Earlier this week, it was reported that the British Parliament was “urgently considering” passing anti-revenge porn legislation. While this was obviously great news for the untold numbers of men and women whose lives have been ruined by revenge porn, it was even better news for the feminist organization Object, which is using news of the legislation to go after an unlikely enemy: The 1972 porn classic Deep Throat, which they’re arguing is an example of the “revenge porn” phenomenon.
In their Change.org petition, “Stop selling Deep Throat and other revenge porn,” Object, which calls itself a “human rights organisation specifically set up to challenge the sexual objectification of women,” is lobbying Amazon to remove Deep Throat and memorabilia featuring its star, Linda Lovelace (nee Boreman). Because Lovelace later disavowed her association with the film, claiming her performance was non-consensual, Object is arguing that Deep Throat falls under the category of “revenge porn.”
Here’s the petition:
In a welcome development, the UK Parliament is currently considering legislation to ban revenge porn, the sexually explicit media that are publicly shared online without the consent of the pictured individual.
The late LInda Susan Boreman testified and wrote how she was coerced into adopting the role of ‘Linda Lovelace’ by a violent and controlling man called Chuck Traynor.
According to her sworn testimony, he was her ‘manager’, pimp and husband who forced her into making many pornographic movies including some involving bestiality. ‘Deep Throat’ was one of the films which she alleged was made under duress, and consequently an actual record of rape. It is still being sold via Amazon UK. Similarly a wide range of other ‘Linda Lovelace’ DVDs, T-shirts and fridge magnets are currently for sale via Amazon. The fridge magnet has the slogan ‘I choked LInda Lovelace’, trivialising the high prevalence of strangulation in domestic violence, coercive pornography and prostitution.
In the context of the proposed legislation, and respecting a dead woman’s testimony, human rights and personal dignity, we call on Amazon to withdraw from sale all movies and ‘Linda Lovelace’ related memorabila [sic[ which she testified include the actual records of abuse and/or trivialise her ordeal.
Although the petition itself probably won’t gain much traction—it’s only received about 100 signatures so far—it does raise some interesting questions about porn, coercion, and what, exactly, constitutes revenge porn, which is typically defined as someone uploading sexually explicit photos and videos of another person (usually a former partner) without their consent.
Although Lovelace claimed later in life that her performance in Deep Throat and its sequels were coerced, it’s unclear whether her adult work falls under that category. After divorcing her husband and manager Chuck Traynor and becoming a born-again Christian, Lovelace claimed in her autobiography Ordeal that Traynor beat her, raped her, and forced her to engage in sex acts with other men by holding a gun to her head off camera. “I felt like garbage,” she wrote. “I engaged in sex acts for pornography against my will to avoid being killed.”
Since her book was published in 1980, Lovelace’s allegations against Traynor and the cast and crew of Deep Throat, who she alleged knew of the abuse and did nothing to stop it, have been both disputed and supported by sources close to Lovelace and Traynor. But her accounts of the seedy, exploitative adult industry have made her a darling of anti-porn, anti-prostitution feminist groups like Object, which says it “challlenges [sic] the objectification of women and the mainstreaming of the sex and porn industries in all of its forms” on its website’s mission statement.
We’ll never know for sure whether Lovelace’s allegations of rape and abuse off-camera were true, and she’s far from the only former adult performer to make similar claims about the adult industry. But sadly, the fact that their performances at least appear consensual on camera means most of these women can do little to prevent anyone with a wireless connection from accessing them.
By all accounts, Lovelace was deeply humiliated by her Deep Throat legacy—”When you see the movie Deep Throat, you are watching me be raped,” she famously said—and she struggled with depression and addiction throughout her life. Her experience with Deep Throat was heartbreaking and tragic. But it probably doesn’t qualify as revenge porn.
H/T Change.org/Object | Screengrab via MedIdEro/YouTube
