Porn Stars Don’t Deserve to Be Beaten
http://www.thedailyb**st.com/stop-blaming-christy-mack-porn-stars-dont-deserve-to-be-beaten
The censor filter replaced two letters in the link above with asterisks. They're "ea".
Quotes from the article:
Victim-blaming, as the CRAA describes it, is a particularly dangerous mindset that simultaneously allows abusers like Koppenhaver to disavow responsibility for their behavior while discouraging survivors like Mack from reporting abuse. Even outside observers might be tempted to blame Mack for her own abuse in order to “reassure themselves” that they will not experience abuse “because I am not like her.”
In the particular case of Christy Mack, the victim blaming is taking on an even more defamatory dimension because Mack, as headlines around the web are sure to remind you, is an adult film actress. In virtually every publication from TIME to TMZ she is introduced by the same four words: “porn star Christy Mack.” You might think “porn star” is her first name and not her profession.
Of course Christy Mack’s occupation should not simply be left out of news reports but the way in which her occupation is always in the foreground is troubling. Women in Mack’s occupation are routinely devalued and disrespected because of the nature of their work. Earlier this year, for instance, PayPal, Chase, and other financial institutions shut down the accounts of clients who work in the adult entertainment industry, citing clauses in their terms of service. And, as the documentary After Porn Ends recently demonstrated, the social stigma of having worked in pornography tends to follow women like Mack long after they have retired from the industry.
The way the media presents Mack and her occupation is encouraging a particularly insidious style of victim-blaming, one that would blame her abuse on her career. When a film actress like Charlize Theron comes forward with a story of domestic v******e, the media regards it with reverence, declaring it, as ABC News did a decade ago, a “tragedy,” but when an adult film actress comes forward, the tone of the reporting changes.
Introducing Christy Mack by highlighting her occupation runs the risk of equating her career in pornography with her personhood. But Mack was not abused as a porn star, she was abused as a woman. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic v******e, around 1.3 million women are physically assaulted by an intimate partner every year. Mack is one of these women; her status as an adult film actress bears no relevance to the way in which men decide to commit acts of v******e against women.
While media outlets have avoided drawing overt lines between Mack’s career and the abuse she faced, the viewing public has been less careful. One Huffington Post commenter, for example, says that he hopes “she recovers and takes time to reevaluate her career.” Male dating expert and blogger James Sama spoke out against the victim-blaming that Mack is being subjected to on social media, only to be greeted by a commenter who describes her as “someone who sucks dick for money” before putting forward this leading question: “She makes a living being subordinate to men sexually and professionally, why wouldn’t she do the same in her personal life?”
In comments like these and others circulating on social media, moralism and victim blaming are so carefully intertwined that they become practically indistinguishable. The boundaries between pornography and reality are strategically dismantled in order to dismiss her real-life experiences of abuse by equating them with her staged performances on-camera. And no one is better equipped to refute this false equivalence than Mack herself. When Mack was asked about her opinion on “degrading” porn in a 2013 interview with VICE, she responded:
There’s some girls that want to be absolutely degraded and they want to be destroyed on film and that’s what they go for. I don’t go for that. I play strong characters, never degraded, never hit, never choked out, nothing like that. Maybe some light domination but nothing that can be considered degrading. I don’t really see it as empowering or degrading. It can empower women a little bit through exploring sexuality and things like that but I don’t see it as degrading if you don’t want it to be.
The censor filter replaced two letters in the link above with asterisks. They're "ea".
Quotes from the article:
Victim-blaming, as the CRAA describes it, is a particularly dangerous mindset that simultaneously allows abusers like Koppenhaver to disavow responsibility for their behavior while discouraging survivors like Mack from reporting abuse. Even outside observers might be tempted to blame Mack for her own abuse in order to “reassure themselves” that they will not experience abuse “because I am not like her.”
In the particular case of Christy Mack, the victim blaming is taking on an even more defamatory dimension because Mack, as headlines around the web are sure to remind you, is an adult film actress. In virtually every publication from TIME to TMZ she is introduced by the same four words: “porn star Christy Mack.” You might think “porn star” is her first name and not her profession.
Of course Christy Mack’s occupation should not simply be left out of news reports but the way in which her occupation is always in the foreground is troubling. Women in Mack’s occupation are routinely devalued and disrespected because of the nature of their work. Earlier this year, for instance, PayPal, Chase, and other financial institutions shut down the accounts of clients who work in the adult entertainment industry, citing clauses in their terms of service. And, as the documentary After Porn Ends recently demonstrated, the social stigma of having worked in pornography tends to follow women like Mack long after they have retired from the industry.
The way the media presents Mack and her occupation is encouraging a particularly insidious style of victim-blaming, one that would blame her abuse on her career. When a film actress like Charlize Theron comes forward with a story of domestic v******e, the media regards it with reverence, declaring it, as ABC News did a decade ago, a “tragedy,” but when an adult film actress comes forward, the tone of the reporting changes.
Introducing Christy Mack by highlighting her occupation runs the risk of equating her career in pornography with her personhood. But Mack was not abused as a porn star, she was abused as a woman. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic v******e, around 1.3 million women are physically assaulted by an intimate partner every year. Mack is one of these women; her status as an adult film actress bears no relevance to the way in which men decide to commit acts of v******e against women.
While media outlets have avoided drawing overt lines between Mack’s career and the abuse she faced, the viewing public has been less careful. One Huffington Post commenter, for example, says that he hopes “she recovers and takes time to reevaluate her career.” Male dating expert and blogger James Sama spoke out against the victim-blaming that Mack is being subjected to on social media, only to be greeted by a commenter who describes her as “someone who sucks dick for money” before putting forward this leading question: “She makes a living being subordinate to men sexually and professionally, why wouldn’t she do the same in her personal life?”
In comments like these and others circulating on social media, moralism and victim blaming are so carefully intertwined that they become practically indistinguishable. The boundaries between pornography and reality are strategically dismantled in order to dismiss her real-life experiences of abuse by equating them with her staged performances on-camera. And no one is better equipped to refute this false equivalence than Mack herself. When Mack was asked about her opinion on “degrading” porn in a 2013 interview with VICE, she responded:
There’s some girls that want to be absolutely degraded and they want to be destroyed on film and that’s what they go for. I don’t go for that. I play strong characters, never degraded, never hit, never choked out, nothing like that. Maybe some light domination but nothing that can be considered degrading. I don’t really see it as empowering or degrading. It can empower women a little bit through exploring sexuality and things like that but I don’t see it as degrading if you don’t want it to be.
8年前
