Pervs Are Stealing Women’s Pregnancy Photos Online, Because of Course They Are
(Photo: iStockPhoto/evgenyatamanenko)
For everything, there is a fetish. Somewhere out there, there is probably a forum devoted to people pleasuring themselves to photos of the awful little blisters that show up on a person’s heels when she first wears a new pair of shoes. So it’s little surprise that there are people out there who are sexually attracted to pregnant bellies, and that’s all well and good. A fetish is a pretty innocuous thing. As long as everyone is consenting adults, just do your thing and it’s all good. But apparently a bunch of pregnant women were horrified recently to find out that their maternity pictures were turning up on “pregnancy porn” web forums.
(Related: What Pregnancy Looks Like According to Stock Photography)
According to SheKnows, the pregnant-belly fetish is called “pregophilia,” and apparently some dudes with that affinity have been joining and lurking on “mother-to-be” forums to look for pictures to, ahem, entertain themselves to. It feels a bit weird to know about, but I guess whenever one posts a photo to the Internet, one runs the risk that someone somewhere might decide to masturbate to it.
Somewhat more disturbing is the fact that apparently some of these dudes are then taking the photos from the parenting forums and posting them on pregophilia websites, so everyone can join in on the “appreciation” of the pregnant woman. (I’m running out of euphemisms for masturbation here.) The photos are also sometimes shared on those sites by other friends and family members who have access to a person’s Facebook or Instagram page. Some apparently even come from the fathers of the gestating fetuses!
This is pretty gross. Having a pregnancy fetish is all well and good, but it’s very bad form to steal and share the photos of pregnant women who do not want to be part of anyone’s pregnancy fetish. There’s plenty of actual porn with consenting models and actresses out there. Leave the women who just want to talk about their stretch marks alone.
Unfortunately, the only way to completely avoid this situation is to not take and share pregnancy photos. Even keeping one’s photos confined to a small email list is no guarantee. The Internet is a weird place. I posted a photo of a sewing box last week, and if you told me someone had posted it to a sewing box fetish site I would probably only be a little surprised. (If there’s a “Bad Food Porn on Instagram” fetish site, I’d be surprised if my photos weren’t on there.) So there’s no reason to hide under a blanket for the rest of your life. Share your maternity photos if you want to, just be aware that there’s a chance they could wind up on a pregophilia site.
