Pornographic influencer Belle Delphine creates controversy with a series of photos describing her "perfect first date". Why ? It features the young woman in schoolgirl outfit, tied up and then raped.
Are there limits to a fantasy? Yes, and an influential online porn personality has just passed it. On January 12, 2021, actress, cosplayer and X influencer Belle Delphine posted on her Twitter a series of photographs titled "My perfect first date" (in French : "My perfect first date"), which we have chosen not to relay. Belle Delphine takes the stage in an unhealthy role-playing game: she is disguised as a child, kidnapped, tied up and raped by a hooded man
The trivialization of the culture of rape and child crime
In the wake of the publication of these photos, Internet users called on Belle Delphine, a woman and performer X who has every right to explore her sexuality. But who should have used a warning, for example in the form of a "trigger warning", before posting. By simply writing "TW" followed by terms that can trigger (in English, "trigger") a strong anxiety, the young woman would indeed have prevented her images from being seen by traumatized people, who configure their Twitter so as not to not come across certain content mentioning rape, violence …
Since their publication, anyone can see these pictures appear in their timeline, especially as the various shares and questions pushed the name Belle Delphine was in top trend in the US, where the young woman comes from, as well as in France and in many countries. In addition, this kind of porn posts and content feed the culture of rape, its trivialization, as well as child crime.
Translation: "I saw a quick glimpse of why Belle Delphine is on trend, without any TW warning (…) I'm not doing well".
When mainstream porn conditions our sexualities
If you are aware of the theatrical aspect of porn videos, you will have a certain distance between reality and fantasy. But for many people, especially young men whose minds are in construction, the line can be blurred. The concept of partner consent is therefore essential and its absence cannot be eroticized, without any context or warning, on a channel as mainstream as Twitter. Yet it is the choice that Belle Delphine made, yet very familiar with the codes she uses here: pedocriminality and rape.
Remember that the latter is a "deliberate process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a constant state of fear (…)", as the author Susan Brownmiller explains very well in her book Rape. And if pornographic productions are only one of the many avatars of this method of patriarchal oppression, we cannot deny their decisive impact on our ways of making love. Especially since mainstream X is present everywhere, via its codes which permeate advertising, fashion … Enough to condition our most intimate fantasies, no offense to the supporters of pornography without any political thought.