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.

Warzone

And I find myself in that place again. At war with myself, at war with my body, body and mind at their most conflicted. Even my mind's in conflict, a series of bickering, fragmented voices all vying for attention, clamouring to be listened to, acted on. Logic versus feelings, addict versus values, inner critic versus my more forgiving, compassionate side.

It's hard to see anything beyond me, beyond this, images and scenarios replaying before my eyes, difficult to hear the voices of friends when the voices battling in my head drown them out. The world clatters on around me but I am lost and disoriented, inhabiting the past, and terrified of the future.

The only constant is fear.

I shake and my heart races and my thoughts race, chasing themselves round in circles, round and round, picking up momentum, getting more confused. The words start to run together, I'm losing my words, and I feel like I did then, and it's terrifying and it's everything and it's nothing and it's dark and it's tangled and twisted.

A knot in my stomach.

A tightness in my throat.

A choking breathlessness.

Can't think. Can't speak. Can't move.

Terrifying. Despair, blackness, hopelessness, pain, lostness, powerlessness.

I can't connect. Lonely on my own, lonelier in company.

Even when it stills, when it calms, it's ever present, lurking in the background, an ominous presence, threatening to blot out a fragile grip on reality.

Then, existing through the pain, through the violence, caught in the cycle, I named this place The Pit. I used to think, once you're in there, ain't no getting out, baby, not ever.

I had revised my opinion.

But now... I reconnect like I was never away.

Living in Limbo

There comes a point when the feelings are so intense, the pain so raw, that words cease to do them justice. You grope about for the vocabulary but there is none. Nothing you say could approximate to how you feel, to what they do to you. People fail you, and language fails you too.

And who's listening anyway? Who's gonna help? You feel invisible. When you go to A&E (and you should go more, but he won't let you - scared they'll find out) and they talk over you, as you lie in the bed - 'drunk enough to knock out a horse', 'clearly alcoholic', 'look at the state they get themselves into', and disregard you and your pain, you lose your humanity. You become 'she', 'her', 'just another drunk', unworthy even of a name. You're already hurting, but still they hurt you, hurt on hurt. You can't take much more of this.

This woman in the bed has feelings you know.

You know you're on your own. And you blame yourself already, hate yourself already, for the drink and the drugs. You're trying to survive, just trying to survive, and you know these things are problems in themselves, you're not stupid, though they treat you like you are, but you're scared and lost and lonely there are no choices. The people who are meant to help you, the 'professionals', judge you and look at you like you're a piece of shit, which is what he told you anyway. When opening your mouth risks disbelief, or his fist, you stop talking. You hurt enough: you don't need anymore.

Feelings, events, people, all jumble in your head, a wordless, hopeless, non-narrative you'd rather not remember. You feel you are losing touch with reality. The blackouts come thick and fast, a product of the drink and drugs and head injuries he gives you. You're scared you're going mad. You can't bring yourself to think about your future. What have you to hope for, to aim for, to pray for, when you're so utterly broken, so completely fragmented. Even your body's not your own. It feels numb to everything but pain. You try to detach, to get away from the physical trauma, but there's no safety or peace even in your head. You feel consumed by him, by them. Their hands possess your body, and their words possess your mind.

They tell you you belong here. You begin to believe it. When the people who might help you, who you were taught to trust before you found yourself here, when you belonged, were accepted, fitted in, in society, look through you, you have no place left to go. Escape feels impossible. Where do you go? Who can you trust? Where now do you belong?

Since I've got out, I find myself still lost, still scared, still hurting. There is no place I can call home. I don't feel I fit with most regular people, with their regular lives, their regular families, their regular behaviours. With their uncritical, unquestioning acceptance of how I as a woman have been treated by society, am treated by society. It's like they see me but they don't see me, they see what they want and throw the rest away. With their comfortable assertion that prostitution should be legalised, that it is empowering for women to 'choose' sex work, that gender inequality is a thing of the past, that there's plenty of help out there for battered women, if they would only choose to take it. They speak confidently of addiction, of alcoholism, as a lifestyle choice, nothing more, a poor one at that, a sign of weak character and selfishness and poor morals. I feel suffocated, dismissed by them and their beliefs. It's like they're talking a different language than me. They are.

Their words are painful to me, ill informed, detached from reality, cloaked in a language strangely out of context given the nature of the sex industry. Meaningless, but widely accepted. Sanitised to the point of abstraction. Edited to the point of vacuousness. Such language suggests it would be prudish to see the women bought and sold in pornography and prostitution as anything more than an expression of free speech and liberalism. And see, she's smiling, so she must like it! And men will be men...

Looking at a naked woman in pornography, with objects in her vagina and rectum, defenders of the sex industry speak not of women at all, but instead they speak the language of rights and free speech and choices. So much cleaner, so much less distressing. So much more socially acceptable. After all, who wouldn't be in favour of rights, free speech and choices? Taken out of context, these words are accepted to have positive connotations. Our society promotes them. The question we need to be asking is, do these words belong in the context of the sex industry and its practices?

The sex industry and our mainstream culture which accepts it looks straight through the women it uses. They looked right through me, look right through me. Looking at a real life woman before them, naked, with genitals exposed, proponents of porn are oddly blind. They see only what they want. Her body's value to them relies on their ability to project their desires and beliefs onto her, and so use her without blame or responsibility. She remains an object of fantasy to them because they do not see, will not see, the reality. Safely at the pornographer's end of the camera, 'users' of pornography remain at a sanitised distance from body fluids, bruises, feelings, reality. They fail to connect with the woman at the other end of the camera, holding herself open, posing, inserting dildos or other objects for the gratification of men she does not know, to make money for someone else. With their language of 'free speech' and 'empowerment' and 'choice', these so called 'liberals' are in fact anything but. Free speech is not so free when it seeks to silence the debate, to mute the voices of the women who have lived out the reality of the consumer's fantasy.

Her humanity, her feelings, get in the way. The pornographer doesn't want you to worry about her - that's why she's been told to smile. Not as easy to get off to if you saw what it cost her, is it?

Perhaps if 'users' of pornography had to face the human cost, if those women were not mute, they would have to take responsibility, to get active. They might have to dare to speak out and risk the wrath of an industry with billions of dollars behind it, and top lawyers behind it, a whole circus of people who have so much to lose if it became unacceptable to trade in real live women. Not that the sex industry would or could ever quite phrase it like that. The sex industry aims to mute language which draws attention to what it actually does - uses women's bodies, with particular focus on the genitals and their penetration - to make vast sums of money, not for the benefit of the women, but for those higher up the chain. This lie retains its power by avoiding such vocabulary at all costs.

The sex industry seeks to control not just the voices of the women in it, but the very language of the discussion, and the vast majority of the media. Strangely, these people object to words which conjure up with any sort of accuracy the reality for the women involved. The reality's a little less palatable. It's not as easy to speak blithely of free speech and empowerment if you could hear the voice of the woman who just had unprotected sex with 8 different men describe the pain from the prolonged sex, how she snorted coke at every break to try to numb out, how difficult it was for her to try and smile for the camera and moan for the camera like she liked it, to say to them 'fuck me harder' when all she wanted was for it to be over cos the pain was unbearable and she thought she might vomit and she just wanted to grab the money and go shower and get drunk to forget.

The sex industry paints a picture of itself as a benevolent figure in a fight against women being chained to marriage and monogamy and subject to sexual control. They present themselves as the good guys, the modernists, the open minded ones. Against all the evidence, they want to be seen as women's liberators, not their exploiters. Society buys into that lie in as much as it accepts that language. The industry's use of language spins a lie which draws on fear: people's fear to seem prudish; people's fear to seem old fashioned; people's fear that they might be seen as backward, anti-women's rights, controlling or frigid. It's rarely said that you can object to women being hurt in pornography and prostitution, to being objectified and sold, but not be a traditionalist, a conservative. It is not in the sex industry's interest to allow that there might be a middle ground. Or that real empowerment of women might be found in something other than their getting naked to get men off.

They play a clever game, and they wage war on those who speak out. They seek to put their money making off limits, to make questioning the effects of the sex industry forbidden. How ironic that an industry that destroys women's lives should adopt a language of women's rights, of feminism and empowerment! How all pervasive has this lie become that a woman like me who has experienced the hell of prostitution, of being used in pornography, first hand is scared to speak out, is told to deny her truth, has found normally kind, non-judgmental people unable to hear her story? Faced with the appalling reality of what it means for women to be sold and destroyed one picture at a time, one punter at a time, people fall back into babbling about choice and freedom. How can it be that the woman becomes unacceptable, her story unacceptable, while the industry is untouchable?

The sex industry's choice and careful control of language is what keeps us where we are. It avoids explicit language to engage with wider society in its battle to remain where it has managed to place itself: in the mainstream. Many people who advocate the 'right' of adults to 'use' pornography, or argue in favour of the legalisation of prostitution, are embarrassed by the use of sexually explicit words to describe the sexually explicit films and magazines they defend. Such language is frowned upon as seedy and unsuitable, unnecessary.

But why is it ok to wank over a picture of a naked woman being penetrated but not ok to speak of her vagina, her anus, to speak of her reality, to say it as it is? To ask why she might be there, how she feels about it, what it means to her. If she has other options. How have we let an industry which deals in selling living, breathing, feeling, warm blooded human bodies as objects, to be used for our gratification, and then discarded in favour of the next body, control us so thoroughly, brainwash us so completely that we may only speak in abstract terms of fantasy, free speech, choices, and never the humanity of the women who we are staring in the face? How is it that the statistics showing that an overwhelming percentage of women used in pornography and prostitution were sexually abused as children or adults or have mental health problems and want out of it desperately have been so hushed up? (See Object: Demand Change website for recent statistics). In this language of rights, where are the rights of the women being used? What happened to the responsibilities that go hand in hand with rights? And in a context of abuse, of addiction, of poverty, of violence, of mental health difficulties, how meaningful is it to speak of choices?

Getting the women who are caught up in all this, trapped, to speak out in defence of their degradation, of their being dehumanised and objectified and sold, is the cleverest and dirtiest trick the industry has come up with. Nothing can release society of it's responsibility to action, to change, like the voice of a woman who knows. A woman who speaks out in support of the sex industry's lie is paid handsomely, by a society that is grateful it need not look at itself or question its practices, and by the industry itself. The industry pays these women to denounce other women, women who dare to say I didn't like it, I didn't want it, being treated as an object hurt me, I don't think it promotes a healthy image of women, as extremists and prudes. A woman who speaks against that lie pays over and over again, firstly through the pain of being sold, then again by having her pain and her story dismissed. Dismiss the woman who speaks the truth, and you need never face that truth or own your part in it. The status quo is at risk, needs to be protected. The truth can't get in the way of that! It is a status quo which suits many, which makes money, in which women can be bought, wanked over, then put away neatly in a drawer til next time, or left in the brothel til next time, no thought for their humanity, their dignity, their feelings and emotions, what they go home to at night. Hearing the vastly publicised voices of a few women telling the sex industry's lie, society again rests easy, blameless.

When I fell back into prostitution after I crawled away from my ex to support my drug addiction, in despair because in my condition I couldn't get any other work, when I'd begged my GP for help to quit the substances and she'd refused, I found myself telling johns if they asked me that I chose it, that I liked it. It was what kept them coming back, and I needed them to come back because I needed the money. No choices. No free speech. They'd whisper revolting words into my ear, and then say 'and you'd like that, wouldn't you?' and I'd have to say yes. It felt like I had given away my last shred of self respect. I cried myself to sleep at night, I couldn't look myself in the eye in the mirror anymore. Being fingered and fucked and stared at and cum over and photographed and videoed and treated like an object for the entertainment of others was oddly unempowering.

The chasm between the 'acceptable', society and its sanitised, abstract views of women and sex 'work', between that world and my world, that reality and mine, seems vast, unbridgable, even now I am out, even now I am sober. They with their jobs and their houses, their strip clubs after work, just a bit of fun, a porno movie or mag just for a 'laugh', no big deal, going home to a warm house, a safe bed, sleeping sound, comfortably distanced. And me, simply surviving here, struggling to live with the feelings and memories, the scars, the nightmares, grateful that I haven't drunk or used just for today, that I haven't been beaten or sold today.

I'm no longer in that hell of prostitution. But I find myself in limbo, still fighting to survive, still at odds with omnipresent voice of the sex industry, still at odds with society, the survivor and bearer of a truth too uncomfortable for most to hear. It's time we call these language games for what they are and get honest with ourselves.

The reality behind the fantasy

I find it utterly bizarre when people speak about pornography as 'harmless fantasy'. Porno isn't cartoons or drawings (in the main) - it's photographs and videos of real women, who have hopes and dreams and feel pain and humiliation like any other human being. Where's the fantasy for them?

I am one of those women. Okay, so I'm one of the lucky ones - I got out in more or less one piece. But my experiences of being used as pornography, as entertainment, have left deep scars. The thing is, with modern technology as it is, when a photo is taken, or a video made, there is no end to it. The humiliation and abuse of the woman, of me, can be endlessly replicated, endlessly sold, endlessly 'used' (I love the way society changes language round this stuff to sanitise it... read instead 'wanked over'). These images can survive long after our bodies and minds have been broken by being dehumanised and degraded.

In the context of violence, I had no choice and no voice. If I refused, or struggled or was 'awkward', I was beaten. I lost touch with reality. They treated me like an animal, and I became one to survive. Sometimes I'd initiate sex to avoid violence, and that hurt me, it filled me with feelings of shame, that I'd colluded with them. Often, I'd go along with things, awful, painful, sordid things, to avoid something worse. When you have to beg to use the toilet, to get some water, to get some booze, because you've been locked in your bedroom, you lose any last shred of self respect. Dignity went out the window long ago. Cut off from other people, you lose touch with reality, with right and wrong. And when the hand that hits you is also the hand that picks you up, and feeds you, you get confused. You don't know what to think anymore.

Nothing can prepare you for this. No words describe it. It is being utterly lost, and the only thing you can tell yourself is 'it's not really real, this can't really be happening to me' and detach as best you can from your body, try to zone out. Everything becomes disjointed, fragmented. When you can't remember what happened to you (blackout) and can't see a future for yourself, life becomes a series of snapshots, of jumbled thoughts and feelings and images and scents. Getting out becomes even more of an impossibility.

I still dissociate a lot - a strange feeling, like being a voyeur in my own life. In the past, I fragmented myself in a desperate attempt at self preservation. The drugs and alcohol were a part of that. I didn't know how to deal with what was happening to me, or how to process it. Now, I still can find myself numbing out and detaching when emotions run too high. But a slow and painful part of getting sober for me is an attempt to integrate these different parts of myself, the different personas. They even have names. An attempt to accept what an isolated, terrified, woman, had to do to survive. The feelings I've had as these memories have returned, and as I've tried to face them, are raw. Painful beyond words.

The thing I find hardest is the way that society normalises so many of the practices that have hurt me. It is an accepted 'right' that people be able to use pornography. Where are the rights of the women used to make that 'harmless fantasy'? The camera doesn't always show the coercion, the fear, the threat of violence, the addiction... all of these are hidden away to allow light entertainment. And where are the rights of the women who are made to act out these 'fantasies' by their partner, who are told that 'she's smiling so she likes it, and so must you' (or else be called a prude, a 'frigid cow' or less of a woman. Who wants to know the reality?