My dad uses pornography and is also very sexist and abusive. My parents finally divorced after 21 years of marriage and I have had no contact with him for several years now. I was 17 when we (my mom and 3 younger sisters) left. He hid his pornographic magazines, but I found them when we were young and told my mom. The first time I found it under the seat in the his old pick-up truck. It was very hurtful for my mom to see the porn and be compared to those womyn in the pictures. His use of pornography fueled his hatred and objectification of womyn. I knew he only saw womyn as sexual objects. My mom tried to reason with him once and asked him if it would bother him to see his own teen girls in pornography, and he answered that it wouldn't bother him as much as it would bother my mom. When I slept on the enclosed front porch on a pull out couch during the summer, I'd look through the window into the living room and see my dad. He often slept on the living room couch, and I caught him using porn magazines in the dark through the window. He hated me for finding the porn originally and for and telling on him. He lied and said he hadn't purchased them, but only found them dumped in a field. I found more porn later and told again, after he lied and said he'd never do it again. From this point on, he managed to pit me against the rest of the family because he hated me for telling on him.

He was sexually abusive to my mom towards the end of their relationship, I feel, in part, because of the porn. He felt he owned my mom's body because he married her. Once she refused to have sex on his demand and he went to her purse and took all her money as a punishment. Controlling as he was, he said if he had to so-called "beg" for sex, then she had to beg for money. I recall I wasn't sleeping yet this night (as their fighting always kept me up and worried) and I remember getting out of bed and yelling that he may as well have sex with me because it would be just as wrong to have sex with me as it would be to force it on his wife. You see, porn contains rape myths such as portraying womyn in a way which makes it look like they enjoy forced sex. I was so mad at him for hurting my mom. (I have come to have very strong feelings on marital rape and other coercive sex.) He also put a lock on the inside of their bedroom door which made me feel like I could not get in to help her if he hurt her. I disliked it when my mom wore dresses too, (which was rare on the farm we lived on) only because my dad liked it when she did this. But I knew my dad only wanted one thing from her. Sex.

The combination of his porn use and other behaviors made me feel uncomfortable around my dad with my developing body as a teen girl. I wore baggy shirts because it felt like he'd look at me sexually because he looked at womyn in porn sexually. I didn't want to swim around him without a T-shirt on over my swimsuit too. He also had an odd practice of walking around the house in just his boxers. I didn't like it when he did that, but we didn't put it together until much later, that it made some of us in the house very uncomfortable. It's funny he felt comfortable walking around in his underwear, when I didn't even feel comfortable around him in my regular clothes. Talk about a power differential. I always looked out for my little sisters cause I really thought he would have done something to them if he was alone with them. I've talked to my mom about the possibility of him molesting me or my sisters (as none of us remembers anything like that) but she doesn't know. Oddly enough, we were all worried as sisters that he would sexually abuse us, or we later feared he may have. However, we didn't talk about it together until after we left and my parents divorced. I fear he may have sexually abused me (but I don't know) and our counselor (later) agreed he was certainly the type of person who may have.

He was also very sexist, which is what porn is, although I didn't know what sexism was when I was younger. He'd stare at other pretty women a lot, and watch sexy TV shows with hot teen girls etc. He rented pornographic videos too, but although I hated it, I couldn't do anything about it. He also had sexist quotes and comics taped up above his desk that disgusted me. This sexism was all interrelated. He would also whistle to get my mom's attention which made her feel more like a dog than a person. Talk about degrading and dehumanizing--just like the porn.

I describe my life back on the farm as hell. I wrote poems to express my feelings and get my rage, depression and misery out just to survive the day to day. I have tons of poems! I really just wanted to die. I didn't understand why I had to live like that. I wrote poems steadily after we left the farm for a while too. I also got into self-mutilating behaviors that lasted after we got out as well. I cut myself. My sister did too. It is difficult to explain, but when I was very angry and feeling helpless, I'd take out my anger on myself when I felt I couldn't turn anywhere else. It was a release in a way. I cut my arms mostly, but also my legs and chest too. I still have some of the scars.

The battered womyn's shelter was such a relief for me. It was the first time in my life I felt safe! They had support groups for me to talk about the abuse and everything, while I continued the regular counseling at the same time. It wasn't all easy at the shelter, but I think it gave me my 1st introduction to feminism.

When I was bored, an advocate gave me a videotape to watch about sexist language. I never made the connections before, that my dad's language (terms such as whore, bitch, slut and witch) etc and his abusive actions and porn use were connected to hating and abusing women. You begin to notice the terms used in porn are often reflected in real life when the porn users (men) call womyn "bitches," "cunts", and "piece of ass" and refer to our body parts in derogatory ways such as "pussy" and "hooters" just as porn does.

With that first seed of feminism planted, I slowly became interested in learning more about freeing and liberating womyn from sexist, abusive men like my father. I took college courses on social issues and majored in sociology with minors in women's studies and human relations. I protested our local porn store weekly with a group of college students. I co-organized a protest at a local strip joint too. Women's studies became my passion and I pursued my masters degree in it.

My past has molded me in every way to be the strong woman and feminist I am today. I care about people who have been abused, especially children. I feel strongly about sexual violence including sexual assault, marital rape, molestation and more. My compassion for animals runs deep as well, because of animal abuse I witnessed on the farm. I also feel quite strongly about sexist and oppressive language towards anyone. For example, I don't like it when womyn and girls are put down, when racist comments are made, when people make gay jokes or when people use words like "retard" because all of these hurt different oppressed groups of people that I can identify with because I was oppressed by violence. I am also absolutely non-violent and I am strongly anti-porn too. To a degree, I am somewhat anti-gun because of the violence and gun incidents growing up, and I am a huge supporter of equality in relationships. It has also been a long, hard road to trusting men again, especially men my dad's age.

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