On 1 July 1969 pictorial pornography was legalized in Denmark. Up until the law was passed legalizing pornography there was a big debate. One of the heaviest arguments for changing the law was that women would not be raped as much as they had been before. That argument everybody could support? ? Is it right that women will not be raped as much, yes, it's true they said, so we naturally should be happy, because the men that would like to rape us will go out and buy a porno magazine instead. But no, it is a big fat lie, with the legalizing of pornography it is also legal to regard women as objects, to rape and accost according to need, because with pornography it is ideologically established that women's inner most wish is to subject herself to men.

It is violence against women that a few make a profit out of such an ideology. It is violence against women to be exhibited as sex objects and nothing else. But why did our government agree to legalize pornography? Who does it serve other than capital, that even before the change in the law made money by sending magazines and films abroad? Free pornography meant even more profit with an open market in Denmark too.

Who is it that agrees to be photographed for pornography? Should we blame those women who their whole lives have been told that they are sex objects, and that is their most important role here in life. Housewives, young women who can't earn enough money, women students who haven't enough money to support themselves, women who have to live up to this society's dictates of what it is to be "a real woman", those women who have not the possibilities to be economically independent of men.

This society is organized according to the needs of capital and men, and it is a threat to capital and male structures if women start to struggle against every form of economic and ideological oppression. Therefore it is quite clear that it is in society's interest to legalize pornography. Because pornography helps to deepen woman's alienation from herself. Alienates her from her own body and her own sexuality. It is a way to strengthen and justify the male ethic that men can direct their potency and aggression towards women, and women shall passively submit to them. It is oppression that makes it more difficult for women to fight and work for a society that is for people, where women have the possibility to be ideologically and economically independent of men.

But here in Denmark we are so sexually liberated, or so it is said, that it must be in women's interests that everything is allowed, pornography too.

Let us go back to those who let themselves be photographed. Yes, I am one of them that believed that I was so liberated that nothing could touch me, nobody could exploit me and earn anything on my body. Why did I do it? I had to have a lot of money fast and that was the easiest way out. I earned well, but how I felt is something else. I felt it as a violence against my body, my body that was exhibited like a piece of meat, and as a violence against all women, they also suffer because I supported the porno industry.

The many women I talked to during my three months as a porno model often hated themselves. But it was very often of bitter necessity that they did it, they had to. The husband drank, they were a single mother, they felt they had to compete with the others at work, and wear smarter clothes, and for others it was just to be the one time, because they wanted to buy this or that... But for many it was many times, for me too, it was almost impossible to get out again. The money is easy and for many women it was easy to get into drinking during the photography sessions. Why do they often hate themselves? The men that model think for the most it is o.k. But who is it that shall have a prick in their mouth, who's to  be tied up, who will do everything for a man so that he can get his orgasm, who is it that is exhibited as a wet cunt and nothing else? Why did I stop when it was so easy to get money. Well I learned quickly to hate myself, my body, that I should support capitalists and their easy money, and support this society's decay, and I learned too that it is men who have the upper hand, they have their rights over me.

 Who should I accuse because I was a porno model? Yes, I did it of my own free will, and the other women I talked too did it too. I accuse the government for making a law that supports a capitalistic patriarchal society with its ideology of women as sexual objects and nothing else. A law that gives life to men's sexual fantasies, that reduces women to passive objects to be abused, degraded and used. I accuse and dare to say that this is violence against women, because now every woman is for sale to the lowest bidder for all men. I accuse the government for supporting the porno industry and thereby oppressing women. For having decided whom women shall love, how they shall love, that women continue to be exploited economically, and that women still do not have the possibility to decide for themselves as to how they shall live. I believe that only by overthrowing this society the violence against women will cease. I will work and strengthen cooperation between women so that we can become ideologically and economically independent of men and this society. I am prepared to use violence against an ideology that says that women are inferior to men. To fight against a government and capital, which strengthens that ideology, and they have strengthened that ideology by legalizing pornography in Denmark.

Edith
Red Stockings Movement
Denmark