I miss having her speak out for us who are too scared too

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	• Ordeal Linda Lovelace Citadel, 2006 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 29 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

I miss having her speak out for us who are too scared too

I'm an ex-sex worker. I now belong to Sex Workers Anonymous. I've lived this industry and I know the crowd Linda spoke about in her books. She had the courage to write about what wasn't just her experiences - but also many of ours experiences - but we go off into hiding and fear once we leave rather then speak out like she did knowing what it could and did cost her. I watched while people who knew nothing of this industry attacked her for speaking out about this industry doing what men do - always blame the woman/victim. Speaking out about what really goes on in this world affected her health deeply from the stress and contributed to her early death I'm sure. She's not the only one who had lasting health problems to deal with after having left the sex industry though no fault of her own. In America - a man can go to jail for raping his wife - but not for raping a sex worker. What people don't realize is that many of these men, women and children are living out Linda's story - they can't get out without fear of themselves being killed or their family members. I knew a pimp once who would hold a woman's child hostage until she came back each night with "his" money. One night she got arrested and wasn't able to come home on time. The pimp cut off the left arm of this six year old girl. Anyone who thinks you can't be held in this business against your will - obviously hasn't been there and should shut up about something they know nothing about. I consider Linda a martyr for taking all the guff she took to tell our stories and to try to enlighten people about what goes on every day - but we don't have the guts to tell about our stories ourselves. Anyone who wants to know what this industry can really be like - should read her stories. If all she wanted was to keep making money and just made this up to sell books - she would have done what Xavier Hollendar or Norma Jean or Heidi Fleiss - did. Sell a hell of a lot more books feeding into the american myths about this business - without any of the flack she took for telling the truth. The woman had the courage of a lion - not only to survive what she did - and to live to tell about it - but also to tell about it in the hopes that us "unknowns" are more believed when we try to tell our stories and try to get help to get out.

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Did she or didn't she?

I found this book unexpectedly in a public library about 7 years ago and was elated. I believe that it was out of print at the time. This book did move me. I have read several of the other reveiws and some of the folks were and still are skeptical about Linda's story of abuse and being forced into prostitution and porn.

I couldn't help but feel so passionate about this story when first read it. I zealously defended her story (or I wanted to believe it so much). I still believe that there are elements of truth to her story, but as someone else once said in their review, you don't need to look carefully to see that she has a tendency to blame nearly everyone else for her mistakes and for the bad things that have happened to her. I sincerely believe that Linda was abused by her husband, Chuck Traynor, and that he was not a nice person. The question is whether or not she willing engaged in prostitution and pornography, or if she was forced or coerced into doing it. There is still much debate over that. The problem is that once LL became an overnight sensation (something she wasn't expecting or prepared for) she made some damning statements about loving what she did and these things later came back to haunt her when she tried to recant those things that she said. Unfortunately, many of the things that she said and much of the unspeakable things that she did on film followed her all of her life. She apparently couldn't escape LL.

To me, it is interesting that the woman that Chuck Traynor married and managed the career of none other than Marilyn Chambers. Unlike Linda, Marilyn Chambers always said that she liked what she did and had no regrets. In her book, LL says that she had been advised to just be the person that the world knew as LL, because no one would believe otherwise. She said all along that this was not really her. She tried to hold her ground. Some people believed her and embraced her, while others scoffed at what she had to say and said that she was just bitter. Who knows?

I'm not a fan of porn. To me, this book is a harrowing story of abuse.

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No reason not to believe her claims

I have known women who have done porn and based on this as well as the testimonies of countless other sex industry survivors such as Shelley Lubben and Crissy Moran, I have no reason to doubt the claims made by in this book. The sex industry is an evil exploitive, multi-billion dollar industry and LL was brave in sharing her story with the public. This book haunted me years after I read it as a teenager.

Really, It's Hard to Say

What really did happen with Linda Lovelace? According to ORDEAL, waved as a bloody flag by feminists as a symbol of the so-called oppression of women, she was a nice girl who found herself in an unbelievably abusive relationship with a man who put her in porn. Given the tone of our times, one cannot question this account without finding oneself the object of hysterical execration.

And yet.

There are just too many questions. For all the adamant talk coming from certain quarters about how abused women can't, just can't, leave their abusers, the facts is that, although at times difficult, they can. And the portrayal of Chuck Traynor, Lovelace's husband, is so over the top it is as if he were specifically created to play the role of the literary wife-beating bogeyman. Traynor allegedly made Lovelace engage in the most degrading and humiliating sexual practices imaginable, all presented to the reader in the style that makes one drool with excitement in that guilty sort of way. No way are you actually going to admit to liking it, are you?

Events subsequent to ORDEAL's publication have cast doubts on its accuracy. Some fellow adult stars around at the time have stated that they saw no sign of abuse and that Lovelace herself, far from acting like the poor frightened waif, instead was as sexually voracious off the screen as she was on, even, or even especially, when her husband was not around.

It is a cliche to say that the truth is somewhere in between. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. But Lovelace's saga is probably one of those times when it is. She seems like a girl who dreamt bigger than her personality and talents could lead her, got in with a tough crowd, and got swept away. When things don't go as planned, many people re-interpret things to make themselves more passive than was actually the case. And for Lovelace, aided by feminists who exploited her as badly as any man ever did, re-interpretation of her past was the way to face the future. Hers was a sad life, but probably not as sad as portrayed in ORDEAL.

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Ignore the negative reviews

I am going to defend Linda Lovelace against those reviewers here who really don't believe her story by quoting from the groundbreaking psychotherapy book "Trauma and Recovery" by Judith Herman:

"Most people have no knowledge or understanding of the psychological changes of captivity. Social judgment of chronically traumatized people therefore tends to be extremely harsh. The chronically abused person's apparent helplessness and passivity, her entrapment in the past, her intractable depression... and her smoldering anger often frustrate the people closest to her. Moreover, if she has been coerced into betrayal of relationships, community loyalties, or moral values, she is frequently subjected to furious condemnation.

"Observers who have never experienced prolonged terror and who have no understanding of coercive methods of control presume that they would show greater courage and resistance than the victim in similar circumstances. Hence the common tendency to account for the victim's behavior by seeking flaws in her personality or moral character."

So, think hard before you judge her.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Good Girl. Obedient Wife.

Porn Slave.

Deep Throat Was Only The Beginning?

Linda Boreman was just twenty-one when she met Chuck Traynor, the man who would change her life. Less than two years later, the girl who wouldn?t let her high school dates get past first base was catapulted to fame she could never have imagined in her wildest dreams?or worst nightmares. Linda Boreman of Yonkers, New York, had become Linda Lovelace, international adult film superstar. The unprecedented success of Deep Throat made porn popular with the mainstream and made Lovelace a household name. But nobody, from the A-list celebrities who touted the movie to the audiences that lined up to see it, knew the truth about what went on behind the scenes.

Enslaved by the man who would eventually force her into marriage so that he could control her completely, Linda was beaten savagely with regularity, hypnotized, and raped. She was threatened with disfigurement and death. She was terrorized into prostitution at gun and knifepoint. She was forced to perform unspeakable perversions on film. She made Deep Throat under unimaginable duress.

Years later, Linda would come out of hiding to relate her side of the story?a modern horror tale of humiliation, betrayal, and violence that would rock the porn industry and put its teller in fear for her life...

Ordeal

Linda Lovelace became a household name in 1972, when Deep Throat became the first pornographic movie ever to cross over into the mainstream. Due to the success of Deep Throat, she appeared in Playboy, Bachelor, and even Esquire between 1973 and 1974. Soon after, Lovelace joined in with anti-pornography feminists led by Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, and she testified before Attorney General Meese?s Commission on Pornography in 1986. She died in Denver on April 22, 2002, due to severe injuries in a car accident.

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