Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry
Page 31
S. Caroline Taylor
The Pornification of Intrafamilial Rape1
The topic of my chapter is the pornification of intrafamilial rape – commonly termed ‘incest’. I have elsewhere argued at length why I do not use the term ‘incest’ when describing the rape and sexual assault of children, adolescents or young adults within a family setting (Taylor, 2001a, 2004a, 2004b). It is a misogynist’s word. It is a word that is used to denigrate children and young people who are raped by their father or other relatives. As the majority of offenders are fathers and the majority of victims are daughters (though males are abused also),2 intrafamilial rape and sexual assault is considered a gendered crime. The word ‘incest’ is derived from Latin and means impure, unchaste, soiled, and unclean. More generally, the word invokes illicit but consensual sex. Anthropologists have used the term to describe inbreeding practices among close relatives and other forms of tabooed consensual sexual behaviour among lineal relatives. But men raping their girl or boy children are not doing so in order to breed, and they are not engaging in ‘consensual’ sex. What they are doing is committing sexual, physical and emotional violence against their children.
Lawyers prefer the word ‘incest’ because it continues to embed ideas of ‘consent’ in the minds of the public. It masks the reality of what is actually happening, that a child or young person is being systematically raped by their relative. Use of the term ‘incest’ arouses all manner of stigma towards the victim – so the use of the word helps to protect perpetrators. The term is proactive in that its use immediately conjures up a prohibited ‘sexual relationship’, making the term even more inappropriate to describe the systematic rape and sexual abuse of children by their parent or other relative. The media too is guilty of pornographising the term ‘incest’ and I have highlighted this trend elsewhere (see Taylor, 2002). In a 2010 news story, in print and on TV, about a perpetrator who was found guilty of sexually abusing his young daughter, he was called a man who “had sex with his daughter.”3 Many survivors report feelings of intense distress, shame and humiliation when they encounter this continued intimation of victims as proactive partners to their own rape.4 Such language continues to fuel a public discourse of intrafamilial sexual abuse as ‘incest’ and as such, an illicit but consensual, even if only partially, act involving the victim.
The word ‘incest’ has become so eroticised that it fuels the staple diet of pornography users, readers and pornography makers. International research highlights the significant degree to which pornography is dedicated to ‘incest’ themes (e.g. Finkelhor, 1984; Itzin, 1996; Jenkins, 2001; Russell and Purcell, 2006). But not just any theme – pornography makers know their market well – and they know what men want to see. Nearly always the theme is of father and daughter. Reflecting patriarchal psychological theories of ‘incest’, pornography depicts the girl child as seducing her father. The mother is portrayed as sexually unavailable or sexually unattractive – either way, in a pornographic script, the mother fails to sexually service her husband’s needs – just as she does in much of the literature on child sex abuse. The child is portrayed as nymph-like. Most importantly, she ‘loves’ being penetrated vaginally, orally and anally by her own father. Being penetrated is great fun for girls of all ages according to porno makers. Even in popularised pornography such as Playboy and Penthouse, a lot of energy is directed toward fathers raping their daughters (see Russell, this volume). ‘Rape’ is what every child and woman wants. Female bodies are designed for penetration and it is considered a male right to access women’s and children’s bodies any time they wish to do so. Pornography provides and enforces such an ideology – an ideology of rape.
Gail Dines argues that much of ‘incest porn’ is pseudo child pornography, a popular genre within the increasingly violent billion-dollar gonzo pornography market that is now mainstream (2010, p. 154). Many ‘incest’ porn Websites urge fathers to rape their daughters, often providing them with advice about how to ‘seduce’ their daughters. As ‘Family Seduction’ puts it: “you won’t get this advice anywhere. Family Seduction is here to help. Don’t wait anymore. Go tell the family member that you want sex right now!” This incitement to child rape is described as a “step-by-step guide to sexual heaven!” Questions such as “how can I seduce my own daughter?” rotate relentlessly in a pop-up window on the Website along with gratuitous prompting: “always get an erection when she’s around” which then rapidly segues to numerous pornographic images of old, greying, overweight men penetrating childish-looking females. Other sites show younger-looking men and pre-pubescent girls with small hands, flat chests, hair in pigtails and ankle socks with lace around the edge and button-flat shoes, like a 5-year-old might wear. Her hands look tiny against the erect penis of the father with the text next to it saying, “daddy’s little girl knows what she wants” or “daddy’s little girl loves to suck his cock.” Short stories accompanying these images tell of little girls with ‘hairless pussies’ seducing their daddy and begging for sex. The father is simply gratifying his highly sexualised and nymphomaniac child. Just satisfying her wish.
Promoting mother–son ‘incest’ is also a feature of pornography. Clearly the trendy but repugnant term of MILF (mothers I’d like to fuck) is promoted on some of these sites as sons fulfilling a type of Oedipal fantasy, and mothers, as some sites say, simply ‘gagging’ for it.5
‘Incest’ pornography Websites often mock and trivialise the criminalisation of child rape. As YoungDaughter puts it:
The disapproval of incest, especially between father and daughter, is a classic example of ‘projection’. The alleged reason for disapproval [sic] is that incest is the same as sexual abuse, aggression and violence. These are all rational argument [sic] but they are used to justify an irrational opinion. In fact, most cases of incest have little to do with violence.
‘First Time With Daddy’ flatters the ego of fathers who want to rape their daughters: “when a dad is so handsome incest is natural. Don’t think it’s filthy. After all, father will always be the paragon man for their daughter. Just set your mind free and get in! Tons of XXX love stories inside!”
Raping dependent children is transformed by pornography into a natural, open-minded, love story. “[F]eel the overwhelming incest passion flowing through your body and mind – and get ready to enjoy!” boasts ‘3D incest videos’.
Narratives about seductive children saturate the ‘incest’ genre. In Daddy’s Whore viewers can watch “sexy naughty girls seducing their own fathers”. In My Sexy Daughter children are “sweet, irresistible angels teasing and tempting their own daddies.” Websites such as ‘First Time with Daddy’ are common. Girl children are depicted as devious and sexually rapacious, even resorting to drugging fathers in order to seduce them. In many of the written pornographic stories, daughters are eager, willing and cooperative and are turned on rather than traumatised. This fantasy of the child willing, wanting and loving it, reflects men’s desires and the patriarchal rule of the father.
Unfortunately, one doesn’t even need to access ‘incest’ pornography to find these scenarios. Read Family Dysfunction literature from the discipline of psychology and social sciences and you will find research-based scenarios that explain ‘incest’ as illicit sexual desires girls harbour for their fathers. And of families where the mother is sexually unattractive or sexually unavailable to the husband and so the daughter ‘substitutes’, most often with the full knowledge and support of the mother.
Family Dysfunction theory is replete with proactive language describing the ‘incest’ as a father–daughter ‘affair’; a ‘sexual relationship’; ‘consensual’ sex and ‘seduction’. Some of the research case studies read like pornographic vignettes, a point I have made explicit in previous published work. Read some legal judgements in ‘incest’ trials: far from understanding that a girl or young woman has been raped by her father or other male relative, some judges are prone to talk down trauma and talk up the ‘sexual relationship’ between
the offender and victim. In some cases, the ‘culpability’ of the victim has been discussed on the basis that ‘incest’ is consensual and simply cannot be regarded as rape (for sources see Taylor, 2001a 2001b, 2004a and b).
In Court Licensed Abuse (2004a) I discuss a court judgement where a 12-year-old girl was merely a “sexual substitute to replace the dissatisfying sex the man was having with his wife.” Under the rubric of ‘incest’ laws, the victim can be co-charged with the offender as they are considered complicit in the commission of the crime (Taylor, 2001a). Indeed, some disturbing studies have shown the very real propensity for health and welfare professionals to view child abuse identified as ‘incest’ as less serious than other forms of child abuse with the child held accountable for the abuse to varying degrees (see Taylor, 1997; 2001a and b; 2004a). And several studies on juror attitudes have shown that the longer a child is subjected to abuse within the family unit, the more likely those jurors were to blame the child (Taylor, 2001a and 2004a).
Male pornography consumers can ‘choose’ between porn that perpetuates the self-serving fantasy that fathers and daughters are engaged in consensual sex, or pornography which celebrates fathers violently raping their daughters. MySexyDaughter.com states that “We know you enjoy rough and bewildering incest action, so we have a very special thing for you” (my emphasis). ‘UseMyDaughter.com’ has a banner that reads, “Want to Fuck My Daughter?” and then states “Watch this slut take cocks for cash in my pockets.” The word ‘rape’ is a key word in the advertisement for these popular ‘incest’ Websites. In ‘How I Became My Daddy’s Whore’ a father repeatedly rapes his daughter in her bedroom one night: “I flipped my daughter over and shoved my cock back into her sopping wet pussy and pounded the shit out of my little girl! I pulled her hair, and made her scream into her pillow and said ‘Be yer daddy’s little whore tonight, baby’ … I raped my little girl on all fours on the floor.” A disclaimer at the end of this child rape story states: “The author does not condone child abuse, this story is meant as an erotic fantasy not real life.” I ask: For whom is the raping of children an erotic fantasy?
Another large ‘incest’ site is described as “a unique site offering reality videos from a real incest-addicted family” (my emphasis). Here viewers can watch videos called brother rapes little sister, dad fucks his little daughter in ass, old dad fucks his little daughter, little daughter raped in the bath, and innocent daughter raped by daddy. The normalisation of ‘incest’, rape and abuse are, as Gail Dines (2010) argues, achieved by desensitising the users of pornography through repetitions and gradual escalations of violence.
Smiling or providing the necessary groans and/or self-derogatory language that will excite the unknown eyes that view her flesh are common in ‘incest’ pornography. Because she is only flesh that is there for men to penetrate and control and denigrate.
But children’s expressions of terror and horror are also a source of sexual excitement for men. In 2004, I was informed about a case in Australia when police swooped on a child sex abuse and pornography ring. One lot of pornographic images showed an infant girl the police believed to be approximately 2 years old. The photographs show her being held down by at least two adult men while she is being fully penetrated. The child’s face is twisted in pain and terror. Police also uncovered a video of the same horrendous crime. During an interview, the man who had penetrated the toddler told a female detective that there was “nothing quite like hearing the ‘crack’ of an infant’s pelvis while you are penetrating them.” This ‘crack’ was the breaking of the child’s pelvic bone.
Pornography debases women – every woman and every girl child. Those who view pornography are not partaking in a morally neutral activity. They are acting as ‘patrons’. Their patronage fuels pornography, commissions further pornography and leads to ever more degrading ways of depicting women and children. Furthermore, those who view pornography are more likely to then act out what they see. In my previous and current research on intrafamilial sexual abuse, many survivors have relayed to me how they were forced to view pornography by the offender and how the offender then wanted them to replicate the sex acts portrayed on the screen. In several cases I know of victim/survivors who were abused well into adolescence were forced to take part in sexual acts that were filmed. Many live with the sheer terror that one day these photos will surface. This greatly exacerbates their trauma. A 2009 US media article identified a serious case of long-term, repeated rape and sexual abuse of children and adolescents by family relatives, with the case only coming to light when the wife of one of the men found ‘incest porn’ in the family home. The case has revealed years of horrendous rapes and sexual assaults on children and adolescents including the production of pornography. Authorities identified the accused men as being in possession of significant amounts of ‘incest porn’ and as the authorities noted, while ‘incest’ is illegal, pornography depicting incest is often not illegal (CBS News, 2009).
Here is my question for you: Does pornography reflect fantasy or reality? We often hear the arguments that pornography affords a ‘release’ and an ‘escape’ from reality and that it delivers just harmless sexual fantasies. But we know that far from providing fantasies, pornography reflects only too sharply the lived reality of so many women and girl children. Yet given the theoretical and legal placement of victims in much of psychological and legal discourse, is it any wonder that pornography is defended as a ‘right’ of men to purchase, produce, commission and view?
Ostensibly, the law prohibits rape and sexual assault, including intrafamilial sexual abuse. Reality shows us that too often the legal process sustains the rights of child rapists via the construction of children as liars and fantasisers, vengeful colluders or seducers (Taylor 2001a and 2004a). Pornography too ‘legalises’ rape because it shows men that women and children are bodies that are there for the taking. Pornography is the training ground of future and current rapists. It is the training ground for society to understand that women and girl children are groups of sub-human citizens and how to respond accordingly. It is the training ground for social stereotypes that make the work I and others do all the more difficult. For all the excellent research into the extent, nature and trauma of sexual violence, pornography is out there depicting the opposite. Its harm to women and children generally is immeasurable.
Pornography is not just about dirty pictures and books sold in sex shops and restricted bookshelves in newsagents. Pornography – and in particular intrafamiliar pornography – is the ideology that regards women and girl children as repositories for men’s sexual needs; it is the mindset that excuses and sanctions sexual offending and refuses to acknowledge the harm of sexual violence.
Bibliography
CBS News (19 November, 2009) ‘Mohler Family Sex Crimes Case: Wife Found Incest Porno, Say Cops’,
Dines, Gail (2010) Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. Beacon Press, Boston; Spinifex Press, North Melbourne.
Finkelhor, David (1984) Child Sexual Abuse: New Theory and Research. The Free Press, New York.
Itzin, Catherine (1996) ‘Pornography and the organisation of child sexual abuse’ in P. C. Bibby (Ed) Organized Abuse: The Current Debate, Aldershot, Hampshire, pp. 167–196.
Jenkins, Philip (2001) Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet. New York University Press, New York.
Russell, Diana and Natalie J. Purcell (2006) ‘Exposure to Pornography as a cause of child sexual victimization’ in Nancy E. Dowd, Dorothy G. Singer, Robin Fretwell Wils (Eds) Handbook of Children, Culture, and Violence. Sage Publications, London.
Taylor, S. Caroline (1997) ‘Betrayal of the Innocents.’ Australian Journal of Women Against Violence. Issue 3, November, pp. 31–37.
Taylor, S. Caroline (2001a) The Legal Construction of Victim/Survivors in Parent-Child Intrafamilial Sexual Abuse Trials in the Victorian Country Court of Australia in 1995. PhD, U
niversity of Ballarat.
Taylor, S. Caroline (2001b) ‘A Name By Any Other Word Does Not Necessarily Make It Merely Another Rose’ in Alice Mills and Jeremy Smith (Eds) Utter Silence: Voicing the Unspeakable. Peter Lang, New York, pp. 211–228.
Taylor, S. Caroline (11 October, 2002) ‘Correct Language Necessary for Victims of Family Violence’ The Courier, Ballarat, p. 9.
Taylor, S. Caroline (2004a) Court Licensed Abuse. Peter Lang, New York.
Taylor, S. Caroline (2004b) Surviving the Legal System. Coulomb Communications, Port Melbourne.
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1 I wish to acknowledge and thank Dr Abigail Bray for assisting me with editing, research assistance and researching online material from pornography sites. Personally I found the experience of writing this chapter deeply distressing and traumatic because of the material content I needed to access. I am very grateful to Abigail for assisting me with this chapter and providing collegial support to complete this task.
2 A discussion of brothers abusing younger siblings falls outside the scope of this chapter.
3
4 This information is gleaned from personal interviews as part of previous and current research undertaken by the author.
5 See for example: ‘MILF Episodes’ of mother–son incest at
Caroline Norma
Teaching Tools and Recipe Books: Pornography and the Sexual Assault of Children
At a 1984 US Senate Subcommittee hearing on juvenile justice, Katherine Brady testified that her father used pornography to sexually abuse her as a child in 3 different ways. Firstly, “he would use it as a teaching tool – as a way of instructing me about sex and what he wanted me to do with him.” Secondly, he “used the pictures to justify his abuse and to convince me that what we were doing was normal.” Thirdly, “he used the pornography to break down my resistance … [because] [t]he pornography made the statement that females are nothing more than objects for men’s sexual gratification” (in Russell, 1993, pp. 43–44). One year earlier, in 1983, psychologist Sue Schafer testified at the Minneapolis City Council pornography ordinance hearings about a fourth way in which men use pornography to aid their sexual assault of children. She saw them using it as a source of inspiration for their crimes. Schafer said she had counselled a number of children who had been abused in situations where “the perpetrator has read the manuals and manuscripts at night and used these as recipe books by day” (Schafer, 1988, p. 126).