Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by: Andrea ... - Feminish

who has been bought and sold. She may not remind heraudience that sexual servitude is a poor school for thehuman intellect and heart—sexually violated, often sincechildhood, she may not know the value of her humanintellect or her human heart— and the audience cannot becounted on to know that she deserved better than she got.Will there be someone there to implore the audience tohelp her escape the pornography— law or no law, constitutionor no constitution; will the audience understand thatas long as the pornography of her exists she is a captiveof it, a fugitive from it? Will the audience be willing tofight for her freedom by fighting against the pornographyof her, because, as Linda Marchiano said of Deep Throat,“every time someone watches that film, they are watchingme being raped”2? Will the audience understand that sheis standing in for those who didn’t get away; will the audienceunderstand that those who didn’t get away weresomeone—each one was someone? Will the audience understandwhat stepping down from the page or out of thefilm cost her—what it took for her to survive, for her toescape, for her to dare to speak now about what happenedto her then?“I’m an incest survivor, ex-pornography model, and exprostitute,” the woman says. “My incest story begins beforepreschool and ends many years later— this was with myfather. I was also molested by an uncle and a minister.. . my father forced me to perform sexual acts withmen at a stag party when I was a teenager.. . . My fatherwas my pimp in pornography. There were three occasionsfrom ages nine to sixteen when he forced me to be a pornographym o d el. . . in Nebraska, so, yes, it does happenhere. ”3I was thirteen when I was forced into prostitution and2 . P u b l i c H e a r i n g s o n O r d i n a n c e s t o A d d P o r n o g r a p h y a s D i s c r i m i n a t i o nA g a i n s t W o m e n , M i n n e a p o l i s C i t y C o u n c i l , G o v e r n m e n t O p e r a t i o n s C o m m i t t e e ,D e c e m b e r 1 2 a n d 1 3 , 1 9 8 3 , i n t r a n s c r i p t a v a i l a b l e f r o m O r g a n i z i n g A g a i n s tP o r n o g r a p h y , 7 3 4 E a s t L a k e S t r e e t , M i n n e a p o l i s , M n . 5 5 4 0 7 , p . 1 6 .3 . N a m e w i t h h e l d , m a n u s c r i p t .