thank you for saying that sam. I am working thru a lot of stuff, and also, starting to have a more informed perspective on what happened and why. I think this will help me work things through more quickly. I hope in the process I help others and inform too.
I'm done with so-called counsellors who told me porn's ok, and who just take your money and make you feel worse, so apologies if I am treating this as a "dear diary" type tool - I feel that if I even reach someone who reads this forum, I have helped.
The article I mentioned above, which mentioned the disassociation issue, struck a chord. There were 2 things that jumped out. One was a quote from a female pimp (I think she was a pimp - doesn't matter really), who said that many prostitutes know after their first trick if they will be able to handle the work or not - just one trick.
The reason for this is their ability or not to be able to disassociate.
The second thing, a continuation of the reasons some can immediately disassociate and some not, is because those who have never experienced disassociation, will not be able to do it at all. Others, who have, whether that be due to childhood abuse, perhaps even long-forgotten/blocked out, will still have the ability instilled in them to disassociate. What struck me is that they don't even know that's what they are doing as the reasons for the ability to do it are so much a part of them, and the circumstances which triggered this, have been long forgotten in most cases. Realising this was a revelation to me.
One woman worked for 30 years as a prostitute, did partner-swapping initialy when married etc, and did not realise until many years later, that her feeling of this all being ok, was due to this ability to switch off - the memories of childhood abuse did not start returning til after she stopped selling her body.
And therein lies the problem with the normalisation of porn and it's exposure to younger and younger girls - not only are they being desensitised to the idea of showing their bodies and genitals to men, it's perpetuating and encouraging even more, the culture that exists already that men are entitled to women. The girls are primed and ready early on, learn to disassociate, and so the cycle continues. Porn is encouraging children into accepting giving/selling their bodies, and it's also clearly creating a much bigger demand by men, all over the world, than ever in history - this is the connection I'm trying to make clear.
Also, see this link from another g-berg topic I just posted - it's related as more young women are going under the knife - disassociation from the idea that major surgery to stuff your body with silicone is dangerous, expensive and painful, but hey, don't think about it, no big deal to look like a sexy fuckable babe, just like the women in on the interntet and in the lad's mags the b/f or hubby reads.
http://genderberg.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6782#6782
The girls who are just forced into prostitution without having been exposed to porn (such as in the topic on another board on the Asian problem), but have to deal with men whose minds are porn-saturated, are even more traumatized as they are having to learn to disassociate without the "advantage" of having had their defenses somewhat lowered already.
I hope I'm making sense - I'm on a learning curve here.
I don't know, I don't remember childhood sexual abuse, but there was a lot of terrorisation by catholic nuns very early in life and the usual stuff to do with weird parents, plus the violent rape in my 20s and other sexual assaults. Somewhere along the line, I learned to seriously disassociate, and using this forum, plus my other projects, are finally hopefully going to help me work this out.
If I ever go too far in my posts, tell me.
"You can't start a fire without a spark" - B. Springsteen