Comedy Club Central

I was reading an interview with Larry Flynt the other day (The Independent: Fri 27th May 2011). The guy who claims he lost his virginity aged 9 fucking a chicken (leaving it bleeding and squawking - he killed it after). He seems to have spent the rest of his life taking much the same attitude to women through his magazine, Hustler. This is the magazine that depicted a woman being gang raped on a pool table, showed rats coming out of women's vaginas, showed a woman being forcibly shaved, raped and then killed in a concentration camp. To name but a few. Criticised for inciting the gang rape of a woman on a pool table in New Bedford, Hustler brought out postcards showing another woman being gang raped on a pool table with the tidings: 'Greetings from New Bedford, Gang Rape Capital of America'. The rape victim's reaction is unrecorded, but it made Flynt laugh and seemed to satisfy his 'readers'.

This guy got filthy rich by publishing hatred against women's bodies and encouraging people to have a laugh and a wank over it.

How did such pictures come to be legally defensible as 'free speech'? Since when has a tortured vagina been able to speak? How could rape and torture, the complete absence of freewill and choice, come to be celebrated as a freedom, fought for as a freedom? Why would people rally to the call of such a man and come to his aid?

What ever happened to the rights of women not to be violated, not to be shamed and humiliated and tortured and used for the entertainment of others?

Do we really want to encourage people to laugh at this stuff, get turned on by this stuff? Would you feel the same, could you feel the same if your daughter, your sister was used in one of these photoshoots? Still think he's a hero, a warrior for free speech, not just some overweight white guy getting rich and getting his rocks off by degrading women, selling women? What about Chester the Molester, the cartoons he published about a paedophile's exploits until the guy who drew them for him got busted for paedophilia?

Is anyone still laughing out there?

Porn isn't in some bubble. What is acceptable there, the attitudes towards women promoted there, are going to have an impact on how the people who 'use' (wank over) it regard women in real life. And yet as a society we wilfully choose to turn our backs on this unpalatable truth and lumber on, any passing doubts quickly overridden by a fast orgasm and a mental channel change.

Maybe it's time to join up the dots.