By Ariane Priyanka
KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 10 — Deeva (pseudonym), who has been watching porn since she discovered it by accident at the age of 11, went through a period when she was consumed with watching “rough” and “questionable” Japanese porn.
“When I watch Japanese porn, I’m always kind of like, ‘er’, because of the more aggressive stuff. I’m always worried about consent. It seems kind of iffy and I don’t know whether that’s done ethically and produced well,” the 26-year-old Malaysian woman told Ova, saying that “she’s least proud” about watching that kind of porn.
“Hentai, I’m a little chill about it because they’re not people acting in it.”
However, even in hentai, which showcases Japanese erotica and porn across mediums such as manga and anime, there are paedophilic themes that hyper-sexualise young girls (for example, lolis, derived from the Lolita complex) and boys, which reinforce teacher-student rape fantasies, incest, and sexual grooming.
Hentai also features visuals that sexualise the tears of women being penetrated, oversexualise their breasts, and render other body parts of women and men into extreme caricatures.
Yvonne (pseudonym), a 28-year-old Malaysian copywriter, became acquainted with pornography while she was in secondary school through a hentai DVD she found in her mother’s purse.
“They love to draw the female crying during sex. Whether they’re enjoying it or not, there’s always tears. Are they taking pleasure from seeing girls cry?”
“Not Any Easier To Digest”
Asha (pseudonym), a 25-year-old entertainment reviewer from Sri Lanka, told Ova she turned to hentai because live action porn is “super disgusting”.
However, the hentai consumer said it’s not “any easier to digest” what’s happening in the Japanese animated pornography she’s viewed.
“But I guess because they’re animated, my brain doesn’t clock it in as it would when there are real people.
“(Live action porn) is just so real, like they’re actually going through that. It’s kind of harsh and really degrading and rough towards women. It’s a bit hard to stomach sometimes,” said Asha, who opined that viewing live action porn is “like watching a crime in real time.”
“The main difference when I watch hentai is that they do have those subplots in hentai where it’s romantic and really sweet. And you have that subplot where they go out on dates and they have a relationship. They have kids.”
Asha said she watches animated porn because it allows her to empathise with the characters by living through them during stimulation. “It makes me feel less lonely knowing that there are people out there who feel the same way. It soothes my soul.”
However, she acknowledges that there is a “creepy side of hentai” that is “incestuous, paedophilic and disgusting as hell.”
She has seen live action porn of old men having sex with 16-year-old virgin girls, and the same thing can also be found on hentai. “I feel like it can be significantly worse in hentai because they show the grooming and manipulation, and how intense it can get.
“And a lot of girls get raped in hentai. And it’s so weird, they do it in such a way that even when the girl says no, she’s saying yes at the same time, which they think is ok.
“I think it is such a bad influence to send out to the mass media.”
“Porn In And Of Itself Is Not Bad”
Despite their repugnance at the violence against women in pornography, the women Ova interviewed found it difficult to resist the appeal of smut.
While Deeva only watches porn once or twice a month, when she does watch porn, she is hooked on it for practically the entire day. “It’s only one to two times a month but when I watch it, it’s like all I’m doing. It’s insane. Once it starts, it’s very difficult to stop.”
However, these days she is more discerning about the porn she watches. “I feel like at the time, I used to justify it by saying, ‘okay, it’s from a production house, clearly these are actresses and they’re acting in the porn’. But increasingly, I’ve started questioning how that can be done in a way that is safe for the person.
“I can’t visualise a situation where you’re in that scenario and you can actually perform that way and have your boundaries respected. It feels like it’s intentionally pushing (the envelope).”
She is not completely averse to pornography though. “I feel like the existence of porn in and of itself is not bad, but I don’t like the way porn is mass produced and how, as a society, we don’t have the proper language to address our feelings around sex, porn, and fetishes.”
Deeva added, “having the access to those things before you understand is a problem.”
Feel Your Mind Morphing Into Sludge
While Yash (pseudonym), a 30-year-old Malaysian lawyer, did not address violence against women in porn, he told Ova that he believes it can be detrimental during all stages of life, especially to children, and to wider society in general. Yash, who masturbates to porn, said it has a stupefying effect on his brain.
He says he watches it every two weeks, sometimes once a week, to help him sleep, and finds that it drains his energy.
“It makes me feel sleepy. My body just shuts down after that, as though, yes, the biological purpose has been carried out and that’s it.
“There’s no need to grow and be better. I lose my confidence and it just gives me brain fog,” he told Ova.
Meanwhile, Yasmin (pseudonym), a 27-year-old Malaysian social media executive, who admits to having a porn addiction, is struggling to stop watching it every day. She told Ova because she was exposed to and experienced sex at a very young age, when she “didn’t have access to a partner,” she’d rely on porn to satisfy herself.
However, like Yash, she said it has become a mindless routine for her. “The thing that I don’t like about porn is that you do feel numb. It numbs your senses. I would say that you can tell your dopamine level is not that high anymore, like you feel empty because you know that you’re not actually with anyone.”
Yasmin said at that stage when she “shuts down”, she realises that pornography doesn’t make her feel happy anymore. “There are times when I’m just watching it because I need to have this thing done.”
Unlike Deeva, she feels “so badly” that porn should be banned. “I just feel less human (watching it). It’s just wrong. Like if you have too much of it, oh this is (messed) up! Eventually, it becomes…something’s wrong with me. You question yourself.”
Yasmin added that she feels like a “degenerate” when she watches too much porn. “I’ve (been in) those phases a lot. It becomes something that you don’t need, it’s something that you want.”
She also feels that porn is not favourable to a healthy mind. “I feel like a good experiment would be to watch porn every day and see at which point you can feel that your mind just morphs into something like sludge. That’s what I meant by the numbness.
“You see so many women just being rammed into, linking it to the criminal side of how the world works with stuff like human trafficking, and how porn is actually just a glamorised version of that,” Yasmin continued.
“And the fact that we find enjoyment in it, then you can understand where the numbness comes in.”
