The art of rape art

After reading about a piece of video art which simulates the act of rape by an
Australian artist - Sophia Hewson. I felt so angry and offended, that I needed to
speak out.
I myself am a survivor of multiple rapes, perpetrated by both strangers and men who were known to me.
I am also an artist who has depicted my own rapes in the medium of paint.

The reasons that I am so incensed are -

1) This simulated 'rape' was a consensual agreement to sex between the artist and a man. Rape is not about sex.

2) This work could never empower me because, this is an artist who is merely being controversial and furthering her art career. She consented to sex with a man and was not raped. So, this in essence is a travesty and an insult to real rape victims and survivors.

3) The artist states " Instead of focusing on the perpetrator, the camera stays on Ms Hewson’s face. The raped woman is nearly always depicted with her face downcast and her eyes averted,”

If you actually took the time to observe that in most cinematic 'Rape scenes' The camera is more often than not, focused on the females clothes being ripped off, close up shots of her breasts, buttocks etc.. and 'Make- up face' rather than the rapists, who is usually fully clothed and in shadow, or his face is barely seen.

4) The artist also states  "To choose to put yourself in this situation, to show (even symbolically) a woman enduring the scene, is conceptually challenging because it threatens our assumption that man’s power is insurmountable. And in the ideology of patriarchy that is the deepest offence possible.”

Firstly, you have not endured rape. You have not endured an absolute fear. You
have not endured a man with a weapon that has penetrated your mind for the rest of your life.
You cannot achieve offence or dismantle male power in the rapist by 'enduring' the rape. Rape is about power, control, hatred, degradation and humiliation over a victim. Be it a woman, man or child. He is doing exactly what he wants to you - as a victim. It matters not what the victims reaction is. He knows that what he's doing - is going to become psychologically and terminally septic.


5) I feel that this work is gratuitous,voyeuristic and highly counter-intuitive. Primarily because there will be many rapists who will be aroused by your 'Play rape' Especially the type of rapists who believe the myth that women secretly enjoy being raped. I also feel that as a victim, I would be incredibly traumatised
by your video. Mainly because I would know that it was a contrived performance and was not manifested from the true pain and trauma of rape.

Therefore, you cannot speak for us, because you were not raped. You had 'sex' with a strange man. You orchestrated your own pretend 'rape' in the name of recognition and controversy.

Here are my depictions of rape, from the mind of a real survivor.

'Shut up and take it'

'Tell me you love it'

'The methodical, no-fuss rape'

#When I was...(Hashtag on twitter)

#When I was a baby - my Uncle sexually abused me.
#When I was six -  my mothers boyfriend sexually abused me for two years.
#When I was seven - Older boys would sexually assault me in the communal sheds.
#When I was eight - A disabled older boy would pin me against a wall and sexually assault me.
#When I was eleven - A boy at school, punched me hard in my breast. When I told a teacher, she tutted and said 'boys'
#When I was twelve - A man on the street punched me hard in my developing
breast. I flew down an embankment, couldn't breathe and vomited. He stood
there smiling before he left.
#When I was thirteen - My older brother fondled my breasts.
 #When I was thirteen - The 27 yr old boyfriend of my friends sister pretended he wanted to help dry my washed hair. He was sat in a chair and whilst rubbing my hair with a towel, he forced my face down onto his erect penis.
#When I was thirteen - A 23 yr old man had sex with me whilst I 'Froze' He asked me if I was a virgin. I said that I didn't know. His 18 yr old brother also pinned me down on a bed and forced 15 'Love bites' on my neck before letting me go.
 #When I was fourteen - My friends mom would ask her 17 yr old son to walk me to my home, as she feared for my safety. He would sexually assault me every-time.
#When I was fourteen - My art teacher kept asking me to meet after school. One afternoon he cornered me in the classroom and sexually assaulted me.
#When I was sixteen, I was duped and trafficked by a gang who forced me into pornography and prostitution.
#When I was twenty, I attended a mental health work placement centre. The doctor who saw me there, closed the blinds, lifted my top and bra up and fondled my breasts. Also, my main tutor offered me a lift in his car. He told me that he was 'Lonely' and forced a kiss on my lips.
#When I was twenty two - I went to the doctors about my depression. The doctor put his hand on my thigh and asked if he would like me to have him come see me at my flat.
#I have been sexually harassed throughout the years, in public, on public transport and at work places..Far too many to state on here. 
 

Violent pornography normalises and incites sexually motivated murders.

 

Georgia Williams (17)

Jamie Reynolds was another sexually sadistic serial killer in the making, who was obsessed and excited by extreme, violent pornography. The problem here- Like these similar cases Ted Bundy, Vincent Tabak,  Maury Travis,  Nathan Matthews,   John Maden (To name but a few)  The initial excitement that fuelled their fantasies via sexually violent pornography - Diminishes to such an extent, that they are left utterly disappointed and are no longer able to perform, reach sexual fulfilment and climax. They have exhausted and exceeded every nasty, sadistic aspect of hurting, degrading, humiliating and killing women via images and videos, that they become both psychologically and sexually flaccid. Because it is their 'Fantasies' that drives the most prominent aspect of their lives, the sexual psychopath cannot exist without feeling power and control and this he can only achieve by eroticising sadistic sexual acts before, during or after killing a female victim. All this cannot just end or go away. It is who they are. It is inherent. So the only option for them, is to take the next step. The next level; In order to feel power, control and sexual arousal again. Unfortunately, that next step is to fantasise, plan and execute a real murder of a real woman.

Georgia Williams murder fulfilled killer's sadistic fantasy

Georgia Williams and Jamie Reynolds

 Sex-Related Homicide and Death Investigation

David Parker Ray

 David Parker Ray Also known as the 'Toy box killer' As a teenager, his sexual fantasies of raping, torturing, and even murdering women developed. Also,around this time, his sister discovered Ray's sadomasochistic drawings, as well as erotic photographs of bondage acts.
Ray sexually tortured and presumably killed his victims in a $100,000 home-made torture chamber he called his "toy box", that he built out of an old mobile home.

The 'Toy box'

 

 David Parker Ray would play a tape of his demands to his victims who were captured and bound within his 'Toy box' 

Inside the toybox where women were sexually tortured

The tape, labeled "Your Wedding Day," showed Travis tying women up and torturing and raping them. One scene showed him apparently strangling one of his victims to death.

Reynolds was known to the police and health agencies at the age of fourteen for his obsession with violent pornography and snuff movies. His parents had already placed him in the care of a psychiatrist and had taken away his internet, which he had bypassed with his own server.
At the age of seventeen he had already lured a girl to his house in order to strangle, rape and film her in 2008. She fights back and escapes with her life. Reynolds, 17 at the time, was given a final warning over the incident, which the police treated as an assault. Weeks later, images of women he knew with ropes digitally added around their necks were found on his computer by his parents and handed to the police.

Jamie Reynolds

 A doctor then assessed Reynolds as being a significant risk to others on the basis that he seemed to have "progressed from viewing sexually violent pornography to achttp://www.ibtimes.co.uk/georgia-williams-police-sorry-failings-over-violent-porn-obsessed-murderer-making-jamie-1523893ting upon it"

Jamie Reynolds

 By the time he was 22, having amassed 16,800 images and 72 videos of sexual violence, he had progressed to murder.   

In 2013 he lures Georgia Williams to his house. Within the space of half an hour, he hangs her by a rope and rapes her corpse whilst taking images in every room. Reynolds had previously told therapists he found images of strangulation arousing and had experimented with asphyxiation using a plastic bag, a report said. Had Georgia's parents had any inkling of Reynolds' dangerous desires they would never have let their daughter go to his house. But they were completely in the dark.


"Georgia died because the suspect had more rights than the victims."


So, here we are yet again! The agencies involved apologise and states
'Lessons will be learned'

Really?? Will that be after the next victim..Or the one after that..and the one after that... 

Georgia,her sister Scarlett and father Steve

(Trigger warning) This video contains horrific details of a woman's murder and her incredibly distraught family members.

Criminal psychologist- The problem with porn and sex offenders


I have extended this subject matter to a dedicated blog

Self Harming is more rewarding through Pornography and prostitution

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The porn proposition

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Response to a prostitution apologist

I came across this kyle Kulinski video regarding Amnesty's decision to decriminalise sex workers, pimps and brothels.  His analysis of things is often very intelligent and he is passionate about what he is discussing. But this time I feel that he hasn’t done his research.

He backs up his claims from a t.v reality show and says "Go ask the girls at the bunny ranch"

He makes two main arguments -

One is a strawman, saying that everybody who is against legalising prostitution is old fashioned and puritanical. That sex is wrong and paying for sex is just immoral on the face of it. Also that we are calling everybody who says that they are happy in prostitution liars.

The second is a composition fallacy. Saying that prostitution is always better when it is legal. He makes the comparison between alcohol prohibition, and how making it illegal made the situation worse. And assumes that the case is the same with prostitution.

The reason we are against it, is because we can see that even in cases where prostitution is legal, there is still exploitation.

Here is an example of a mega brothel in Germany, where prostitution is legal. It was recently raided by police under suspicion of human trafficking, forced prostitution and fraud.

'Josie, who’s 23 and has spent four years in the sex trade, reckons she has slept with 15,000 men. The key item in her make-up bag is a tube of Xylocaine, a local anaesthetic gel that numbs the inevitable physical pain that results from sleeping with up to 20 men a day.'

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-01-29/mega-brothel-inside-a-german-sex-palace

Germany admits it made a terrible mistake...

Ildiko from Hungary is a victim of brutal and unscrupulous human trafficking. Lured to Germany under false pretences, she ended up in a brothel

A report on the legal sex industry in Nevada, showing how it really works in a legal brothel.

"Legalising this industry does not result in the closing down of illegal sex establishments," says Farley, "it merely gives them further permission to exist."

 A 2-year research study of Nevada legal and illegal prostitution and sex trafficking reveals human rights violations against women in the Nevada legal brothels.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/sep/07/usa.gender

 NEVADA DECLARED MOST "DANGEROUS AND LETHAL STATE FOR THE SEX INDUSTRY" BY SEX WORKERS ANONYMOUS

"Never buy the line that nobody under 18 works in (Nevada brothels)," he said. "It's happening."

  He began promising these girls the moon when they were just 16 years old but they learned real quick once they got to the Bunny Ranch, they weren’t going to be any celebrity. Instead, they had to sexually service Dennis while they called him Daddy FOR NOTHING whenever he wanted.

Dennis Hof

 Pimps Will Be Pimps Whether Male or Female or Posing as “Sex Worker Activists”

Testimonial from an former sex worker.

"What happens in legal brothels is sexual harassment, sexual exploitation and sometimes rape," Farley said. "Despite the claims to the contrary, legal prostitution does not protect women from the violence, verbal abuse, physical injury or diseases such as HIV that occur in illegal prostitution."

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/outlaw-industry-ex-prostitutes-say

Women have to justify it: they can’t tell themselves or anyone else the reality of it or else they’d die. Until you step out of prostitution, you don’t realize what the emotional wreckage is

The betrayal of a human rights organization

Today, Amnesty International voted for the global decriminalisation of  'Sex work' because 'Sex workers' are marginalised and face constant risk of violence and abuse'. Now I wonder who on earth could possibly exploit, own, sell, rape, violently assault and murder these girls and women?
 It couldn't be the flesh traders and buyers could it, after all they totally love and respect their merchandise and they would never dream of forcing a girl into that kind of 'work' Even though, one of their motto’s is  'Why sell drugs once when you can sell one girl thousands of times'  And what of those who 'choose' this work? Maybe some do- But our concern is the millions who don't. Those who are coerced or forced. Those who are desperately poor. Or those who have unresolved PTSD. As any therapist can tell you, there is a strong link between child & adolescent sexual abuse and long term high risk sexual behaviours. Especially present when the victim is substance addicted.
 I, along with many other advocates and sex trafficking victims are mortified, sickened and angry at a 'Human rights' movement who are normalising and protecting men's rights to buy and use girls/woman's bodies however and  whenever they wish, in order to satisfy their sexual deviancies, power and hatred. Amnesty states that 'Sex workers' will be safer and that it will lessen sex trafficking. Really? None had reported being victims of this violence, which they considered "part of the job". I think they have listened to a lot of pimp talk, because even in countries where it is legal like Germany. Girls and women are suffering from their abusive clients and being trafficked within legal brothels. And are you really that naïve to think that the pimps and brothel owners will treat their 'workers' with dignity and respect. And that they will not provide young girls..When the demand for young girls is escalating beyond measure, in countries whether it's legal,illegal, decriminalised or not. It does not matter to the flesh traders, because they are only interested in PROFITS. Ask yourselves this- Who else would profit, if 'sex work' was decriminalised.

Amnesty denies and dismisses survivors, treating them like defects that don't deserve a voice..

In  Decriminalised New Zealand in 2013..
Former prostitutes and their advocates are calling for clients of sex workers to be prosecuted, saying the decriminalisation of the industry has failed them

 Full pdf of petition and more reading here-

Sexual slavery, forced drug-taking in Decriminalised NSW brothels on the rise

 
Pimps force under-age girls to work in Nevada brothels, Oregon police say

"What happens in legal brothels is sexual harassment, sexual exploitation and sometimes rape,

Nevada declared most dangerous and lethal state for the sex industry

 Romania's disappearing girls

sexual exploitation and prostitution

 Many came from dysfunctional homes, had few friends or family members who cared about them, and were drug addicts or alcoholics.FBI.

 Pimps prostituting children (one girl by her own father who filmed her) Who often grow up & continue being pimped.

 On average, countries where prostitution is legal experience larger reported human trafficking inflows.

 The purpose of the fiction is to cover up all indications of human trafficking, in which women are brought to Germany and exploited there

  Lured to Germany under false pretences, she ended up in a brothel.

 Consent is not a meaningful concept when a woman acquiesces to prostitution out of fear, despair, and a lack of alternatives.

What Amnesty Did Wrong 

 I feel that they have made this decision from the purses of pimps. Because money talks and the sex industry talks billions of profits, made from the holes of young girls and women who often don't have the choice. For example, Domestic abuse and impoverished parents selling their own daughters. I could cite references for months, maybe years. But I don't have that luxury of time and besides, you don't have to be an expert, a professional, an academic, a feminist or a survivor to understand that mentally healthy girls and women would never sell their flesh to many men a day in order to "pay their bills or have a flexible work schedule", as you stated in your draft. You never once mentioned the mental health, PTSD and serious drug addictions of many of these women. The self sexual denigration and dissociation that occurs in most adolescents who were sexually abused by men. Yes, by all means decriminalise prostituted people and help them to attain health and social care. You need to criminalise the flesh traders who exploit and the buyers who create the demand. But, you won't do that will you Amnesty. You believe that men are entitled to women's bodies and need to fulfil their sexual desires. Why don't you read the language of the buyers and understand, that it's not about sex. It is the same as rape. It's about power, control and hate. Good men don't use women, good men love women.
 Amnesty International​ - You have demonstrated today, that you have ignored and dismissed the countless victims and survivors of sex trafficking. And that you have assigned girls and women a second class status and you have jeopardised millions more vulnerable women and children, who will be at greater risk at the hands of flesh traders and buyers across the globe. Your actions and watching you all celebrate with your glasses of champagne today, have caused myself and many others who were forced by pimps into prostitution. Utter distress, disbelief, anger and emotions that triggered and exacerbated our traumas, beyond words.

Congratulations.