Getting the Monster in My Cupboard: A Personal Account by Rebecca

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.

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Larry Flynt: The Right to Be Left Alone?

What Larry Flynt was really doing the night
of the opening of Larry Flynt: The Right to Be Left Alone.

On Friday the 13th in April 2007 The Right To Be Left Alone, the latest documentary on Larry Flynt had its world premiere as the “center frame” film at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, sponsored by Duke University, The New York Times and HBO. Flynt was even invited as an honored guest, however his brother showed up instead, because Flynt said he was ill. At the opening, his brother said the reason Flynt was not present was not because he was sick. Maybe he was too busy satisfying his fetish for bondage pornography and not leaving women alone by violating their privacy in every way imaginable on his blog.

There were over 2,000 films entered in the Full Frame Festival, and apparently the Flynt documentary was among only one of two films that escaped the critical review process in an otherwise scholarly environment. Full Frame appears to have given Larry Flynt special protection where it could be assured that his critics were kept silent in order to protect Flynt from criticism. Free Speech, anyone?

Full Frame’s motto is “How much reality can you handle?”, but the filmmakers have produced a manipulative and superficial examination of Flynt, one that uses propaganda tactics and takes their audience for a ride. It is indeed a very unreal portrayal of Flynt which includes even “very little nudity” and hypocritically did not mention any of the massive amounts of racist, homophobic and misogynist materials he produced.

For decades Hustler, his hate magazine, has been on sale in almost every convenience store in the country. During that time, with each new issue every month he has declared war on women, feminists, people of color, animals, Jews, the disabled, children, and animal rights activists, as well as other groups or individual who disagreed with him. Flynt has aimed hate speech and harassment against every mistreated or oppressed groups you can think of. A full generation of males have now been raised on contempt like his and he loves it.

Dwayne Tinsley, close personal friend to Flynt, and the creator of the Hustler cartoon “Chester the Molester,” which depicted pre-teen girls of all races being molested, was convicted in 1990 of sexually abusing his daughter. When he was released from prison, after serving his time, Flynt hired him back on at Huster. In February 1996, Hustler publisher Joe Theron was arrested in Britain with 400 videos imported from South Africa, many of them depicting child pornography.

For all this Flynt is being promoted as a free speech hero instead of the greedy, exploitive, racist misogynist he really is. The right to be left alone? The right to be left alone? In his whole life Larry Flynt has never left anyone alone. Flynt has aimed hate speech and harassment against every oppressed groups you can think of. Big man. Big hero. Thanks Duke University, HBO, New York Times and Full Frame Documentary Festival!

Most people who have seen the Larry Flynt movie think they know who Larry Flynt is. A leading figure in the struggle for free speech, who published, according to our modern eyes, quite innocent nudie-photos and some jokes against the right wing conservatives and Jerry Falwell. Sounds cool but it’s a lie.

The real Flynt has little in common with the martyr that he finances people to describe him as. According to his own autobiography Flynt’s first sexual experience was raping a chicken. He killed the chicken to “avoid suspicion”. He has also gone to tremendous degrees in his attempts to silence his daughter from talking about how she was raped by him. He has used his power in the media to attempt to instill intimidation in any who spoke out against pornography. He used his magazine to vilify activist Aura Bogado with hateful, violent and threatening cartoons and articles. In his column called “Asshole of the Month” he has included Barack Obama, Diana Russell, Andrea Dworkin, Dorchen Liedholdt, Gloria Allred, Catharine MacKinnon and hundreds of others. In the 1970s he put out “Wanted Posters” for Gloria Steinem and Susan Brownmiller because they were antipornography. He has offered a bounty on feminists who have been critical against him and done whatever he could to silence whoever would be critical against the racist and misogynic material in his magazines.

The only free speech Larry Flynt really wants is his own and what he wants said, which makes him as much of a defender of free speech as say for example Stalin or Hitler.

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