After seeing Lovelace, I was compelled to articulate some thoughts about it. See the trailer for the film below if you haven't already:
Growing-up, and I can't chart the exact age, I had learned about Linda Lovelace and Deep Throat relatively young. I never saw the pornography nor excerpts from it. I just heard about it. I know it was at a age where not only was I too young to be giving blow-jobs, I actually wasn't giving anyone blow-jobs yet. It made an impression on me though nonetheless. The impression it made was a negative one, I'm old enough to know now. The impression it gave me was that a female better learn the craft of sex to please and keep her man, even if it meant her physical discomfort. How is losing your virginity, "deep throating" a ten inch or longer penis, or getting a cock shoved up your ass anything other than physical discomfort?--because it is. But a sexually desirable, a sexually knowledgeable, female is going to know how to adequately suppress that discomfort for the sexual edification of a male. Just like that, even without once being seen, Deep Throat affected my psyche, my sexual identity, and how I earnestly pursued perfecting my fellatio. Even on men who did not reciprocate oral sex on me.
Growing-up, I never knew Linda Lovelace was coerced, perhaps even brainwashed, into doing sexual acts she did not want to do. Growing-up, I never knew she outlined her hellish marriage to Chuck Traynor in a book called Ordeal. I was extremely poor back then, did not have regular access to the internet, and this was in the days before Google. Certain information was not at my disposal.
Imagine my 32 year old surprise than while watching the bio-film Lovelace and then subsequently downloading Ordeal to my Kindle to learn, what I'm horrified to believe isn't just "the rest of the story" but "the true story".
The first pornography that I was openly exposed to (beyond Brad Pitt's flaccid penis being in Playgirl and that was a disappointment) was around 16 or 17 at man by the name of Jack's house in Eastlake, OH. A grown man, an established man, who owned a small construction company. And Jack wasn't really showing me the video clip of a topless woman blowing a horse, he was showing it to my boyfriend who was 2 years older than me, placing him at about 18 or 19. I remember being sickened, feeling like my presence in the room should've deemed that viewing it should not have been permitted, I remember how she puked the horse sperm up in a manner that actually made me very concerned for her welfare--so concerned, I wrote a poem about the exploit later, questioning just that. It was so long ago, I can't remember if I stormed out or told Jack off. I remember refusing to go over Jack's after that happened and being very angry at my boyfriend for thinking...it was funny.
Jack always had antidotes about the ladies. One that's very vivid still is his tale of how him and some of his cronies took a stripper from Crazy Horse out on the golf course and attached a dildo to a remote control car and made a game of inserting said dildo into her vagina. I wish I was making that up. What I never got was how disgusting Jack really was in appearance, he was extremely overweight, tottering on What's Eating Gilbert Grape? obese, what gave him the right to objectify and evaluate the physicality of women?
I was mad when I read 'Linda Lovelace Is Not A Porn Star' by Connor Habib until I realized that Connor Habib was a man and promptly dismissed anything he had to say because of course a male's going to have a very different experience on a porn set than a female will. I'm still pissed that I had to learn late in life that Lovelace was hypnotized frequently by Traynor, forced into lewd sexual acts (including the porno Dogfucker), by not only her life being threatened, but by him threatening the lives of those she loved. It reminds me of Stephen King's character Wild Bill from The Green Mile who threatened each twin sister with the others death, that despicable type of evil. It's like John Coffey observed, "He kill them wi' love."
Men kill us with our love. Not all men. But probably a lot. This NYTimes article outlines how 1 in 5 women have been sexually assaulted in the United States. That bears repeating, 1 in 5 and that article is from 2011, how high is it now?
Linda fell in love first and that was her ultimate undoing.
If you're going to entertain seeing the film, I recommend reading Ordeal afterwards, because if you read it before the film, the film's mis-portrayals are going to tick you off all the more.
But I want to touch on some of the insights that Ordeal allows females especially in an era of so called 'slut-shaming':
Growing-up, and I can't chart the exact age, I had learned about Linda Lovelace and Deep Throat relatively young. I never saw the pornography nor excerpts from it. I just heard about it. I know it was at a age where not only was I too young to be giving blow-jobs, I actually wasn't giving anyone blow-jobs yet. It made an impression on me though nonetheless. The impression it made was a negative one, I'm old enough to know now. The impression it gave me was that a female better learn the craft of sex to please and keep her man, even if it meant her physical discomfort. How is losing your virginity, "deep throating" a ten inch or longer penis, or getting a cock shoved up your ass anything other than physical discomfort?--because it is. But a sexually desirable, a sexually knowledgeable, female is going to know how to adequately suppress that discomfort for the sexual edification of a male. Just like that, even without once being seen, Deep Throat affected my psyche, my sexual identity, and how I earnestly pursued perfecting my fellatio. Even on men who did not reciprocate oral sex on me.
Growing-up, I never knew Linda Lovelace was coerced, perhaps even brainwashed, into doing sexual acts she did not want to do. Growing-up, I never knew she outlined her hellish marriage to Chuck Traynor in a book called Ordeal. I was extremely poor back then, did not have regular access to the internet, and this was in the days before Google. Certain information was not at my disposal.
Imagine my 32 year old surprise than while watching the bio-film Lovelace and then subsequently downloading Ordeal to my Kindle to learn, what I'm horrified to believe isn't just "the rest of the story" but "the true story".
The first pornography that I was openly exposed to (beyond Brad Pitt's flaccid penis being in Playgirl and that was a disappointment) was around 16 or 17 at man by the name of Jack's house in Eastlake, OH. A grown man, an established man, who owned a small construction company. And Jack wasn't really showing me the video clip of a topless woman blowing a horse, he was showing it to my boyfriend who was 2 years older than me, placing him at about 18 or 19. I remember being sickened, feeling like my presence in the room should've deemed that viewing it should not have been permitted, I remember how she puked the horse sperm up in a manner that actually made me very concerned for her welfare--so concerned, I wrote a poem about the exploit later, questioning just that. It was so long ago, I can't remember if I stormed out or told Jack off. I remember refusing to go over Jack's after that happened and being very angry at my boyfriend for thinking...it was funny.
Jack always had antidotes about the ladies. One that's very vivid still is his tale of how him and some of his cronies took a stripper from Crazy Horse out on the golf course and attached a dildo to a remote control car and made a game of inserting said dildo into her vagina. I wish I was making that up. What I never got was how disgusting Jack really was in appearance, he was extremely overweight, tottering on What's Eating Gilbert Grape? obese, what gave him the right to objectify and evaluate the physicality of women?
I was mad when I read 'Linda Lovelace Is Not A Porn Star' by Connor Habib until I realized that Connor Habib was a man and promptly dismissed anything he had to say because of course a male's going to have a very different experience on a porn set than a female will. I'm still pissed that I had to learn late in life that Lovelace was hypnotized frequently by Traynor, forced into lewd sexual acts (including the porno Dogfucker), by not only her life being threatened, but by him threatening the lives of those she loved. It reminds me of Stephen King's character Wild Bill from The Green Mile who threatened each twin sister with the others death, that despicable type of evil. It's like John Coffey observed, "He kill them wi' love."
Men kill us with our love. Not all men. But probably a lot. This NYTimes article outlines how 1 in 5 women have been sexually assaulted in the United States. That bears repeating, 1 in 5 and that article is from 2011, how high is it now?
Linda fell in love first and that was her ultimate undoing.
If you're going to entertain seeing the film, I recommend reading Ordeal afterwards, because if you read it before the film, the film's mis-portrayals are going to tick you off all the more.
But I want to touch on some of the insights that Ordeal allows females especially in an era of so called 'slut-shaming':
"How can you identify a Chuck Traynor? The answer: you can't. At first Chuck seemed normal and nice. Suddenly there was a gun in his hand and it was pointed at my head. I never thought something like that could happen to me, and it could happen to you.
This story is not unique. There are plenty of Chuck Traynors out there. And an endless supply of girls who are young, trusting, gullible, and sometimes a little stupid. And it is certain that these people will, from time to time, come together. By the time they are pried apart, incredible damage can be done."
See, apparently it's easy to identify a slut, even at 12, but it's not so easy to diagnose the Chuck Traynors of the world, until it's too late. I also found this to be accurate having been sexually assaulted twice myself:
"When I was younger, when I heard about a woman being raped, my secret feeling was that that could never happen to me. I would never permit it to happen. Now I realize that can be about as meaningful as saying I won't allow an earthquake or I won't permit an avalanche.
...But I know that it did happen once, and I know something else: It could happen again--to me or to you."
Victim-blaming takes away notions of self control on the part of the attacker. Our culture needs to stop advising, "Don't get yourself raped," and instead needs to start proclaiming, "DON'T RAPE!"
Linda said she had no difficultity in relating to what happened to Patty Hearst.
Linda was told that the world wouldn't accept "the truth", no one would believe her if she told the whole truth all at once, since Ordeal was not her first oral publication.
I seethe that Linda Lovelace and Deep Throat are essentially household names but her harrowing ordeal is/was not. Traynor didn't just abuse Linda in forcing her to make this pornography, he abused ALL OF US. That's what's the most shocking. Pornography isn't Elvis or apple pie or Christmas, it's p-o-r-n-o-g-r-a-p-h-y. Never will it empower women. It's not about love or sexuality, it's about power and money. It's an industry for a reason. In this capitalistic paradigm it's nothing more than a crass commercial exploitation of sex for profit gain. Money just doesn't walk and talk, it fucks too.
How much did porn help Castro declare that he "wasn't a monster, just sick," where is the humor in images like this truck decal that aren't a new or shocking rarity:
What state do you live in and what kind of pornography is being viewed? See this chart to find out. Thanks to this chart, I now know what "complication" porn is, which is exactly what it sounds like, a complication of specific sex acts. Creampie has apparently evolved to just cumming in a female but originally 'creampie' was cumming in a female without her consent.
And what of Revenge Porn, this is basically a bullshit article on if making Revenge Porn illegal is somehow censorship? Revenge Porn is just as sickening as the website "Backroom Casting Couch" that brags on their own site:
Backroom Casting Couch is a website about the real life interactions that occur during adult modeling interviews. We film girls sucking, fucking, swallowing and taking it in the ass just to land a job. I would hire them all, however I'm not a talent agent... and there is no modeling job.
That sounds a lot like rape. Sex under false pretenses?
I can't even end this blog post on a positive note.
Ladies, girls, sisters, women, bitches, mammas, arm yourself with knowledge and the ability to protect yourself and the females you love. I really think we need a female only police force in this country.
Because if men lack self control than apparently we need to control them, I don't know about you, but I'm tired of being controlled. I can't be alone on this. Do we really need to wear a Rape-aXe when we go outside?
Is this really the last defense we have in the War On Women?
I'm sick of the over-glorification of serial killers as well in plot-lines that just helps fuel the perverted fantasies of men, especially when many serial killers claim that extreme violent pornography were the "gateway" for most of them. Listen to what the notorious Ted Bundy had to say on his last interview:
Hi came over to read your blog because Robyn Oyeniyi recommended it and I'm a big fan of Robyn's blog. I think you are right and as a 48 year old married man with children I'm very concerned about the increasing sexual violence directed at women and the increasing proliferation of pornography, which serves no other purpose than to oppress women and make someone somewhere some money. I personally blame the god Yahweh and the Bible for the oppression of women. Females dominate in evolved nature and they should dominate human society, but Genesis and the subsequent commandments of Yahweh have led to the Old Testament based religions creating societies in which women are oppressed. My god is Jesus, whom I don't believe to be the Hebrew Christ nor the son of Yahweh but a god in himself. Reports of Jesus in Gnostic and Orthodox gospels show that he treated all people equally and was reported to have considered the content of people's minds as an indicator of their humanity and not their race, creed or gender. So I think women should dominate a natural human society; I think Yahweh has caused humanity to 'misevolve' into a misogynistic society; I saw some pornography as a teenager and it honestly made me queasy,(a lot of boys view it when they are 'at that age', but I think that mature men grow out of being even remotely interested in it; I personally view rape as the act of an animal, not a human being. Mature intelligent human males are in control of their bodies and minds.
ReplyDeleteAnyway thanks for the good read and I'm sorry to say that the men you have written about and the large numbers of moronic, cretinous under evolved human males whose lives are controlled by the 'itch' in their genitals make me embarrassed to be male. I think that the 'sabre toothed femidom' you pictured above is a great idea, but is obviously not an answer to the problem of rape and as you say we need to get the 'don't rape' concept into thick skulls, which is never going to be easy, but we have to keep trying.