Posted on 12/18/2014 11:48:14 AM PST by Morgana
Joan Collins, who became one of the most glamorous actresses of the 1980s in her steamy role as Alexis Carrington in Dynasty, is revealing that beneath the Hollywood glitz she was repressing a secret: She had been raped. And she's concerned that the misogyny of porn five decades later will victimize another generation of naive young women.
The British-born star is speaking out about being raped after her attacker showed her hardcore pornography and drugged her at the tender age of 17. She went on to marry him.
Collins says that her favorite actor, Maxwell Reed, invited the teen to his apartment, where he gave her a drink and some reading material while he went into the other room. “The books were porn, which I’d never seen before,” Collins said. “Hardcore porn.”
As her head began to swim, she realized “he had drugged my drink.”
“The next thing I knew, I was out flat on the sofa in that living room and he was raping me,” she said. “It felt so horrible.”
Reed, a matinee idol of his day, continued to ask her out. “It wasn’t my fault but I didn’t know, [so] I went out with him,” she said. In a short time, he asked her to marry him. “I really hated him, but I was so filled with guilt.”
She claimed over the years that Reed became violent with her and tried to traffic her. “ I found out how really abusive he was - I used to be physically abused and physically assaulted, and the final straw was when he tried to sell me for £10,000,” she says.
Collins is speaking out as part of a new documentary, Brave Miss World, filmed by 1998 Miss World Linor Abargil, who was raped at knifepoint six weeks before being crowned Miss World.
Joan Collins warns that today's ubiquitous culture of degrading and violent pornography is preparing another generation for similar exploitation.
“I think a lot of what we see today in terms of exploitation of women in porn, for example - they are portrayed just as objects and objects that are unobtainable for most women to look like,” she said. “There’s a lot of brutality in porn apparently, and it’s very hardcore, and I think that a lot of men feel that's acceptable.”
Collins' anecdotal observations would be supported by experts, who study smut's effects on human behavior. Mary Anne Layden, the director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology program in the University of Pennsylvania's psychiatry department, found that males who consume pornography were more likely to view rape as more acceptable than men who do not. “Males who viewed sexual violence obtained higher scores both on scales measuring acceptance of interpersonal violence and the rape myth [the belief that women actually enjoy rape and suffer few negative consequences], when compare to males who viewed either a physically violent or neutral film,” she wrote in a paper. “The increase in attitudes supporting sexual violence following exposure to pornography is greater if the pornography is violent than if it is non-violent.”
She added, “A similar effect is seen even when the pornography is not violent. Males who are shown non-violent scenes that sexually objectified and degraded women and were then exposed to material that depicted rape indicated that the rape victim experienced pleasure and ‘got what she wanted.'”
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children blames porn for more than 4,500 British children becoming sex offenders in just three years.
The sentiments expressed in Brave Miss World represent a sea-change for Collins, who appeared in a number of softcore pornographic films in the late '70s – including two based on the books of her younger sister, Jackie Collins. In 1983, at the age of 50, the Emmy-nominated actress posed nude for Playboy.
Now she offers advice to young girls on how to avoid a fate like hers.
“I just want to say to any other girls who are out there - don’t let it happen, don’t go to somebody’s house, don’t let them give you a drink which could possibly be spiked, and get these animals behind bars so they don’t do it again,” she said.
Feminists have derided similar advice as “slut-shaming,” claiming that telling women to avoid being rendered unconscious blames the victim.
Nonsense. I know for a fact that many women do not depend on men for security.
OK, let’s get real. Physical strength has nothing to do with deciding to marry a man after he has drugged and raped you in an assault that you describe as “It felt so horrible” at the time that it happened. Neither does feeling trapped in a relationship gone bad explain it either. As a story being told decades after the fact it doesn’t ring true and definitely doesn’t indicate a mindset in the present time of personal responsibility for one’s actions.
I’ve found women are mean to each other over things men wouldn’t fixate on
We live in weird times
Way over sexualized women
Way over claimed victim hood by so called women leaders
Its an illusory age......the era of this perception that women tump men is temporary
The reset will not be pleasant but it will be as always up to decent men to make things right again
Nothing personal but when half the time I watch what passes for news and I see women emotively screaming to one another over what’s wrong and how to fix it......regardless the perspective
I know that is a culture in decline
You talk too much
You worry me to death
You talk too much
You even worry my pet
You just talk
Talk too much
You talk about people
That you don't know
You talk about people
Wherever you go
You talk about people
That you've never seen
You talk about people
You can make me scream
I have no “feminist guilt.”
“youse guys”
y’all gonna lose your Southerner card talkin like that.
Sure sounds like it to me...male feminist guilt.
I was pretending
Bronx
Or old Nwaleans
Similar
Since I no longer care what folks I don’t know think about me
I normally turn it up southern accent wise
Especially in the tony areas around here which are very northernized
Some girls like thugs.
Merry Christmas ma’am
Saw her and her sister at a Benihana in Beverly Hills two or so weeks ago dressed like they were going to walk the red carpet. Never knew this stuff, but she did not look like she was suffering.
Is she using the Cosby issue to be more relevant?
I hear my wife say "I would HATE be single nowadays" at least once a week...
:)
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