CHAIRMAN WHITE: Will you bring the mike up? E. M.: Okay.
I am afraid to be here. I am also afraid not to be here. In thinking about coming here today to speak, I realized that my life would be in danger. As a woman of color these dangers seem many and great—an absolute loss of credibility and respect, wrath and disgust, potential vio lence both verbal and physical, and ridicule and harassment, to name a few. I also realized the dangers to my life if I did not come. These dangers being complacency, letting go of my rage and terror about pornography and its impact on my life, accepting that the shame is mine, accepting that I am the slut and the whore that deserved what was done to me, believing that I am useable. I have no illusions about men not seeing me as a slut. They do. They see all women as sex itself, even the ones they venerate. But I also want to say to you that I have no illusions about my refusal to accept that I am and must always be these things.
I want to tell you how pornography has affected my life, how I am fighting self-loathing, disgust and shame, how I am fighting at the begin ning, and how I am fighting tearing out my skin.
The first thing I want to talk about happened when I was three years old. When I was three, I was sexually abused by a fourteen-year-old
neighbor boy. I would tell you it seems really bizarre to me to use the word “boy, ” because the only memory I have of this person is as a three-year-old. And as a three-year-old, he seemed like a really big man.
I was told by him and some other neighborhood kids, which also included his sisters, that we would be playing a secret game. They told me that it was safe and that they had played it before and that I had nothing to be afraid of. What this game consisted of was each child going into a tool shed with this guy. When my turn came, I didn’t want to go in because I was scared. It was dark in there and it was dirty. There were cobwebs and there was this giant pitchfork.
One of the kids pushed me inside and shut the door. Then this boy grabbed me and he pulled down my shorts and sexually abused me. In short, he finger-fucked me and he made me masturbate him. I was really terrified. I thought I was in hell, and I was also in a lot of pain. I started crying really hard and he finally let me go, but I was told that if I told anyone, I wouldn’t be believed, that it was all my fault and that I would be punished. He also told me that he would hurt me again if I told anyone.
His sister told me that this game he had learned from his dirty books. I knew that he had these dirty books because I had seen him with them.
The second incident I want to talk about occurred eight years ago, and I want you to know that for the past several weeks I have been living in hell because for the first time I am remembering this. And, for me, this memory is my first experience with it.
About eight years ago, I went to a friend of mine’s house for dinner. She was living with what I call her pimp friend, most people would call him her boyfriend. Some male friends of hers—of theirs—came by, and she went out to the store to get something that they had forgotten for dinner. While she was gone, someone poured me some wine, and after she came back I drank it. She came back, I started feeling really dizzy and disconnected, and I wanted to go home. They kept telling me to stay, that I could sleep there. Everyone was laughing at me. I found out later that I had been drugged.
What I remember is this. I am on the couch and everyone is looking at me, laughing. They are talking about—they started talking about taking pictures of me. I am not sure they took pictures. I passed out. I do remember flashing lights and what I do know is that they made and they sold pornography.
friend strips. I want you to know that I use this term “friend” not with a whole lot of sincerity. I knew it was this club where she stripped because I had been there before. I had tried previously to understand and to accept what it was she was doing, and so I had gone there with her and her parents.
I remember being on the stage, and there were two men that were holding me up and they were taking off my clothes. A third man was sexually fondling me. I saw a lot of faces in the audience that were laughing and men were waving money. One of them shoved it in my stomach and essentially punched me. I kept wondering how it was possi ble that they couldn’t see that I didn’t want to be there, that I wasn’t there willingly. I am not sure what else happened. I have real bad feelings about what may have happened. Somehow, I don’t know how, I got to a pay phone and I called this friend of mine who came and took me home.
You are probably wondering, have I told anyone about this. As to the incident with my friend, no, I didn’t report it to the police. How do you report something you don’t remember? Even when you remember, if you are a woman, even if you do remember, you are not believed. Even if you have bruises, you are bleeding, or whatever. I didn’t remember anything, and what could I have reported?
And I didn’t tell anyone about the sexual abuse when I was three because I was terrified and I was real ashamed. And also because I didn’t have any words to describe it. I didn’t tell anyone about that for 24 years. I confronted my friend about the incident, and she told me that it was all my imagination. I told her I didn’t have an imagination and I was trying to find one. She laughed. I asked her why I had been found naked, passed out by the phone, if it wasn’t true and she told me that was a joke.
Like I said before, I don’t know if any of those men fucked me. I do know that that boy fucked me. I know that, in both instances, I was violated, and I am not alone in these experiences. There are thousands of women and girls who are forced and coerced into accommodating men’s degrading sexual pleasures.
Now you tell me that pornography doesn’t hurt women, doesn’t vio late us, does not use and abuse us, does not instigate and inspire the abuse of women. And when I say women, I include children, in particular girls. I don’t understand how anyone can believe it is harmless. I don’t understand how anyone can call this fantasy, a deflection of aggression against women. I don’t understand how anyone can say that this is speech when actual live women are being brutalized.
On the other hand, I can understand it because it is men who are saying this. It is the pornographers who create it, who get the money from it, who get erections from it, and society shuns this. I want to stop this for me, for all women and for all girls. There are men here, and we have heard from some of them, who say that pornography has to exist because they have a right to it, its pleasure, its so-called political message. I disagree and I want you to consider this when you make your decision about these amendments. At what cost does this have to exist? Surely not at all costs, surely not at the cost of any woman or girl’s life and integrity.
I am going to urge you for once to look at pornography for what it really is, a violation of women’s civil rights, and I want you to take action to stop it.
CHAIRMAN WHITE: Thank you, Ms. M.
MS. C.: My name is [N. C. ] and I live in Ward 14. I would really like to thank [E. ] for saying what she said.
I am also afraid to be here and afraid not to be here. What brought me here is that I know a lot of women who have stories to tell about how pornography has hurt them and how they are trying to recover from the destruction it has brought into their lives, and that can’t be here because they are still working through a lot of that pain. This for me is also a way of purging my own shame about this. I would also like to preface what I am going to say by saying that in my testimony here, I say fuck three times because I believe in calling something what it is.
I was twenty-one years old at the time. It was 1980 in March or April. I did have a sexual relationship with this man for about a year. He had gone to a stag party. This particular evening I was home alone in my apartment. He called me on the telephone and he said that he had seen several short pornographic films and that he felt very horny. Although he did make some general comments about the content of these films, I do not remember what they were at this time specifically. So he asked if he could come over specifically to have sex with me. I said yes, because at that time I felt obligated as a girlfriend to satisfy him. I also felt that the refusal would be indicative of sexual quote unquote hang-ups on my part and that I was not quote unquote liberal enough.
When he arrived, he informed me that the other men at the party were envious that he had a girlfriend to fuck. They wanted to fuck too after watching the pornography. He informed me of this as he was taking his coat off. He then took off the rest of his clothes and had me perform fellatio on him. I did not do this of my own volition. He put his genitals
in my face and he said, “Take it all. ” Then he fucked me on the couch in the living room. AH this took about five minutes. And when he was finished he dressed and went back to the party. I felt ashamed and numb, and I also felt very used.
This encounter differed from others previous. It was much quicker, it was somewhat rougher, and he was not aware of me as a person. There was no foreplay. It is my opinion that his viewing of the pornography served as foreplay for him.
There were no lasting detrimental effects on me from this experience alone. It was simply an intensification of the ordinary treatment I re ceived from him. It [was ordinary]—something I feel worth noting—and this usual treatment did result in feelings of low self-esteem, depression, confusion and a lot of shame.
I do not have any knowledge of him purchasing any pornography at any time in the relationship. I know that the friends he got together with twice a week, they had it in their homes. He was exposed to it regularly.
I feel what I have to say here is important because I feel what he did, he went to this party, saw pornography, got an erection, got me to inflict his erection on. There is a direct causal relationship there. Thank you very much.
MR. C.: My name is G. C. I live in the 9th Ward. I strongly support the proposed ordinance on pornography. I am going to tell you how pornog raphy affected my life. Obscene is not the word for pornography. Por nography is dangerous. I was battered by my first lover, and the pornog raphy each of us used condoned the violence.
When I was younger, I was exposed to heterosexual pornography, including Playboy; Penthouse, Oui, and other magazines. It was one of the places that I learned about sex, and it showed me that sex was vio lence. What I saw there was a specific relationship between men and women. The woman was to be used, objectified, humiliated, and hurt. The man was in a superior position, a position to be violent. In pornogra phy I learned that what it meant to be sexual with a man or to be loved by a man was to accept his violence. When my lover was violent, I was taught that the violence was normal. I accepted the violence, which I did not like, and it was some time before I left the relationship.
My ex-lover used pornography. One of his first contacts with other men were in gay pornography theaters. He used pornographic magazines before I met him. He started wanting to look at pornography together. I believe that the pornography influenced his behavior. As our relationship
progressed, it became violent. He threatened me with a knife, forced sex on me, and battered me on different occasions. The heterosexual pornog raphy that I had been exposed to was one thing that convinced me that this kind of treatment was normal. The battering was one of the most profoundly destructive experiences of my life. Pornography has showed me that a man’s love was violent and to be close to my ex-lover I had to accept his violence.
There is a lot of sexual violence in the gay community, and pornogra phy condones it. I was with my ex-lover after he had been raped by a casual sex partner, and my ex said that rape was just a risk you had to take. I was with a friend after he had been violently raped by his boy friend, and his boyfriend did not understand that violence and force was not supposed to be a part of sex. The objectification and the violent themes in pornography promote and increase these kinds of violence.
I understand pornography to be a force in creating violence in the gay community. I was battered by my ex-lover who used pornography. The pornography, straight and gay, I had been exposed to, helped convince me that I had to accept his violence, and helped keep me in that destruc tive relationship.
Pornography is harmful and I want something to be done. The pro posed ordinance provides concrete measures for action.
R. M. M.: My name is R. M. M. I live in St. Paul. I am here today to share