Alyssa Ahrabare from the French organisation Osez le féminisme explains how they managed to prosecute traffickers and pornographers in a historic French court case.
Next year in Paris, the owner of a porn site will be prosecuted. It is a historic case involving 40 victims and three organisations as civil parties (Osez le féminisme, Mouvement du Nid and Les Effronté-es). It is a victory for the women’s movement, and especially for us in the Osez le féminisme group, which has pursued the issue and is a civil party to the case. Osez le féminisme (“Dare to be feminist”) is an organisation that provides holistic support to over 40 victims in both cases, including legal assistance, psychological trauma therapy, and social support, with a team of 30 lawyers, two specialist psychologists and a social worker.
The prosecution covers a range of charges: rape, prostitution and human trafficking.1 The subject of the prosecution is the French website ‘French Bukkake’, owned by Pascal Ollitrault (known as Pascal OP), which posts extremely violent pornographic videos. According to a report by the Haut Conseil à l’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes (Equality Council), these cases are the norm rather than the exception, and the pornography industry benefits from widespread impunity to minimise “serious violations of human dignity”.2
The preliminary investigation was launched in 2020, and investigators soon discovered that many complaints had been filed across France for several years, but had not been followed up. In the course of their work, the investigators uncovered a system of sexual exploitation for the purpose of rape, and a judicial investigation was opened for ‘gang rape’, ‘aggravated trafficking in human beings’, ‘aggravated pimping’, ‘money laundering’, ‘concealed labour’ and ‘distribution of recordings of images relating to the execution of a deliberate attack on the integrity of a person’.
The survey revealed the grim reality of ‘Bukkake’ films. Paying subscribers were invited to participate in gang rapes based on a particularly dehumanising scenario: many men penetrated a woman (sometimes over 80 times in less than two hours) before collectively ejaculating on the victim, who was displayed on a pallet as a commodity. 500 men were identified in the investigation. Ordinary men, porn consumers who were invited to rape and torture women on camera. They have not yet been prosecuted.
The French Council for Gender Equality published a report this year on the criminality of the pornography industry, including the testimonies of victims.3
The investigation related to the “French Bukkake” case has revealed a well-organised strategy to capture victims. A man named Julien D. targeted women on social networks. He approached them under a fake female profile called “Axelle Vercoutre” and, using the myth of “happy and lucrative prostitution”, convinced them to try becoming “luxury escorts”. He then posed as a buyer, met the women and raped them. Raping victims in order to exert control over them is a common practice used by pimps and traffickers.
After the rapes, Julien D. encouraged the women to try being in pornographic films that would only be shown to limited audiences abroad. They were to go to a specified address where several days of horror ensued. The producer, Pascal OP, at first seemed nice, with the intention of forcing their consent and recording it. Subsequently, the complainants report that they were raped on camera, humiliated and tortured by filming degrading scenes. Hair analysis also shows that some of them were drugged without their knowledge.
Women were also deceived when they asked for videos posted online to be deleted.4) Victims report significant psychological difficulties after the filming. Some tried to take legal action as early as 2017, but the police did not act: warnings in Toulouse, Brignoles, Les Andelys and Reims (where Julien D. lived) were not followed up.5
At the end of the investigation in July 2023, seventeen people (producers, directors and actors) were charged with rape (often committed as part of a group), human trafficking, aggravated pimping, and hidden labour. and concealed labour.6) Several have been in preventive detention since 2020.
The trial will be held in summer 2024.7
As a result of the evidence highlighted by the investigation, the French Senate has produced a report entitled “L’Enfer du décor” (Hell behind the curtains).8
The findings clearly show that pornography is a system of violence against women. Subsequently, a resolution was signed by 255 senators (making it the most signed senate text of the French Fifth Republic) stating that the fight against pornographic violence should be prioritised. The resolution was unanimously adopted in a public session on 1 March 2023.
For the civil parties in the cases, every step of the way is a struggle. Plaintiffs do not always have the money to travel to Paris for interviews, hearings and expertise on the case. Many are traumatised and live in very precarious situations due to the physical and psychological effects of the violence they suffered. Moreover, the films are still available online. Despite countless attempts, it has proved impossible to have them deleted.
Many women are threatened or are recognised and harassed on the street. They experience both a social death and an ongoing fear that loved ones, families or colleagues will accidentally see the films. The difficulties they go through make it extremely difficult for more victims to come forward. This exposure highlights a failure of the justice system for women who are victims of violence.
Ultimately, the word pornography hides an organised global criminal system. In the videos we can see real people being subjected to humiliating and degrading acts, such as ejaculation on the face, spitting on the face, urinating or defecating on the victim.
This kind of violence is the norm: it’s what the industry calls ‘mainstream’ porn, with content showing extreme violence where women are bound, whipped, strangled to suffocation, beaten… Women are muzzled to force them to keep their mouths open and are orally penetrated without restriction. Women are given electric shocks. In any other context, this is considered torture. However, in this context, it means that international criminal networks that could be held accountable under the existing legal framework can get away with offences in the name of freedom of expression.
EU Member States, including France and Sweden, are using the “freedom of expression” argument to limit the potential protection of women and girls from online violence, particularly the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, in the proposed directive on violence against women and girls currently under discussion in the EU institutions.
The EU Council of Ministers, representing the “interests” of the Member States, has included amendments to Articles 7 to 10 of the proposed directive aimed at tackling online violence against women. These amendments significantly limit the criminalisation of non-consensual use of intimate images, stalking and expression of hatred online.
The condition of ‘serious harm’ to the victim was added, as was the condition that the offence be ‘public’, meaning that acts in private groups or forums and online pay sites will not be included. Finally, both the reasoning and legal text now state that criminalising these types of online sexual violence must be balanced with freedom of expression, academic considerations, art and science.
Freedom of expression is not an absolute right. The European Convention on Human Rights states that it can be restricted in a democratic society for legitimate purposes, such as protecting the rights and reputation of others. In the case of defamation lawsuits against survivors of sexual violence condemning the perpetrator, freedom of expression is not used as a shield. This highlights a very dangerous paradigm shift of both approach and culture.
Traditionally, the law only protects speech that is consistent with a humanistic social contract, not hate speech. In European legal culture, freedom of expression was traditionally a right that protected the weak against the strong. This right is now mobilised in the war against women.
Pornography is an attack on the fundamental rights of all women. Violence is a natural part of its economic function as the content must constantly “surprise and shock” the consumer.
Pornography has been condemned and fought in every wave of the fight for women’s rights. After the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, feminist movements gave a voice to victims who testified about rape, kidnapping, violence and sexual trafficking. We have known this for decades. It is high time to fight. It is happening now. What we are seeing is a systematic, global violence that requires a global resistance.
As a general policy response, we call for the reaffirmation of the fundamental principles on which our society is based: the rejection of hatred and violence, and an explicit respect for human dignity. Unlimited freedom for pornocrats means trampling on the rights of the most vulnerable and discriminated against in our society.
In France, decision-makers, especially senators, have been crucial to the progress achieved so far. It takes courage to take a stand against something that has become so normalised. We expect Swedish decision-makers to be brave too. It is time for Sweden to stand on the right side of history in this matter as well.
Introductory Thoughts I understand as I begin writing this zine that I’m going to piss off a lot of folks; people don’t like to hear opinions that contradict or oppose their behaviours. Besides that, I know all too well from personal experience that I’m in the minority on this one. And this subject matter (unsurprisingly) seems to evoke a rare and aggressive vehemence in people- particularly radicals- that other realms of conversation do not.
I chose to write this zine because I’m tired of being persecuted for not having interest in BDSM and all it entails. I’m writing this because I’m exhausted by the near-ubiquity of positive thoughts and words on the matter, I’m tired of being constantly bombarded by people’s stories of “kinky” sexual conquest. I’m absolutely sick of being in info shops and houses designated “safe spaces” (those apparently devoted to abolishing oppressive speech and action and making everyone feel safe and comfortable), and being regaled by a never ending supply of bondage stories, domination fantasies.
I’m writing this because, to be upfront, I think the various behaviours encouraged by BDSM are fucked up and oppressive, and I just can’t understand how so many anarchists and feminists I meet tout these acts as “hot,” and even worse, as “liberating.” And I’m writing this because I think, no, I know there are many others out there who also find the actions and mindsets of BDSM unpalatable, but are too afraid to speak up because it’s accepted (at least in radical circles) as a given and wonderful aspect of human sexuality. Everybody does it, something must be wrong with me. I want these men, women, and others to be able to speak up without fear of reprisal or rejection, just as I hope to be able to.
I want to lay out some things about myself, so those who read this who don’t know me can understand better where I’m coming from. I also want to avoid speculation about my person instead of contemplation of the ideas presented herein.
I’m male bodied and I identify as male. I’m 25. My ancestry is mostly Scottish and Native American (Cherokee, or Aniyvwiya), with a sprinkling of French. As far as civilized family units go, mine was poor but functional and loving growing up, and my childhood- compared to many I’ve witnessed- was fucking sweet. I am a green anarchist and a feminist. I hate civilization and look forward to its downfall, but I am not a primitivist. I’ve never been raped (in terms of full-on, un-consensual intercourse- I know this isn’t the only definition of rape, it’s just the one I choose to use), but I have been molested on several occasions (as in wandering hands, forcefulness, and unwelcome advances after clearly saying “no”). This includes being propositioned by one of my high school teachers to engage in BDSM with a friend and fellow student. I enjoy the emotional and sexual company of men and women, and, though I’ve never yet been with such a person, I’m attracted to people who don’t identify as either. I enjoy emotional intimacy and asexual relationships as much as I enjoy sex.
It might seem odd to state such things outright, but I want to be very honest and straightforward throughout this zine. It is not my intention to attack those who are into BDSM. Too often, conversations from which all involved should benefit are instead battlefields in which all parties are trying to “win.” I have no desire to win this discussion. I also understand that like-minded adults can do whatever they want in private, and I don’t intend to tell anyone what they can and can’t do.
But I’m not going easy on the subject. I do intend to attack BDSM itself, as a set of behaviours, as a set of ideas and attitudes, as a civilized tradition, as a reflection of oppression, patriarchy, and violence, and, to borrow a term from Derrick Jensen, as a toxic mimic of healthy adult human sexuality.
Defining BDSM
BDSM is a complex acronym embodying a number of words and practices. Extracted completely this includes bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism, and masochism. Quite a mouthful. Let’s look at each of these individually, just to make clear what we’re talking about.
Bondage is a the act of being bound (or binding others, in the case of those in “dominant” roles), usually, though not always, for sexual pleasure. It is also sometimes known as vincilagnia, from the Latin meaning “the lust to be bound with chains.” The practice of bondage involves an expansive arsenal of paraphernalia, including chains, ropes, collars, gags and bits (like those used on horses), handcuffs, straitjackets, leather and latex clothes specifically designed for bondage, thumb cuffs, St. Andrew’s crosses (large, xshaped racks), slings, tape, and a number of other devices.
Discipline is pretty self-explanatory. It usually involves a “dom,” or dominant party, disciplining a “sub,” or submissive party. This can come in the form of commands, bondage, whipping, hot wax, physical blows, humiliation (such as licking the soles of the dominant party’s shoes, or demeaning the submissive verbally), and so on. Domination and submission are equally self-defining.
Domination is the act of dominating, submission the act of submitting. In a sexual context, this can include a variety of behavior, but is generally characterized by two polarized roles: “dom,” or dominant, and “sub,” or submissive. Dominant people sometimes also use the term “top,” while submissives occasionally use the word “bottom” in place of dom and sub. “Switch” describes those who alternate between roles.
Sadism is the act of inflicting pain, torment, or humiliation upon another to achieve sexual gratification. Masochism, quite similarly, is the act of receiving pain, torment, or humiliation to gain pleasure. Because they so often go together, these terms are collectively known as sadomasochism. The term sadism was inspired by the life and writings of Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, better known as the Marquis de Sade. The term is well-deserved, as the Marquis lived a life of extremely abusive, violent, painful sexuality, and was on more than one occasion imprisoned by the austere French authorities for his actions. Masochism is derived from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who wrote many works including the 1869 novel Venus in Furs. SacherMasoch was also a socialist, philosemite (an opponent of discrimination against Jews), and, in his later years, a feminist. Seems BDSM has been common in radical circles for quite a long time…
A Brief History of BDSM
The origins of BDSM are not definitively agreed upon. The Cult of Orthia, one of the most important religions of ancient Sparta (one of the most violent, slave-driven, dominant, militaristic societies of all time), performed ritual flagellation called diamastigosis- on a regular basis. The Tomba della Fustigazione, or Flogging Grave, is an Etruscan burial site in Tarquinia dating to the sixth century BCE that depicts quite graphically the whipping of a woman by two men with whom she’s having sex. The writings of the Roman authors Juvenal and Petronius both contain references to flagellation for pleasure.
Many Roman rituals have also contributed to the origins of BDSM. One of the most notable characteristics of the Roman holiday Saturnalia was the exchanging of roles- the exchanging of power- between master and slave. Perhaps even more obvious is the Roman holiday Lupercalia, during which sacrifices were made, thongs cut from the hides of the victims, and young men, dressed in the hides of the sacrificed animals, chased women through the streets whipping them to ensure fertility and to ease the pain of childbirth. Though it is not nearly as blatant a mingling of violence, death, dominance, and sexuality, Lupercalia’s tradition of flagellation lives on in certain Christian Easter Monday whippings.
Of course, flagellation is by no means an exclusively Roman or pagan phenomenon. In the tumultuous European medieval era, Christian flagellants practiced the “mortification of flesh” that has come to illustrate their way of life. Although sexuality is absent in the rituals of Christian flagellants, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, a life of mental bondage and vassalage to God, body hatred, physical discipline (flagellants were called disciplinati in Italian), and public humiliation are omnipresent. The practice of ritual Christian flagellation is much less common today than it was in the middle ages, but the legacy of Christian BDSM lives on in our society. Ritual flagellation is also present in several forms of Islam, and ritual whipping (for women) and spanking (for men) is present in Taoist temples.
More recently, in the Western world, there is an abundance of literature and artwork containing references to or full depictions of BDSM-related activities from the mid-1700s onward. Such prurient literature culminated, of course, in the writings of the previously mentioned Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.
Many years after the writings of de Sade and Sacher-Masoch, BDSM finds influences in the gay male leather subculture, particularly in the U.S.. The leather movement, now sometimes called “Old Guard Leather,” is one of the most potent influences on the attitudes and actions of modern BDSM, and its origins are perhaps the most patriarchal.
Leather culture came about in the period just following World War II, as soldiers returned home from the European and Pacific theatres. These soldiers became addicted to a life surrounded and defined by men, traditional “masculinity,” enforced structure and hierarchy, dominance and submission, discipline, extreme violence, servitude, and an atmosphere or command and obedience. Upon returning home, this morphed into a gay (that is, queer male, and only queer male) subculture involving all of the same traits. This subculture is arguably the most influential element in the formation of modern BDSM.
Thoughts and Arguments Against
BDSM As I mentioned before, I fully understand that in any society whether it be, say, a terrifyingly powerful police state like the Western world at present, or a fictional, yet to be achieved anarchist paradise some of us are working toward- two (or more) consenting adults can do whatever they want in private. But, as with all other behaviours and ideas, just because folks have (or should have, in the case of sexual legislation in Statist societies) the right to do something doesn’t mean I have to like it or think it’s good and wonderful and liberating.
And I don’t think BDSM is good and wonderful and liberating, no matter how many people insist that it is. I also don’t think for half a second that just because it’s consensual, it’s good and healthy. Pretty much every time I’ve had a discussion about this topic in person, people are quick to dismiss any rejection or questioning of BDSM with, “It’s consensual!” I wonder if these people know the horrifying and vomit inducing story of Armin Meiwes and his victim Bernd Brandes, who consented to being fucked, and killed, and eaten. Good job, civilization; well done, patriarchy.
No, whether it is consensual or not, I see BDSM as oppressive, patriarchal in every sense of the word, and as a poisonous charade of healthy, mutually beneficial love and sex. It’s difficult for me to understand how other people feel differently.
I found a post some time ago on the feminist blog Angry For a Reason that I can’t resist using to open this critique. User Twisty writes:
“Like it or lump it, BDSM is patriarchy, the whole patriarchy, and nothing’ but the patriarchy, in a black latex nutshell. It is, I unwaveringly assert according to the Honor Code of the Blaming Spinsters, the eroticization of a vastly horrific social order that has, over the millennia, generated the suffering of untold millions, and against which I am sworn to vituperate.
BDSM’s got it all: sex, power, rape, pain, dominance, submission, the false pretext of freedom [emphasis added], delusions of superiority, sublimation of the orgasm at all costs, women who think it liberates them [emphasis added again], a conservative orthodoxy, compulsory conformity, absurd, exaggerated gender roles, and a silly dress code. It is profoundly anti-feminist… anti-individual, and unattractive.”
Most of the traits Twisty lists can also be applied to Civilization, and aptly so. BDSM is in every way tied to and a product of Civilization. There are few, if any, anthropological indications that the behaviours and mental atmospheres encouraged by BDSM existed in societies before the world was poisoned by pandemic civilization. Considering the nature of civilized societies, it’s not really surprising that BDSM is as common as it is.
During the last six thousand years as civilization has conquered and destroyed, its many defining characteristics have remained unchanged. A quick glance at any fallen or contemporary civilized society reveals that they all depend on and benefit from slavery, violence, subjugation, mental and physical torture, imaginary guises of freedom and superiority, self-destruction and personal sacrifice of those not in power, domination and humiliation of those not in power, strict gender roles, compulsion in so many ways, power structures and established hierarchies ruling over every aspect of life, and discipline and punishment for rule-breakers. Sound familiar?
Throughout his works, anti-civ author Derrick Jensen frequently alludes to oppressed peoples fetishizing and glorifying their own suffering in religious beliefs that reinforce the socio-political structures keeping them down. Many African slaves, for example, adopted Christianity, which teaches: “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ (Ephesians 6:5-7)” and “If you are willing and obedient, You shall eat the good of the land (Isaiah, 1:19).” It might have uplifted the spirits of impoverished and beaten slaves, but adopting the religion of white Westerners didn’t do a bit of fucking good in terms of stopping slavery. It, in fact, reinforced and strengthened slavery.
BDSM is the same. As Twisty said, it is qualified in part by the “false pretext of freedom.” It glorifies and eroticizes slavery and submissiveness, authority and subjugation, embarrassment and punishment, and promises “heaven” in the form of pleasure and release for its followers. Many who practice BDSM insist that it sets them free, but, like Christian dogma to slavery, how is BDSM stopping or even challenging the social and political institutions that keep us all imprisoned?
Twisty lists “women who think it liberates them” as one of the defining points of BDSM. I would extend this to men, trans folks, and genderless/genderqueer people, ending with people who think it liberates them. I certainly know many such people, and I’m sure you do too.
All of the friends and acquaintances I’ve known who are into BDSM are victims of one or more of the previously listed symptoms of civilized life/patriarchy/oppression, &c.. It’s entirely subjective, of course, because there are countless others who enjoy BDSM whom I don’t know. However, it’s these close relationships and the critical thinking I’ve applied to them that really made me begin to doubt BDSM as a natural part of human sexuality.
One friend, a privileged white male, likes being bound, whipped, spanked, humiliated, lambasted, and punched in the face- like, actually punched in the face- during sex. Another friend loves being bound and silenced, she likes playing the role of a little girl being raped by an older man, she enjoys being strangled and cut during sex, and all of her relationships are with older, overbearing dominant men who keep her in mental slavery and emotional dependency to their abuse. A third friend loves being tied up and talked down to, spanked and told he’s bad.
I could go on and on, but with each and every one of the folks I know who enjoy such things, the reasons are blatant. A repressed childhood of Catholic school and abusive male figures, being told as a young girl that masturbation is poison and you’ll go to hell if god catches you doing it, a lifetime of gender confusion, the feeling of being held down and choked by the conditions of growing up, seeking retribution for one’s patriarchal bullshit instead of seeking solutions and making amends: all of these things, and other forms of psychophysical repression, manifest themselves in the pursuits and behaviours of BDSM.
I think most of the people who view BDSM as liberating don’t realize that the power of these various oppressive institutions we’ve been discussing is actually reinforced by BDSM, as it also relies on and encourages the exchange of power. What this essentially means is that those who practice BDSM recognize that there is a power structure, really many overlapping hierarchies, in our society. However, instead of battling these structures and actively seeking their annihilation, people fetishize exchanging power briefly in hopes of getting off. More often than not, those most interested in exchanging power are those in power. A quick glance at Craigslist or any other website advertising erotic “services” shows that there is an endless supply of wealthy (powerful) white (powerful) men (powerful) who can’t wait for the next dominatrix to come along and sell them some punishment for being “bad little boys.” These fuckers are fully aware how awful their lives and actions are, maybe they’re even aware how puerile and held back they are mentally, and they’re totally willing to exchange their blood money for the hot commodity of poor powerless people to discipline them.
Surely, helping these rotten bastards get off in exchange for money only cements the idea in their head that they own the world, that they own all the people in it, and that they can buy whatever that want, even remonstration and punishment for their misdeeds.
This brings up an entirely different aspect of BDSM that disgusts me; that is, the consumerism and capitalism driving it and profiting from it. You name it, BDSM is all about buying and selling it: toys, props, absurd costumes, sex acts, professional domination, overpriced conventions and fetish balls, porn, porn, porn. I’m sure there are folks out there who make all their own BDSM gear, but even so, BDSM is undeniably money-driven, money-making, money-oriented. Probably because in our society money is the same as power, and that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it?
The assorted miscellany available for BDSM “play” is pretty telling itself. Many of these “toys” are overt in their relationship to the multifarious onslaught of oppression. Hell, even calling these implements toys (when they are clearly made for less-than-playful means) demonstrates the kind of sophistry that must go on in the minds of folks who see BDSM as a freeing force. Bits and whips, to take two examples, have been used to drive animal slavery (including humans) for as long as domestication has existed. Among certain practitioners of BDSM chains and shackles- serious, heavy, transport-to-the-New-World shackles- are used as restraints. Does this even need discussing? And among others handcuffs, thumb cuffs, ankle cuffs, and straitjackets predominate bedroom activities. These are the same devices used by those who “protect and serve” the dominant culture and its insane policies and practices by arresting, imprisoning. and enslaving those on lower rungs of the hierarchy. Of course, some people toss out the props and get straight to the point by donning the costumes of cops, businessmen, doctors, slave masters, and soldiers.
In the face of all of these arguments to the contrary, people who participate in BDSM still claim that it is liberating. If it’s not liberating them from patriarchy, capitalism, fucked up childhoods, slavery, gender roles, groupthink, or the dark shadow cast by nation states (which it absolutely isn’t on all accounts), what the hell exactly is it liberating them from?
Radicals and, to a much greater degree, queer folks are two of the most vilified, persecuted groups of people in the world at present. I suspect, then, that due to constant abuse and due to constantly paying attention to just how abusive this world is, many queer and radical (and radical queer) individuals don’t know how to express love and sexuality any other way than through violence and abuse.
In every city and small town I’ve been to that hosts an anarchist community, there are ongoing projects aimed at mental healing, mediating conflicts between people, healing our bodies from the poison of industrial society, and groups to help survivors of rape. And yet, there are no discussion groups aimed at rooting out the patriarchy, violence, and desire to lord over others in our sex lives. There is only positive affirmation- “ooh babys!” and “hell yeahs!”- toward a system of false freedom and continued constraint.
And there’s a lot of rhetoric, too. People have invented a whole slew of sophisticated, gentle vocabulary to soften the image of BDSM. These include SSC- safe, sane, and consensual- and RACK- risk aware consensual kink. But these clever titles completely ignore the historical roots and modern linkages of BDSM to just about all the tremendously bad crap in the world. Sex involving BDSM can be as consensual, aware of risk, safe, and sane as possible, but it’s still patriarchy, it’s still domination, it’s still slavery. And those who consent to slavery, domination, and patriarchy are helping these things thrive just as much as the slavers, dominators, and patriarchs. Doesn’t sound very safe or sane to me.
It’s exactly this kind of language and attitude that makes BDSM a toxic mimic of healthy love and sex. Clever lingo disguising horrors underneath the surface is a technique as old as the oppressive forces who use it. Military officials insist that Our Glorious Empire’s wars abroad are liberating people.
Liberals demand angrily that voting is responsible and will free us if only we’ll all vote the right way. The hordes of religious zealots here and elsewhere insist that obedience, worship, prostration, loyalty, and the complete revocation of personal choice and responsibility will bring us eternal happiness. When disaster strikes the Empire, our political leaders tell us to go shopping- that’ll make everything alright. Instead of allowing and helping our kids to educate themselves, we send them to schools where their heads are filled with garbage and propaganda, because it’s the responsible decision, the choice that will make them free people in a free country.
These examples all imitate actual responsibility and healthy adult decision making. Instead of allowing all people their autonomy, we conquer, err, liberate them and make their choices for them. Instead of abolishing all governments and governing ourselves, we continue to rely on Statist governments to make decisions for us; we continue voting to convince ourselves we have a voice, that we have responsibility. Instead of freeing our minds, taking action when action is called for, and seeking to attain our own happiness, now, in the real world, we trust in god to take care of us, make decisions for us, guide our lives. Rather than removing ourselves entirely from capitalist economies and making all of our own necessities, we make the most responsible, freedom-loving choices when we go shopping. When our kids could be learning naturally as children do, we send them to government schools in hopes that they’ll get good jobs.
We’ve all seen through this obvious bullshit, we’re all fighting hard against such clouded, insane doublethink and the systems that bring it about. And yet, many still think BDSM will free them. As long as we practice capturing, binding, enslaving, silencing, flogging, torturing, dominating, submitting, berating, humiliating, and otherwise abusing one another, we’re all free and liberated and happy. As long as we imitate the social and political structures destroying our lives and minds and bodies and the world, we’re free of those things. Yeah, right.
I think it’s time we all started thinking a little more critically about our sexual behaviours and attitudes. I think it’s time we anarchists, we feminists start discussing which sexual behaviours are good and liberating and which aren’t, instead of just accepting BDSM as an inseparable aspect of human sexuality, as a universal presence inf social spaces, as a given interest we must all have. I assert it’s time for us all to engage in truly safe, sane, consensual sex and asexual relationships; it’s time for us all to be aware of the risks of imitating and engaging in oppressive behaviours under the guise of freedom and pleasure. Maybe then, we can all heal that much more from this society’s mistreatment and insanity.
Anti-Copyright 2009
Usul of the Blackfoot. Please reprint, republish, & redistribute.
This article is shared from: https://purplesagefem.wordpress.com/
A piece of anti-feminist propaganda published in the Guardian recently preaches that yes, feminists can have rape fantasies! And it’s all subversive and revolutionary when we do, of course.
The main gist of this article is that women just intrinsically want to fantasize about rape, and create porn that depicts rape, and they are ashamed of this because of the shaming coming from repressed, anti-sex prudes.
This shit is not new. Sex-pozzie “feminism” has been around for decades as a backlash against radical feminism. The sex-pozzies don’t like when feminists talk about serious topics like rape, incest, pornography, prostitution, and sexual slavery, and they prefer to turn the conversation back to their fun sexytimes. Because they are really fun people who just want to have a good time and they’re not like those ugly, man-hating feminists.
The article begins thusly:
“Can a feminist have rape fantasies?
According to feminist pornography producer Pandora Blake, who runs the fetish porn site Dreams of Spanking and frequently portrays fantasies of “non-consent”, the answer is a no-brainer. “Absolutely.”
The general consensus in the feminist porn movement is that no fantasy, no matter how anti-feminist the subject matter appears to be, is off limits. To tell a woman what she is and is not allowed to be turned on by is just about as anti-feminist as it gets.
“Removing shame from hardcore BDSM desire and rape play and age play and all of the kinky taboos that women just have not been allowed to like ever, that’s the kind of stuff that really draws me into the feminist porn movement,” says Courtney Trouble, the producer behind Trouble Productions and a past Feminist Porn Conference keynote speaker.”
Where to even get started with this “feminist porn” business? The people quoted in this article are suggesting that “feminist porn” can have just as much abusive content as regular porn—they say that nothing is off-limits, including hardcore BDSM and rape. So what is the difference then, between what they’re creating and the rest of the misogynist porn industry?
The “feminist pornographers” explain that in their porn, performers are allowed to cut the scene if they are uncomfortable with something, they talk about consent first, fat people are allowed, and only people who are kinky in real life do kink scenes, so that no vanilla prudes will be made uncomfortable. So basically the only difference between “feminist porn” and regular porn is that no one is outright being raped, and there is more variety in body type. Everything else is the same though—the eroticization of dominance and submission and the portrayal of oppression as sexy is left intact. The same message is being sent to the viewer: the sexual abuse of women is sexy.
When it comes down to it, the main difference between “feminist porn” and regular porn is that in “feminist porn” it’s women volunteering for their own degradation, instead of men enforcing it on them. How revolutionary! But this is what third wave sex-pozzie “feminism” is. It’s when women take over doing the hard work of oppressing women so that men can relax and just enjoy the show. Women volunteer to be oppressed instead of being helpless victims of oppression. Because if we volunteer for our oppression, it isn’t oppressing us anymore. You can fight a revolution without changing the material conditions of women’s lives—you simply rebrand what’s happening to you as something else and voilà—oppression gone!
Back in 2008, Twisty Faster wrote about a “feminist” burlesque show that was a lot like this, in the sense that it was about how it’s a “feminist” act for women to volunteer to be objectified. She wrote one of the best blog titles I’ve ever seen:
Fucking genius.This is a great piece of hers, however short, and it contains these gems, which are applicable to the current “feminist porn” article.
“How is fun-feminism different from regular feminism? Not at all, except that it’s antifeminist. It’s when you capitulate to, participate in, embrace, and openly promote rape culture in exchange for approval, claiming that it empowerfulizes you.”
And…
“The idea that women’s public sexuality can so precisely mirror traditional male fantasy while simultaneously existing in a kind of pro-woman, I-do-it-for-myself alternate universe is the cornerstone of funfeminist “thought.” The flaw in this reasoning is that all women must participate in patriarchy regardless of what they say motivates their participation; patriarchy is the dominant culture, and there is no opting out. Which means there is no opting in, either. Do it for me, do it for you, whatever; the primary beneficiaries of women’s participation — willing or unwilling, ironic or sincere — in patriarchy, are men.”
Even funfeminists should be able to realize, if they bothered to think about it, that when you promote the idea that rape is sexy, the people who benefit from that are rapists.
One of the interviewees, Blake, presents her desire for kink as a naturally-occurring trait that she discovered while growing up, and that she had to work through her shame around it in order to become her kinky self. I call bullshit on that. The idea that a woman’s inborn sexual desires perfectly resemble the oppression that men subject us to is actually a misogynist idea that men have been using against us for centuries. Men have always claimed that women naturally want to submit to men, and that we want to be controlled, used, and abused, because this justifies women’s oppression. MRAs are still saying this today. (Notice that sex-pozzies and MRAs agree on a lot of things?) Of course, if you bring this up to a kinkster, you’ll be dismissed, name-called, and booted out. That’s because they don’t want to think about the social context of their desires or the political implications of what they’re doing. That would totally kill their buzz, and their buzz is way more important to them than liberating the female sex class from oppression.
“What’s hot about spanking is the fear of it, the anxiety and anticipation of what’s coming,” Blake says.
Well I must be a vanilla shitlord, because I don’t believe that anxiety and fear are a part of a healthy sex life. I think that what people should feel during sex are love, joy, arousal, fun, excitement, climax, and release, not fear or pain.
“Feminists routinely fight for sexual agency – a woman’s right to make decisions about her own sexuality, including when and with whom to have sex, and when, if ever, to get pregnant. Feminists traditionally rebel against the forces that would hem in these rights: the puritanical voices that say that a woman who enjoys sex is a slut, that would restrict access to contraceptives, that claim that dressing provocatively is inviting rape.”
Real feminists, not the fun kind, realize that fighting for women’s sexual agency means making material changes in the world that allow women to say no, because when you don’t have the option of saying ‘no,’ your ‘yes’ is meaningless. For example, when feminists fought for the right to divorce, the right to work for our own wages, and the right to access birth control and abortion, those changes all made it easier for women to control when and how and with whom we have sex or get pregnant. By controlling our own lives and not being dependent on a husband we are free to make our own sexual and reproductive decisions. But when funfeminists talk about “fighting for women’s sexual agency” they actually mean celebrating middle-class women’s choices to participate in the exact patriarchal institutions that deny agency to countless women who are less fortunate than they are. Creating your own pornography is only fun for middle-class women. Women who have no real choices and are desperate for money and find that their only option is the sex industry find it a lot less fun.
Funfeminists vaguely understand that there is something wrong with mainstream porn, but because their understanding is very limited, they don’t have any useful solutions.
“Certainly there are things in mainstream porn that I think are stereotypical, or repetitive, boring, or even offensive,” Taormino told me, “but the answer is not to shut down porn. The answer is to make more porn.”
I’m going to use an analogy here that comes from Gail Dines. People call her “anti-sex” because she opposes the porn industry. As she explains, that would be like calling someone “anti-food” because they criticized the fast food industry. The problem with the porn industry is not that a few movies are bad, it’s that the industry as a whole harms women as a group. It’s an industry that profits from male power and sexualizes women’s submission, it teaches that rape is sexy, it grooms entire generations into accepting abusive behavior, it reduces women to a collection of holes to fuck instead of whole human beings. The answer to this industry is not to set up one porn studio that makes so-called “ethical porn.” That would be like trying to counteract the negative effects of capitalism by opening one ethically-run business. That one ethically-run business does absolutely nothing to negate the fact that unethical business practices are institutionalized worldwide and harming most of the world’s people. And by the way, when your porn studio produces rape scenes, “age play,” and hardcore BDSM, then it’s already unethical, even if your actors talk about consent before they shoot the scene.
Let’s talk about what “age play” is. This is a euphemism for acting out the sexual abuse of an underage person. We are even given an example of it in the article:
“like a schoolgirl who knows she’s going to get a caning after school and can’t think about anything else and she’s asking her friends how bad it’s going to be, if it’s going to hurt.”
It should be obvious to anyone that this is the sexualization of child abuse.
“Removing shame from hardcore BDSM desire and rape play and age play and all of the kinky taboos that women just have not been allowed to like ever, that’s the kind of stuff that really draws me into the feminist porn movement,” says Courtney Trouble.
So this “feminist” thinks that removing shame from the eroticization of things like rape and child sexual abuse is a part of the “feminist porn movement.” I disagree. If you are fantasizing about hurting a woman or a child you SHOULD be ashamed. And as for women who fantasize about being on the receiving end of abuse, they have a responsibility to realize that this is not some sort of innate “kink” to celebrate having, it’s a response to being treated in an abusive way and being taught to sexualize that abuse. It’s not necessary to be ashamed if you have internalized harmful messages from your culture, but it’s necessary to realize they are harmful and to avoid defending and promoting them.
“In a world where porn is the de facto sex education for any teenager with an internet connection, socially responsible producers have to think not only about what will get people off, but what people will learn.”
This sentence coming from someone who thinks that “rape play,” “age play” and “hardcore BDSM” are okay? Are these the things that they want teenagers to learn? That’s absolutely frightening.
I will never call these people sex-positive, because they are actually positive toward abuse, not sex. They are as far from being feminists as the average MRA, and they are not fighting a social justice movement. Women already have the right to be abused. What we need is the right to be free from abuse. Only the radical feminists are fighting for that.
P.S.—The mainstream media loves publishing these sorts of articles. That’s because part of the backlash against feminism is a sort of fake version of feminism that gets promoted by people who have an interest in the continuation of capitalism and patriarchy. They promote a neo-liberal version of feminism that is all about women being “empowered” by making consumer choices, and women participating in patriarchy while rebranding it as their “agency” in a deliberate strategy to kill the feminist movement. There is no better explanation of this phenomenon than Gail Dines’ lecture Neo-Liberalism and the Defanging of Feminism. Neo-liberalism has also killed the Left, because it has turned us away from class analysis and toward pointless wanking over “identities.” Anyone wanting to learn about feminism should avoid the mainstream media altogether and just read either Feminist Current, print books by feminists, or anonymous blogs by feminists. Not the fun kind.
This article is shared from: https://purplesagefem.wordpress.com/
Detail from Suzzan Blac’s painting entitled ‘Let me entertain you’ which depicts the sexual and physical violence now commonplace in mainstream pornography
This is an edited transcript of the second part of Suzzan Blac’s talk at the ‘An evening with Suzzan Blac’ webinar we held in July 2021 and the subsequent discussion with Ygerne Price-Davies. The transcript of the first part of the talk, which was about her extraordinary paintings, is in a separate article. You can watch the recording of the whole talk on YouTube.
Of all the harms done to girls and women, pornography is the most damaging and far-reaching, affecting not just the victims within the porn industry, but also women and girls outside of it.
I first saw pornography when I was six years old. It was shown to me by one of my mother’s boyfriends as he sexually abused me. Throughout my childhood and teenage years, every older boy and man who sexually abused and raped me had pornography. And that’s not forgetting the sex traffickers who forced me into pornography. [Editor: Suzzan talks about this in the first part of her talk.]
So, I knew that there was a connection between sex offending and pornography. Over the years, and in my obsession with perpetrators and why and how they could so easily abuse and hurt girls and women, I researched sex offending, rapes, kidnapping, torture and sexually motivated murders and noticed that high pornography use was a significant and prime factor in their offending. I began writing about this in my blog, The Violence of Pornography, in 2016, documenting such cases.
I also read about research on the aggression in pornography. Whenever I posted about this on social media, however, I would be attacked by men. Some would laugh and say ‘You’ve never seen any pornography’. Well, yes that was true, I hadn’t seen any pornography – at least not since I was trafficked into it in 1977. I knew I would be traumatised if I accidently came across any.
So, in 2017 I decided that I had to watch it. How could I speak out against porn if I had never seen any recently? I chose Pornhub, because it was the most popular mainstream porn-site, having 115 million hits a day. I watched and took screen-shots of hundreds of videos on it.
Like many women who don’t watch porn, I had no idea about it’s true content. You just assume that much of it is ‘adults having consensual sex’ with maybe a bit of hair pulling and slapping going on. How wrong I was!
Crime scene videos
I could not believe what I was seeing, I thought that these things could only be seen on the dark web. I watched women being sexually and violently abused, humiliated, degraded, raped and tortured.
These were not sex videos. They were crime-scene videos.
There were women being raped when they used their safe words in ‘kink’ videos and when they were sleeping or passed out from alcohol or high on drugs. There were drug addicted prostitutes unaware that they were being filmed. Women being suffocated with plastic bags, water-boarded, strangled manually or with ligatures. Women being really hanged with ropes.
Many are ‘professional videos’, but a significant amount of user-generated content is uploaded onto Pornhub, often with no consent from the women appearing in it.
I watched one man film a woman standing on a chair with her neck in a noose. He would kick the chair, let her hang for a few seconds, then pick her up, place her back on the chair and do it again. And again. And again.
I watched a tied-up naked female being shot continuously for fifteen minutes by a man with an automatic BB rifle. I watched women’s breasts being tortured with needles, cigarettes being stubbed out on their nipples, and breasts already heavily bruised being punched or stood on by men in heavy boots. I watched women having their genitalia whipped with nettles or being sharp whipped, causing deep lacerations, some were ‘live streamed’ with requests from paying males.
Many of these videos have millions of views and endless derogatory comments along the lines of, ‘Loving the torture and seeing women suffer’.
There were tons of ‘domestic violence’ videos, mostly home-made by men who abuse their wives and girlfriends, filmed on their mobiles.
I frequently came across child sexual abuse imagery, some of real children and also CGI child abuse. I only saw these as thumbnails. I never clicked on the videos. Obviously, I couldn’t research this. I reported it to the Internet Watch Foundation, but never heard back.
There is also a lot of extremely disturbing and realistic CGI bestiality videos.
There were a significant number of men sexually offending outside the home, filming their offences with mobile phones and uploading them onto Pornhub. Offences ranged from up-skirting, secret toilet filming, indecent exposure, to masturbating and ejaculating onto unsuspecting females.
There is an incredible amount of criminal activity on Pornhub and I have evidenced much of it in my blog in the form of screen-shots for all to see.
Pornhub is completely unregulated and violates its own uploading terms. I am happy to say at least they are now being held accountable and have many lawsuits against them.
And, there are so many views. You can’t actually ascertain how many views a video has, because one video might have two million views and is then uploaded with a different title that has 600,000 views, and then another, and so on.
Strangulation (aka ‘breath play’)
I’d also like to talk about how common strangulation is on Pornhub. The kink community have changed the language, so it’s no longer called strangulation. They now call it ‘breath play’, which can mean suffocation or strangulation or hanging or choking. Quite often they call it choking when it’s not actually choking.
Choking is the act of having something stuck in the oesophagus. Strangulation is completely different. It can be done manually or with ligatures or with their arms or legs. It’s extremely dangerous because even for a few seconds it can cause a lot of health issues including brain damage – and that is if it’s non-fatal. It really is extremely dangerous. There are thousands of videos of men strangling women until they lose consciousness, either suffocating them, putting things in their mouth, suffocating them with plastic bags and strangling them or hanging, and I mean really hanging, them.
Rape, donkey punch, incest…
There are other disturbing videos like of rape but they don’t call it rape anymore. You can’t type in the word rape. Pornhub removed that term, but other words that mean the same thing are there – for example, unwilling sex or surprise anal.
There’s hate fuck, and donkey punch where men kick and hurt women and then punch them in the back of the head as hard as they can. I’ve seen women’s vaginas being stapled shut. Electric torture, punch fisting. Women being pissed on, either in their mouths or in their vaginas or anuses and they have women licking toilet bowls. Or, their heads being flushed down the toilet while they’re being pummelled from behind.
The most humiliating and degrading stuff.
There are also tons of incest videos with titles such as ‘No Daddy Stop’ or ‘I’m Not Mommy’. They dress 18-year-old girls to make them look like little girls and put them in child-themed rooms with much older men or sometimes elderly men, like it’s a granddad abusing his granddaughter. There’s a lot of incest, an awful lot of incest, brothers and sisters and so forth.
There are also horrible channels called sexually broken where they destroy women in every way possible.
Normalising and eroticising sexual violence against women and girls
I have documented all these types of videos on my website, The Violence Pornography. I have blurred the genitalia and it is very distressing to see, but I put it out there because I think people, especially women, need to see what it’s like without having to watch it themselves.
My research makes it absolutely clear that pornography normalises and eroticises sexual violence against women and reinforces rape myths. It is common for the girls and women who are being abused in these ways to be portrayed as if they are loving it. As if they’re not really saying no. It is made to look as if they say yes because they’re worthless whores and they love it.
This is extremely dangerous – especially knowing that young boys are watching this kind of content.
I believe that pornography should be deemed hate speech and that it is a violation of Article 3 of the Human Rights Act: the right not to be tortured in an inhumane or degrading way.
I could talk a lot more about pornography but most of it, as I said, is on my website.
Gay men’s porn
Ygerne: I just wanted to say thank you so much, Suzzan, for such a powerful and moving talk. And now if it’s OK with you, I’d like to ask about gay men’s porn. Did you research that and what did you find?
Suzzan: Every time you speak out on social media there are people who love to derail you and that’s one of the many things that was said to me. Gay porn! And I realised that I hadn’t actually watched any gay porn. So it was clear I was going to have to. Believe me, I didn’t want to do it, I really didn’t want to, but it was the only way to get answers.
So, one night I sat down with a big glass of wine and I went to Pornhub’s gay porn channels and typed in the same search words that I had for the women – such as rough sex, unwilling sex, torture, strangulation, everything. And I prepared myself…
At first I was confused because when I started watching the videos, they were lovely, absolutely lovely. The men were kissing. I had never seen any kissing on the straight porn channels.
They were also hugging and caressing each other. They were talking to each other; they were wearing condoms; they were respectful.
I thought I’d probably get to the other stuff later. So, I kept watching. I kept typing in the same search terms. There was one that came up under “rough sex”, and it was this huge hairy guy in leather. He was with another guy, a young guy, who was strapped to a cross and I thought, here we go. So, he gets a whip – but it’s a cat-o’-nine tails that has thick, wide pieces of soft leather – and he flogs him very gently so he doesn’t hardly even turn pink. And then he kisses him.
And I’m like, what? So, I type in torture and most of what I see is being tortured with feathers and tickling. Tickling torture! And it was like that in so many videos.
And I realised that this is the polar opposite of how the women are treated in pornography. There was no hate. There was no degradation; no humiliation; no cruelty; no sadism; no pain; nothing.
So then I did the same thing with trans porn. And again, I watched hundreds of videos and took screenshots and it was like the gay porn: caressing, kissing, and respect.
I looked at casting couch porn. You’ve probably heard of that. In the straight porn, it’s nasty: right from the beginning they start calling her names, humiliating and degrading her, and then some guy comes in and literally throws her about the room and pummels her. In the gay men’s porn, he’s asked some questions and then they start kissing and have normal sex.
The difference was astounding, really astounding and I thought that just proves the misogyny on that platform. It is virulent, it is horrific, and I’m glad I’ve documented it because now a lot of it has been taken down, as you know.
Pornhub has a lot of lawsuits against it as we speak and it took down millions of videos. Eighty percent of its unverified videos were taken down. So, that is some good news. We’ll see what happens next.
Wider implications
Ygerne: I saw that the house of Pornhub’s owner was attacked by an arsonist and burned down.
Suzzan: Yes, I saw that too. In the research I did years ago, I found him. I found that MindGeek owns Pornhub and so many other sites. I found a photo of him and put it on Twitter. Of course, nobody took much notice at the time. It wasn’t until, and I’m glad to say this, a male reporter at The New York Times took this story up, that anything actually happened and then Visa and Mastercard and other companies stopped dealing with Pornhub. So, I’m glad of it.
Ygerne: That’s why the work you are doing documenting it is so important.
Suzzan: I think it is important. Without seeing the images, it’s hard to believe. Images are really important to me – as you can see in my paintings. It’s not that people don’t believe exactly, it’s just that if you’re reading text, you’re detached from the reality. But, when you see images… It’s like, no one believed that the holocaust could happen – no one – until they saw the images and videos of what was going on over there.
It’s the same with everything. That’s the reason I took screenshots because I didn’t believe it. I’d read about it, but I didn’t understand the extent of it and how it’s worse than awful. The misogyny is truly horrifying.
As I said, it’s not about adults having consensual sex – as many people claim. They say that it’s consensual and if a woman likes a bit of rough, it’s her choice. But that’s not what it’s actually like.
And of course, a lot of the videos out there are not professionally made. There are millions of mobile phone videos – taken by men – boyfriends, husbands. I documented that too. It is domestic abuse – but it’s not only that because you’ve got men who are abusers, who are not just filming their wives and girlfriends and putting it on Pornhub, they’re also doing live cams and making money from it.
They’re actually making money out of their wives and girlfriends who are not consenting. And that says a lot about consent in pornography. No one can really tell if the person in pornography is consenting or not. Because you can’t tell if they’re a trafficking victim; you can’t tell if they’re a domestic abuse victim; whether it’s secret filming; whether it’s a minor. Simply no one can tell.
Facebook and YouTube have something like 20,000 to 30,000 moderators working on their sites to get rid of illegal content. Do you know how many Pornhub have? And we’re talking millions and millions of videos, I can’t remember the exact number, but millions. They had 20 or 30 moderators!
That’s a joke, isn’t it? I think they said a moderator can look through about 150 videos an hour. They literally fast forward through them. But they aren’t all in English. There’re a lot of foreign videos there, from all over the world. So, often they wouldn’t even know what the title said or what anybody said.
But, 150 videos an hour, how can anyone moderate that? It’s impossible. But, you know, it’s coming to a head now and people are finally understanding what Pornhub’s about and it’s about time.
Ygerne: The comparison you made with YouTube… It’s like when it comes to porn, the attitude is it’s just a bit of fun, and any criticism of it is deemed to be prudish.
Suzzan: Well, it’s free speech, isn’t it? [Laughs.] It’s free speech, but not for the women who are performing in these videos, or not performing, or don’t even know they’re in the videos.
And as I said, there is so much violence on there. It’s not sex! I’ve been called all sorts of names as you can imagine.
You know, we all like sex. But most pornography is not about sex anymore. It’s now about the humiliation, degradation and suffering of women. They love to punish women and there are millions of these videos, with millions of views, and men who are enjoying them.
What is that doing? What is that doing to young boys? What is that doing to their minds when they see that and they’re looking at it everywhere, including in school?
It’s awful and I think they should ban mobile phones in schools because even my own daughter, years ago when she was a teenager, was traumatised. She didn’t tell me at the time, but she was traumatised by boys showing her violent pornography. And it’s still going on and they’re getting younger and younger; we’re talking 10, 11, 12.
We must put the onus on the perpetrators
Ygerne: I remember getting shown porn when I was in primary school.
So now a question from the audience. What would you advise us to use in terms of language in the sense of putting the onus on the perpetrators? Would you use the word prostitutor to define this person?
Suzzan: Yeah, the problem has always been seen in terms of the victim and the perpetrators are hardly mentioned and that needs to change. The onus really needs to be on the perpetrators. We need to ask why they are doing this and make them accountable. Definitely more needs to be done about that.
Even with victims of murder, women who were murdered, the emphasis is always on her: she was drunk, what she was doing? Why was she out on her own? Why was she wearing headphones, why this, why that? But, not the perpetrator. And why is that?
It has to do with misogyny and, and victim blaming. Because it is women too who are doing this. Women can also be misogynistic. I’ve known that first-hand. Yes, it needs to be changed and we all need to collectively keep fighting for these things.
Ygerne: Misogyny is so engrained in all of us, isn’t it.
Suzzan: Yes. And with domestic abusers, it’s always been why doesn’t she do this, why doesn’t she do that. I’ve experienced it. My sister and my mother have experienced it.
Even though you’re married to that person or live with them, they can still terrorise you and no one understands that, unless they’ve been in that situation. Just because you live with that man, it doesn’t mean it will calm down and be okay.
I have been in that situation and my sister has too. The worst time is when you leave them. That’s when he would threaten. He’s broken her bones. He’s kicked her when she was pregnant.
When I was young and this was going on, she was only 17, 18, I was so used to violence it didn’t affect me, it was normal. In the end, when she would threaten to leave, he would say he was going to kill her and the children. When finally she did leave, he followed her and beat her up in a spa shop, and kicked the hell out of her. Nobody, not one person, said anything. Nobody did anything. They just watched or walked out.
When she fled to a women’s refuge, he came and found her and was swearing and throwing stones at the windows. Then they put her in a caravan with her four children. The terror that she went through hasn’t left her. She’s still not right from it now.
This is what people don’t understand. This is why we must concentrate and focus on these perpetrators.
Impact of watching porn
Ygerne: Thank you so much. We’ve got loads of positive comments coming in from the audience. Gratitude to you for your honesty and resilience.
Suzzan: Thank you. You’re so kind. I appreciate that. It’s worth the hard work.
It has been traumatising work, especially the pornography. For a year I’ve had to take a break because just watching it traumatised me and I was having other effects. For example, I would go to the shops or the post office and I would see different women, I would look at different women, young women, elderly women, all kinds of women and think about what genre they would be in. Every time.
If it’s done that to me, and, believe me I’m not masturbating to this material, I’m analysing crime scenes, because that’s what they are, what is it doing to young men in particular, who are masturbating to this kind of material? And then they’re out in the real world looking at women in the real world, what is it doing to them?
Ygerne: It’s terrifying.
Suzzan: It is and there’s so much to talk about.
I’ve researched serial killers and sexually motivated murders because most serial killers kill women. You can see the rise in serial killers, especially in America, since the early 70s, 80s, and 90s which coincided with the increase in violent pornography. You can see, it’s almost like an exact match.
And their prime motivation is fantasy. Sex offenders say that it’s all about the fantasy. Whatever they do, whether they look through a woman’s bedroom window or expose themselves or want to kidnap and rape and murder a woman, it’s all about the fantasy and this escalation.
What happens is, they start watching what they like to call vanilla porn, although there’s not much of that around anymore, I can tell you, except in gay porn. If you don’t want to see violence then watch gay porn.
They start with the vanilla and go on to harder and harder stuff, and then bestiality. And once they’ve covered everything, they can no longer become aroused and that is when they cross the line into real offending. And might actually film it and import it onto Pornhub.
I can’t tell you how dangerous it is and how many rapes there are a year and sexual assaults – but I bet you money they are rising and have been rising since pornography became so available on the internet.
Ygerne: We’ve run out of time now – so I just want to say, if anyone wants to find out more about Suzzan’s research, you can find it on her website, The Violence Pornography. If there are any parents that have been affected by topics we’ve talked about, we provide some links to some good resources below. Thank you for participating and all your questions.
And thank you, Suzzan, for passing on your wisdom. Good night, everyone, and thank you.
This is an edited transcript of the first part of Suzzan Blac’s talk at the ‘An evening with Suzzan Blac’ webinar we held in July 2021 and the related discussion with Ygerne Price-Davies. The transcript of the second part of the talk, which was about her research into pornography, is in a separate article. You can watch the recording of the whole talk on YouTube.
Introduction
I am a survivor of child sexual abuse, sexual assaults, numerous rapes and sex trafficking.
This had been my life. My normal. So normal, that I didn’t even realise that I had been abused and been a victim for the majority of my childhood. I only began to acknowledge and understand this in my mid-twenties. I finally sought counselling when I was thirty-three years old.
Recovery was extremely traumatic and it took me more than twenty years to overcome the worst of it. One of the reasons it took so long to recover, was the victim blaming that many people inflicted upon me. In my experience, victim blaming is as painful and distressing as the abuse itself.
Between 2000 and 2004, in order to try and help myself, I decided to paint my story of abuse to help me process my pain, anger and trauma. I began by drawing subconscious doodles whilst watching TV, as I knew that these drawings had to come from deep inside of me and not my thoughts. I then turned the drawings into realistic paintings that depicted ‘me the victim’ and ‘the perpetrators’.
I was sometimes shocked by what I had painted, but I knew that they were my true feelings. I painted forty images over four years and I hid them away for over a decade, because they were for me alone, and not meant for anyone to see, especially knowing that I would be condemned if I showed them.
In 2011, I decided to put them online. I had other works out there, but I knew that ‘silence impairs the victims and empowers the perpetrators’. So I had to speak out by using my art, and although I had many people make hurtful comments, I had hundreds of survivors thanking me for giving them a voice.
I have also been training police and social workers in child sexual abuse (CSA), child sexual exploitation (CSE) and victim blaming since 2014.
I also paint about sexual objectification, sexual conditioning, pornography, prostitution and misogyny.
I am motivated by my pain, anger, injustice and indignation surrounding violence against women and girls (VAWG) and victim blaming.
I’m now going to show you twenty-four of my works with a very brief description of each one.
1. The trusted uncle
The trusted uncle
This painting depicts my mother’s brother, who sexually abused me as a baby. I painted it like a ‘Happy family portrait’ to convey the lies and cover-ups of family members who knew that it was happening. It also conveys the horrific fact that babies are sexually abused and raped, especially since the invention of the internet and mobile phone cameras. I was actually told that ‘I was sick’ for painting this image.
2. One of mother’s boyfriends
One of mother’s boyfriends
This painting depicts one of my mother’s boyfriends who sexually abused me from when I six to when I was eight years old. He was also extremely violent, and in this image I watched in horror as he beat my mother to a pulp. No child should ever have to witness such violence.
3. You’re such a good girl
You’re such a good girl
This was the first time that anyone had ever called me a ‘good girl’. He also told me that it was all my fault, because I was so ‘pretty’. Here, I am trying to express what sexual abuse was doing to me internally, whilst I remained frozen and detached throughout the abuse.
4. She likes it
She likes it
This image depicts the first-time my mother’s boyfriend sexually abused me in front of my mother, whilst she was at her dressing table. She turned around and asked why he was doing that, to which he replied, ‘Because she likes it’.
He laughed and said, ‘What’s the matter love, you jealous? There’s plenty to go around’.
I searched her face for a reaction, but all she did was ‘tut’ and resumed putting on her make-up. I knew then that it was not going to stop, that it was okay and was to become my ‘normal’.
5. Playtime
Playtime
This image depicts my childhood – although at the time, I didn’t feel like a child. I felt like an ‘Entity’ that existed, merely to survive every day, every hour, every minute. He destroyed my childhood and he destroyed my innocence. Still to this day, I get very emotional when I watch small children innocently play, because he took that from me and put me in the darkest of places.
After many years of sexual abuse from others, including those I had trusted, even a teacher, I became a teenager on a path of self-destruction. These next paintings depict the devastating consequences of my years of abuse.
6. Embracing death
Embracing death
By the age of fourteen, I was regularly drinking, taking drugs, partying, being highly promiscuous and self-harming. I was called a slag, slut and a whore, and yes, I was.
One night, as I lay on the piss-flooded floor of a night club toilet, I felt like I was home. I was disgusting, vile and filthy and this is where I belonged. I was so intoxicated, that I thought I was going to die, and I embraced the thought, because I hated my life, I hated humans, and I hated myself.
7. Demonic whispers
Demonic whispers
This painting depicts the time that I was sex trafficked when I was sixteen years old. This is a portrait of the man who threatened, hurt and (alongside others) repeatedly raped me. I had been taken to London under the pretence of ‘modelling’.
Locked inside a once former Victorian hotel with many other girls and women, we were forced into pornography and prostitution. This was a whole new level of abuse, terror and trauma, one that will always stay with me.
8. Tell me you love it
Tell me you love it
On the first night that this man abducted me, he led me to a room, told me to take off my clothes and viciously raped me. Whilst raping me, he forced me to repeatedly tell him that ‘I loved it’.
9. I’ve killed bitches before
I’ve killed bitches before
After raping me, he told me to get dressed, and as I did so – he grabbed me by my throat, shoved me against a wall and as he stuck a large knife underneath my rib-cage, he seethed into my ear, ‘I’ve killed bitches that misbehave before, so you need to think about that.’
My only thoughts were, ‘I’m only 16 and this is how I die’.
While I was still shaking in absolute terror, he withdrew the knife and laughed at me, saying, ‘You should see your face.’
This was pure sadism. I could never speak about how this affected me.
There are no words, and that’s why I had to express myself through my paintings.
10. Pornographic meat
Pornographic meat
On the second day, along with other girls, I was forced into making pornography in a large room full of men. I had to completely detach; I became a ‘dead actress’, a ‘fleshed robot’ that obeyed their every command in absolute fear.
The other girls and I did not speak or even make eye contact. We were first made to watch films of the worst kind of pornography, including bestiality, sadism and child abuse. One man joked that he was going to get the popcorn.
When they began filming me, one of the men asked for ‘Butcher shots’ and I immediately turned inside out. I cried for me and I cried for the other girls, because we were no longer human beings, we were pieces of meat inside an abattoir.
11. Shut up and take it
Shut up and take it
This image depicts one of the traffickers taking me back home. In a train toilet, he violently raped me – three times between London and Birmingham. As I whimpered, he shushed me, covered my mouth and told me, ‘This was part of the deal, so shut up and take it’.
He drove me back to my flat, asking many questions about my boyfriend and family. He then told me that I would be seeing him again soon.
12. The end of everything
The end of everything
After I got home, I never told a soul about what had happened to me. I was still traumatised and knew that it was all my fault. I also was being terrorised by one of the traffickers. So I had to internalise all of that pain and fear.
After a while I deteriorated both mentally and physically. I cut all of my hair off, because I didn’t want to be pretty anymore. My weight dropped to six stone, I developed intestinal worms, severe cystitis, boils, chancres and weeping eczema that turned septic.
One night, I sat naked in the shower tray, and poured a bottle of red food colouring all over me. Rocking and crying that ‘I needed to die’.
13. The epitome of sorrow is to die alone
The epitome of sorrow is to die alone
This painting depicts one of my suicide attempts. I had taken all of my clothes off and laid down on my 9th floor balcony, one winters evening, after failing to jump off. I was hoping to die of hypothermia. As my face stuck to the icy concrete floor, hot tears ran down my freezing face as I thought how awfully sad it was to have to die alone.
I woke up at dawn. I slowly walked into my lounge which was like walking into a furnace and saw my reflection in a mirror. It was surreal, I looked like a wax model covered in blue and green veins. I just curled up into my bed, so sad that I wasn’t dead.
14. No one asked me why
No one asked me why
This image depicts the time I had my stomach pumped in a hospital after taking an overdose. After hostile staff discharged me, and as I walked away from the hospital, I began to cry – because not one person in there had asked me why I had done this to myself.
It was then I knew that even doctors and nurses never gave a shit about me, they didn’t care if I died, they just did their job.
15. I am a piece of shit
I am a piece of shit
This painting depicts how others made me feel, whenever I disclosed what had happened to me. I was condemned, isolated, abandoned and judged. Not believed, made to feel guilty, ashamed and that much of it was my own fault.
This is how many people make victims and survivors of sexual abuse feel. If someone says that they were robbed, mugged or beat-up, there is sympathy and empathy, but not if you are a victim of sexual abuse, you are literally treated like a piece of shit.
16. I’m fine thank you
I’m fine thank you
I painted this self-portrait to show how it felt, to constantly hide myself by wearing a mask for self-protection and social acceptance. People made me feel like an ‘outcast’. If I spoke out about the crimes committed against me as a child, I would be met with a wall of silence, made to feel uncomfortable, defective and dysfunctional.
No survivor of sexual abuse should have to hide their pain, anxiety and distress, in the fear of being re-victimised. No human being should ever have to feel what I have painted here.
Now I want to show you some of my other works, ones that I painted years after my story of abuse.
17. Your suffering is real
Your suffering is real
I painted this image of myself to express and convey how severe, continuous sexual traumas impact your mental health, your body and your very soul.
Sexual violence is unlike any other kind of violence. It’s blackness creeps inside your every vein and permeates every organ until you emotionally shut down and are no longer the human being that you once were. Unable to speak of the horrors, you outwardly smile – whilst hiding the truth that you are internally destroyed.
18. The prostitutor
The prostitutor
This image represents the men who prey on vulnerable girls and women. They are the pimps and pornographers who target ‘bent but not broken girls’ in order to profit from their bodies. They are men on the streets, men online, sex traffickers, husbands, boyfriends and fathers.
The majority of these girls and women are victims of previous sexual abuse, rape and domestic violence, who have mental health issues and are often alcohol and drug dependant.
19. Let me entertain you
Let me entertain you
This image depicts the sexual and physical violence now commonplace in mainstream pornography. Women are being humiliated, degraded, hog-tied, raped, punched, kicked, suffocated with plastic bags, strangled, tortured and even hanged.
This isn’t about sex; these are crimes committed against women. These videos are the stuff of serial killer fantasies. In fact, the only thing that they don’t do to women in mainstream pornography is kill them.
20. What women want
What women want
Which brings me to this painting, which depicts a young boy watching this kind of sexual violence on his mobile phone.
For the first time in history, boys are viewing this horrific and hateful misogyny and violence against women, which has become so normalised that boys are completely desensitised. Many use pornography on their phones to sexually harass, intimidate and exert power over girls. Pornography alters and influences sexual behaviours and reinforces misogyny in young, malleable minds. This is why the government needs to implement age-verification now.
21. Blue Hair
Blue Hair
This painting is one of a set of six images, named Abasement of dolls that depict issues that affect women and girls, such as sexual conditioning, sexual objectification and sexual exploitation.
Right from birth, baby girls are objectified and conditioned with bows, ribbons, lace and frilly nappy pants. Toddlers wear sassy clothes, jewellery, heels and painted nails. Many little girls are only given ‘girly toys’: housework sets, make-up and hairstyle sets, etc. Girls are taught that only being attractive and pretty are valued, and this often stays with them.
Many teenage girls and women resort to extreme diets, Botox and cosmetic surgeries, because they don’t match up to the high standards of beauty.
22. Blonde girls
Blonde girls
Again, this is about the sexual objectification of little girls, in the media, film, dance studios and even by their own parents – for example, entering them into horrific ‘beauty pageants’ such as ‘toddlers and tiaras’ or buying Playboy merchandise for them. Incidentally, Playboy merchandise was sold to girls as young as eight in the high street.
23. Black Hair
Black Hair
This painting depicts the young women who enter the porn industry, many because of mental health issues, oppressed religious backgrounds, suitcase pimps and coercive boyfriends. These are eighteen-year-olds – they are still kids! – who enter a world of grown adult men who love ‘fresh meat’.
Many pornographers make them appear even younger and then have them ‘punished’ and ‘destroyed’.
Many of these young women leave after a short period of time after being so traumatised, a trauma that continues, because their videos remain online indefinitely for all to see.
24. The life giver
The life giver
This painting represents sexism and misogyny. I portray a history of derogatory and sexist terms used to silence, erase, hurt, subordinate, humiliate, degrade, hate and punish women.
My point is that no one is morally or legally allowed to make racist, homophobic or transphobic slurs as they are deemed ‘hate crimes’ but you can call women anything you want, because misogyny is not deemed a hate crime.
The discussion
Ygerne: I just wanted to say thank you so much to Suzzan for such a powerful and moving talk. I personally find your work really significant. It’s very hard hitting and often can be quite disturbing, but I think that the depiction of such extreme experience and psychological trauma is pivotal because speaking with a lot of women who have experienced sexualized violence and sexism more widely that sharing stories especially in creative ways enables us to overcome misogyny together. So thank you for sharing your story with us.
Suzzan: You’re welcome.
Ygerne: In the past I’ve heard you say that understanding complex PTSD helped your recovery. Would you like to talk a bit more about that and how it’s helped you?
Suzzan: Absolutely. Recovery can take so long and it wasn’t until literally about five years ago that someone explained to me the concept of complex PTSD. I’m now 61 and I wish that someone had told me earlier in my life. That’s why it’s so important to talk about this.
Going through my teenage years and adult life, no matter how many times counsellors and therapists would say to me, it wasn’t your fault… I don’t mean just as a child, I mean as a teenager and a young woman because a couple of years after I was sex trafficked, I actually went back into pornography and prostitution. No matter how many times they said it wasn’t my fault, I still knew it was my fault. So I still had the shame, self-blame, the guilt, everything was still there, it remained.
And you can’t ever recover whilst you have those intense feelings inside of you. Then a few years ago I learned about complex PTSD which is different from ordinary PTSD. Ordinary PTSD occurs after a one-time event, say being held up at gunpoint. That actually happened to a friend of mine in Birmingham. Or like a serious car crash or something like that and afterwards you develop PTSD.
But, with complex PTSD you are traumatised over a long period of time, especially from childhood and the teenage years as in my case, as in many other women’s cases. You are constantly, repeatedly traumatised over years. For me it was every day or every other day for all those years.
Each time that you are traumatised you internalise that trauma and become detached – especially in sexual violence. Each time someone abuses you, you become detached and as in my case, completely detached, all through those years.
And so, you never really feel what’s happening to you, you never really feel that pain. All through my teenage and early adult years I was self-abusing because what you don’t ever want to do is feel that pain. So, you keep abusing yourself, in whatever way, drink, drugs, putting yourself in certain situations, like I did.
I would put myself into dangerous situations because I wanted to keep being abused or abusing myself so I would never have to feel it because it was too enormous. The enormity of it was too much – unlike someone who is suffering from PTSD from a one-time event – they can talk about it. If you were mugged or robbed or attacked physically, you can tell people. But, with sexual violence, you can’t. So that compounds it and you have all these extra symptoms because you cannot talk about it.
Once I understood that, I could understand that it was not my fault. In the end I understood completely why I carried on abusing myself. I wanted to relay that to other people because it took so long for me to understand it.
Ygerne: You mentioned victim blaming and how that made it so much harder for you.
Suzzan: Exactly! You don’t get victim blamed if you are mugged. They don’t say, you shouldn’t have worn that jewellery or you shouldn’t have carried money with you. Nobody says that.
But, if you are raped, especially young girls, around 14 and upwards, it’s what was she wearing? How much was she drinking? And they don’t ask such questions to elderly ladies who are raped.
There’s so much victim blaming of young women and it compounds the recovery. That’s another reason you don’t want to talk about it because people are really cruel. In my book I talk about the many times that I suffered victim blaming. This is something we need to address; we need to address this because it is only young girls and women who are targeted, nobody else.
Ygerne: It’s re-traumatising all over again and it comes from this hatred for women, doesn’t it?
Suzzan: Absolutely. Misogyny plays a large part in all of this.
Ygerne: OK, so we’ve had a question that came through from the audience. She says: are you married to a man and if so, how were you able to trust him or anyone? How were you able to move past the hatred of people?
Suzzan: I never wanted to have a relationship when I was a young woman. I never trusted anybody. How could I? So, I would just go out with someone and you know, whatever. I never wanted to get close to anybody or have anyone close to me.
And I never wanted children, either. I’ve been asked quite a few times by people whether it was because I was worried I would abuse them. And I would say no it wasn’t that. It was because I didn’t want to bring them into this evil world.
But I met my children’s father and I found myself getting close to him and I didn’t want to. I don’t think I’ve ever really trusted him and I had good reason not to. We ended up going through hell.
I even went to the women’s hospital because, like I said before, I thought I was mentally ill. At that time I didn’t know that I had been abused. People find that hard to believe, but I thought I was just a looney. That’s what I thought. That I was a looney who took drugs, drank, and had a good time and hated the world. I thought I was mental. We went through quite a difficult period.
I was on the pill from when I was 13 years old, and I went to the doctor because I had severe migraines. He told me to come off the pill and as soon as I did, I got pregnant, which was a big shock. And that’s a whole other story – of how an abused person feels when they have a child.
We did divorce years later. And I’ve only had one relationship since then. I haven’t had one now since 2017. I’d rather just not.
It not just relationships that I find hard, it’s friendships, it’s work colleagues. Because, being abused affects every aspect of your life. Say something comes up in a work situation – for example, Mother’s Day and you’re asked about your mother. I would often say that she’s dead. She’s not, but I would say she was. I couldn’t talk about her because I stopped seeing her when I was in my early 30’s and I’ve never seen her since and I don’t want to see her.
So, it’s things like that, things that come up all the time. It’s very difficult. So, I would rather be alone, I’d rather just write and go for walks and just be by myself these days, with my cat, I love my cat. And, of course, I’ve got my two beautiful grownup children and a granddaughter. And I’m happy with that, but it’s been very difficult to trust. It’s hard to trust people.
Ygerne: That’s understandable.
Suzzan: It is, because I’ve even been abused by doctors – when I was in my early 20s. I went to a place for help to get into work. One of the lecturers started abusing me there and I went to the on-site doctor and he closed the blinds and started abusing me too. So, all my life, up to a certain point – after having children and counselling, everything changed. But, before I had children, I was constantly, constantly abused.
And as I said, you just detach.
I didn’t know I had an inkling about being abused when I was in my mid to late 20s. Having my daughter was the catalyst to my recovery because I understood at that moment when she was born what it should be… How the protection and love that you have for a child, for a baby, for your baby, was so intense and everything kind of changed from that moment.
Ygerne: That’s a moment of hope.
Suzzan: Oh, absolutely. But it was so hard because even when I had children I had so many difficult times and even when I was in therapy. When I was 33, I’d had my second child, my son and suddenly social workers got involved because they knew I was in therapy for my own abuse and I had a lot of abuse from them. It just went on and on. It was absolutely awful, never ending.
Ygerne: It was the blaming again, wasn’t it?
Suzzan: Instant victim blaming, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know things have improved, but they’re not good enough, especially when it comes to young women.
Ygerne: There’s definitely a long way to go. We have to keep fighting.
Suzzan: We do, absolutely. And all of us can impart the knowledge and understanding to younger women that I didn’t get, and that’s why I do what I do.
Ygerne: Thank you Suzzan. Thank you so much, it’s been amazing to have you.
Suzzan: You’re welcome. And thank you to everybody who watched. I wouldn’t say it’s been fun, but this stuff needs to be out there and women, especially younger women, need to understand more from us older ones.
If you want to see more of Suzzan’s paintings, you can go onto her art website.
She has also written a book about her life called ‘The Rebirth of Suzzan Blac’ which is available on Amazon.
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The second part of Suzzan’s talk, which is about her research into pornography, is available here.
Your records may be allowed as evidence in court Jun 08, 2015 By DomesticShelters.org
Keeping a diary of domestic violence incidents—both physical and non-physical—may seem like the last type of record a survivor would like to collect. The truth is, this type of documentation can be an integral part of your case when it comes time to file charges, file for divorce or file for custody of your children.
According to WomensLaw.org, each state has its own laws about what evidence is permissible in court. It’s best to talk to an attorney or legal advocate prior to your court hearing to learn more about your state’s laws. In the meantime, recording and gathering the following types of documentation can benefit you:
Verbal accounts of the abuse from you and any witnesses. This can include not only physical abuse, but also verbal abuse, stalking, or financial, reproductive or spiritual abuse. Ask these witnesses if they would testify on your behalf in court. You can subpoena a witness, which will force them to appear in court. Visit Womenslaw.org for more information on this process.
Medical reports of injuries from the abuse. Ask your doctor about safe ways they can make notes about this abuse, advises The National Domestic Violence Hotline. For example, some can write “cause of injury” on your medical records, without the report having to go to the police.
Pictures of any injuries from the abuse, documented with the date the photo was taken.
Police reports from when you or any witness called the police.
Objects in your home broken by the abuser.
Photos showing your home in disarray after a violent episode.
Pictures of weapons used by the abuser to harm or threaten you.
A personal diary or calendar in which you documented the abuse as it happened. This could also include a stalking log. The National Center for Victims of Crime shows an example stalking log here.
Digital evidence. Let your abuser’s or stalker’s threatening calls go to voicemail, and then save those voicemails. Save emails, threatening texts, screenshots of 30 missed calls in a row, etc.
Finally, make sure the place in which you to choose to save these items is a safe one. Don’t keep this evidence in the same home you share with your abuser. Keep it at a friend’s or family member’s house, in a safe deposit box or at your place of employment.
And, advises The Hotline, listen to your gut—if it’s not the right time to compile this evidence because your safety will be at risk, hold off. Know that what’s safe for one person, may not be safe for you.
