penetration.”
Sonya went on relentlessly with descriptions that did indeed turn many of our stomachs. She didn’t mention the fundamentalist belief system that underlay her arguments against porn, she didn’t bring up some of the other goals of the moral majority to which she belonged, like putting homosexuals in concentration camps to prevent them from spreading AIDS and making abortion and contraception illegal. Sonya only talked about pornography’s abuse of children, and when she got to her stories of the little blond Minnesota girl who was kidnapped off her playground and sold in Los Angeles for use in porn films, there wasn’t a mother or a father in the house who felt easy in their seats. Penny, beside me, was completely agitated. “I never knew any of this. I never knew any of this.”
Elizabeth, if anything, was even more persuasive. Not only was she cute and pregnant, but she gave off the aura of vast experience, which indeed she did have. She talked primarily about the contract work she’d done with sex offenders, both sexually abusive fathers and other relatives, and rapists.
“Most of the offenders I worked with were exposed to or involved with pornography at a very early age. They tended to have an obsessive relationship with porn. Sometimes their families have found stacks of magazines in their closets, their basements, their garages. It’s taken over their lives, it’s become their entertainment, their way of life. Let me tell you the results of some studies we made. In psychological testing most of our offenders seem predisposed to violent acting-out behavior. Many of them state that they think pornography is directly responsible for where they got their ideas about women and about what sexuality is. Many of them say that the exposure to pornography early in their lives had a direct effect on them and contributed strongly to their need to act out.”
My stomach was churning and tense, but I had to keep listening.
“Let me talk a little about adults who sexually abuse children. A recent study reports that one of the major reasons why children don’t report being sexually abused is that the abusers convince them that such activity is normal and pleasurable. They routinely use pictures of child pornography to convince the children of how enjoyable it is….”
I could see that I wasn’t the only one who felt sick hearing this. In any audience full of women it’s probable that at least one out of four will have been sexually violated in some way. At some point in Elizabeth’s careful recounting of statistics I realized I couldn’t listen any more and just shut down. As far as I was concerned, everything she said made sense and was true and horrible and frightening. And I didn’t want to hear it.
So much of the effect of a panel discussion lies in the order of the speakers. Miko, coming after Sonya and Elizabeth, was hard put to equal their quiet, passionate power. Starting off on the wrong foot by announcing that she too had once been afraid of and threatened by pornography, but that now she saw it as the way to her personal salvation, Miko went on to tell the audience many particulars of her sexual and creative life. But her nervousness made her appear off-key and strident instead of being a woman powerfully in touch with her eroticism. It wasn’t just my prejudice either. Miko, who so loved a public forum for her cultivated outrageousness, was definitely not in tune with the atmosphere tonight as she told story after embarrassing story of what her life had been like before and after she discovered the liberating power of making videos of women’s body parts.
“Who cares?” I heard June sigh, but when I snuck a glance at Hadley, she looked fascinated.
The discussion with the audience began with Miko and Gracie bearing the brunt of the attacks. One woman wanted to know how Miko could justify promoting pornography when innocent children were being abducted right and left. Someone from
Sonya went on relentlessly with descriptions that did indeed turn many of our stomachs. She didn’t mention the fundamentalist belief system that underlay her arguments against porn, she didn’t bring up some of the other goals of the moral majority to which she belonged, like putting homosexuals in concentration camps to prevent them from spreading AIDS and making abortion and contraception illegal. Sonya only talked about pornography’s abuse of children, and when she got to her stories of the little blond Minnesota girl who was kidnapped off her playground and sold in Los Angeles for use in porn films, there wasn’t a mother or a father in the house who felt easy in their seats. Penny, beside me, was completely agitated. “I never knew any of this. I never knew any of this.”
Elizabeth, if anything, was even more persuasive. Not only was she cute and pregnant, but she gave off the aura of vast experience, which indeed she did have. She talked primarily about the contract work she’d done with sex offenders, both sexually abusive fathers and other relatives, and rapists.
“Most of the offenders I worked with were exposed to or involved with pornography at a very early age. They tended to have an obsessive relationship with porn. Sometimes their families have found stacks of magazines in their closets, their basements, their garages. It’s taken over their lives, it’s become their entertainment, their way of life. Let me tell you the results of some studies we made. In psychological testing most of our offenders seem predisposed to violent acting-out behavior. Many of them state that they think pornography is directly responsible for where they got their ideas about women and about what sexuality is. Many of them say that the exposure to pornography early in their lives had a direct effect on them and contributed strongly to their need to act out.”
My stomach was churning and tense, but I had to keep listening.
“Let me talk a little about adults who sexually abuse children. A recent study reports that one of the major reasons why children don’t report being sexually abused is that the abusers convince them that such activity is normal and pleasurable. They routinely use pictures of child pornography to convince the children of how enjoyable it is….”
I could see that I wasn’t the only one who felt sick hearing this. In any audience full of women it’s probable that at least one out of four will have been sexually violated in some way. At some point in Elizabeth’s careful recounting of statistics I realized I couldn’t listen any more and just shut down. As far as I was concerned, everything she said made sense and was true and horrible and frightening. And I didn’t want to hear it.
So much of the effect of a panel discussion lies in the order of the speakers. Miko, coming after Sonya and Elizabeth, was hard put to equal their quiet, passionate power. Starting off on the wrong foot by announcing that she too had once been afraid of and threatened by pornography, but that now she saw it as the way to her personal salvation, Miko went on to tell the audience many particulars of her sexual and creative life. But her nervousness made her appear off-key and strident instead of being a woman powerfully in touch with her eroticism. It wasn’t just my prejudice either. Miko, who so loved a public forum for her cultivated outrageousness, was definitely not in tune with the atmosphere tonight as she told story after embarrassing story of what her life had been like before and after she discovered the liberating power of making videos of women’s body parts.
“Who cares?” I heard June sigh, but when I snuck a glance at Hadley, she looked fascinated.
The discussion with the audience began with Miko and Gracie bearing the brunt of the attacks. One woman wanted to know how Miko could justify promoting pornography when innocent children were being abducted right and left. Someone from
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