Testimony in Massachusetts: Johns who like porn are the “most dangerous and potentially violent” (explicit language)

Massachusetts legislators heard testimony about peoples’ encounters with porn at a hearing on March 16, 1992. This account appears in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.417-419).

Written Submission of JW, Boston, Massachusetts

The following testimony contains descriptions of incidents which occurred over a period of eight years in which I worked as a prostitute, dancer and nude model…

As a prostitute I worked in massage parlours, peep shows, private apartments, street corners, bars and for escort services. I worked in most major cities across the country. In all of these cities, wherever pornography is being sold, that is where prostitutes work. We did not choose to work in these places but would get arrested or thrown out of hotels or bars if they were not in the so called red light district. The prostitutes I knew who were African American or Latin[a] had even less options because many places would not hire them and police would bust them if they strayed out of a certain area…

At the age of seventeen I began dancing in topless and bottomless bars. I was working for a pimp and was under a lot of pressure from him and the club owners to make a lot of money. In these bars they had pornographic videos playing constantly which contained graphic scenes of various sexual acts. The women in the videos were usually naked and the men were often clothed except for their penis… I had never seen pornographic movies before. I soon found out that in order to make tips I had to lay on the dance floor, spread my legs and expose my genitals to the customers, just like in the videos. I had to simulate postures such as being on my hands and knees and arching my back as if being entered from behind by a penis. I had to look at the customers and stick out my tongue as if performing oral sex. This was all extremely degrading.

A co-worker talked me into doing a photo session with a photographer she knew. She showed me a spread she had done for Penthouse magazine which she said he had shot. I later found out she got a finders fee for bringing me to him. I had to sign a release form which said I would only be paid a certain amount if a photo was sold to a magazine. I was told to wear red nail polish and cover my genitals with red lipstick. The photographer told me to suck in my stomach even though I was very slim. The most humiliating part was when the photographer told me to spread my legs as wide as I could and look right at the camera making facial expressions depicting arousal while masturbating with a pearl necklace or pushing my breasts together with my hands. One photograph that I know of from this shoot was sold to a magazine. It was a shot of me on my hands and knees, my buttocks facing the camera and spread so that my genitals were exposed while I peeked over my shoulder so that my face was very recognizable. This appeared on the back of High Society magazine as an ad for back issues for twelve months straight. I do not know what happened to the other photographs. I remember being afraid that a relative would see that picture.

The first massage parlour I ever worked in I had to dance topless in the lounge which I did not get paid for, as well as service customers. I was still seventeen and very naive. One day someone was taking pictures of me. The next thing I knew, a picture of me clothed only in a G string, was on a flyer advertising this massage parlour and being handed out on every corner. I did not give permission for that photo to be used but could not do anything about it. Shortly afterwards I got into an argument with the owner over a racist comment he made and he punched me in the face, took all my money and threw me down some stairs.

The massage parlours and private houses I worked in all had pornographic videos available for the customers, either in the bedrooms or in the waiting room. A lot of my work consisted of acting out particular scenes for the customer which caused him to become aroused. If a customer was into real hard core movies in which women were tied up, whipped, raped, urinated on etc., then he would want me to act out that kind of scene. On several occasions a customer requested that I act like I was his daughter and he would then rape me while I screamed “No Daddy, please don’t, I’m so scared” and so on. I had several life threatening experiences with customers who were into violent fantasies. A very wealthy man lured me into his private house by offering me a large sum of money which I needed at the time. He locked me into his bedroom and after throwing some money at me he threw me face down on the bed and tore off my clothes. He choked me until I almost passed out and said he would kill me if I didn’t do what he said. He jammed his fist up my rectum and smeared my own feces all over my body while he masturbated and made me say things like my cunt was hot for him. When he achieved orgasm he ejaculated in my hair and all over my body. When I got back out on the street I had no one to go to for help even though I had been raped and violated in the worst way.

Some of the most violent pornography that I saw was in the houses of customers that I saw through escort services. Sometimes they had magazines with women being gang raped, urinated on, defecated on and being penetrated with inhuman objects like scissors. A lot of times these men were high on cocaine or other drugs and would watch pornographic films for hours and hours while having sex with one woman after another. I considered the men who were into pornography to be the most dangerous and potentially violent since that is what aroused them. One time a customer took out a heavy leather belt and started beating me across the stomach and breasts. He was into pornography which showed young girls tying each other up and whipping each other. I tried to remain calm and keep it like a game even though I was in a great deal of pain. I convinced him to reverse roles and let me whip him instead. I had large purple bruises on my body the next day.

At least fifty percent of the men that I saw professionally were into fantasies and pornography such as I have described. They were men from all over the world and all types of professions. Every prostitute I know has had similar experiences. Often we keep it to ourselves because it is very painful to remember. I have been scarred for life both mentally and physically. I have violent nightmares on a regular basis which replay my worst experiences of sexual violence over and over. I have difficulty relating to people in normal social situations. I cannot make love with someone without having flashbacks of being a prostitute. I have very little self confidence.

See also:

Capital Video Springfield: Secondary Effects Extend to Prostitution; Actions the City Can Take
[Fred Rowe:] Outside, we have both male and female prostitutes standing across the street, by our building, and we have a vacant lot that we use for parking. They stand there, and they wait for [customers] to come out, and they solicit them, and they try to take them out behind our building, and do their business. It’s unbelievable.

Prostitution Research & Education: How Prostitution Works
Real sexual relationships are not hard to find. There are plenty of adults of both sexes who are willing to have sex if someone treats them well, and asks. But there lies the problem. Some people do not want an equal, sharing relationship. They do not want to be nice. They do not want to ask. They like the power involved in buying a human being who can be made to do almost anything…

Realities of Teen Prostitution Mock Notions of ‘Sex Work’, ‘Sex-Positive’, ‘Freedom’ and ‘Empowerment’; Media Glamorizes Pimps
Advocates for ‘sex work’ say it is or should be about free choice and the empowerment of women. They claim that if prostitutes have troubled lives, this stems fro
m the fact that many (unenlightened) people find prostitution offensive and the government doesn’t care enough about prostitutes’ working conditions, rather than anything inherent in exchanging sex for money or the common power differences between prostitutes vs. pimps and johns. They ignore the fact that a large proportion of prostitutes begin when they are underage…

Testimony in Minneapolis: Prostitutes and Porn (explicit language)
One of the very first commonalities we discovered as a group: we were all introduced to prostitution through pornography. There were no exceptions in our group, and we were all under eighteen.

Pornography was our textbook. We learned the tricks of the trade by men exposing us to pornography and us trying to mimic what we saw. I could not stress enough what a huge influence we feel this was…

When I went into that room, the trick said that I was almost too old, but he was pleased with me because I looked young. He stripped me, tied me up, spread-eagled, on the bed so that I could not move and then began to caress me very gently. Then, when he thought that I was relaxed, he squeezed my nipple really hard. I did not react. He held up a porn magazine with a picture of a beaten woman and said, “I want you to look like that. I want you to hurt.” He then began beating me, and when I didn’t cry fast enough, he lit a cigarette and held it right above my breast for a long time before he burned me.

Kink.com: Bondage Porn Gone Chillingly, Cheerfully Corporate (explicit language)

Offerings at Kink include:

Whipped Ass
“As the title implies, you will be seeing extreme ass whipping. Our girls turn on each other and dish out the punishment like no other site out there.”

Wired Pussy
“This site is shocking, literally. Our girls are put to the test when they are bound, gagged, and shocked over and over. It’s all in good fun of course!”

Sex and Submission
“Our powerless girls scream as they are tied up and forced to have sex over and over. Are they screams for help or do they really just want more?”

Testimony in Minneapolis: With Growth of Porn, Rapists Show Less Remorse
[L]iterally hundreds of women have mentioned to me the anger and despair they feel when their husbands, lovers, or other male partners press upon them specific sexual acts which these men learned from pornographic materials–acts of bestiality, sodomy, “swinging”, forced group sex, etc. The men feel such pressure on women is acceptable because porn is acceptable, and pornography was the so-called “educational” source…

[T]he work of Dr. Natalie Shainess (psychiatrist of New York) and Dr. Frank Osanka [sic] (psychologist and child-abuse specialist, Chicago) show that convicted rapists who, even five to seven years ago, expressed remorse about their acts of violence, recently show no such remorse and often cite as a reason for their guiltlessness that “everyone knows women want to be raped; all the porn stuff proves that.”

Lizzy Borden: We don’t shoot “all the lovey-dovey stuff that there’s not a big market for” (explicit language)
Q: So what is this scene going to have in it that’s controversial?
A: A girl being kidnapped, being forced to have sex against her will, being degraded. Being called “a cunt, a whore, a slut, a piece of shit.” Then being butchered at the end, and spit on. She’s being degraded…