTube especially provides wonderful opportunity to easy creation
of amateur vlogs. YouTube users may also use specific tags for listing the
video with certain steams like pregnancy and child birth, medical learning,
fitness during pregnancy, know hows of
child births and neo natal care by new parents etc. Many of such users love to
share such vlogs or images (through other social media platforms and digital
messaging apps ) with their virtual friends and groups. I personally have come
across several of such videos and images which may have been as old as 2, 3 or
even 5 years.
But they may not bring back the good old
memories always. Pregnancy and child birthing videos and images are hugely
consumed by porn industry consumers as well. Several researches on pornography including
non-consensual and revenge porn have shown existence and growth of different sorts of porn contents which may include
black porn, older women porn, nude porn, voyeur, amateur porn, big belly porn
and preggo porn. The last one, i.e. preggo porn is actually made with women
showing different types of pregnant belly formation, sloth movement of pregnant
women with huge belly, (supposedly) movement of the baby within the belly and
the corresponding gasping or painful twitching of the body of the pregnant
woman and necessarily the breasts which may be half covered. These contents are
made by porn actors who may or may not be pregnant in real life. Generally these porn
actors may be clad in under wears right from the beginning of the video to give
an impression of real life birthing scenes. Several videos may also show women
slowly removing dresses: such videos may actually give impression that the
woman suddenly developed labour pain at home or at some place other than the
hospitals. All such videos may have similar tag lines like the original
pregnancy and birthing videos, i.e., pregnancy, child birth. The ancillary tag
line could be ‘fake’ or ‘prank’ or ‘sexy preggo’. As such, these taglines may
also pull the real pregnancy and birthing videos in the pool of sexually
consumable contents.
Getting sexual
gratification from the birthing scenes and scenes of labour pain is indeed a
sign of perversion. But what is more disheartening
is how the porn industry has grown preggo porn stream on the basis of this
perversion. If one notices the comment sections of such videos, one may see
that the woman in the video may be asked to act more accurately in the next
video, the woman may also be asked to
make videos with different pregnancy postures and sounds of pain which may
create more erotica. The producers and actors of these videos may earn a good
profit depending upon their presentation and ‘perfect’ acting. Unfortunately
the real pregnancy vlogs may also be consumed with equal ‘interest’. The new
mother may get trolled in the comment
section for her belly shape or for taking too much time to make the ‘birthing
sounds’ or ‘labour pain’ moments which may be sexually gratifying for the ‘consumers’
of the videos. Some may even get trolled for ‘wasting time’ of the viewer. Often
the creators of genuine vlogs may not get time to look into the comments which
may be extremely disturbing for any new mother. Even if the creator would have
disabled the comments, the links of the videos may still be shared with a
malicious object to consume it as porn.
While the ‘victims’ may
definitely take the matter to the websites for removing the offensive posts or
to the police and courts for taking
action against the comment maker for making obscene, sexually explicit or misogynist or (as it may happen in several cases) racist and hate comments,
the website, the police and courts and above all, the families may find hard to
prevent themselves from ‘victim blaming’ for uploading ‘those private moments’
for ‘public viewing. In remote possibility, the content may even be considered
as non-consensual porn (but not revenge porn) in case the police and the courts
decide to book the perpetrators who may have made obscene, sexually explicit or
misogynist or racist and hate comments
or who may have shared the video as porn content to others either for unethical gain or just
for the sake of sharing ‘another porn content’. The legal provisions for voyeurism
may also be applied in this regard along with provisions for making word etc
for harming the modesty of women, inappropriate representation of woman
concerned etc. But the new mother may not be saved from acute trauma and
depression which may arise from this.
Pregnancy vlogs may be
considered as unique examples of rights to expression which should not be
violated at any cost. But again, we as responsible society must work together
to prevent such wonderful moments to be destroyed by perverts and perpetrators.
Please Note: Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to
use informations provided in this blog for your own
assignment/writeup/project/blog/article, please cite it as “Halder D. (2018), “Making pregnancy vlog? Beware! You may be feeding the porn consumers” 27th March, 2018, published in
http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/
