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

have been h urt by pornography. T he women are real tome. I know what they look like standing tall; I’ve seen thefear; I’ve watched them rem em ber; I’ve talked with themabout other things, all sorts of things: intellectual issues,the weather, politics, school, children, cooking. I have someidea of their aspirations as individuals, the ones they lostduring the course o f sexual abuse, the ones they cherishnow. I know them . Each one, for me, has a face, a voice,a whole life behind her face and her voice. Each is m oreeloquent and more h u rt than I know how to convey. Since1974, when my book Woman Hating was first published,women have been seeking me out to tell me that they havebeen hurt by pornography; they have told me how theyhave been h urt in detail, how much, how long, by howmany. They thought I m ight believe them , initially, I think,because I took pornography seriously in Woman Hating. Isaid it was cruel, violent, basic to the way our culture seesand treats wom en— and I said the hate in it was real. Well,they knew that the hate in it was real because they hadbeen sexually assaulted by that hate. O ne does not makethe first tentative efforts to com m unicate about this abuseto those who will almost certainly ridicule one. Somewomen took a chance on me; and it was a chance, becauseI often did not want to listen. I had my limits and myreasons, like everyone else. For many years, I heard thesame stories I have tried to encapsulate here: the samestories, sometimes m ore complicated, sometimes more savage,from thousands of women, most o f whom hadn’tdared to tell anyone. No part of the country was exem pt;no age group; no racial or ethnic group; no “life-style”however “norm al” or “alternative. ” T he statem ents I haveparaphrased here are not special: not more sadistic, notchosen by me because they are particularly sickening oroffensive. In fact, they are not particularly sickening oroffensive. They simply are what happens to women whoare brutalized by the use of pornography on them.Such first-person stories from women are dismissed bydefenders of pornography as “anecdotal”; they misuse the