Witnesses attributed to pornography their having been coerced into pornographic
performances, bound and beaten in direct imitation of pornography, and forcibly imprisoned
for the purpose of manufacturing pornography. Although this Commission can neither
conclusively determine that pornography caused these physical harms nor conclusively
determine that it did not, it was the opinion of the witnesses that pornography played a
central role in the pattern of abuse within which they were harmed.
Witnesses attributed many different kinds of damage to psychological functioning and
sense of self to their having been used in the production of pornographic materials,
exposed to pornographic materials, or sexually assaulted by offenders who used pornography
as part of the abuse. Many of these psychological injuries correspond to the signs and
symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.[762] Witnesses also attributed to
pornography financial losses due to hospitalization and therapy, damage to family
relationships and status in the community caused by defamatory representations in
pornography, associations between prostitution and pornography, and sexual harassment
through pornography. Many of the women, men, and children who testified reported each of
these types of consequences, and some individuals are quoted repeatedly in various
sections of this chapter.
Although we have tried in this chapter to allow victims to speak in their own words,
without interpretation or commentary, we have in several instances quoted the words of
victim's mothers, friends, or therapists. We have done so only because there are instances
in which the victims themselves were unavailable for testimony. In the same vein, we quote
here pertinent excerpts from the eloquent testimony of Andrea Dworkin on behalf of other
victims whose voices were not heard:
My name is Andrea Dworkin. I am a citizen of the United States, and in this country
where I live, every year millions of pictures are being made of women with our legs
spread. We are called beaver, we are called pussy, our genitals are tied up, they are
pasted, makeup is put on them to make them pop out of a page at a male viewer. Millions
and millions of pictures are made of us in postures of submission and sexual access so
that our vaginas are exposed for penetration, our anuses are exposed for penetration, our
throats are used as if they are genitals for penetration. In this country where I live as
a citizen real rapes are on film and are being sold in the marketplace. And the major
motif of pornography as a form of entertainment is that women are raped and violated and
humiliated until we discover that we like it and at that point we ask for more.
In this country where I live as a citizen, women are penetrated by animals and objects
for public entertainment, women are urinated on and defecated on, women and girls are used
interchangeably so that grown women are made up to look like five- or six-year-old
children surrounded by toys, presented in mainstream pornographic publications for anal
penetration. There are magazines in which adult women are presented with their pubic areas
shaved so that they resemble children.
In this country where I live, there is a trafficking in pornography that exploits
mentally and physically disabled women, women who are maimed; there is amputee
pornography, a trade in women who have been maimed in that way, as if that is a sexual
fetish for men. In this country where I live, there is a trade in racism as a form of
sexual pleasure, so that the plantation is presented as a form of sexual gratification for
the black woman slave who asks please to be abused, please to be raped, please to be hurt.
Black skin is presented as if it is a female genital, and all the violence and the abuse
and the humiliation that is in general directed against female genitals is directed
against the black skin of women in pornography.
Asian women in this country where I live are tied from trees and hung from ceilings and
hung from doorways as a form of public entertainment. There is a concentration camp
pornography in this country where I live, where the concentration camp and the atrocities
that occurred there are presented as existing for the sexual pleasure of the victim, of
the woman, who orgasms to the real abuses that occurred, not very long ago in history.
In the country where I live as a citizen, there is a pornography of the humiliation of
women where every single way of humiliating a human being is taken to be a form of sexual
pleasure for the viewer and for the victim; where women are covered in filth, including
feces, including mud, including paint, including blood, including semen; where women are
tortured for the sexual pleasure of those who watch and those who do the torture, where
women are murdered for the sexual pleasure of murdering women, and this material exists
because it is fun, because it is entertainment, because it is a form of pleasure, and
there are those who say it is a form of freedom.
Certainly it is freedom for those who do it. Certainly it is freedom for those who use
it as entertainment, but we are also asked to believe that it is freedom for those to whom
it is done.
Then this entertainment is taken, and it is used on other women, women who aren't in
the pornography, to force those women into prostitution, to make them imitate the acts in
the pornography. The women in the pornography, sixty-five to seventy percent of them we
believe are victims of incest or child sexual abuse. They are poor women; they are not
women who have opportunities in this society. They are frequently runaways who are picked
up by pimps and exploited. They are frequently raped, the rapes are filmed, they are kept
in prostitution by blackmail. The pornography is used on prostitutes by johns who are
expected to replicate the sexual acts in the pornography, no matter how damaging it is.
Pornography is used in rape-to plan it, to execute it, to choreograph it, to engender
the excitement to commit the act. Pornography is used in gang rape against women. We see
an increase since the release of "Deep Throat" in throat rape-where women show
up in emergency rooms because men believe they can penetrate, deep-thrust, to the bottom
of a woman's throat. We see increasing use of all elements of pornography in battery,
which is the most commonly committed violent crime in this country, including the rape of
women by animals, including maiming, including heavy bondage, including outright torture.
We have seen in the last eight years, an increase in the use of cameras in rapes. And
those rapes are filmed and then they are put on the marketplace and they are protected
speech-they are real rapes. We see pornography in the harassment of women on jobs,
especially in nontraditional jobs, in the harassment of women in education, to create
terror and compliance in the home, which as you know is the most dangerous place for women
in this society, where more violence is committed against women than anywhere else. We see
pornography used to create harassment of women and children in neighborhoods that are
saturated with pornography, where people come from other parts of the city and then prey
on the populations of people who live in those neighborhoods, and that increases physical
attack and verbal assault.
We see pornography having introduced a profit motive into rape. We see that filmed
rapes are protected speech. We see the centrality of pornography in serial murders. There
are snuff films. We see boys imitating pornography.
We see the average age of rapists going down. We are beginning to see gang rapes in
elementary schools committed by elementary school age boys imitating pornography. We see
sexual assault after death where frequently the pornography is the motive for the murder
because the man believes that he will get a particular kind of sexual pleasure having sex
with a woman after she is dead.
We see a major trade in women, we see the torture of women as a form of entertainment,
and we see women also suffering the injury of objectification-that is to say we are
dehumanized. We are treated as if we are subhuman, and that is a precondition for violence
against us.
I live in a country where if you film any act of humiliation or torture, and if the
victim is a woman, the film is both entertainment and it is protected speech. Now that
tells me something about what it means to be a woman citizen in this country, and the
meaning of being second-class.
When your rape is entertainment, your worthlessness is absolute. You have reached the
nadir of social worthlessness. The civil impact of pornography on women is staggering. It
keeps us socially silent, it keeps us socially compliant, it keeps us afraid in
neighborhoods; and it creates a vast hopelessness for women, a vast despair. One lives
inside a nightmare of sexual abuse that is both actual and potential, and you have the
great joy of knowing that your nightmare is someone else's freedom and someone else's fun.
. . . The first thing I am going to ask you to do is listen to women who want to talk
to you about what has happened to them. Please listen to them. They know, they know how
this works .... It has happened to them.
I am also asking you to acknowledge the international reality of this-this is a human
rights issue-for a very personal reason, which is that my grandparents came here, Jews
fleeing from Russia, Jews fleeing from Hungary. Those who did not come to this country
were all killed, either in pogroms or by the Nazis. They came here for me. I live here,
and I live in a country where women are tortured as a form of public entertainment and for
profit, and that torture is upheld as a state-protected right. Now, that is unbearable.
I am asking you to help the exploited, not the exploiters. You have a tremendous
opportunity here. I am asking you as individuals to have the courage, because I think it's
what you will need, to actually be willing yourselves to go and cut that woman down and
untie her hands and take the gag out of her mouth, and to do something, for her freedom.[763]