On Total Denial: What it Means to Live in a Rape Culture

It’s hit the news recently about the conviction of 9 men for grooming and pimping underage girls. As ever, there’s been an outcry. But in truth, we live in a rape culture. These shocked protestations are as predictable and pointless as those in America whenever someone gets gunned down in their house or school. I mean, the link’s obvious, for chrissakes – you live in a gun culture where the ‘rights’ of the individual to own lethal weapons precede the rights of the community and children not to be shot dead. Compare the number of gunshot deaths in any non gun-toting nation and you can’t fail to make a connection. But nothing changes. The pro-gun lobby is too powerful, their money more persuasive than any amount of coherent thinking and informed argument, more valued than the lives of innocents. The media reacts with outrage and then today’s newspapers become tomorrow’s rubbish, all forgotten, business as usual.

We have the same thing going on here, but with the selling of women. We live in a misogynist culture, one in which women are bought and sold every day in pornography, in strip clubs, and it’s legal. The rights of the individual (male) consumer trumping the rights of women everywhere to be treated as equals, as human beings with thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, not a piece of meat, a set of holes to be bought, wanked over and discarded. That in such a culture some people will be hurt is a given. Every woman knows that in this culture she is viewed primarily as a commodity, there for the pleasure and profit of others. Hell, with tv ads and programmes, womens’ magazines, movies and radio blasting out this message she could hardly miss it, or help internalizing it at least to some degree. What woman hasn’t looked in the mirror and judged herself  imperfect against the prescribed form of beauty and sexiness sold us all day long? Everywhere you look – women for sale! But again, the sex industry lobby is powerful and has endless money at its disposal. So it continues, the link between the worldview it promotes and the abuse of women and children ignored. (see www.antipornography.org for the connection between the viewing of porn and attitudes towards rape).

What makes us think that in such a culture, where girls are indoctrinated into viewing themselves as sex objects at an ever younger age, where the sex industry has adopted the empowering language of feminism, where it has become the norm to see the sale of women for sex as a good thing, we will be able to enforce arbitrary lines of age and consent? In a culture which sells ‘Barely Legal’ magazines and dvds in which ‘models’ who look underage are introduced to sex by much older men in a manner directly mirroring those of child abuse, should we be surprised when young girls are abused?

Whatever we consume, be that food, tv, books or pornography, shapes us. It has an affect. Yet with pornography, we grasp fiercely onto the lie that this is not in fact the case. Like the gun lobbyists in the US after the next murder case, we call it an anomaly when something like this child pimping ring is exposed. We label the perpetrators ‘freaks’ and ‘other’  because we’re too damn comfortable to join up the dots, to make the connection.

If the girls who were abused had been 18, there would have been no outrage. The case would not have made the papers – unless, of course, it was in the ads section, under ‘personal services’. Does a vulnerable 17 year old suddenly become invulnerable at the turn of a birthday? The percentage of women in prostitution who have backgrounds of sexual abuse or grew up in care, who wound up in prostitution before they were 18*, attests that this recent case is not an aberration. But when they turn 18 we suddenly cease to have consciences and instead reach for the excuse – she chose it. She chose to be in porn, in prostitution (though we call it 'sex work' now- so much less distasteful!). In fact, we’ll even defend her right to be abused in the sex industry and feel like the big shot, protecting free speech.  One of the 15 years olds was raped by up to 20 men a day. This is an experience, sadly, shared by many women trapped in the sex industry, seeing john after john.

It is estimated that 3 million women are currently being trafficked worldwide in the sex trade (see Demand video at www.antipornography.org). Are we outraged, lobbying our politicians, saying ‘this can’t go on!’, demanding change? No! Instead we sit at home clicking away on our computers, wanking over women being degraded in pornography, telling ourselves she likes it, she’s smiling, she chose it, she’s well paid. When you click on an image on the internet there is simply no way of knowing whether the woman is pimped, is there through economic desperation, has been coerced. There should be a public outcry! Human slavery continues in this very day and age, in this very country, in the very town in which you live.

The question is, do we care? The same people who were in uproar about the pimping of these girls were outraged by the government’s suggestion of a possible ‘opt in’ for internet pornography, something which would protect children from exposure to pornography at a formative time in their lives, the normalization of extreme penetration and aggression which are becoming ever more mainstream. Consider this: the average age of exposure to pornography is 11. 90 percent of 8-16 years olds have viewed pornography online (TopTen Reviews: Internet Pornography Statistics). The largest consumer group of internet pornography is the 12 – 17 year old age group (www.internetfilterreview.com).

Combine this information with the following analysis of bestselling porn.  R. Wosnitzer and A.J. Bridges, in ‘Aggression and Sexual Behaviour in Best-Selling Pornography: A Content Analysis Update’, a paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, San Francisco, CA, 2007 reported that:
- 89.1% of scenes contained aggressive acts, with the average containing 11.52 acts of verbal or physical aggression (physical being the most common, featuring in 88.2% of all scenes)
- 94.4% of all aggression in films was directed towards women
- women in porn are shown to enjoy or not mind being abused:95.2% of victims responded with either neutral or pleasurable expressions

We have created a rape culture, a truly toxic environment.  Pornography is not only legal, it has become mainstream. We have naturalized the unnatural. TV programmes from Friends to According To Jim to The Big Bang Theory joke about pornography, and it is accepted without question that the male characters ‘use’ it. The women are presented as having no problem with it – in fact, they share the male viewpoint, even going to a strip club (Friends)and objectifying the strippers with the men. The message that programmes such as these, which are watched by children, give, is that it is part of being a man to buy women for sex, whether that be indirectly, through pornography, or in a strip club or elsewhere. This is normal and healthy and a demonstration of masculinity. Women learn that it is the done thing to ‘be cool’ about this objectification of women. If they don’t want to be labeled ‘jealous’ or ‘prudes’ they need to adopt a casual attitude towards the selling of other women, even if this leaves them with feelings of conflict.

Pornography promotes certain views about men and women. It promotes the view that women want to be fucked – it is their nature. If they say no they mean yes, even if they say it hurts or it looks like it hurts they still say they like it. In pornography, women get hurt and they ask for more. They are called names, spat at, choked, airtighted, slapped and they enjoy it. They smile and say that they enjoyed it. Only in pornography does a human being ask someone to hurt her.

In this toxic environment, we should be more surprised if pimping young girls wasn’t going on.

Of course, whether or not anything will change remains to be seen. That is up to us, you and I. Will we continue to defend woman-hating practices for fear of seeming prudish or illiberal? Or will we take a stand and say it is not acceptable to inflict suffering and treat women as subhuman for a quick and easy orgasm and a laugh? The sex industry has at its disposal more finances than the gun lobby and many more people who have a stake in its survival – porn is our right! It’s harmless! Yeah right, harmless. Stop yanking your plank and face facts. A gun toting nation leads to gun crime. A porn obsessed nation leads to sex crime. Condemning the consequences of something you support is hypocrisy plain and simple. It’s time to get honest with ourselves. What do we value most highly: pleasure and profit or human beings? Protest all you want, the only effective solution is to take personal responsibility for our actions and their impact on others and stop porn culture.

* see www.object.org.uk for statistics

Damaged Lives: The Hidden Cost of Pornography

There’s going to be a whole army of women out there who have had the experience of having their heads flushed down toilets as entertainment, being strangled as entertainment, being double penetrated and throat fucked ‘til they throw up as entertainment. These are women who found themselves caught up in something beyond their control, the sex industry, where the person who’s meant to be on their side, their ‘agent’ (best case scenario – or pimp), pushes and pushes and pushes them to ever more painful and degrading acts in the pursuit of money. Hard to see a human being when you have dollar signs in your eyes. These are vulnerable women, often women with histories of sexual abuse, physical abuse, substance abuse, psychological abuse, with mental health problems, financial problems. These are the women who just can’t say no, but not in the sexy way the industry would have you think. More of a Hobson’s choice situation.

Welcome to hell on earth. Lost already, you become increasingly split: detached from yourself, from what is happening to your body, from the verbal abuse directed at and over you, in which you’re made to take part - call yourself names, beg to be hurt. Alone, with no one to turn to for help, reliant on the very people who abuse you, who make money off your abuse. You become a shell: there but not there, enduring, just enduring, unable to comprehend, to compute, the horror of what is being done to you for the profit and pleasure of others. Out of your depth.

When you are hurt, people laugh or hurt you more. You stop showing that it hurts. Naked already, with cameras focused on your most intimate areas, on capturing their abuse, you become numb: this is what you do, what you are here for. They will do what they will do and it’s best not to think about it. You have to change the goalposts to survive. What was once humiliating and unthinkable is now an everyday occurrence. Unavoidable. It becomes: as long as I don’t show that I’m hurting, that they’re getting to me, give them that satisfaction. Your boundaries are broken one by one: they fuck you in the arse, subject you to double penetrations, to fisting, to speculums, to urinating and spitting and slapping and choking… Endless abuse, endless pain, endless degradation.

Total destruction.

The only thing left is your denial and your determination that they will not see how much they hurt you. Feigning supreme indifference, even enjoyment, you pretend you have some measure of control because to recognize your powerlessness is to open the gates to insanity and in all likelihood suicide.

As ever more aggressive, ever more debasing porn becomes more mainstream, the number of women who have had these experiences, who have been sold, abused and profited from, who have been tortured, grows. Everyday it grows. If they are lucky enough to get out, to get clean and sober (yeah, most women in porn have substance abuse issues – wouldn’t you drink or use to get through?), where have they to turn?

Most people nowadays if they are told that a woman has been in porn, would say ‘cool’. Cool!!! Knowing as she does the reality – wiping down after 8 sweating pigs have cum in her face, limping to the shower after being anally and vaginally penetrated for hours at a time with cocks and objects, bruised and bleeding, what was said to her and what she was made to say, the coercion, the ever present threat of violence, the powerlessness – this metrosexual, abstract notion of cool is from another planet. She has never been less understood. Hell, even the pornographers, even the cameramen, even her pimp or agent acknowledge that this stuff isn’t good on the body, is a test of endurance rather than a pleasure trip.

Hers is a great loneliness, separated as she is from the majority who believe that pornography is harmless fun, that women in it are empowered, choose it from a variety of meaningful options, enjoy it. 'Paid to get laid? Awesome!'. Her friends may hold this view, her neighbours may hold this view, her therapist may hold this view. Protective of their ‘right’ to wank over other women in similar circumstances, unwilling to hear the truth, theirs is a language far removed from the sordid realities, an abstract language of free speech and liberation. To many of the people who surround her, porn is just a concept, one with a very pleasing result, easily cleaned up with a tissue. These people, people who defend porn, project their dark desires onto her, conveniently forgetting that the reason for her being there is their demand for such images rather than her desire to engage in such acts. She wanted it! After all, she said so didn’t she, and she smiled?

A growing number of women who have been subjected to extreme physical, sexual, psychological torture. They are traumatised, they are used in ever more extreme ways for the amusement of the purchaser, unless they are lucky enough to exit, until they are too broken to be of further use. Anyone who objects to the use of the word 'torture' here might do well to look it up, and to compare some of increasingly common porn practices such as gagging, spitting, verbal abuse, slapping, and 'swirlies' to name but a few.

The pornographer doesn’t care about her.
The men fucking her don’t care about her.
The pimps and agents don’t care about her.
The guy at home with his cock in his hand doesn’t care about her. Her life is unimaginable to him, her humanity invisible to him, her hopes and dreams destroyed for him, all for a cheap and easy laugh and an orgasm.

She has quite simply no place left to go, her body battered from fucking after fucking without condom or care, her head mashed with thousands of fragmented images, sounds, scents, words, reminders of horror and pain and degradation beyond words. She has nightmares, flashbacks, PTSD. She continues to get sick, as she did when she was in it. Suicide becomes an option* Her humanity has been disregarded by every person in her life who sold her, who fucked her, who pressured her, who paid the men who did this to her and then calmly laid the blame at her feet.

We need to understand what it means to be a woman on a website called ‘Elastic Assholes’, to have people joke that ‘she might just be wearing a diaper by the time we’re finished’. To feel or to try to empathise what is is actually like to be choked so you can’t breathe, to be facefucked so viciously you throw up, to have water in your eyes and nose and mouth when you’ve been fucked every which way possible and they’re flushing your head down the toilet, the final insult. What it is like to be violently abused and traumatised, and to know that images of that abuse are being sold and generating money for the men who hurt you.

I am a survivor of prostitution – of pornography – of torture. Just. It’s been touch and go and recovery isn’t a piece of cake either. Being abused for entertainment is inhumane.

To remain desensitized is to be inhuman. If we’re not part of the solution, taking a stand against pornography, taking action, we’re part of the problem. Together we can be stronger and make a difference. We need to look past the picture the pornographer has painted for us of the women he uses.  She is not other, in some way different. There is not a subspecies of woman who wish to be abused in such a way. If it would hurt you to have two cocks in your arse, it will hurt her. Let go of the bullshit line of dismissal ‘whatever floats your boat’ and imagine yourself in her shoes for one moment. Would you like it? Would you be happy having that done to you? Would you be happy if she were your daughter or your sister or your mother? She says she likes it in the movies, maybe even asks them to hurt her because she has to, but if you look into her eyes, if you dare, you’ll see the very real fear and pain, you’ll see the truth.

Stop funding a system that destroys women. Stop porn.

* The suicide rate and death from drug and alcohol abuse in the industry is significantly above average, see www.antipornography.org

Not For Sale: The Sex Industry Sell Out

The one and only reason that I am against prostitution and pornography is that I am for people. I believe in people. Male and female we deserve more than this, this narrow view of sexuality and gender, this web of lies concocted and perpetuated by the sex industry and society’s acceptance of it.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Anything that crushes the human spirit, that disregards people’s humanity, must be seen for what it is and put to an end. The fact that the sex industry may have adopted the language of good – freedom of speech, empowerment, liberation of sexuality – does not in fact make it good. It has been a feature of many dominant and damaging ideologies that they have adopted language which appeals to the culture they emerge in. It is a key to their survival. But when that language bears no relation to the realities such systems create and maintain, it must be disregarded. We cannot begin to change things if we do not keep our language real.

The sex industry does men a huge disservice: it teaches them that women want to be treated like sex objects, and that to object to such a view is somehow unmanly and less-than. It perpetuates an aggressive, macho culture in which buying women, fucking women without care or respect is both normal and also something to aspire to, to laugh about, to brag about. A male bonding experience. Porn is no advocator of equality, of gentleness or mutuality. Sex is something the man does to the woman – the rougher and the more holes he penetrates, the better. It is about conquest and domination.

The sex industry does women a huge disservice. Its effects reach far beyond the women directly involved in the making of porn, in lapdancing and prostitution. Womens’ bodies are cheapened by the mere fact that they are everywhere for sale. Women in porn accept any treatment, no matter how painful or degrading, with gratitude and an orgasm to boot. Any woman who objects to women being sold risks being labeled frigid or jealous (!). Women’s magazines, tv chat shows and advice columns have been quick promote the views of the sex industry, telling women who are upset by their husband / son’s use of pornography that it is normal and healthy and to get over it. Women may find themselves coerced into re-enacting sex acts their partners have seen, and their partners are able to point to a whole host of sources which show this is mainstream: it’s normal. Teen magazines feature articles such as ‘position of the fortnight’, and women’s magazines have articles such as ‘how to keep your man happy in bed’ in which blowjobs are just the beginning, the base line of expectation. There are online ‘love and sex advice’ sites where if a woman writes that she finds anal sex painful, she will be given a load of practical advice to make it better. No one ever says, if it hurts, if you don’t want to do it but feel pressured, just don’t do it. You have the right to say no, no explanation required.

Women’s magazines frequently sell the sex industry’s side of the story: lapdancing as harmless fun and a good way to make a quick buck; stripping as a bit of glamour and excitement; 'our day (pre-arranged of course) on a porn set'. We aren’t told the truth and misinformation makes it hard to make informed decisions. Women will often argue in favour of the ‘rights’ of other women ( - I wouldn’t do it myself) to sell their bodies. This is based on ignorance as to the realities of what being fucked for money actually means, and an overwhelming pressure which tells us that to fit in, to be acceptable and non-prudish, non-judgmental, we must go along with it and say that it’s okay, even if it doesn’t feel right.

In such a worldview, there is no room for individuality, for empathy, for respect, for intimacy. People are reduced to their body parts, for financial gain. Sex becomes a formulaic, mechanical act, devoid of connection, with no space for personal preference, feeling or emotion, with pressure to perform on both sides: both parties acting an act, re-creating a vision which has been given us, illustrated for us so graphically in a thousand pornos, making the right noises, looking the part.

We must change this! The omnipresent sex industry has stolen our humanity, stolen our sexuality, stolen the way in which we perceive those around us and short changed us with a twisted, power-laden, financially driven lie. A lie which our society profits from and so continues to sell us. So mainstream is the sex industry propaganda that it has become naturalised, almost invisible. There exists, however, a marginalized but increasingly vocal group of people who risk the wrath of society at large by speaking out, saying ‘it wasn’t good for me – being sold, being forced to act like a pornstar wasn’t good for me’. We must continue to speak out, and work together – male and female, because the sex industry damages both men and women. We need to take action and say, I don’t want to be a part of this, I won’t be a part of this, I’m not buying into it because I want more and you know what, I deserve more. I am a human being and I deserve more.

On Societal Blindspots: Porn and Prostitution, Women For Sale

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.

Good John Bad John?

The johns want their egos massaged, not just their cocks. If they fantasise about power and force and humiliation, they want to see the fear and shame in you eyes. If they fantasise about being good with women, they want you to say you love being with them, talking with them. If they fantasise about being a great lover, well ...Yeah baby, I love it when you do that... mmm, that feels sooo good... you are amazing... ooh, you've made me cum again...

Maybe not. It used to amaze me that any of the johns I met could have been so stupid as to have thought that what they were doing to me would actually give anyone an orgasm. Hello! Perhaps time to turn off the porn and throw out the notion that fucking any orifice with any thing will make me ecstatic. Plus maybe did you ever think about washing down there before you shove it in my face? Just a thought.

Sometimes they want to be the good guy, in the face of all the evidence. They want to differentiate themselves from your average john, they don't want to be bracketed with the sexual inadequates, women haters and weirdos. I'm not like that! The girls love me cos I understand them, cos I talk to them. The girls love me cos I'm a good lover.

BS!

You kind of think, what d'you want, a fucking medal because you've chosen not to be an out and out sadist today? So you didn't shout at me and beat me up. Hardly a qualification for sainthood. Perhaps you asked me how I am or why I'm here, in a pretence of care (you don't actually want to know), to make yourself feel better. It demonstrates either stupidity or a wilful ignorance of the obvious, that anything I say in this context will be lies for your benefit, to appease your conscience, such as it is. Disobedience and backchat is potentially deadly as a prostitute so I have to say what you want to hear. So I'll tell you I'm here cos I love sex, and I love talking to you and I love being here, love your company and your cock, and pretend I'm not here for the money for the addiction and because of the mental hell caused by the abuse I suffered in my past. And you'll ignore the self harm scars and the smell of alcohol, and go away thinking you might have actually improved my day! Gee, you didn't beat the crap out of me - thanks for that.

If you were really concerned for my welfare, you wouldn't be here, wouldn't be a john. A bit of pseudo-kindness can't hide that.

You're still paying for my body, still demanding a performance, still violating my space, still funding the system that's destroying me one lie at a time. Whether they consciously desire your pain or whether they're after affirmation of their sexual technique, johns are johns are the guys with the money, the guys calling the shots, the ones with the power. They're still there to fuck you, to use you, to degrade you. They still demand you respond in whatever way gets their rocks off, be that abject terror as they hurt you or the little sweet girl playing along with this oh what fun! They don't want you to be you - that's why they're paying rather than with a girlfriend. Even the 'girlfriend experience' is about acquiescing to their every whim. They are paying you in short to be less than human, to have no needs or wants of your own, to be used as they wish, to react as they wish, to say what they wish, your body the blank canvas for their fantasies, however extreme, the words in your mouth their words not yours. If someone talks to you before they fuck you, it doesn't lessen the violation.

The omni-presence of porn of course legitimates the johns' thinking. It teaches them that women want to be fucked in every which way possible, however extreme or painful it might seem. She'll love it in the end, used and abused and covered in cum, smiling for the camera.

You hate them, and they use you, whether that be more or less roughly, with more or less hardcore talk and moves. A lose lose situation, a web of lies designed to massage their ego, make them cum. I can say honestly it didn't do anything for me. Less than that, in fact. Just left a fuck load of emotional scars that are healing much slower than the physical ones. And a burning desire to set the record straight with the johns. They need to get honest with themselves. There's no such thing as a good john.

Destruction Calling: Come on Down

I get the strongest urge at times to utterly destroy myself, to hurt and hurt and hurt myself, to shred myself to bits. To punish myself. It's as if I've internalised what they said to me - you deserve it, you like it, you were meant for this - worthless! Bitch! Dirty girl! Slut! Whore... and on. There's a part of me that feels horribly dirty and damaged beyond repair, which makes any attempt at change seem utterly futile.

My therapist said to me, when you encounter evil of the type you have experienced, most people go with one of two options: destroy others, thus perpetuating the evil, or destroy themselves. I took the latter course. I believed the badness, the hatred and aggression, and the dirtiness, which belonged to the men who used me, to be mine. There were no boundaries: nothing was mine, nothing was sacred, there was nothing that couldn't be smashed and tainted. Their words circled in my head, their hands possessed my body, their body fluids in and on me, my pain their orgasm. They consumed me. Not surprising then that I was confused about what was their stuff and what was mine. Degradation after degradation, beating after beating, rape after rape. It was always my fault - my fault I got hit for not cooperating, for showing him up, for making him angry, my fault I got raped because I deserved it, liked it, was a slut anyway, had it coming to me.

They told me it was my fault, and I believed them. Their voices were louder, more persistent, more cruel, playing on my fears, on my insecurities than the small whisper in my head that said this isn't right, what they do and say isn't right. They told me I was dirty and it fit my experience: I felt dirty, a collection of holes to be fucked and cum on and in. They told me I was worthless: I felt worthless, disposable, when one man after another used me and then left me, a battered wreck, to clean myself up, to make myself decent for the next fucking. They told me I liked it, and I thought, no I don't, but I found myself saying I did, colluding, to try and stay safe, try and avoid any more violence.

I felt at times I simply can't take anymore - anymore shouting, anymore beatings, anymore punishments. Anything but that, I'll do anything. And I did. The shame stays with me, the self-blame stays with me.

To survive what was happening, I used to tell myself it doesn't really matter, I don't matter, this body isn't really me. Unable to remove myself from that situation, just to survive, I ended up internalising the attitude of my abusers, denying my own feelings and rights and humanity. Knowing I might die there, but powerless to change that, coming close, I detached from myself, and said to myself, so be it. So tired, so so tired of the fear and the pain and the daily horror of being sold.

It's a slow and painful process to say to myself that I do matter, that what was done to me does matter, and to really believe it. There remains a behaviour pattern in me that makes it much easier to say, particularly when I'm tired and struggling and hurting as I am right now, it doesn't matter: none of this matters and neither do I, and hurt myself again. To detach from this body, as I did then, to separate off, let the body take the punishment, and self harm. I get this overwhelming urge to purge myself of this evil, to be rid of it, to destroy every last bit of it, but this evil left its marks on me, on Angel, in the form of scars and body memories, association. To wipe out the past would be to wipe out the body, to wipe out me, to end myself.

I have come to understand, though it has taken time, and the urge to hurt myself, to punish myself remains strong, that this is misplaced emotion. I don't want to erase Angel, and I shan't. I just don't want to feel dirty anymore, feel shameful anymore, feel worthless anymore. I still feel powerless in the face of the sex industry. But I can see that this is not my shame to bear. I can see that the dirt and the guilt and the blame lie with the men who used and sold me. The feelings, though, oh the feelings! They take a little longer to catch up. As long as I keep doing the right actions - talking about this stuff, writing about this stuff - I don't have to act on it. I didn't get clean and sober to fuck myself up another way.

You know what needs destroying? The sex industry with all its lies and abuses. I fully intend to do everything in my power to aid that process.

On Hangovers of the Emotional Type

My scars have come to my attention again, now I'm dating, seeing a new man. He notices and is curious. I'm not used to the questions. I had the same scars from my ex when I prostituted myself, but the johns couldn't have cared less. Fixated by boobs and holes, those staples of pornography, I doubt they even noticed.

Maybe not. They couldn't have missed the self imposed gashes on my arms, a desperate attempt on my part to survive, to live with the unlivable, to be me in my body, be me in the wreckage of my life. They wouldn't have wanted to know, anyhow. After all, isn't that the whole point of pornography, of prostitution, that it's the guilt free buying and using of a woman as a sex object? No place for hearing the woman's story, hearing her emotions, asking how it makes her feel and how she comes to be here - it would get in the way. The punters demand a guilt free, truth free experience, whether it be cumming in the face of the prostitute they bought or knocking one out over the shiny pages of a magazine, the woman's humanity another step removed, just to be folded up and put into a drawer.

The punter finishes and is free to continue with their everyday life. Not so the woman he uses! She lives this, she knows, has reaffirmed on a daily basis that her only value comes from being a receptacle for his spunk, a spectacle to be held open and abused and penetrated and sold. She doesn't matter: her pain, her feelings don't matter; what matters is him, the punter, his pleasure, his kicks. The only thing that matters about her is that she is available, that she is mute, that she displays nothing but pleasure and gratitude for whatever he chooses to do to her, however painful or sadistic. Rough anal sex? No problem - I love it. Double penetration? Feels so good! Ass to mouth? Fisting? Being pissed on? Can't get enough.

As if. Each time she is abused, she shrinks a little, becomes less. Every time he abuses her, he grows a little, becomes more. His power grows as hers diminishes. Boundaries no longer exist. Those sexual acts she didn't want, that hurt her and humiliate and debase her happen one by one. Her 'no' lacks power and the ability to remove herself from the situation to safety. You hear those words coming out of her mouth, asking for more, moaning with pleasure, saying she likes it, his words, but in her mouth. He is the puppet master. Take it from a woman who knows, the ultimate humiliation is being made to thank your abuser, to ask to be abused more. I cut, I drank and I drugged, I dissociated, I cried myself to sleep where there were nightmares waiting just to pick up where he left off.

With my ex, I knew what was expected. The violence, and the threat of it, was constant. I was told to smile for the photographs, to say that I liked it for the camera. Sometimes it was clear that I wasn't there by choice - there were welts and bruises, and violence on film (and that sells well in some quarters) but not always. It's easy to ignore what you don't want to see. For the user of pornography, he has behind him the weight of a society which condones and normailses his buying of women as laddishness. A society which, furthermore, says, don't worry about her, she loves it, is liberated by it, empowered by it, makes good money from it.

3 years out, and the bruises are gone. The wounds have healed into scars which will be with me for the rest of my life. But it's the mental scars that hurt me the most. My PTSD's been bad again of late, and it's not always easy to live with my past, the abuse. It continues to impact on my present, the emotional hangover of being sold which society continues to choose to ignore. It's a tricky trap to get free from. All I know is that as much as it hurts, trying to move forward is the only option. It's a beautiful thing to be with someone I care about. I'm going to use every means at my disposal to leave that shit behind so I can actually enjoy what I have.

On Equality

I was talking with a friend the other day about man hating, and it made me think... I am not a man hater. I did go through a phase of hating men, when I was 'working' as a prostitute, and looking back, it's easy to see why. My ex partner abused me, the men he introduced me to abused me and the johns paid to abuse me. It was far safer for me to say, men are shits, they hurt you, and to disconnect. I think it made it less personal, less hurtful to me as a human being, to say all men are like this.

Now, though, in recovery, and over time, I have come to believe something different. As the anger fades, and I can see things a little clearer, see the hurt a little clearer, I can see my old view for what it was: a defence mechanism which was helpful in a situation of extreme trauma. I have sought therapy in recovery (I spent 12 months seeing a male therapist, which helped me immensely with my difficulties trusting men), and met and became friends with some good men along the way. I have come to see the truth that just as there are good women and bad women, so there are good men and bad men. I just happened to have spent more time with the latter!

The porn industry perpetuates a lie, it sells us a lie that men and women are fundamentally completely different. Women are there to be used, to be fucked and photographed and filmed as sexual animals, who want that, who love that, and who get off on that (look at that smile!). Men, on the other hand, are there to dominate, to penetrate, to violate, with impunity. All this under the guise of 'free speech', of 'harmless fun', of 'boys just being boys'. It is excused, no, more than that, it is expected that men behave a certain way, treat women a certain way, in order to be men. The subtext is clear: if you do not buy into using pornography, into treating women as sexual objects, to be seen as a collection of body parts and 'holes' that exist for your pleasure, you are less than. Similarly, a woman who questions whether an industry that sells women's bodies, that makes vast sums of money not for the women it uses but for the men who sell them, is 'empowering and liberating' for women, are labelled as prudes.

The sex industry has achieved something quite remarkable: it has hijacked the language of feminism and choice to defend its destructive and oppressive practices. And society has bought into this. I don't believe it's easy for anyone, man or woman, to stand against what has become seen as 'normal' and mainstream. Society has naturalised something which is completely unnatural, which oppresses both men and women. There's nothing new about the oppression of women, but the way that the sex industry seeks to undermine its opponents by posing as some sort of protector of free speech, justice and liberty has added a clever twist and made it more difficult for people to speak out against it.

The lies that we are told and sold by the sex industry are damaging to both men and women. But we do not have to buy into those lies. I believe that men and women are equal, and that a healthy relationship between men and women needs to be founded on respect for their common dignity and humanity. We all bleed if we're cut. We all hurt if we're beaten. To tell men that they are 'less manly' for not treating women as sex objects is to do them a disservice. To tell women that they are 'prudes' for wishing to be treated as ore than sex objects is to do them a disservice.

It is not surprising that such a hugely profitable industry should defend itself at all costs against attack. What is perhaps more surprising is the way our society has bought into this so easily. In my experience, a good deal of the inaction around the inequalities the sex industry fuels is based purely on ignorance. People who lack personal experience of the sex industry look at the arguments as they are laid out (by the sex industry), and are drawn in by what superficially appears to be the side of 'choice' and 'empowerment' for women, ie the sex industry's argument. As a survivor of pornography, of prostitution and domestic violence, there is nothing more painful to me then to watch other women fight to defend the 'rights' of other women to be treated as I was. The arguments defenders of the sex industry use are abstract, impersonal, at a safe distance, and sanitised beyond meaning. I defy anyone, male or female, who saw what I saw, who experienced what I experienced - being raped, being beaten, being threatened, being sold - to continue to defend the practices of the industry. The use of women by the sex industry is nothing if not personal! Being naked and penetrated and wanked over and used again and again is as personal as it gets.

So though I remain cautious in my interactions with men (as I do with women: trust takes time to rebuild after being so thoroughly shattered), I do not buy into the lie of the sex industry that men are at the mercy of their hormones, controlled by their penises. I think men deserve to be given more credit than that. Men and women who oppose what the sex industry is doing to our society, and how it treats the people it uses, need to join forces and fight together. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for the good person to sit and do nothing. It's time we spoke out, side by side, male and female.