to Hefner. Ms. Strat en said she was sexually molested by
Hefner. After her death, Hefner was made aware that Ms. Stratten had hated the pornography made of her and had hated posing for it. He responded by issuing more videotapes of Ms.
Strat en posing. Dorothy Strat en’s estate entered a brief in her
behalf in support of the Indianapolis Ordinance. The brief outlined how Ms. Strat en had been pressured into pornography.
The hope of her estate was that the Ordinance could be used
to recover and destroy videotapes and photographs (primarily
in back issues of
Questions and Answers
69
The women used by Hefner personally and in the magazine are rarely much over eighteen. Ms. Strat en was underage when she was initially pimped to Hefner.
The sexual exploitation of women is what the magazine is,
what it does, what it sel s, and how it is produced.
Q: Pornography is the fault of the women who pose for it.
Why don’t they just stop posing?
A: The women in pornography are most often victims of child
sexual abuse. Some studies show that 65 to 75 percent of the
current population of women in prostitution and pornography
(overlapping experiences for the same pool of women) have
been abused as children, usually in the home. People who work
with women who are in pornography and prostitution to provide social services or counselling, some of whom have been in pornography or prostitution themselves, believe the percentage
is much, much higher. Children run away from home, from the
sexual abuse, to cities where they are picked up by pimps, raped,
beaten, drugged, and forced into prostitution or pornography.
Women in pornography are poor women, usually uneducated.
Pornography exists in a society in which women are economical y
disadvantaged. The only professions in which women make more
money than men are modeling and prostitution—and in prostitution, the pimps keep most if not al of it. Women’s economic value is determined largely by sexual value: how much the
woman’s body is worth in the marketplace as a commodity.
Many women are forced into pornography as children by
fathers who sexually abuse them; pornography is made of
them as part of the sexual abuse they experience as children.
Many women are forced into pornography by husbands,
many of whom are violent (bat ery of married women being
the most commonly committed violent crime in the country).
Many women are photographed by lovers and find the photographs published as pornography in revenge or retaliation.
Aspiring actresses and models are photographed nude, almost
a trade practice, and find the photographs published against
their wil and without their knowledge in pornography.
70
Pornography and Civil Rights
When a woman has been forced into pornography, the pornography itself is used to keep her in a life of sexual exploitation and abuse. Think of what happens when a bat ered wife asks for help. She is doing what society says women should do:
she is married, and the sustained bat ery is proof that she has
