fix it with a little battery operated happiness from Adam and Eve!

Candida Royalle

the interview with Olivia de Court

Part Five

Olivia : Using politics as well as the pulpit as conduits to spread their ideology. One of the main themes, particularly in mainstream and radical feminist anti-porn movement is that most of the women in the sex industry were abused as children and continue to be abused by the porn industry. Therefore, the anti-porn and prostitution laws are necessary. Under the guise of protecting children, this whole thing about pornography harms children.

But my question would be why aren’t the parents monitoring the pornography they’re watching? And, doesn’t the notion that protecting women for their own good completely nullify the core philosophy of feminism, which is, in the end, about choice and freedom of expression that results from choice.

CANDIDA: Yes. I would completely agree with that. The stance that feminists for Free Expression takes is that a democratic society should have to access all materials, look at it and decide for ourselves. This is really the only way to true democracy. I think that it is very misguided to try and protect women.

And even, the whole thing with children. We're terrified of child sexuality, childhood sexuality, in this country to an unrealistic degree. It's the inability to deal with their own guilt over certain kinds of thoughts we might have. With women there is a tendency to want to, I think it's human to just want to do away with that (discussions of childhood sexuality). And, to protect people from what is "bad." It just doesn't work.

Olivia : Clearly laws to protect children are necessary in terms of sexual victimization. Children do not have the emotional maturity to consent. But in terms of protecting adult women from the "evils of porn," even though there’s some material I’ve seen that is just awful. And while I understand, and sympathize with, the anti-porn movement in terms of some of the material that’s out there, overall, we cannot expect to be treated equally and then enact laws to protect us from ourselves.

CANDIDA: Yeah. I think that the important thing to do with children is to talk to them. To always talk to them about what they're seeing. For example, I, years ago, was part of a conference in Norway for sexuality educators and service staff. I had a very nice discussion with Thore Langfeldt, who is a noted child psychologist there. He was saying that there is a certain recipe that very likely leads to a sexual predator. Basically, it is someone who grew up in a very sex-negative, repressed culture, someone who grew up in a very sex-negative, repressed family and, on top of these two things, was sexually abused as a child. You put these three things together and you very likely have a sexual predator. What this points to is the fact that your sexuality, whether you are inclined to be a predator, is all established very, very early in life.

I remember years ago, I had been married for about nine years to a man I consider very healthy sexuality. His father was a film producer; he produced Swedish Spaghetti Westerns. He also owned a few porno theaters. My ex-husband, Pere, had told me that when he was a little boy they used to let him go sit in the theater between the porno movies. They would show cartoons for some strange reason. (Laughs) This is Sweden; they have a much more open attitude toward sexuality. So, they would bring him down and let him watch the cartoons. They would come and get him before the porn movie started. One day, when he was, I guess he was about maybe ten, someone forgot to go down and get him and he sort of, he saw the beginnings of a porno movie. No big deal. It was so matter-of-fact, I mean, it didn't damage him, it didn't shock him. He didn't turn into a rapist. If anything, he was almost not kinky enough, you know? (Laughs)

Another example my friends from Amsterdam, where, of course, they also have a much more understanding attitude toward child sexuality-- I had these little samples that someone had given me of what they distribute. They produce S&M stuff. The packaging had these very playful cartoon-like figures of people, not having sex but just like, in handcuffs or something like that. Slightly provocative. Anyway, my friend had his two little daughters with him. I said, "Gee, do you want me to get the stuff out of here?" And he said, "No. They, they've seen things. I've talked to them about (sex)."

I think that is the whole point. If you talk to your children, as they’re growing up, about the things they're seeing. "What did you see, what does this mean to you, how does this affect you?" If you explain to them the realities of life, this is not the way most people are but this is what shapes a child. A perfectly healthy child does not grow up, look at a porn movie one day and his (her) whole sexuality is changed.

What author John Money calls love maps, these are formed very early in life. To worry about something that women are going to see that offends them, it's not that easy, We’re not so simple. If a woman sees something that offends her or disturbs her, if she’s got a firm foundation, if she's clear about her sexuality, she is not in danger. I don't know if I'm making myself clear, but I think we just make way too much out of potential dangers of images that are seen. And, we give way too little importance to what we discuss and teach our children at a very early age. This and what children experience and see around them.

Olivia : Yes. I agree. That's a great point, especially about the children. Some want to ban pornography but they want to take sex education away too. Sometimes I think it's more what you don’t tell children that affects them more profoundly than what you do.

CANDIDA: Exactly. I think it's completely what you don't tell them that affects them far more than what you discuss with them.

Olivia : You mentioned in your last answer a little bit about Feminists for Free Expression. Could you delineate what are the differences FFE and other feminist organizations?

CANDIDA: What was the question?

Olivia : Mainstream and radical feminist groups are losing membership because, for one thing, they're not reaching the very young. At the other end of the spectrum, once you get into your forties, fifties and sixties, you start to know more about life and learn that not everything can be solved with a law or a ban. Do you see where I'm going? So, what is it about Feminists for Free Expression that drew you to them, in particular?

CANDIDA: I think that the fact that, well you said it yourself, I stopped being a member of NOW a long time ago because I felt that they were outdated, they were old-fashioned. You know, I had been a young feminist in college. In those days, the feminist movement really embraced the whole sexual liberation of women. What I saw happening in the early 70s was a shift to "men as enemy" and sex as something you shouldn't share with a man, we should only turn to our sisters now for sex; sleeping with a man was like sleeping with the enemy. And I just didn't like where this was all going. I thought this was very repressive to my sexuality and kind of going back to a very puritanical way of thinking. I didn't think that we were helping anyone by becoming enemies with men; we have to try to work together.

I saw NOW as more following, not so much the radical Lesbianism or even radical Feminism, but just this very conservative place. It smelled to me like the way a sorority is run, like, "you'd better think like us or you can't be in our club." I resented this. For me, they just did not, I couldn't really relate to them. I felt that the work I was doing was very pro-woman, more humanist really, than feminist. I wasn't getting support there. They had this need to see anything sexual as kind of taboo and crossing enemy lines.

Olivia : It wasn’t just about heterosexuality so much as it was about them feeling that men were using sex as a weapon against women, and, somehow confusing crimes such as rape and sexual harassment, which have nothing to do with sex, it about violence, with sex in general. It {the Feminist Movement} went from the "wild sister" to the "virgin daughter" overnight. Would it be fair to say of Feminists for Free Expression that the women who have come together in this group are very much more open in terms of allowing people to be individuals socially and sexually, as long as they’re not hurting others?

CANDIDA: Yes. What we saw happening was that politically, the whole idea of protecting women and women's rights was being used to pass some very dangerous legislation that would, in the long run, really hurt women's rights, and women's ability to politically evolve. This was after the whole Anita Hill debacle. Feminists were very, very angry at the Senate for the way they treated her. So in an effort to win back the women and feminist vote, they (the Congress) came up with this terrible law that they wanted to pass. It would have allowed third party liability for sexually violent crimes against women. You might remember this.

Olivia : Yes.

CANDIDA: If a woman was raped, she could actually, if she could prove that the rapist looked at a particular movie or read or a particular book, sue the producer of the material.

Olivia : It’s all flooding back to me like a nightmare...

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