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.421-423).
Submission of Kathleen O’Neill Alexander, March 16, 1992, Boston Massachusetts
I have been a rape crisis coordinator and counselor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. I also taught a course there for six years entitled: Violence Against Women: A Multi-cultural, Multiracial Perspective. I have been a program coordinator of Daybreak, Inc., a shelter for battered women and children in Worcester. I have been involved with the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault since 1983. And I am the author of Reclaiming Our Lives: A Handbook for Rape Crisis Counselors and Educators in Massachusetts. Over the last ten years I have committed myself to working on behalf of victims of violence. Presently, I am the Director of the Victim Witness Assistance Program in the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office. I have had the privilege to work with District Attorney Judd J. Carhart for the last three years serving the people of Hampshire and Franklin counties…I know the impact and violence of pornography first hand… These were the kinds of books my father looked at. In my house there were films, photographs and magazines. They were all over. There was one item so abhorrent and violent that it is difficult to describe to you.
It was a handkerchief. I was putting the ironing away for my mother. We ironed everything–sheets, pillow cases, towels, underwear, etc. I was in my Dad’s dresser, as I had permission to be. There was a hankie with images of women imprinted on it. They were all bleeding from the vagina. They looked to be in such awful pain. I had seen his magazines before but nothing like this. I recall women with dark hair and some with Asian features. I wanted to crawl up in a ball and die. What this what my father did to women? Was this what he thought should happen to women? Did this happen to my mother? Was this going to happen to me?…
Parties among adults in our house involved pornography. It was used to get people to strip and “play games”… I always made sure I cried into my pillow so no one could hear me. I kept watch so no one would come into my younger brother[‘s] and my bedroom…
When I couldn’t have known as a child, I have come to realize as an adult who has worked with victims of violent crimes. And that is, that I just wasn’t looking at pictures–I was looking at women’s lives. The influence of pornography is not a literary or artistic influence but a violent influence at the expense of women and children[‘s] lives. My own healing process was very painful. I have worked with women who have had pornography used while they were being beaten by their husbands. I have heard from women that while they were being raped a perpetrator referred to pornography. Sometimes women have told me they were forced to imitate whatever was in the picture. One woman told me that her entire incest victimization, by her older brother always included pornography. Collectively, women have suffered humiliation, degradation and violence at the hands of pornography. It has taken years to deal with the turmoil of my own experience. One of my most painful struggles even now at 43 years old is having a sense of my body size and physical appearance. I have suffered eating disorders and had to overcome a great deal of pain that I directly attribute to the barrage of sexually explicit images and the activities that took place in my home.
There is no pleasure in violence for the victim of pornography. The private and public humiliation we feel at the hands of men and boys who consume this woman-hating material cannot be understood by any representation of government unless you have the insight and empathy to understand that we speak of fear for our daily personal safety.
See also:
Testimony
in Minneapolis: “Pornography in the home is insidious. Girls pick up
the message, they act it out, they don’t know why they feel suicidal
and crazy.”
A third example was in a very abusive violent family where the father
had read a great deal of pornography. It was kept in his room and the
children knew it was there. He beat his children a lot, his daughters
particularly. The girls used to sneak in when the parents were gone,
read the pornography. They became addicted to it. It was their only
escape, as it had been their father’s escape. The woman that reported
it–today at thirty–is addicted to pornography, has yet to have
intimate sexual relationships or free herself from the connection of
silence and sexuality…
I believe a lot of battering of young
girls has to do with sexual feelings, much of what comes every time in
families where there was pornography. The father feels sexual towards
his daughter, wants to repress that, and instead of taking
responsibility for his addiction, which is out of control, beats his
daughter. It is connected many times. I have had fathers open up to
this when they come to family therapy and talk about it…
The Science Behind Pornography Addiction
Children who have porn-viewing fathers complain that when he looks at
them it feels “creepy”. The parental gaze has now become the “porn
gaze”. The child of the porn user finds that everything is now about
sex.
Exposure to Pornography as a Cause of Child Sexual Victimization
Playboy, Hustler magazines all “covertly” normalize adult–child sex and
promote sex with children (Mayne, 2000, p. 25). There are many
examples–particularly of cartoons in Hustler–that quite blatantly
legitimatize incestuous and extrafamilial child sexual abuse. Many of
them trivialize child sexual victimization by repeatedly making jokes
about this crime…
Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture
Raunch culture is particularly cruel to teen girls, who feel pressure
to perform before they can even understand their own desires. The girls
Levy interviewed, mainly students at elite high schools, seemed
perpetually distracted by the competition to “dress the skankiest” and
rack up the greatest number of conquests, in order to gain status in
their female peer group. (p.152) Sex and beauty were about power, not
pleasure. In fact, some sexually active girls repressed feelings of
arousal in order to avoid vulnerability.