Pornography and Sex Equality: The Life and Times of Linda Lovelace

[redqueen]

Lovelace, starring Amanda Seyfried, is the story of a small town girl, Linda Boreman, pornographed as Linda Lovelace, who gained fame as the "star" of the porn classic Deep Throat. It is crucial to know, when watching this film, that Linda Boreman maintained that Linda Lovelace was not the "star" of Deep Throat, but rather its victim. Linda Boreman died in 2002, from injuries sustained in a car accident; but Linda's story is lived over and over by countless women every day who are trafficked to make pornography. And the objectification of women as only for sex accomplished through films like Deep Throat is lived by every woman, everywhere, in one way or another, and whether or not they care to admit it.

Reading Linda's book, Ordeal, which chronicles her life as she was pimped by her abusive husband, Chuck Traynor, and trafficked to make pornography, changed my life. It certainly changed the way I thought about pornography. It made me realize that pornography happens, literally, to those used to make it. It isn't harmless. It isn't make-believe. Lovelace, based on Linda's account of her life, is a beautifully done, superbly acted film. I hope everyone will see it. Hopefully, it will advance the understanding of what pornography really is -- and what it is that it does-- in important ways. But the film presents its own challenges. For one thing, Linda's life was not the screen's fiction. One only gets a clear picture of the torture she endured at the hands of the pornography industry by reading Ordeal. One understands, of course, that the filmmakers could not make a movie showing just how horrible Linda's life was actually made by pornography and domestic violence. The fact of the matter is that the same sort of chic detachment from reality that made Deep Throat into a 600 million dollar phenomenon had to be maintained in the Hollywood version of Linda's real life. As Catharine MacKinnon recently said in reference to the film, "apparently, when you make fact into fiction, people begin to believe it is true." That's true, but only so long as the fiction doesn't get too real.

Even so, Lovelace does more than any mainstream effort I know of to debunk the myth that pornography is just a fantasy. This portrayal of Linda's life demonstrates, without equivocation, that what you see happening in pornography is happening to a real, living, breathing woman. And Lovelace also makes clear that just because she looks like she's enjoying it doesn't mean that she really is. Critically, Lovelacece pulls back the curtain on the pornography industry to reveal what's going on out of range of the camera. One of the things that made Deep Throat into such a tremendous success was that Linda Lovelace appeared to be the girl next door. She seemed innocent, a little naïve, on screen. And most important of all was the convincing smile that let her viewers know that she was enjoying it. It was Linda's ability to be convincing that allowed the well-heeled, business types who took their wives and girlfriends to see Deep Throat to say to these appropriated women: "Linda enjoys it. If you really loved me, you'd enjoy it, too." Linda said in Ordeal, as we see in Lovelace, that she was threatened with a gun by her husband/pimp, and in some cases even hypnotized to do what was necessary. I've often thought it was a terribly cruel response by so many civil libertarian defenders of pornography to disbelieve Linda simply because she managed to be a convincing actress when a gun was pointed at her head.

...

There has been only one attempt in the law to take pornography seriously. In1983, Catharine MacKinnon and the late Andrea Dworkin authored a law to help Linda and those like her. Their civil rightsordinance, first written for Minneapolis but adopted or considered in other jurisdictions, recognized pornography as a concrete practice of sex discrimination and gave victims harmed in and through pornography access to a civil remedy they could seek for themselves. MacKinnonand Dworkin said emphatically through their law that women's bodies are not words, and that the fortunes of pimps and pornographers are not more important than women's lives. When you get right down to it, the pornography civil rights ordinance marked a rare moment in the law when women'slives and their rights to bodily integrity were discernibly more important than the male erection. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the MacKinnon/Dworkin ordinance was struck down as unconstitutional in American Booksellers v. Hudnut (7th Cir. 1985). Shortly after the release of Lovelace, I told Professor MacKinnon that women, men, and children injured through pornography need a law like the one she wrote now more than ever, because thanks to the Internet, the pornography industry is bigger and, in fact, crueler than ever. We need a freshapproach to pornography and itsharms, and there is absolutely no reason the MacKinnon/Dworkin approach couldn't be found constitutional today. Weneed to say, once again, that women matter. Thequestion Lovelace raises at this moment, when pornography is more normalized and more powerful than ever, is: who will have the courage to say it?

...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shannon-gilreath/pornography-and-sex-equal_b_3916374.html

[Arcanetrance]

1. I used to believe porn was a harmless thing I mean who really gets hurt by sex

But as I got older I saw more and more the people on the screen were reduced to nothing more than body parts. Than I met someone who worked in the industry and some of the things she told me about how the more extreme the act your willing to do the more you get paid for the scene. Anal is basically something you have to be willing to do. All that combined made it basically abhorrent to me.

[redqueen]

2. I used to as well. I even defended it to those who tried to tell me this stuff was happening.

Sad how easy it is to dismiss such women. 'Well its only some of them being raped routinely, so its ok! I don't need to stop supporting this industry just cause a few women are raped over and over again, right? Liberals mostly all agree about this, so I'm cool with it if they are.'

Later I learned about what actually goes on behind the scenes... even the women who are "consenting", no matter how much they try to sugar coat and whitewash, can manage to completely hide the myriad problems. It's sad how easily so much evidence of abuse and exploitation can be ignored, in favor of focusing on privileged exceptions... and why...

[Arcanetrance]

3. I remember a conversation with my friend describing how much worse it is for women who aren't white

The Asian women regardless of where they're from are forced to act like they're fresh from Japan or China even if their ethnicity is the from either of those countries. Black women are reduced to nothing but ass. They also get paid significantly less than white pornstars to things that are sometimes more extreme than their white counterparts. There's a whole website that exists and their whole existence is based on a group of white guys basically raping a black female regardless of consent the extremity of the site that was described to me was ridiculous and scary

[ismnotwasm]

4. I still have the habit of cruising porn sites

It doesn't do anything for me, but I want to see what's out there. As far as I'm concerned, and from what I can see, it's sexist, racist, promotes rape and pedophilia, because of the high level of fetitishizing, like everything.

I've seen bits and pieces of the erotic , but it's always the exception, I believe it poisons sexual imagination, and it is a huge industry one that the nature of the Internet has changed. Remember the porn defenders saying the rate of HIV transmission was lower than the general public? With all the small studios and unregulated "amateur" porn, there is no way to track the actual health of sex workers.

AIM- an organization I thought could do some good, declared bankruptcy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_Industry_Medical_Health_Care_Foundation

It's really a mess when you think about it.

And that objection to condoms--here the sex industry has a true potential for teaching about safe sex, and they balk in favor of unsafe sex practices.

[duffyduff]

5. The media in the 1970s and 1980s did a real disservice regarding porn

They tried to glamorize it, to turn it into some kind of lifestyle option or something. That was profoundly wrong and had nothing to do with reality.

When you sit down and analyze it, when you think about the working conditions of people who are in this business, how in the hell would you go anywhere near the stuff?

I won't touch it. I would feel like I am taking part in a human rights violation if I consumed it.

Moreover, as the OP notes, porn isn't a "fantasy"--it is REALITY for those people who work in the business as actors and models. And because it is reality, that needs to be told to the general public.

It isn't harmless fun.

[nomorenomore08]

6. While I certainly wouldn't support attempts to outlaw porn - impossible anyhow - I do think

people need to be made more aware of the uglier side of the industry. And to really think about what they're consuming, even if just passively. Lovelace may have been a somewhat extreme example, but certainly not a unique one.