The TRUTH about stripping and porn

How many times am I going to have to hear a man say, "Strippers like their job. They are proud of their bodies and are confident with themselves." How many times I am going to have to hear, "women in porn just enjoy having sex."

Men like to entertain the delusion that the women they are paying for actually like them. The woman giving me a lap dance loves this because I am so hot and sexually stimulating. She is so turned on by me. She loves getting nude and rubbing all over my body.

I mean, what kind of a fantasy would it be if they let themselves believe the truth? I am just sitting here, like hundreds of men before me, and she is dancing and taking off her clothes because I had to pay her to do so. She is just going through the motions and is probably thinking about how disgusting I am all the while.

When men watch porn, it's obviously more arousing to imagine that the woman is totally into it. Oh yeah, she loves getting her hair pulled and taking it up the ass. She doesn't need any kind of foreplay, whatsoever. As soon as he puts in his magic penis, she is nearly at an orgasm. Everything he does, no matter how rough, aggressive or degrading, is turning her on. Man, what I would do to her if she were here right now. She would be in heaven.

I don't know how well a man could masturbate to these thoughts: Hmm, I wonder if she was raped as a child? Did she used to curl up in the fetal position every night and cry herself to sleep? Is she currently strung out right now just so she can get through this shoot? Will she contract HIV soon? Does she drink everyday of her life because she hates what she is doing? Is she clinically depressed? Is she thinking that she hates her life every second that guy is touching her?

No matter how many times I hear that there just are women out there who like doing what they are doing in the sex industry, and are completely mentally stable, I am skeptical. If these women do exist, they are very rare. And I personally can't wrap my head around it.

For the majority of strippers and porn stars, having sex and taking off their clothes isn't a dream come true. It's a result of a traumatizing past.

According to University of Pennsylvania psychologist Mary Anne Layden, between 60 and 80 percent of nude dancers were raped or sexually abused as children. (Dr. Layden is Director of Education, Center for Cognitive Therapy, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; and Director, Social Action Committee for Women's Psychological Health, Philadelphia.) Excerpt from 'If pornography made us healthy, we would be healthy by now,' by Dr. Mary Anne Layden:

"Most strippers, as with other women who work in the sex industry, are adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Research indicates the number is between60%-80%. One study found that 35% of strippers have Multiple Personality Disorder, 55% had Borderline Personality Disorder, and 60% had Major Depressive Episodes, These are severe psychiatric problems and many of them are connected to childhood sexual abuse. These are women who when they were little girls would get into their beds each night and roll themselves into a fetal position and every night he would come in and peel her open. The physical and visual invasion of little girl's bodies damages them psychologically and gives them a psychologically unhealthy view of sexuality. Often as adults they reenact their childhood trauma by working as strippers, Playboy models, and prostitutes.The men who, now as customers, physically and visually invade the adult women's bodies, reenact the role of the perpetrator. These women work in the sex industry because it feels like home."

These women are taught through abuse that they are sexual objects. They don't associate sex with love.

Shelley Luben, a former porn actress, was first sexually abused at nine years old. She discusses the horrors of working in the porn industry, and how porn actresses really feel about their profession:

"I never liked sex. I never wanted sex and in fact I was more apt to spend time with Jack Daniels than some of the studs I was paid to “fake it” with. That’s right none of us freshly-dyed blondes like doing porn. In fact, we hate it. We hate being touched by strangers who care nothing about us. We hate being degraded with their foul smells and sweaty bodies. Some women hate it so much you can hear them vomiting in the bathroom between scenes. Others can be found outside smoking an endless chain of Marlboro lights...

But the porn industry wants YOU to think we porn actresses love sex. They want you to think we enjoy being degraded by all kinds of repulsive acts. The truth, porn actresses have showed up on the set not knowing about certain requirements and were told by porn producers to do it or leave without being paid. Work or never work again. Yes, we made the choice. Some of us needed the money. But we were manipulated and coerced and even threatened. Some of us caught HIV from that coercion. I personally caught Herpes, a non-curable sexually transmitted disease. Another porn actress went home after a long night of numbing her pain and put a pistol to her head and pulled the trigger. Now she’s dead.

It’s safe to say most women who turn to porn acting as a money-making enterprise, probably didn’t grow up in healthy childhoods either. Indeed, many actresses admit they’ve experienced sexual abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse and neglect by parents. Some were raped by relatives and molested by neighbors. When we were little girls we wanted to play with dollies and be mommies, not have big scary men get on top of us. So we were taught at a young age that sex made us valuable. The same horrible violations we experienced then, we relive through as we perform our tricks for you in front of the camera. And we hate every minute of it. We’re traumatized little girls living on anti-depressants, drugs and alcohol acting out our pain in front of YOU who continue to abuse us.

As we continue to traumatize ourselves by making more adult films, we use more and more drugs and alcohol. We live in constant fear of catching AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases. Every time there’s an HIV scare we race to the nearest clinic for an emergency checkup. Pornographers insist giving viewers the fantasy sex they demand all the while sacrificing the very ones who make it happen. In other words, no condoms allowed. Herpes, gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia, and other diseases are the normal anxieties we walk around with daily. We get tested monthly but we know testing isn’t prevention. Besides worrying about catching diseases from porn sex, there are other harmful activities we engage in that are also very dangerous. Some of us have had physical tearing and damage to internal body parts.

The truth is there IS NO fantasy in porn. It’s all a lie. A closer look into the scenes of a porn star’s life will show you a movie porn doesn’t want you to see. The real truth is we porn actresses want to end the shame and trauma of our lives but we can’t do it alone. We need you men to fight for our freedom and give us back our honor. We need you to hold us in your strong arms while we sob tears over our deep wounds and begin to heal. We want you throw out our movies and help piece together the shattered fragments of our lives. So don’t believe the lie anymore. Porn is nothing more than fake sex and lies on videotape. Trust me, I know."

Jenna Jameson, the most well-known porn star, goes to great lengths to justify what she does for a living. She claims she is a sexual person and porn is liberating. She strongly protests that women are strong and independent, and that it is her choice to have sex in movies for money. She considers herself mentally healthy. Coincidentally, she was gang raped as a young teen, began stripping at 16 (she removed her braces with pliers to become a stripper), and she became addicted to crystal meth at 20.

Strippers are no less dehumanized and exploited than porn stars. Even at the age of 12, girls are dancing for men for money. In 2008, a sixth grader was stripping at Diamonds Cabaret, an all-nude strip club in Dallas's red light district. This story ran in Newsweek:

"After running away from home in the suburbs for at least the fourth time in a year, the sixth-grader needed a place to stay. David Bell, 22, and Demonica Abron, 28, a Diamonds Cabaret dancer whose stage name is "Jewels," allegedly told the child she could stay with them in Dallas—as long as she earned her keep. First Bell tried to make the girl work as a prostitute, according to police reports, but she refused. Instead Bell drove her to Diamonds, a BYOB strip club he frequented in a dilapidated office park next to a business that rents hot tubs by the hour.

The girl told the authorities that she lied about her age to a club manager and wasn't able to show proper identification. Police say the club's staff hired her anyway, after asking her to undress to prove that she wasn't too shy to dance nude for strangers. Diamonds Cabaret, where women perform vigorous routines on a stripper pole, features some of the raunchiest exotic dancing in Dallas. According to the account she gave the police, the girl lasted about a week and a half in November, working the stage amid flashing multicolored strobe lights and a pounding hip-hop soundtrack laced with obscene lyrics. She made as little as $100 a night, she told the authorities, and gave all her profits after paying the club fee to Bell and Abron, her "caretakers."

"You did good," Bell allegedly told the girl after one particularly lucrative shift, but, she says, he wanted more. Despite her protests, Bell drove her around Dallas forcing her to perform oral sex on him, she told the police. Back at the house, the girl says, she tried to escape, but Bell grabbed her hard by the arm and said she wasn't going anywhere. When he fell asleep she fled."

Diamonds Cabaret, the strip club, did not lose its business license and it still open.

Working in a strip club is not the paradise and party place that men like to imagine it to be.

A study of exotic dancers found that 100% had been physically assaulted in the clubs where they were employed, with a prevalence ranging from 3-15 times over the course of their involvement in exotic dancing. Violence included physical assault, attempted vaginal penetration, attempted rape,and rape (Holsopple, 1999).

In another study, 51.2% of women working as exotic dancers were threatened with a weapon (Raphael & Shapiro, 2004).

Here's what I have to say to all those men and women who think that strip clubs and porn are just fine: You need a reality check. Things aren't as rosy and innocent as you would like to believe. The majority of these women are victims and need help. We are all socially responsible for their welfare. We need to help them, not make things worse. By going to a strip club or buying porn, you are the oppressor. You continue to victimize women, and do so for your own pleasure. If that isn't misogyny, I don't know what is.