Where do Sri Lankans learn about sex?

Watching pornography in Sri Lanka is illegal. But like many things in Sri Lanka that are illegal on paper, it turns out it’s actually quite popular. Pornhub.com, the largest pornography website in the world, released its global viewership statistics at the end of 2017. Sri Lanka ranked high on the list of countries with the greatest increases of watching pornography over the previous year: Sri Lanka came in eighth place, following Belarus and Vietnam.

On average, according to Pornhub, Sri Lankans are watching pornographic videos for 96 seconds longer than they did last year.

In terms of sheer traffic, Sri Lanka moved up 23 slots, tying the country with Pakistan.

Some who advocate for better sexual education believe this trend is worrying. Because Sri Lanka does not have a comprehensive sexual education programme in schools, for many young people, this online exposure to sex is the first and only context they have about physical intimacy.

A young man in Colombo, speaking to the Daily News anonymously, summed it up succinctly: “People think porn is the reality.”

Pornography without education

Sarah Soysa, a programme and advocacy coordinator at Doctors of the World in Sri Lanka, said that at a recent meeting with other medical professionals, the conversation turned towards whether depictions of violence in pornography were leading adults and young people towards dangerous ideas about sex.

A study from the journal Violence Against Women found that out of more than 300 pornographic videos chosen from some of the most popular websites, more than 88 percent displayed physical aggression. Almost 50 percent showed some form of verbal aggression.

Soysa said she suspects, although can’t confirm, that such videos might support violent conceptions about sex.

“What a lot of people, medical professionals, health professionals, the INGO community, what they said was: maybe it’s triggered by watching porn,” she said. “Because (pornography) shows gang rape as something very enjoyable all the time.”

“Maybe there’s a link or connection there,” she added, “although we haven’t studied it.”

An unofficial survey by Bakamoono.lk, a website devoted to encouraging sexual education, showed that some people in Sri Lanka are searching specifically for violent content. Out of 800 anonymous responses to the survey, almost 180 respondents said they searched for “gang bang.”

Top searches for men included the terms “Sri Lankan,” “teen,” and “homemade,” both “aware of” and “not aware of,” being filmed.

The website, which is run in part by The Grassrooted Trust, warned that the responses should be taken with a grain of salt.

Because the survey was filled out anonymously, “it was not possible to distinguish if the respondents were being honest,” the authors wrote.

Because the act of watching pornography is so private, it’s difficult to gauge its effect on society.

But sometimes anecdotes bubble up to the surface. Soysa said that as part of her work with Doctors of the World, she helps conduct sexual education workshops around the country, where the subject of pornography occasionally comes up.

“When we have conversations with women, sometimes they start opening up about issues and sometimes they start talking about the man doing different things.

For them, it’s like weird things,” she said. “They say things like: the man asked us to do this, and we don’t really know what it is, they watched it in porn.”

One of the Bakamoono respondents wrote that “I don’t really like watching porn and only do occasionally as my husband insists. I feel sorry for the people in them since I cannot imagine they enjoy having to do that particular act for money.”

Misconceptions about sex

What is known is that in the absence of sexual education, many people do turn to the Internet to answer their questions.

“When we do trainings, the first question we always ask is, 'How do you get information (about sex)?',” Soysa said. “What people mostly say is the Internet, and then friends and magazines.”

These answers are the same in both major cities and rural villages and estates, she said. “Almost all young people have access to mobile phones,” she added.

As a consequence, Soysa often finds herself dispelling basic myths about sex and intimacy.

“For girls, it’s virginity,” she said. “( I get) questions like, does everyone bleed? I ride bicycles, how does that affect me?”

“They’re really stressed about it,” she said, because there is so much cultural value attached to virginity and so little access to informed education about sex.

“For boys, (the stress) is mostly and always about penis size,” she added. Doctors of the World is working with the government to develop a sexual education curriculum in the North. Other organizations, like the Family Planning Association, do their own sex education trainings. Bakamoono.lk posts articles about topics like HIV and sexuality to their website.

“We all do different efforts in different areas, but nothing is centralized,” Soysa said. “That’s the problem.”

Government tackles sex education

Last year, the Parliamentary Monitoring Committee on Women and Gender started a pilot project in the Western Province to introduce a sexual education curriculum above Grade 6. Dr. Thusitha Wijemanne, Chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee, said that based on the success of that programme, they are trying to expand it to every province.

“We recognize the importance of awareness of sexual education to reduce child abuse, early pregnancies, and sexual harassment,” she said in an interview.

In the Western Province, a group comprising the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs, The Family Health Bureau, the National Education Institute, and the National Child Protection Authority developed a three-month curriculum regarding reproductive and sexual education. It addresses topics like menstruation and contraception.

“We have already started this programme, this teacher training programme in the Western province,” she said. At the moment however, “we don’t have enough staff for the teachers’ training programme (islandwide),” she said.

In addition, Dr. Wijemanne said that there is a cultural barrier to sexual education. “Most of the teachers are reluctant to teach this subject,” she said.

Instead, “most of these teachers ask children to study on their own. They must be trained not to do that.”

She also added that the committee is putting a special focus on the North and North Central Provinces, which she said were more “high-risk” areas.

“The goal is to minimize the sexual harassment,” she said. “(These students) need sexual education in the adolescent stage.” Be cause if they don’t have the education in school, they will go look for it somewhere else. That much is clear.