Belén Matesanz, coordinator of Metges del Món en Balears, has been in Ibiza this week presenting a course for the social and health professionals of the Consell to improve the care they provide to women in prostitution.
Are those who pay for sex getting younger and younger?
Yes, pornography has this effect. It’s consumed earlier and earlier and it’s becoming more and more violent and aggressive. The most common themes are gangbangs (orgies), groups… It doesn’t work like that when you go out, you don’t dare to ask for it because you are aware that they are not usual sexual relations or because you have already asked for it and have been rejected. “Anal sex? Pass. Threesomes? Pass.” So you pay. We live in a society where we want everything now and we can get everything now. Even sex. And we are used to immediate and constant change. The iPhone, for example, new models are released constantly and people change it every time. So you change sex partners with the same speed. The idea is: “I want to try women of all colors, types, sizes, shapes and nationalities”. And we don’t get that in our day to day lives.
Is something as intimate as sexuality now like a car or a cell phone?
That’s right, sex has become a commodity, a product, as if women’s bodies are separate from us as people. Look at the Dolce & Gabbana advertising campaign that Rocío (López, social intervention technician in Ibiza) was talking about. What is an image selling in which you only see a woman with four men, one of them completely on top and the other three looking on? Where is the perfume? These are hypersexualised campaigns.
Almost pornographic.
Pornography sells the vulva of women infantilised to the point where that of a nine-year-old girl no longer meets their standards. Nine years old! What sex are we selling? Paedophilia, the bodies of four or five year old women. Without lips, without hair… Do we really live in a pederastic society? Is it what men are looking for or is it what the pornographic industry is looking for and what they are being educated in?
By all accounts, the pornographic industry has a brutal power in our daily lives.
Yes, in the end the big advertising, marketing and product sales campaigns are closely linked to prostitution. How do I increase the demand for prostitution? By selling pornography, by advertising pornography. During the confinement, sites like Pornhub became free, something like, “poor guys, you are confined, have free sex on TV”. The consequence is that when the confinement is lifted, more prostitution is sought. Pornhub has increased its revenue twenty-fold. It’s no longer free, but it is still consumed. It’s pure and simple advertising. Psychology. If I see something all day long on TV it’s what I’m going to want. Like the cartoon ads now that Christmas is coming: toys, toys and toys from the Three Kings. It’s the same with adults. They don’t sell us toys, they sell us sex. They sell us to keep women as objects because that way a man can maintain his power. We have to put an end to that. We are all people, human beings and equal.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.