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Granny Porn in Kenya

Ayanna Nahmias

Ayanna Nahmias, Editor-in-ChiefLast Modified: 00:55 AM EDT, 15 May 2011

Dr. Drew Pinsky is the host of both a prime-time radio and television show which airs weeknights on HLN which is a part of Time Warner Inc.'s CNN.  The show addresses issues of addiction and sex.

A preview promised that Dr. Drew would lead a discussion on "Granny Porn," following the break. The fact that the program alluded to Kenya piqued my interest but more intriguing was the thought of pornography in a country with a Muslim population.

Muslims comprise 10% of the total Kenya's population. However, Islam is the predominant religion in many of its neighboring countries like Somalia where 98% of people are Muslim, followed by Sudan with 71% and Tanzania with 30%.  The idea of "Granny Porn" was disturbing given the reverence for elders in most African nations and in Islam.

After the release of information by the American government which claims that pornography was discovered on Osama Bin Laden's computer, the idea of pornography in Islamic nations shouldn't be strange.  In fact, I wrote a post titled "The Plight of Sex Slaves from Moldova to Dubai," which deals with the topic of human trafficking and sex slaves from former Eastern Bloc countries who end up working across Europe and the Middle East.

But even researching these abuses I had never heard of "Granny Porn."  The term evoked an image of an elderly frail grandmother with white hair engaged in non-consensual sex.  In fact because of the lead-in I thought that Dr. Drew was going to focus on the issue of the rape of elderly women in nursing homes.

This was not the case. Instead, he featured Ogi Ogas co-author of 'The Desire of Being Human: ‘A Billion Wicked Thoughts’ who explained that in researching the book and his extensive analysis of sexual web searches, found that the category “Grannies” was the 20th-most-popular search term which was far more popular than cheerleaders (79th), celebrities (23rd) and lingerie (44th).

Although Ogas was unable to explain these findings he speculates by looking at some of the countries where granny porn is popular: Kenya, Great Britain and the Czech Republic that there is story within the cultural paradigms of each of these countries which might explain the popularity. "In Kenya, adolescent boys are permitted to talk about sex with their grandmothers but not their parents.

In Britain, we've been told that because of the public school culture, which often has matriarchs doing corporal punishment, for a lot of young boys their first physical contact with a female is an older woman. The Czech Republic is Europe's capital for sex tourism and it has a larger percentage of older prostitutes than any other country in Europe. Perhaps that has also caused an interest in older women."

Though the popularity of adult women doesn't quite reach the stratospheric heights of teens, it's worth observing that more men search for fifty-year-olds than search for nineteen-year-olds. There is a rather shocking number of searches for underage women, but you may be equally surprised to discover there is significant erotic interest in sixty- and seventy-year-olds. ~ Ogi Ogas

This quote cast the story in a different light entirely.  In American popular culture 40+ year old women are called "cougars;" however, most women our age keep fit and attractive hence the adage "40 is the new 20."  'Granny Porn' is a misnomer because though the reality may be that most women in their late 40's and early 50's have grown children or grandchildren, though this is by no means ubiquitous.

Contrary to a horrific image of an elderly woman being raped or otherwise sexually abused on film, granny porn is a niche market in the multibillion dollar porn industry.  The women who perform in this industry are a far cry from most people's image of a grandmother either here in America or elsewhere.  Is the porn industry culpable for an increase in misogynistic behavior in our society? Probably, but that is a topic for exploration in another post.

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