My name is Tonya Flynt. I am here to tell you that the portrayal of my father, Larry Flynt, in Oliver Stone and Milos Forman’s movie is a pack of lies. My father, the founder and publisher of Hustler Magazine, is not a hero who has sacrificed everything to fight censorship and protect freedom of speech. He doesn’t give a damn about freedom of speech. All he cares about is making millions of dollars out of the sexual exploitation of women and children.
My father is a pornographer, a pimp, and a molester of children. I say this with pain and sorrow because in spite of everything he has done, I still love my father. I also say this with fear, because my father has threatened me and my daughter. But I feel I have a responsibility to expose the truth about my father. Making Larry Flynt a hero justifies and makes invisible the harm he has done to women and children. It silences their voices and muffles their cries of pain. This is exactly what Oliver Stone’s movie has done.
This is the real story behind Hustler. Before my father owned his first bar, he was a small-time pimp with a string of women. That’s how he got the money to open his first bar and strip club. During the time he owned strip clubs, my father continued to pimp the women who worked in the clubs. He would make the women have sex with customers and give him a cut of the proceeds. That’s how he made so much money so quickly.
Why does the movie ignore the connections between my father’s financial empire and the prostituting of women and girls? Why doesn’t it say that Althea was a child prostitute? Why doesn’t it say that my father made his early money pimping? I guess it’s easier to glorify a pornographer than pimp?
To my father, women have always been objects to dominate and control. He showed his power through sexual use and abuse. One of my father’s favorite sayings was, “The man who controls pussy controls the world.”
My father used his power against me when I was a little girl. I worshiped my father. Part of that worship grew out of the fact that he lived in unimaginable luxury while my mother, my sister, and I lived in dire poverty. He didn’t feel any obligation to support us. We were always one step from destitution. We would go visit him at his mansions and have a taste of wealth and privilege. Then we would be back at home, worrying about how to pay the rent. The movie doesn’t talk about that.
My father used his power against me in another way too. He sexually abused me. On one occasion, my Dad was angry because I wouldn’t stop crying. He came in, out of control with rage, and beat me over and over again with a belt. That night he came into my room and sexually molested me. He penetrated me with his fingers. He made me touch his penis. He had oral sex with me and made me have oral sex with him. I hadn’t celebrated my thirteenth birthday when he did this to me.
On many occasions, he would touch my breasts or grab me between the legs. One time he came into my bedroom, took my panties off, and fondled me.
When my sister and I visited my father, he made no effort to shield us from any of the brutal and humiliating pictures. He was proud of them. Twice he sent me pornographic Christmas cards stuffed with money. At 8 or 9, my father made me and my sister go into a go-go bar, dress up in revealing outfits, and dance for him on the stage like strippers. I can’t tell you the damage these experiences did to my feelings about my body and to my sexuality. These are issues I will struggle with for the rest of my life.
My father wasn’t content just to molest me. I have been told by a close relative that he makes trips to Bangkok and buys little girls there. I was also told he brought back videotapes of child pornography from Bangkok. It causes me so much pain to realize that what he was doing to me he does to little girls pushed into prostitution by poverty.
Pornography and prostitution turned my father’s heart stone cold. It made him see even his own daughter as an object to use for his sexual gratification. I am the mother of a nine-year-old daughter. And when I look at her I thank God that I have been able to protect her from the abuse I was subjected to.
Hustler says it’s funny and sexy to molest little girls like my daughter. And Oliver Stone says Hustler is about freedom and liberation. That’s a dangerous message.
I ask you to look at these pictures and ask yourself: who benefits from them and who is harmed? Is this freedom?
Copyright Off Our Backs, Inc. Apr 1997
All rights Reserved
[Larry Flynt has publicly denied allegations that he molested his daughter however there is a tape that refutes his claim that was made by his wife that documents her confrontation of him about it.]
Please visit our websites: http://www.hustlingtheleft.com & http://www.therighttobeleftalone.org . Our myspace website was taken down by the management at myspace (owned by Fox and Rupert Murdock) and turned over to Larry Flynt. If you have links to this page on your sites be sure to take it off. Thanx
This makes me want to throw up. I have to force myself to read it because it depresses me, enrages me, nauseates me. It’s the reason I know I can’t be an activist, because I just don’t have the stomach to face the celebrated violation of my own class under the guise of “freedom,” or “biology,” or “progressive” anti-puritanism. I don’t know any woman who has not been hurt by pornography, even if they are unaware that that’s at the root of what is causing them harm. Some of us have not been so lucky to be ignorant of the connection…
I hate that the one thing I can count on is the progressives using the subjugation and dehumanization of an entire class of people to defend their supposed humanist politics.
I hate that the alternative is to band together with republicans if anything is to get done (because who would listen to women’s politics unless legitimized by REAL people who we don’t automatically dismiss, right?)–republicans who hate sleaze mainly because it undermines their own brand of control over women as an enslaved class.
I’m not a political science expert, but I also hate that the binary political system forces this exaggerated dichotomization of what positions neocons/libs take. Of course, the one thing you can count on from both is the implicit desire to subjugate and dehumanize women as something OTHER-than….
My, my, it’s only 1 PM, and I already need a shot of bourbon!
This piece of writing is so moving. I hope that Tonya Flint’s can heard, and not silenced.
In my experience, Hustler has been used as mental abuse, before sexual and physical abuse. I was about six, when I was made to view Hustler. The images that I was forced to see, put intense fear into my mind and body. I saw extreme sexual violence. I experience the hatred of women and children at it’s most brutal.
The hardest thing to handle was the humour of the cartoons in Hustler. These were just hate-speech. “Chester the Molester” terrified me to the core. It made incapable of resistance.
The brainwashing of Hustler made violence in my life seems acceptable. My stepdad abuse me for 21 years. I learnt though hard-core porn to be silent and still. When I was 14, I was having sex with violent men. Sometimes, I was paid, always I was treated as a piece of dirt. Porn had taught that I was a whore. Taught that I deserved pain. I was an object, so I had no rights. I was not even allow to have feelings.
This why I get so angry that Hustler can see as liberating or an upholder of the freedom of speech. The women and children who were destroyed by Hustler have no voice. If they dare to speak out they are ridiculed or told they are liars.
Hustler creates a world of violence and hate, so it must be attacked.
Frontline was looking into Larry Flynt’s Hustler empire in an episode titled “American Porn.” It had a section about the new chain of Hustler stores, with a major branch operated by another one of Larry’s daughters, Theresa. Her general attitude was that women are empowered by the products she sells, that women make up a large fraction of her patrons, and that the latter is a sign of wonderful progressive change. While she was selling her sleazy variety of empowerment, I was thinking of her sister, Tonya. I’d like to see a verbal exchange between the two and see how Theresa handles it.
I just wanted to thank Tonya for being brave enough to share what her father did to her.
K.A., it is beyond disheartening to *know* women are a second class of people and magazines such as Hustler are a good reason why. I wish there was more of a simple answer to what could be done about it.
Larry Flynt abused his own daughter. There is nothing he can say that can be believed or respected. There is nothing he can do that can be respected or honored. Everything he does and touches is stained by the fact of his misogyny.
I cannot understand how he can have a clear conscience or sleep at night.
I cannot understand how he can go through life establishing women as dirt, inferior, …. I cannot even say it right now.
Instead, I can say this:
Women and Woman the archetype and each and every single woman on earth is special and precious and sacred. Women give birth. Women raise children. Women give their lives to their husbands and marriages. Every man on earth is challenged to love, respect, honor, comfort each and every woman on earth.
I hope Tonya Flynt sees this:
I honor you.
I respect you.
I appreciate you.
You have told the truth about what he did to you. There is no greater power than breaking silence and telling the truth about the violence a man does to a woman.
I admire your courage and I hope other women will follow your example.
Flynt can Say what he wishes, as long as it is from behind bars, which is where he needs to stay. If Julius Streicher was sent up, Flynt should be, too.
Laur, you’re right, disheartening isn’t even the word.
Crippling?
Silencing?
Abusive?
I can’t let it paralyze me though. It’s difficult, because if I take an avoidant approach to this horror in order to maintain my own sense of self without misogynist interference, the status quo remains. But it has to be confronted to be stopped. It’s so stupid that I have to choose to between immersing myself in misogynists’ poison, or begetting other women’s silence by turning a blind eye and being silent myself. Flynt et al. can continue because many women fear being vocal, or the vocal ones feel defeated because they’re unilaterally dismissed by the powers that be.
Tommie, I agree that women should be more culturally respected as givers of life, and I agree that women of generations past should be lauded for their courage in supporting their husbands with little gratitude back when they had no other choice. But what we should also emphasize now is that women are more than their reproductive differences, and their former subjugated status is not to be the archetype any longer. Our expectations for our daughters and sons should be the same.
To Tommie.
I agree with K.A. above.
Women are deserving of full human rights not because they give birth or take care of men or children: they are deserving of human rights because they are human, and more diverse an oppressed group than any archetype can conjure.
And I agree with you completely, Tommie, in wondering how Flynt can sleep at night and I appreciated reading those sentiments of yours.
Peace After Patriarchy.
Tonya,
Just three words:
I believe you!
Well okay more than that – I support you, I salute you, and I hope you win your fight to be heard. I was subjected to viewing your father’s misogynistic trash growing up amongst other types of sexual abuse, and yes, it does leave its scars, you are right.
I’m so very sorry… sorry you’ve had to also be silent out of fear and sorry that your father exploited you like this. Keep fighting the good fight, such evil cannot be allowed to win.
I’m sorry your dad hurt you, your sister, and your mother so terribly. I’m sorry he’s hurt countless others. I heard that he has disinherited you for publically telling the truth about him sexually abusing you. That is just disgusting. If I were you I would feel unimaginably angry. I hope you are coping with all these struggles. I’m sorry if what I am about to say hurts you — I know you love him — but your dad is an awful human being!