Where are millennials getting information about sex from? Is it porn or sex education? According to a survey done by Vitamin Stree, most millennials learnt about sex before they turned 13 – but much of their knowledge was from porn.
The survey was conducted on 2,500 millennials, both men and women, and they opened up about their deepest, darkest sex-related secrets.
Sex is one of the most taboo topics in our country; we all know that it exists somewhere, but never acknowledge its presence in our families. Parents shudder when they are asked about the topic and thus the sex education-deprived generation resorts to the internet. And the internet can often mislead.
Although the Indian education department has finally woken up to the frantic calls of children and has introduced a sex ed course starting from class 1, what about the generation that went without any of it and are called ‘millennials’ today?
“It is not like young Indians are not having sex just because nobody is telling them about it. In our survey, almost 50% respondents said they started having sex between 14 and 18 years of age, in line with the global trend. The American and European teens are having sex for the first time is 17 years.”Vitamin Stree survey
How Porn-Hungry Are We?
According to Pornhub, Indians are the third-largest consumers of porn. The Vitamin Stree survey, however, suggests that 91% of men watched porn three to four times in a week and 65% of women watched porn, while 34% of them watched it three to four times a week.
Although the percentage of women watching porn may be going up, that may not necessarily mean that they are enjoying what they are watching.
Traditional porn is often offensive and depicts women almost solely as the pleasure giver rather than the pleasure receivers.
“On a spectrum ranging from dirty, disgusting and violent to hot, wonderful and erotic, a lot of women and men leaned towards hot and erotic. But quite a few women used violent, dirty and disgusting to describe porn. This is not surprising, because for years now, porn has been made by men, for men, where women are only seen as pleasure givers. While there is certainly more porn being made for women, and there has also been a rise in the number of women making porn, there is still a huge gap between demand and supply.”Vitamin Stree survey
On Masturbation and More
“99.45% men have masturbated. And 82% women also said they have masturbated at least once in their life. 28.8% women said that they masturbate 3 to 4 times a week. 1 in 4 men said that they masturbate at least once a day.”Vitamin Stree survey
If sex is a taboo, masturbation is an even bigger taboo. And women masturbating is what nightmares are made of, for our society anyway. So, if the society thinks that women are ignorant about self-pleasure giving techniques, are they at least getting orgasms?
“It’s still not looking too great for women, if our survey is anything to go by. Only 10% of women said they orgasm every time they have sex. And 38% of women said they fake their orgasms at least 50% of the time. But why fake it?”
But doesn’t faking orgasms egg the partner on to do things the wrong way?
We are the second most populated country in the world but our lack of sex education is pushing the young to learn about sex from the internet. Internet may be a vast resource but it can become counter-productive when they fall prey to porn that can lead to sexually violent behaviour and unrealistic sexual expectations.
The way to initiate sex education cannot be a blanket ban on porn websites, it has to start with sex education and early.
Also Read: #LetsTalkSex: 8 Qs on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Porn
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)