Lovely Linda
Deep Throat made her a star. Then she revealed that she had been
forced to appear in the film by her abusive husband - and became the
heroine of the anti-porn lobby. But the Linda Lovelace story isn't
quite that simple, says Petra Boynton
Petra Boynto
Wednesday April 24 2002
The Guardian
Deep Throat, as most people - certainly most men - know, is a movie
about a woman whose clitoris is in the back of her
throat. Brilliantly, of course, this means that to obtain sexual
satisfaction she needs to perform oral sex on men. No need for any
awkward fiddling down below for Linda Lovelace, its star.
When Deep Throat was released in 1972, it caused a sensation. The film
was seen as groundbreaking as (unusually for porn films) it had a
semblance of a plot, and was shown in mainstream cinemas. People who
would never have been caught dead in a porn cinema flocked to see it,
and a film made for £15,000 ended up grossing £500m and counting. Even
certain members of the women's movement welcomed the film as sexually
liberating. And everyone wanted to know about its star.
Linda, a slight, dark-haired prostitute turned porn actor, appeared on
chatshows, endorsed sex products, featured in Playboy, and wrote a
book; all the while maintaining that she was highly sexed - a
nymphomaniac in fact. The press, public, and porn industry loved
her. She became the world's first porn star.
But it wasn't long before the buzz around Deep Throat and Linda
Lovelace began to take on a rather sinister tone. Sex manuals began
teaching women that they should learn to "deep throat" their partner
in order to please him. Some even endorsed a training programme in
which women pushed their fingers down their throat while suppressing
their gagging reflex, in order to perfect their deep-throating
skills. As with much contemporary sex advice for women, the message
was that you have to learn to like it, just like Linda.
And then, in 1980, she revealed that she had learned to like and do
things, not for money or pleasure, but because her very survival
depended on it. In her autobiography, Ordeal, written under the name
Linda Marchiano, she said that she had been an unwilling participant
in the film and the subsequent publicity campaign, and that she was
not the sex maniac she had been made out to be, and although the movie
grossed millions, she had not seen a penny of it. Worse still, she had
been beaten and humiliated by her first husband and manager, Chuck
Traynor, who had forced her at the point of a gun to perform sexual
acts - including her porn appearances, and prostitution.
And so Linda was reborn, this time as the heroine of the growing
anti-pornography movement. She went about the country talking to
women's groups and giving evidence to congressional committees
investigating pornography.
But once again, all was not quite as simple as it seemed. Sadly, as
with so many women in the sex industry, Linda was never really
listened to. The world's first porn star was effectively hijacked by
elements of the anti-porn movement. She ended up endorsing statements,
books and films she didn't necessarily agree with; latterly her words
were used and misrepresented by groups supposedly helping sex workers.
Ordeal was held up by anti-pornography groups as a guide to the evils
of the sex industry, and it appeared on the recommended reading lists
of several UK and US anti-porn groups, where readers with little or no
experience of the industry could learn what it was "really like" to be
a porn star. The groups regularly quoted from the book, in debates,
protest flyers, and even in academic texts, to show how her life was
threatened to ensure her cooperation in Deep Throat.
Katherine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, and Diana Russell in particular
used Linda's testimony to suggest that all women in porn could expect
to be forced into prostitution or raped at gunpoint. This meant we did
not get to hear about the women doing sex work who had experiences
that were positive, or even mundane. All porn was bad, and here was
Linda to prove it.
Delighted by the fame of its new supporter, the anti-pornography lobby
conveniently overlooked the fact that Linda's testimony was one of a
battered wife, not a critique of the sex industry. Linda was
encouraged to campaign against porn, but most of her problems were to
do with an abusive partner. It is worth noting that while the abuse
Linda suffered was horrific, in Ordeal she notes that the only time
she was treated respectfully and professionally was when she was
making Deep Throat. It was outside of this setting that her then
husband abused and harmed her.
Those in the porn industry chose to overlook this as any negative
publicity detracted from Lovelace the sex star, and so they are on
some level culpable. But that doesn't excuse the claims of the
anti-porn camp that the negative experiences Linda suffered were
solely due to the sex industry, rather than an abusive husband.
Of course there is more to Linda - who was born Linda Boreman - than
these twin roles of nympho and victim, and the fact that she was used
and abused by both the porn industry and the anti-porn industry. So
often those who work with sex workers hear them talking about the fact
that being a sex worker is only a part of what they do; cliched as it
may sound, they are also mothers, sisters, lovers, housewives, or
whatever it may be. Well, it was true of Linda too. When she died on
Monday, aged just 53, from injuries sustained in a road accident, she
left behind two children and her second husband, Larry Marchiano.
They divorced five years ago, after 22 years of marriage, but were
still "the best of friends", and he and the children, now both adults,
were there when she was taken off her life support machine. "Everyone
might know her as something else, but we knew her as mom and as
Linda," said Larry.
Despite her notoriety, and despite being dogged by ill-health from
dodgy breast implants and a tainted blood transfusion (which led to
hepatitis and then chronic liver problems), Linda had put together
some semblance of a normal life.
So how should we remember her? Linda brought porn out into the open,
where everyone could get a good look at it. Without her we wouldn't
know what we know today about the sex industry, and although she may
not have approved, her appearance in and criticisms of porn have led
to women making porn by and for each other, in improved working
conditions (the most famous is Candida Royalle, who is currently
celebrating 10 years of making erotic movies for women).
There is so much to say about Linda, but we should remember her for
her two most radical actions. First, she wrote a compelling book about
spousal abuse at a time when people were not paying attention to
domestic violence. And second, she was a survivor - a woman who
escaped an abusive marriage, who coped with the emotional and physical
scars it left, who managed to form a happy relationship and raise a
family, and coped with serious health problems.
And we should remember Linda in her own voice. In 1997 she said: "I
look in the mirror and I look the happiest I've ever looked in my
entire life. I'm not ashamed of my past or sad about it. And what
people might think of me, well, that's not real. I look in the mirror
and I know that I've survived."
Dr Petra Boynton is a psychologist specialising in sex, media and
relationships.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
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