At this point, I still didn’t know what was going to happen to my book. Did anyone really believe the story? Was I getting through to anyone? Or was I doomed to be always what I had been ten years earlier: A bad joke—the Linda Lovelace doll; wind her up and she swallows the key.
twenty-four
Gloria Steinem happened to see me on
The Donahue Show.
What did I know about Gloria Steinem at that time? Even less than she knew about me. Which is to say, nothing.
All I knew about Gloria Steinem was that she was associated in some way with a magazine called
Ms
. or
Mrs
. and was a woman who wanted to open her own doors and light her own cigarettes but not go out Dutch treat.
Ten years earlier, when everyone else was discovering feminism, it barely dented my consciousness. At that time I was the personal property of a pimp. What would something like that have to do with me?
How did Chuck Traynor react to feminism? I can tell you exactly. Did you ever see any of those vampire movies? And do you remember the big scene where the vampire is suddenly shown a cross? That’s the way Chuck reacted to feminism.
When I was with Chuck—that was the first time people started asking each other whether they’d rather be called “Miss” or “Ms.” One time Chuck snarled at me, “You can forget that ‘Ms.’ stun—no
real
woman would ever want to be called ‘Ms.’” That, of course, settled the issue.
Back then that was the entire feminist struggle to me, the only feminist issue—whether to be called “Miss” or “Ms.” To me, it was immaterial; all I was ever called was “Hey-you.” And when Chuck decided the whole issue was “a crock,” I could see no reason to argue with him. Not that I ever would.
Now I see feminism as the exact opposite of everything Chuck believed and practiced. Often he explained to me that a woman’s body was meant to make money so that a man would never have to go to work. Therefore, a “real woman” would do anything and everything that a “real man” commanded.
But Chuck didn’t know any more about feminism than I did. I don’t believe he ever read a book in his life. No, I take that back. He did read one book several times. It was called
The Family
and it was about the Charles Manson family; Manson was Chuck’s idol.
I had never met any woman who described herself as a feminist. No one ever tried to get me to join the National Organization of Women or to back the Equal Rights Amendment or to get involved in any of the causes that feminists get involved in. Of course, people in pornography have never been noted for feminist sentiments. And people struggling to survive on welfare don’t have the time or the energy to think about such things.
A hooker I worked with named Melody tried to be my friend. She gave me a book called
The Female Eunuch
by Germaine Greer. It was about the way men had always treated women. But when Chuck saw what I was about to read, he snatched it from my hands and threw it into the garbage.
In retrospect, I’m a little surprised that I didn’t run into more feminists in the days when I was Linda Lovelace. I’m surprised they weren’t out picketing me. I had to be Public Enemy Number One—this female freak who got such immense pleasure from serving men with oral sex.
But I never heard a peep from any of them. No one ever told me there were groups who could help someone like myself escape, groups that worked with battered women. If I’d known about these groups, I might have turned to them.
I’ve since learned that most big cities have special units set up to help women who are being abused by men. Now when a woman writes me or calls me asking for help—say a woman who has read
Ordeal
and finds herself in a similar situation—I refer her to a local feminist group.
But at that time my ignorance on these matters was awesome. When I heard that Gloria Steinem was trying to reach me, it meant nothing at all. She contacted Mike McGrady to say that she had seen me on
The Donahue Show
and wanted to learn more about me.
Not that she was instantaneously persuaded of the truth of my story. She grilled Mike on many details. Then she spoke to publisher Lyle Stuart’s wife, Carole, and asked whether she was “crazy” to be concerned about my case. Both Carole and Mike assured her the story was true, and that I needed and deserved all the support I could get.
Once she was convinced, Gloria managed to get a message to me: If I needed any help at all, I should call her. How many times has Gloria given that same message to a woman in distress? I couldn’t guess. But since I’ve come to know her, I’ve learned delivering that message is part of her life. In point of fact, she once delivered that same message to Marilyn Chambers, Chuck Traynor’s new porn property.
Gloria and I were scheduled to appear on the same television program in New York City, a talk show called
Midday Live
hosted by Bill Boggs. One newspaper described our joint appearance, accurately enough, under this headline: “Odd Couplings.”
Gloria wanted to interview me for an article. I went to her office before going to the television studio. I had never seen
Ms
magazine before. Now I know the kind of woman who reads
Ms
is someone who is independent and stands up for what she believes, the kind of woman who makes up her own mind about things. I wouldn’t have qualified for a subscription back then.
My first impressions of Gloria were all positive and nothing has ever happened to change them. Everyone knows that she’s attractive, intelligent, strong and independent. However, I’m not sure everyone knows how kind she is and how much she extends herself for people who are less fortunate.
Quite a few women were waiting to say hello to me at the
Ms
offices. That morning I met several of the most famous writers in the feminist movement—Susan Brownmiller, Andrea Dworkin, Letty Cottin Progrebin and others. At first they were just friendly people who wanted to help. Since then, some have become friends.
But that first day I knew nothing about any of them. All I knew is they were sizing me up. Whenever I’m in a setting like that, or with people who are celebrated and cultured, I become nervous. I always feel insecure around people who have gone to college, and these were all well-educated women; they were knowledgable, they were independent and they seemed oh-so-sure of themselves. These were people who knew what had gone on in society in a way I never will; they were able to make sense of things.
And, of course, they were all deeply involved in a women’s movement of which I knew nothing.
At first I was surprised at the lack of hostility. It was as if there had never been hostility. These women had every reason to despise Linda Lovelace for the Big Lie she represented, but they greeted me with warmth.
twenty-five
As we began speaking I learned that Linda Lovelace had been one of their biggest obstacles to overcome. They explained: Whenever they went out to speak against pornography, the name “Linda Lovelace” was always thrown up to them. They’d always hear some variation of this: “How can you say that pornography is degrading to women? Look at Linda Lovelace—she always smiled and enjoyed it.” My book was taking ammunition away from their opponents.
I was with friends. And Larry felt the same way. My husband always stays by my side on tours and during interviews, he can be tight as a drum, always on the lookout. He sensed at once these women would never work against my interests.
As we learned what feminism was all about—basically it has to do with fair play—we both realized there was nothing wrong with being a feminist. Although Larry knew nothing about feminism—and, in fact, had the typical set of male reactions to the whole notion—he now tells everyone that he’s a feminist and, what’s more, he is.
I think the whole experience has helped our marriage. Larry has always had a great deal of trouble accepting my past life. In his head, he knows I was a victim, but in his heart, he has to wonder why all this happened to me. Was there something about me, some weakness that led to my downfall? The feminists made us aware of the fact that I was just a statistic, just one of many women who have been defeated by a system that stacks the odds against them. The fact that I was not the only one helped Larry a great deal.
If I were just to list the things Gloria has done for me, it would fill several pages of this book. I’ve met many people who’ve spoken nice words to me. But every now and then a person comes along who backs up words with deeds. That’s Gloria Steinem.
That was clear from the moment we met. After the television show we stood together on a streetcorner waiting for the show’s limousine. The car failed to appear and we were stranded—stranded and vulnerable. I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to stand on a crowded street without feeling some fear. When it was clear that the car was not coming, Gloria did a very typical thing. She simply arranged for another limousine to take us to our home a hundred miles away, and she paid for it herself.
I think it’s possible to be more than a friend without ever quite being a buddy or a pal. I mean, when I’m depressed, blue, down in the dumps, I can’t just call Gloria in the hope that she’ll cheer me up. She’s way too busy for that kind of thing.
But it’s funny the kind of effect just knowing someone like Gloria can have on your life. Just knowing there are women who are strong and independent, women who are winners. My little daughter Lindsay is extremely independent, but if I see her not following her own mind or allowing some little boy to push her around, I’ll hear myself saying, “Come on, Lindsay, I don’t think Gloria would like that.”
Some people ask me whether the woman’s movement is using me a bit. It’s only natural they would use me as an example of what can happen to a woman involved in pornography. This is the way I
want
to be used, these are the causes I
want
to be involved in. My relationship with feminism has never been one-sided. They use me to show people what can happen when an innocent person is dragged down into the pornographic sewer. And at the same time they deliver the message I want delivered: There is a way out.
The relationship is a win-win one, and that’s the way any real friendship is supposed to work.
Just as knowing Gloria Steinem as a human being helped turn my life around, so knowing her as a writer helped turn the life of my book around. Gloria was watching
The Phil Donahue Show
when the woman in the audience wondered why feminists weren’t involved in my cause.
Whether I personally knew anything about feminism or not wasn’t important. In her writing, Gloria pointed out that my cause is very much a feminist cause: “Perhaps the unknown victims of sexual servitude—the young blondes of the Minnesota Pipeline, ‘seasoned’ by pimps and set up in Times Square; the welfare mothers pressured into legal prostitution in Nevada; the ‘exotic’ dancers imported for porn films and topless bars—will be the next voiceless, much-blamed women to speak out and begin placing the blame where it belongs. Now they are just as disbelieved as the rape victims and battered women were a few years ago.”
No meaningful voice, no intellectual, had offered this kind of sympathy before. Gloria could have no first-hand knowledge of the world described in
Ordeal
, but still, she was able to understand it. And she seemed to understand what had happened to an overly sheltered, naive, gullible, frightened 22-year-old girl who had been dragged down into that world.
Gloria wrote a lead article about me in
Ms
magazine. Once Gloria’s article appeared, an amazing phenomenon occurred. People started taking both my book and me seriously. Before then I had always been on the defensive, always explaining. As attitudes toward me changed, my own attitude changed. If someone lashed out at me, I lashed right back. And suddenly I was getting a brand new reaction from people: respect.
Gloria’s article also drew a new kind of creature out of the woodwork; the intellectual critic who would never have otherwise noticed my book but now saw me as some kind of danger.
The biggest attack came from one of the editors of a publication called
The Nation
. His name, Aryeh Neier, and he put forth a theory that would have been hilarious if he weren’t being so deadly earnest: Just as I had once been a captive of Chuck Traynor, used for his monstrous purposes, so was I now a captive of the feminists, being used for their monstrous purposes. “Lovelace is a great prize.
Deep Throat
is probably the most popular pornographic work ever. . . . The assumption that many of the women who perform in pornographic movies are coerced, as Lovelace was, serves a double purpose. First, and most obviously, it supplies an elusive link between pornography and actual harm to women; pornography becomes merely another manifestation of rape, appearing to justify censorship.”
Neier’s response to Gloria’s article was all but unique. The main result of the article was that many thoughtful people picked up
Ordeal
and read my story in a way they might not otherwise have done. Suddenly I was reading the kind of responses I had hoped to get from the beginning-serious responses.
Such as a column by Judith Finlayson from the Toronto
Globe and Mail
: “. . . there’s a very dark side to our sexual culture which Linda Lovelace experienced first-hand. All women should be horrified by the thought that ‘respectable’ men—even rich and famous ones—paid for the privilege of abusing the
Deep Throat girl
.”
What I particularly liked about the new articles I was reading, even the Neier fiasco, was that the emphasis had been shifted. No longer was I the sole center of debate and argument. People had started asking questions of others, of the men who had abused me.
Here’s Jill Tweedie, writing in the London
Guardian
: “. . . what no one questions or contemplates or gives any thought to at all, is simply this: never mind that Linda Lovelace did what she did—why, why, a thousand times why did her husband [Traynor] do what he did? Why did other men do what they did, with his contrivance?”
And Richard Cohen writing in the Washington
Post
: “Whether pornography plays a role in violence directed at women is a question that for now can’t be answered. But it’s clear that at the least it’s a raging insult to women. But so strong is the hold it has on the male imagination that when a book comes out by the star of
Deep Throat,
exposing it for the lie it is, the book fades from sight, while the movie plays on and on.” Happily, the book
didn’t
fade from sight, it hit the best-seller lists.
For the first time in my adult life, I began to appreciate the press. For now I was finally seeing the part of the press that didn’t want everything pre-packaged and neatly arranged. Now I was running into people who were both thoughtful and concerned.
I was even beginning to relax a bit. There was hope, after all. People were listening to me and hearing me. They were understanding me and believing me. People were even buying my book. Royalties were accumulating and everything was just fine.
Right?
Wrong!