We encourage folks to turn out for Northampton’s Fourth Annual Mayor Higgins’ Hot Chocolate Run on December 1. The proceeds will benefit Safe Passage, which serves women, children and families affected by domestic violence.
Choose from a 5K Road Race or a two-mile walk through downtown Northampton. The event begins at The People’s Institute, 38 Gothic Street. Start time is 9:30am for walkers, 10:00am for runners. The first 2,500 registered participants will receive a mug. Advance registration is $16 for individuals, $40 for families and $12 for students. Last year over 1,700 people participated. The event will take place rain or shine.
See also:
Testimony from Northampton Shelter for Battered Women: Half of Abusers Use Pornography as a Part of the Abuse (explicit)
My name is Gail Kielson and I work at Necessities/Necesidades, an organization in Northampton, Massachusetts that provides services to battered women. I am a Licensed MSW, and for 17 years have worked with women and children who were living with abuse. I am unable to testify in person today because we at Necessities/Necesidades are short-staffed and it is essential that I be there to work with the women using our services, many of whom are living in life-threatening situations.
We have recently begun to formally ask the battered women who call us whether the abuser uses pornography and from this we conservatively estimate that at least 1/2 of the abusers use pornography as a part of the abuse. Battering is based on an issue of power and control, with the abuser using all kinds of methods to continually assert his power and control over the woman. Throughout, he is persistently working to deny her of her ability to make informed decisions about her life and through threats, coercion, and continual terror succeeds at clearly establishing himself as “in control”. We frequently hear a woman say that she feels like a prisoner in her own home, and in fact, she is.
The use of pornography is but one means that an abuser uses to degrade and humiliate the woman. The stories that I hear are horrific and just when I think I’ve heard it all, I hear another horrifying story that sends me reeling. Women frequently state that abusers bring home pornographic videos and make them perform the acts depicted in the video. One woman described endless days and nights of this, with her husband demanding that she leave her place of business, a shop that she owned, and come home and enact the sexual tortures depicted on the videos… Another woman said that her partner used pornographic books and read portions to her and then made her perform the degrading sexual acts described therein. Another woman said, tearfully, that her husband brought home pornographic videos and made her have sex with other men as he watched her and the videos simultaneously. Another woman said that her partner, while watching pornographic videos, raped her with all kinds of objects–pipes, sticks, knives…
Pornography is but one example of the underlying societal sanctions of violence against women that is endemic and epidemic in our country. I am working, daily, minute by minute, to arrest this epidemic.
Northampton Shelter Coordinators: Porn a Factor in Many Cases of Domestic Abuse
Roz Cuomo, the administrative coordinator at Necessities/Necesidades, the Northampton battered women’s shelter, said pornography is a factor in many cases of domestic abuse.
“People say pornography doesn’t hurt anyone. Real women are being tied up to produce this. Men seeing it think it’s all right,” Cuomo said…
Everywoman Center Coordinator: Porn Damages Women; Porn Addiction
Stacey Roth, coordinator of an educational outreach program at Everywoman Center, a women’s advocacy group at the University of Massachusetts, said that, based on accounts of area women speaking about their experiences with domestic abuse, she agrees with recent arguments that pornography damages women.
“Typically, a woman will say that her boyfriend is into very violent forms of pornography and likes to act out specific aspects of that, and she doesn’t know how to stop it,” Roth said, “or a battered woman might perceive a connection between the pornography in her household and the bouts of violence…
“In no other case [of media communications] are people so quick to discount the argument about the human cost, which I think reflects how low protection of women ranks in our priorities. We’re quicker to protest media (material) that depicts the mistreatment of animals than of women,” Roth said. “A society does need to make choices about what attitudes it wants to condone.”
Testimony in Massachusetts: The Lasting Impact of Growing Up in a Porn-Filled Home
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 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…
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.
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.”
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…
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…
“The incest started at the age of eight. I did not
understand any of it and did not feel that it was right. My dad would try to convince me that it was ok. He would find magazines, articles or pictures that would show fathers and daughters or mothers, brothers and sisters having sexual intercourse. (Mostly fathers and daughters.) He would say that if it was published in magazines that it had to be all right because magazines could not publish lies… He would say, ‘See it’s okay to do because it’s published in magazines…’”
Testimony in Minneapolis: “Pornography is probably the most extreme example of anti-women socialization that men receive in this society”
If you look at a lot of pornography, it shows women being beaten, humiliated, tied up. It shows women tied and stabbed, poked, prodded and abused by devices, assaulted by several men or animals, and many ugly and degrading things. When you see a woman being battered, you see a lot of the same ugliness and violence at the same time. Not only do they portray women as liking and deserving this sexual abuse, it shows them as enjoying it, deserving it. And that is what one of the great myths of battery is, is that women deserve to be battered and that they enjoy it. If they didn’t like it, they wouldn’t stay…
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.”
Abusive Relationships and Porn: The Similarities (explicit language)
At Bookends, a large porn shop in Enfield, we found more material that emphasized violence, domination, lack of consent, and manipulation of the victim:
“YEEOWWCH! STOP IT!!” I screamed and shot a hand back to protect my blazing behind. David’s failure to concede to my pleas or to say a word in reply scared me to death!…
“OUCH! Y-YES DAVID! AND I AM SORRY!! REALLY I AM!! OWWWW!”
“Not as sorry as you’re going to be!… Maybe you’ll listen to me next time and not act like a spoiled brat… I love and respect you, Allison…but I won’t stand by and let you do something dangerous and stupid. Do you hear me?”…
Punishment Porn: “Whether-She-Wants-It-Or-Not” (explicit)
[T]o the delight of the frenzied mob of young & old fans who’d just love to see her so shamed, The Shadow…blows Angie’s plan by ambushing her from behind & dragging her right to the manly man who is ready, eager & more than able to turn her over his muscular thigh & give her saucy seat six good whacks that tame the fiery female & have her singing a totally different tune when she’s finally released & forced to apologize to all.”
Capital Video’s Magazine Rack: Bondage, Racism and More
“A bed is still one of the most convenient bondage platforms invented by man. If the headboard is of the metal type, rather than solid wood, so much the better. A girl’s wrists can readily be tied to it, imprisoning her.”
“With the shapely divorcee twisting like a snake and frantically protesting the indignity he was inflicting on her, Rex proceeded to peel her black panties down…”
Rick Porras, Capital Video Executive, Would Rather You Not Know He Is a Pornographer (explicit language)
We can understand that if you’re promoting your ability to maximize sales, you might not want it known that you were maximizing sales of
NPN took a walk around 135 King Street to see who will be next to Capital Video’s proposed porn shop. Directly across North Street is the Northampton School of Dance and ServiceNet. The latter provides mental health counseling. A little further down King Street, still within sight of the porn shop, is Saint Valentine’s Church, the first of several houses of worship in this area. A little further still is Children’s Aid and Family Service. Back closer to the porn shop, on Myrtle Street, is Skipton House, a YWCA office and counseling center…
Robert Jensen: When Examining Complex Social Phenomena, Scientific Method Has Limits; Listen to the Stories of the Victims (explicit language)
“I know all about you bitches, you’re no different; you’re like all of them. I seen it in all the movies. You love being beaten. (He then began punching the victim violently.) I just seen it again in that flick. He beat the shit out of her while he raped her and she told him she loved it; you know you love it; tell me you love it…” [Silbert and Pines, 1984, p.864]
Testimony in Minneapolis: Porn and the Death Spiral of a Marriage
…we would have incredible arguments with each other. I would tell him I loved him, I only wanted to love him, I wanted to be a good wife, I wanted our marriage to work, but I didn’t want to be with these other people. It was he I wanted to be with, and no one else. He told me if I loved him I would do this. And that, as I could see from the things that he read me in the magazines initially, a lot of times women didn’t like it, but if I tried it enough I would probably like it, and I would learn to like it. And he would read me stories where women learned to like it.
Choose from a 5K Road Race or a two-mile walk through downtown Northampton. The event begins at The People’s Institute, 38 Gothic Street. Start time is 9:30am for walkers, 10:00am for runners. The first 2,500 registered participants will receive a mug. Advance registration is $16 for individuals, $40 for families and $12 for students. Last year over 1,700 people participated. The event will take place rain or shine.
See also:
Testimony from Northampton Shelter for Battered Women: Half of Abusers Use Pornography as a Part of the Abuse (explicit)
My name is Gail Kielson and I work at Necessities/Necesidades, an organization in Northampton, Massachusetts that provides services to battered women. I am a Licensed MSW, and for 17 years have worked with women and children who were living with abuse. I am unable to testify in person today because we at Necessities/Necesidades are short-staffed and it is essential that I be there to work with the women using our services, many of whom are living in life-threatening situations.
We have recently begun to formally ask the battered women who call us whether the abuser uses pornography and from this we conservatively estimate that at least 1/2 of the abusers use pornography as a part of the abuse. Battering is based on an issue of power and control, with the abuser using all kinds of methods to continually assert his power and control over the woman. Throughout, he is persistently working to deny her of her ability to make informed decisions about her life and through threats, coercion, and continual terror succeeds at clearly establishing himself as “in control”. We frequently hear a woman say that she feels like a prisoner in her own home, and in fact, she is.
The use of pornography is but one means that an abuser uses to degrade and humiliate the woman. The stories that I hear are horrific and just when I think I’ve heard it all, I hear another horrifying story that sends me reeling. Women frequently state that abusers bring home pornographic videos and make them perform the acts depicted in the video. One woman described endless days and nights of this, with her husband demanding that she leave her place of business, a shop that she owned, and come home and enact the sexual tortures depicted on the videos… Another woman said that her partner used pornographic books and read portions to her and then made her perform the degrading sexual acts described therein. Another woman said, tearfully, that her husband brought home pornographic videos and made her have sex with other men as he watched her and the videos simultaneously. Another woman said that her partner, while watching pornographic videos, raped her with all kinds of objects–pipes, sticks, knives…
Pornography is but one example of the underlying societal sanctions of violence against women that is endemic and epidemic in our country. I am working, daily, minute by minute, to arrest this epidemic.
Northampton Shelter Coordinators: Porn a Factor in Many Cases of Domestic Abuse
Roz Cuomo, the administrative coordinator at Necessities/Necesidades, the Northampton battered women’s shelter, said pornography is a factor in many cases of domestic abuse.
“People say pornography doesn’t hurt anyone. Real women are being tied up to produce this. Men seeing it think it’s all right,” Cuomo said…
Everywoman Center Coordinator: Porn Damages Women; Porn Addiction
Stacey Roth, coordinator of an educational outreach program at Everywoman Center, a women’s advocacy group at the University of Massachusetts, said that, based on accounts of area women speaking about their experiences with domestic abuse, she agrees with recent arguments that pornography damages women.
“Typically, a woman will say that her boyfriend is into very violent forms of pornography and likes to act out specific aspects of that, and she doesn’t know how to stop it,” Roth said, “or a battered woman might perceive a connection between the pornography in her household and the bouts of violence…
“In no other case [of media communications] are people so quick to discount the argument about the human cost, which I think reflects how low protection of women ranks in our priorities. We’re quicker to protest media (material) that depicts the mistreatment of animals than of women,” Roth said. “A society does need to make choices about what attitudes it wants to condone.”
Testimony in Massachusetts: The Lasting Impact of Growing Up in a Porn-Filled Home
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 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…
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.
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.”
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…
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…
“The incest started at the age of eight. I did not
understand any of it and did not feel that it was right. My dad would try to convince me that it was ok. He would find magazines, articles or pictures that would show fathers and daughters or mothers, brothers and sisters having sexual intercourse. (Mostly fathers and daughters.) He would say that if it was published in magazines that it had to be all right because magazines could not publish lies… He would say, ‘See it’s okay to do because it’s published in magazines…’”
Testimony in Minneapolis: “Pornography is probably the most extreme example of anti-women socialization that men receive in this society”
If you look at a lot of pornography, it shows women being beaten, humiliated, tied up. It shows women tied and stabbed, poked, prodded and abused by devices, assaulted by several men or animals, and many ugly and degrading things. When you see a woman being battered, you see a lot of the same ugliness and violence at the same time. Not only do they portray women as liking and deserving this sexual abuse, it shows them as enjoying it, deserving it. And that is what one of the great myths of battery is, is that women deserve to be battered and that they enjoy it. If they didn’t like it, they wouldn’t stay…
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.”
Abusive Relationships and Porn: The Similarities (explicit language)
At Bookends, a large porn shop in Enfield, we found more material that emphasized violence, domination, lack of consent, and manipulation of the victim:
“YEEOWWCH! STOP IT!!” I screamed and shot a hand back to protect my blazing behind. David’s failure to concede to my pleas or to say a word in reply scared me to death!…
“OUCH! Y-YES DAVID! AND I AM SORRY!! REALLY I AM!! OWWWW!”
“Not as sorry as you’re going to be!… Maybe you’ll listen to me next time and not act like a spoiled brat… I love and respect you, Allison…but I won’t stand by and let you do something dangerous and stupid. Do you hear me?”…
Punishment Porn: “Whether-She-Wants-It-Or-Not” (explicit)
[T]o the delight of the frenzied mob of young & old fans who’d just love to see her so shamed, The Shadow…blows Angie’s plan by ambushing her from behind & dragging her right to the manly man who is ready, eager & more than able to turn her over his muscular thigh & give her saucy seat six good whacks that tame the fiery female & have her singing a totally different tune when she’s finally released & forced to apologize to all.”
Capital Video’s Magazine Rack: Bondage, Racism and More
“A bed is still one of the most convenient bondage platforms invented by man. If the headboard is of the metal type, rather than solid wood, so much the better. A girl’s wrists can readily be tied to it, imprisoning her.”
“With the shapely divorcee twisting like a snake and frantically protesting the indignity he was inflicting on her, Rex proceeded to peel her black panties down…”
Rick Porras, Capital Video Executive, Would Rather You Not Know He Is a Pornographer (explicit language)
We can understand that if you’re promoting your ability to maximize sales, you might not want it known that you were maximizing sales of
A Caning for Miss Granger…Considering the role of porn in domestic abuse and child molestation, you might not be proud of some of the magazines sold by Capital Video, which include such material as…
Ass 2 Mouth #11
Broken China Dolls
Mexicunts #5
Ashley Blue Aka Filthy Whore
and
Barely Legal: School Girls #3
“These sweet and oh-so-studious school girls can’t wait to have their perky titties peaky titties and most holes corrupted!“
Photo Caption: “Her Master has told her, ‘Don’t you dare move.’ She’s finding that immobility is in itself a form of torture.”Northampton Neighbors of Porn Shop to Include Homes, School of Dance, Counseling Centers and Churches
Photo Caption: “Because her body is beginning to ache, she writhes on the carpet. It makes watching her even more arousing.”
Photo Caption: “Tied to the post, Tracy takes a fearful whipping.”
Story: My Father, The Hero
First He Protected Me, Then He Porked Me!
Story: Getting Gooey With Uncle Louie
His Huge Cock Made Me A Woman!
Story: Portrait Of A Hot Pussy
My Brother Painted Me Nude, Then We Got Lewd!
Story: Two On A Tool
I Gave Both Of My Daughters A Good F***!
NPN took a walk around 135 King Street to see who will be next to Capital Video’s proposed porn shop. Directly across North Street is the Northampton School of Dance and ServiceNet. The latter provides mental health counseling. A little further down King Street, still within sight of the porn shop, is Saint Valentine’s Church, the first of several houses of worship in this area. A little further still is Children’s Aid and Family Service. Back closer to the porn shop, on Myrtle Street, is Skipton House, a YWCA office and counseling center…
Robert Jensen: When Examining Complex Social Phenomena, Scientific Method Has Limits; Listen to the Stories of the Victims (explicit language)
“I know all about you bitches, you’re no different; you’re like all of them. I seen it in all the movies. You love being beaten. (He then began punching the victim violently.) I just seen it again in that flick. He beat the shit out of her while he raped her and she told him she loved it; you know you love it; tell me you love it…” [Silbert and Pines, 1984, p.864]
Testimony in Minneapolis: Porn and the Death Spiral of a Marriage
…we would have incredible arguments with each other. I would tell him I loved him, I only wanted to love him, I wanted to be a good wife, I wanted our marriage to work, but I didn’t want to be with these other people. It was he I wanted to be with, and no one else. He told me if I loved him I would do this. And that, as I could see from the things that he read me in the magazines initially, a lot of times women didn’t like it, but if I tried it enough I would probably like it, and I would learn to like it. And he would read me stories where women learned to like it.