Porn. It’s used individually, in secrecy, albeit collectively among men. It is a multi-billion dollar industry, an unspoken form of communication contributing to the kind of society where 30 men just gang raped a 16 year old girl in Eilat, in an incident that is just one of many worldwide.
When I found out about the incident last week, I had two sleepless, rage-filled nights. Having experienced sexual violence myself, and having spent decades healing from it – and still healing from it, because really, it can be a lifelong process – my body felt overwhelmed in visceral empathy for this child. Will society support her in healing over the years – smashing bottles, howling in rage, doing whatever it takes to release the black tar from her mind, her soul, her heart, her body? Will society pay for her therapy, self-defense classes, and retreats in the forest, where she has a chance to reset her Being in alignment with nature? Will she find a man who will patiently, gently, compassionately offer her love and support in her healing – creating the space for her to come back into her power, her body, her sense of self, her sovereignty? Or will society more likely expect her to snap back into the expected female role and be quiet, so that nobody else has to deal with the horrors of the trauma to which 30 men subjected her?
I don’t know the name of this girl, but she is a poster child for what our society has become, through men’s rampant use of pornography – which has hijacked our sexuality, and along with it, our humanity. I have turned to my art – creating poetry and music – to process the rage I have been feeling and to connect the dots explicitly between what these men did to this girl, and what scores of men worldwide inflict on every girl and every woman, every time they indulge in porn, through internalizing and propagating its ideology and sensibility.
Below is one of my poems in this series, “A Growing Hunger.” For the spoken word performance of this poem, visit my SoundCloud page. For additional poems, spoken word performances, songs, and live video chats about my creations on pornography and sex, both in response to this incident and otherwise, become a Patreon member on this site, for anywhere from $5-$101.
A Growing Hunger
This is the result
Of your pornography
Dissociated sexuality
Callously jerking off rhythmically
To the bondaged women on TV
Leading to 30 men raping
A 16 year old girl
Repeatedly
Without mercy
One man after the other
Deriving pleasure
From her excruciating suffering
On the levels of mind heart soul and body
What kind of recovery
Is even remotely possible
From such brutality
And the numbers of gang rape
Are soaring exponentially
As you justify your use
Of this kind of imagery
Maybe not this scene exactly
But one that is inextricably intertwined
In such a trauma-fueled industry
Where the destruction of female sovereignty
Is leveraged to cultivate the appetite
Of your sexuality
A growing hunger
That you feed repeatedly
And so instead of honoring your sex
As a sacred expression of intimacy
With the power
To restore wholeness and harmony
To a woman’s war-torn body
Assaulted constantly in this society
You have chosen to use your penis
As a tool of the enemy
Contributing to female destruction
With every pornographic image
You seek out actively
The question is
Will you stay tethered
To the safety and security
Of girls girls girls in virtual reality
Whom you control entirely
Handing you the kind of power
That comes easily
With no requirement
Of self-reflection or accountability
Or will you take a fearless moral inventory
Do the work of soul-searching
And walk through the fire
With this woman in 3D
Awake aware with integrity
Asking inviting you to truly LOVE
And be fiercely present with me
©2020 by Loolwa Khazzoom. All rights reserved. No portion of this article may be copied without author’s permission.