Violence against women has become so prevalent, so generally accepted, as to be largely invisible. Pornography and prostitution are a part of that blindspot. The language used by the majority in any discussion about such abuse ensures that it remains that way. It has been carefully sanitised to the point of abstract vacuousness. It is the language of unreality.
Supporters of the sex industry speak of 'sex work', 'clients', 'female empowerment', 'sexual liberation', 'easy money', 'choice', and being 'respecters of women' - 'we don't see them as victims, we support their own agency'. They call pornography, stripping and lapdancing 'harmless fun', say 'boys will be boys', and tend to say stuff like 'I wouldn't do it myself but I would never judge a woman for expressing her sexuality that way'. How very generous.
Women who are in the sex industry have to go along with these notions because when you are being bought (or sold, if you have a pimp), you are not free to say any different. You are not a free person at all but goods for sale. You are there to get him off, your buyer, the john, whatever that takes. It's not acceptable, nor safe, to tell it as it is. It is all about him and what he wants but you are made to say it is all about you - you choose to be here, you like what he does to you no matter how extreme. This notion that if a woman in porn is smiling, if a prostitute smiles, it proves she's happy and enjoying it, is a lie. You see, you thought it was about her, that she's smiling by choice.
This is not about her.
It's always, always, about him. The man off camera. The audience it's going to be aimed at and sold to. Her pimp or her agent or her madam, and how much money they want to make. The more extreme sex acts make more money, see, cos they hurt and they get the buyer off. He wants to see her 'taking it all like the dirty slut she is', and she's been told to smile to revert responsibility for the abuse she's experiencing back onto her. A woman who's smiling but clearly in pain, or a woman saying stuff like 'fuck me harder' when her expression says otherwise should ring alarm bells, not set our consciences at rest.
Women lucky enough to get out of the sex industry in enough of one piece to find a voice still have a problem speaking out, being heard, because the language we use - the language of reality - is deemed too extreme. People don't want to hear it. We speak of violence, of johns not clients, of fear and pain and the smells and body fluids of men we never wanted to touch us on and in our bodies. Prostitution, being in porn isn't just a 'job'. In what other job do you learn to split off from yourself, to dissociate just to survive? We say it wasn't empowering, being verbally and physically abused wasn't empowering. We speak of rape and lack of choice, of mental health problems and histories of abuse, we speak of addictions and vulnerability all exploited in the worst possible way. Of poverty and being trapped and used - others profiting from the use of our bodies, not us. Any cash we might have had goes straight into drugs or booze, anything to block out the reality of what's happening to us day after day.
But people don't want to hear it. Interfering, as it threatens to, with their own enjoyment of porn, with their quick and easy orgasm, they call us liars. And worse. They refuse to see the truth because then they'd have to look at themselves and what they do. Instead they say we are not part of the problem because there is no problem.
And then they abuse you for speaking the truth, for having a voice. You know, this idea that it can't have been that bad, that women essentially want a good fucking and so porn or prostitution's a dream come true cos they not only get fucked but they get paid for it, is pretty hard to shake. An ex-partner of mine in recovery said to me with some disbelief, but you must have enjoyed some of it. And this after he'd seen the scars all over my body made by my pimp! He'd been so indoctrinated by porn culture that he was actually unable to get his head around the fact that being a prostitute, being abused on film and for the camera could not have been pleasurable.
We are no longer together.
In truth, in my experience there is nothing remotely sexy about being a prostitute, or about being used in porn. There's no turn on. It's all about what it looks like or what it feels like for the man fucking you or buying the dvd of you being fucked, not about what it feels like for you. So penetration's the order of the day, with whatever - cocks or toys or objects or fists, the bigger the better as far as the buyer is concerned - but with absolutely no regard for what it feels like for you. Sucking cocks isn't exactly foreplay and won't make the fucking any less painful. Neither is it pleasurable - it's all a performance, your body always contorted in whatever way necessary for best visibility of your orifices and breasts. You are focussed on breathing through the pain, on getting through, surviving. Orgasmic? Hardly. Just let me get through it, let me get through it. You split from the body as much as you can - hardly an aid to an orgasm, just what the mind does to survive the body being so abused, over an over. You hope they'll use lube, the lubrication of spitting, copied from a thousand other pornos, is never enough. It's painful enough even if they do use lube.
Imagine someone poking their finger in your mouth, jabbing it about, maybe making your gums bleed. Multiply that pain a good many times. Then add to that the mental pain, the humiliation of knowing that these are your most intimate body parts being opened up and used for entertainment to strangers, your vagina and your anus. Then maybe you have some idea of how unsexy and painful being poked and prodded and fucked for money is. Naked and used by man after man, stranger after stranger, telling you you're a dirty bitch, touching you everywhere (and not gently), looking at your body with a look so filthy you want to shower for a month just to feel clean. Doing stuff to your body for their pleasure not because it feels good for you, often doing stuff deliberately to hurt you, then pushing their cock inside you, with or without a condom, leaving you covered in their body fluids. There is no intimacy, no illusion of intimacy. You are simply a set of holes they will mechanically grope and pound away at, an outlet for their anger.
It's not personal.
Not for them anyway - the punter, the pimp, the pornographer - but it is for you. It doesn't get more personal than this. When you have to flee your own body mentally because of what they do to it, it feels personal. When you're trapped there through violence and addiction and lack of choices, it feels personal. When you pick yourself up when they're done with you, limp to the shower and scrub yourself raw to try to purge your body of their touch and their sneers and their taunts and their body fluids, it feels personal. The abuse lives on in the videotape, your pain and degradation continues to entertain. You are absolutely alone: no one sees you properly, no one hears you. They look through your suffering, turn a blind eye to the reality and reach for their orgasm, or else sometimes see the suffering and get off on it anyway.
Let's stop buying into the sex industry's language and tell it as it is. Porn and prostitution are not abstract, sanitised, safe, empowering or even jobs in any recognisable use of the language. In porn and prostitution, the only free speech is that of the pimps and pornographers and the lies that they sell. The women are not free and are only permitted to speak the words of the pornographer to aid your orgasm. As Dworkin wrote, when did a vagina or anus have a voice? Let's cut the bullshit and for one moment just allow ourselves to see and hear the reality. We can't afford to be blind to the fact that women are being sold and abused all around us, every day, in whatever town or city you live in. We're starting to feel some of the logical consequences of that, which the tabloids always respond to in shocked outrage. But unless we address the real issue, unless we turn and face this blind spot, women for sale, any shock or outrage will be pure hypocrisy. Time to join up the dots.
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