Getting the Monster in My Cupboard: A Personal Account
by Rebecca Mott
[Rebecca Mott sent this article to my e-mail while I was creating this website. -- M.H.]
I have found the writing of this article very hard. I have had to reassess image of my past. I had to live in a household where the viewing of hard-core porn was the norm. This did me great damage. Part of the damage is that I have lost a great deal of my memory.
I get memories through my body. I can see my past in nightmares. I can remember when watching TV. Watching good acting brings up buried memories. I can feel fear -- only it has no name.
Then, I choose to be invisible. From the age of eight to twenty seven I chose not to live.
I lived with hard-porn from the time I was eight. Hustler entered my life when I was eleven. I found it suffocated me with fear. Now, I wish to face Hustler in the eye, and to stand tall.
There was a time when I was a happy child. A time that I thought that I was free. A time when the adults around me were trustworthy. There was a time when I could wander round naked. There was a time when I was a child. Nothing more - nothing less. I see that time as a dream. Sometimes, I stare at photos taken of before Hustler came into my life and wonder if it was true - that there was a time before Hustler and hard-core porn in my life.
My stepdad entered my life when I was eight. He adored porn, the more violent the better. He came with images from sex-murders. Images of children doing things I didn't want to know. He was a member of PIE.
When he came, I changed.
He made look at the images. It burnt through my brain. When I closed my eyes it rotted in my body. When Hustler came, I lost hope. All I knew was despair. All I saw was pain, only now it was with a smile. I made no sense.
I got headaches. I lost my sight. I was closing down.
All I heard was my stepdad's laughter. He was laughing -- as I shook with terrror.
Then, I saw "Chester the Molester". Then I knew I could not fight. In those cartoons I saw my fate. I looked and wanted to die. In those images, I saw my fear, my humiliation and my pain. Only, they were just a joke. I felt sick. I had forgotten how to laugh.
I was learning to freeze my emotions.
Looking back, I see those cartoons for what they are. I had entered a world where children were property. They were always available for sex. They would never complain. Like the women in hard-core porn; the children knew their place. They would learn to smile when in pain. When I saw "Chester the Molester" I was taught that sex was pain and fear. I learnt that it was inevitable I would be raped, beaten and threaten. For, after I learned the world belonged to rapists I knew resistance was futile.
I survived by closing down my visual imagination. I thought it was a short-term solution, but it will last for the rest of my life. Even when I relax I cannot escape into places that I have loved. Hard-core porn has taken away my dreams.
My stepdad begun abusing me when I twelve. His abuse was gentle and calm. It was not as I had expected since it felt as though it was accidental. I thought I was lucky since I was not dead or being tortured. I thought I had done something to make him touch me.
Hustler taught me how to accept being abused and now I was obeying my Stepdad. I had ceased thinking I could say no. As the abuse became more and more painful and as I was more and more degraded it all became clearer. I know the rules now. Only then it did not make any sense. Since I could not understand why my Stepdad kept saying that he loved me. How could that be true when he threw me into hell.
Now, I see he spoke the language of hard-core porn. Always linking pain with pleasure. Speaking of how it was fine to have sex with children. He said it was only society’s convention which says it is wrong.
He made me believe the reason I experienced pain was because I had moved. Every time he made me cum, he would say I was a whore. I can see now I was his live porn.
When I was fourteen I had given up. I decided that all I deserved was pain. I knew I was just a whore. I had been by brainwashed by hard-core porn. I went blindly into the world of paid sex. At the time, I felt it was my decision -- only I knew nothing.
I went towards men that used extreme sexual and physical violence. In that world, I found my place. The familiar place I had seen in Hustler's photo-shoots. I thought I was hardened. I had forgotten I was still a child. I thought I understood the rules of their game. But I was so wrong.
I did not know that each time that they hit me I would go into shock. I did not know that each time they raped me, I would feel pain. And I had no idea that men could hate women with such intensity.
I thought I was street-wise. I was a child screaming to be rescued.
In their beds, I was an object. My eyes were dead. I had become just holes to be filled. Now, I had reached the beginning of my pain. Now, I was part of porn. I had no feelings left. My safety was not relevant. Seeing me then, I can see the dead eyes in the Hustler's photo-shoots. I can understand that look. It is the look where hope is forgotten. For hope will only bring pain.
To believe in hope, means facing the reality of violence committed against me by these men. Existing in the middle of such horror can lead to suicide.
That time, was a different life to the one I now live. I know it is part of me but I see it through a haze. My past made me strong and gave me a great deal of compassion. Now I feel some content since my life is low-key.
I was changed by having hard-core porn forced into my life. I can never regain the open trust I had before I was eight. I am still wary of own sexuality. Hard-core placed an underlying depression in me.
I still fight the desire to go back to violence when I am depressed. After all, violence was my norm. I am building a non-violent world around myself, but I find it very hard. For I cannot understand the rules of living a safe life.
Each day, I am learning that I am more than a whore. I see now, that was never true. It was just lies that hard-core porn placed in my brain.
I live in the hope that one day all women and children will be safe from the hatred of hard-core pornography.
Rebecca Mott is British. She is a survivor of child sexual and mental abuse. When she was14, she was a prostitute working in a club. The men that used her were into extreme sexual violence. These experiences made her a radical feminist. For she feels that feminism is working toward a future without sexual violence. She is a writer, in both performances of poetry and prose, and does some visual art. She supports the Anti-Hustler website "Manufactured Contempt: Deconstructing Larry Flynt’s Corporate Sexxxism" The address is http://manufacturedcontempt.wordpress.com/