I have found the writing of this article very hard. I have had to reassess my image of my past. I had to live in a household where the viewing of hard-core porn was the norm. This did me great damage. Part of the damage is that I have lost a great deal of my memory.
I get memories through my body. I can see my past in nightmares. I can remember when watching TV. Watching good acting forces back buried memories. I can feel fear – only it has no name. Then, I choose to be invisible. From the age of eight to twenty-seven I chose not to live.
I had lived with hard-porn from the time I was eight. Hustler entered my life when I was eleven. I found that it suffocated me with fear. Now, I wish to face Hustler in the eye, and to stand tall.
There was a time when I was a happy child. A time I thought that I was free. A time when the adults around me were trustworthy. There was a time when I could wander ’round naked. There was a time when I was a child. Nothing more — nothing less. I see that time as a dream. Sometimes, I stare at photos of me then. I wonder if any of it was true.
My stepdad enter my life when I was eight. He adored porn, the more violent the better. He came with images from sex-murders. Images of children doing things I didn’t want to know. He was a member of PIE [Paedophile Information Exchange, UK].
When he came, I changed. He made me look at the images. It burnt through my brain. When I closed my eyes, it rotted in my body. When Hustler came, I lost hope. All I knew was despair. All I saw was pain, only now it was with a smile. It made no sense. I got headaches. I lost my sight. I was closing down. All I heard was my stepdad’s laughter. He was laughing — as I shook with terror.
Then, I saw “Chester the Molester”. Then I knew I could not fight. In those cartoons, I saw my fate. I looked and I wanted to die. In those images, I saw my fear, my humiliation and my pain. Only, they were just a joke. I felt sick. I had forgotten how to laugh. I was learning to freeze my emotions.
Looking back, I see those cartoons for what they are. I had entered a world where children were property. They were always available for sex. They would never complain. Like the women in the hard-core porn, the children knew their place. They would learn to smile when in pain. When I saw “Chester the Molester” I was taught that sex was pain and fear. I learnt that it was inevitable I would be raped, beaten and threaten. For, after I learnt that the world belong to the rapist. I knew resistance was futile.
I survived by closing down my visual imagination. I thought it was a short-term solution, but it lasted for the rest of my life. Even when I relax I cannot escape into places that I have loved. Hard-core pornography has taken away my dreams.
My stepdad begun abusing me when I twelve. His abuse was gentle and calm. It was not as I had expected, it felt as if it was an accident. I thought that I was lucky since I was not dead or being tortured. I thought I had done something to make him touch me.
Hustler had taught how to be abused. I was now obeying my stepdad. I had stopped thinking that I could say no. As the abuse became more and more painful, as I became more and more degraded it all became clearer. I know the rules now.
Only, it made no sense. For, I could not understand why he keep saying that he loved me. How that be true, when he threw me into hell. Now, I see he spoke the language of hard-core porn. Always linking pain with pleasure. Speaking of how it was fine to have sex with kids. Telling me that it was only society’s conventions that say that it is wrong.
He made me believe that I received pain because I had moved. Every time he made me cum, he would say that I was a whore. I see now that I was his live porn.
When I was fourteen I had given up. I had decided that all I deserved was pain. I knew I was just a whore. I had been brainwashed by hard-core porn. I went blindly into the world of paid sex. At the time, I felt it was my decision — only I knew nothing.
I went towards men that used extreme sexual and physical violence. In that world, I found my place. The familiar place that I had seen in Hustler‘s photo-shoots. I thought I was hardened. I had forgotten that I was still a child. I thought I understood the rules of the game. But I was so wrong.
I did not know that each time that they hit me that I would go into shock. I did not know that each time that they raped me, I would feel pain. And I had no idea that men could hate women with such intensity. I thought I was street-wise. I was a child screaming to be rescued.
In their beds, I was an object. My eyes were dead. I had become just holes to be filled. Now, I had reached the beginning of my pain. Now, I was part of porn. I had no feelings left. My safety was not relevant.
Seeing me then, I can see the dead eyes in the Hustler‘s photo-shoots. I can understand that look. It is the look where hope is forgotten. For hope will only bring pain.
To believe in hope, will only mean facing the reality of the violence that i was living through. Then I may kill myself.
That time, was a different life to the one I live now. I know it is part of me, but I see it through a haze. My past made me strong and gave me a great deal of compassion. Now I feel some contentment for my life is low-key.
I was changed by having hard-core porn forced into my life. I can never regain the open trust I had before I was eight. I am still wary of my own sexuality. Hard-core porn placed an underlying depression in me. I still fight the desire to go back to violence when I am depressed. After all, violence was my norm. I am building a non-violent world around myself, but I find it very hard. For I cannot understand the rules of a safe life.
Each day, I am learning that I am more than a whore. I see now, that was never true. It was just the lies that hard-core porn placed in my brain. I live in the hope that one day, somehow, all women and children will be safe from the hated of hard-core porn.
Manufactured Contempt 
Wow..
It must have been very difficult for this writer to actually write about her systematic and horrific experiences wherein pornography was used against her in order to make her more compliant. Writing about one’s experiences of male sexual abuse in whatever form is never easy. However, Rebecca has courageously decided to speak out against the defenders of porn and ‘freedom of speech.’ We need more women and men too – to speak out and say ‘porn and child sexual abuse must never be acceptable or normalised.
Rebecca although your article is very disturbing it needed to be written and I admire your strength and courage. Larry Flynt and others of his ilk must be seen for what they are – pornographers who seek to make one group slaves to another group – namely white male supremacy.
Thank you Rebecca for talking of your experiences – of the direct impact that pornography has had on your life both as a child and as a woman. A valuable and much needed testimony that for obvious reasons many survivors are unable or reluctant to disclose. I admire and appreciate your honesty and I sincerely hope that safe spaces such as this that allow us to not only see – but to stare into the whites of the eyes of pornography, will hopefully encourage and inspire other survivors of men’s hatred to find restitution or some order of closure.
first Nikki–you’re doing a fabulous, over-the-top job with this blog. Thanks! 🙂
Rebecca,
I am glad you shared your experience with us. Your story brought tears to my eyes….for one child/woman to go through this would be atrocious, but to think about the number that do makes one feel quesy….
I hope you will continue to share, and in sharing, continue the fight against this devestating pornography.
In sisterhood,
Laur
Hi Rebecca.
Your brave and honest personal account of life in a deeply female-hating, pornography-saturated society is heart-breaking.
As someone who also knows the on-going horrors, numbness, and dissociation of living with a past that includes child sexual abuse, let me just say that my heart goes out to you.
I have been reading some work by a U.S. woman psychotherapist who works primarily with girls who are survivors of trauma, especially sexual violation and invasion.
Her name is Annie G. Rogers and she has written two amazing books:
A Shining Affliction: A Story of Harm and Healing in Psychotherapy. (This book deals with her psychotherapeutic work with a severely neglected boy, and her own therapy with a woman who is harmful to her, and with a man who is helpful to her), and:
The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma. (The second book is much more centered on the lives of girls and women, and has a lot to offer, but briefly gets into the language of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who, in my view, is deeply sexist in his use of language and concepts. She does her best to correct this, however, in her own writing here.)
I’m not sure if these books would be helpful to you, what your resources are, and what helps you to cope.
But there were things in these books that helped me understand my life better–how fractured and fragmented it was, and how some levels of healing are possible–which I thought was impossible for most of my life, and still do, in some ways.
For me, activism against pornography, and all other forms of violence against boys and girls and women is “therapeutic” but I also see a psychiatrist (a wonderful feminist), who understands the individual and collective harm of sexual abuse. I would only recommend seeing a woman therapist who really understands that pornography is sexual violence and racism and misogyny, graphically depicted. And, hopefully, someone who knows how to listen as Annie does, with an ear for what cannot, most of the time, be spoken out loud, but is expressed in other ways, through nonverbal cues, and the habits and recurring dramas of our inner and outer lives.
I wish you wellness and empowerment.
Julian
Rebecca,
I know just how painful it is to speak out about being sexually abused as a child. I applaud your courage.
Stefin Bradbury
To All – Thank-you for your interest in my writing. I am very honoured if my writing has help to give other Survivors a sense of empowerment. I hope that this helps with the battle agaainst hard-core porn and it’s impact on too many people’s lives. Yours with respect, Rebecca.
Rebecca,
Thanks so much for bravely sharing your story. There are so many out there who can relate and don’t know who to trust. The pain cannot be underestimated; I haven’t been through a fraction of the abuse forced onto you, yet even my own experiences have left me with pain rendering me unable to be regularly involved with sites like this, as much as I want to be an activist.
Rebecca, I read your story when it was first posted and I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. Seeing those images, alone, is enough to shut me up. You are such a strong woman to be able to resist and speak up against the woman-hatred of hard-core porn. You really are an inspiration. x a.
Rebecca, when you said your experiences gave you compassion, it broke my heart. So many times I have tried to convince people of the damage that porn does, because like you and many others here, I have experienced it myself. It seems so many people just don’t want to hear, in their blind defence of pornography as free speech, choice, empowerment and all those other nice, convenient, modern words. The word compassion rings in my ears every time I feel the frustration that they just don’t see it for what it is. I wonder is it only through experiencing suffering ourselves that we can understand the suffering of others? It breaks my heart that there is such a lack of compassion in this world, and so much hatred directed towards women. Thank you so much for your story. It has given me strength and inspiration. xx
Thank everyone again for your thoughtful comments.
Ang, I found your comment very moving. I think it is very sad that suffering can open your heart top compassion. I wish I had never know the thing that I know. But, I do believe that my experiences have empathy. It is very hard, for I feel so much sadness that the hatred of women and children is still so overpowering. I also feel anger at the way women and children are living with mental and physical torture in a pornified culture.
I feel the most important feeling I have my anger can lead to my campaigning through writing to show how deeply porn causes massive harm. I feel grief for what happen to me, which make attempt to prevent such crimes in the future.