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Larry Flynt: Champion of Freedom or a Purveyor of Hate?
This page was last updated Jan 12,1997. If questions about these press releases, or the issues they address,
Email or
Call the NOW-NYC office at 212-627-9895 and leave your name and phone number.
Larry Flint's daughter Tonya joined Gloria Steinem and other women and civil rights leaders to address this question on Tuesday, Jan. 7, 1997. Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler Magazine, is celebrated in Milos Foreman and Oliver Stone's new movie, The People v. Larry Flynt, featuring Hollywood celebrities and Donna Hanover Giuliani.
While lionizing Flynt, the movie presents Hustler as benign if taseteless. It ignores Hustler's racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic cartoons and jokes, its promotion of child sexual abuse, and its often violent and always demeaning pornographic portrayals of women. Critics have followed suit, heaping praise, awards, and accolades on the movie as they studiously ignore Hustler's content and its creator's deeds. The movie is considered a serious contender for one or more Oscars.
At the press conference, speakers exposed the truth about Hustler by showing cartoons, jokes, and pictorials published in Hustler since its founding in 1974. Speakers also unmasked Larry Flynt, revealing him to be a pimp, a vicious pornographer, a proponent of Klansman bigotry, and the molester of his daughter Tonya. Said Susan Brownmiller, author of the landmark book on rape, Against Our Will, "What we are seeing is a total denial of the most virulent hostility aimed at women." Norma Ramos, general counsel of Women Against Pornography, stated, "Hustler targets women of color for violence and discrimination."
In an interview published in The Daily News on July 7, 1996, Tonya revealed that her father started sexually abusing her before she was 10 years old and continued until she was 18. She described her father sending her a Christmas card when she was 12 filled with hundreds of dollars and a picture of Santa having sex with a nude woman. "I cried so much about that card," she stated. "Since I was a little girl, I was surrounded by (pornography). I had to go through so much pain and grief to survive."
Dwayne Tinsley, the creator of the Chester the Molester cartoon, a Hustler feature showing preteen girls of all races being stalked and molested by a middle-aged white man, was convicted in 1990 of sexually abusing his daughter. In February 1996 Hustler publisher Joe Theron was arrested in Britain with 400 videos imported from South Africa, among them child pornography and pornographic videos showing extreme violence against women.
Tonya Flint's Statement from Jan 7. 1997 NOW-NYC Press Conference
My name is Tonya Flynt. I am here to tell you that the portrayal of my father, Larry Flynt, in Oliver Stone and Milos Forman's movie is a pack of lies. My father, the founder and publisher of Hustler Magazine, is not a hero who has sacrificed everything to fight censorship and protect freedom of speech. He doesn't give a damn about freedom of speech. All he cares about is making millions of dollars out of the sexual exploitation of women and children.
My father is a pornographer, a pimp, and a molester of children. I say this with pain and sorrow because in spite of everything he has done, I still love my father. I also say this with fear, because my father has threatened me and my daughter. But I feel I have a responsibility to expose the truth about my father. Making Larry Flynt a hero justifies and makes invisible the harm he has done to women and children. It silences their voices and muffles their cries of pain. This is exactly what Oliver Stone's movie has done.
This is the real story behind Hustler. Before my father owned his first bar, he was a small-time pimp with a string of women. That's how he got the money to open his first bar and strip club. During the time he owned strip clubs, my father continued to pimp the women who worked in the clubs. He would make the women have sex with customers and give him a cut of the proceeds. That's how he made so much money so quickly.
My father got involved with my mother when she was only fourteen. He tried many times to pimp her out, but she refused. Althea, another of my father's wives, was a sixteen-year-old prostitute when he started a relationship with her.
Why does the movie ignore the connections between my father's financial empire and the prostituting of women and girls? Why doesn't it say that Althea was a child prostitute? Why doesn't it say that my father made his early money pimping? I guess it's easier to glorify a pornographer than a pimp.
To my father, women have always been objects to dominate and control. He showed his power through sexual use and abuse. One of my father's favorite sayings was, "The man who controls pussy controls the world."
My father used his power against me when I was a little girl. I worshipped my father. Part of that worship grew out of the fact that he lived in unimaginable luxury while my mother, my sister, and I lived in dire poverty. He didn't feel any obligation to support us. We were always one step away from destitution. We would go visit him at his mansions and have a taste of wealth and privilege. Then we would be back at home, worrying abut how to pay the rent. The movie doesn't talk about that.
My father used his power against me in another way too. He sexually abused me. On one occasion, my Dad was angry because I wouldn't stop crying. He came in, out of control with rage, and beat me over and over again with a belt. That night he came into my room and sexually molested me. He penetrated me with his fingers. He made me tough his penis. He had oral sex with me and made me have oral sex with him. I hadn't celebrated my thirteenth birthday when he did this to me.
On many occasions, he would touch my breasts or grab me between the legs. One time he came into my bedroom, took my panties off, and fondled me.
When my sister and I visited my father, he made no effort to shield us from any of the brutal and humiliating pictures. He was proud of them. Twice he sent me pornographic Christmas cards stuffed with money. AT 8 or 9, my father made me and my sister go into a go go bar, dress up in revealing outfits, and dance for him on the stage like strippers. I can't tell you the damage these experiences did to my feelings about my body and to my sexuality. These are issues I will struggle with for the rest of my life.
My father wasn't content just to molest me. I have been told by a close relative that he makes trips to Bangkok and buys little girls there. I was also told he brought back videotapes of child pornography from Bangkok. It causes me so much pain to realize that what he was doing to me he does to little girls pushed into prostitution by poverty.
Pornography and prostitution turned my father's heart stone cold. It made him see even his own daughter as an object to use for his sexual gratification. I am the mother of a nine-year-old daughter, and when I look at her I thank God that I have been able to protect her from the abuse I was subjected to.
Hustler says it's funny and sexy to molest little girls like my daughter. And Oliver Stone says that Hustler is about freedom and liberation. That's a dangerous message.
I ask you to look at these pictures and ask yourself: who benefits from them and who is harmed? Is this freedom?
As long as we put our heads in the sand about pimps and pornographers like Larry Flynt, women and girls all over the world will continue to pay the price for this so-called freedom.
Speakers attending the Jan 7. 1997 NOW-NYC Press Conference
Susan Brownmiller is the author of Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, Femininity, and Seeing Vietnam.
Anne Conners is the President of the New York City Chapter of the National Organization for Women.
Laura Cottingham is an art critic whose writings on feminism and art have appeared in many recent anthologies, including Sexual Politics, The Power of Feminist Art, Bad Girls, and New Feminist Criticisms. She is also the author of two collections of essays, How many "bad" feminists does it take to change a lightbulb? and lesbians are so chic.
Tonya Flynt is the Director of Medial Relations for the Coalition Against Pornography and works closely with the Justice Coalition, a victims advocacy program in Jacksonville, Florida. She is the daughter of Larry Flynt.
Dorchen Leidholdt, a feminist activist and attorney, is the director of a legal services program for battered women in New York City and co-executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, an international nongovernmental organization with consultative status to the United Nations. She has represented hundreds of victims of prostitution, rape, and battering.
Norma Ramos is an environmental lawyer, an ecofeminist activist, and General Counsel for Women Against Pornography.
Vera Rivers is the president of the National Council of Women, one of the oldest continuing organizations in the United States, founded in 1988 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her suffragist colleagues.
Florence Rush is the author of The Best Kept Secret: Sexual Abuse of Children (McGraw Hill/Tab), an AIDS activist, and the member of a support group of mothers who have cared for and lost their adult children to AIDS. She has written and spoken widely on the subject of child sexual abuse and on the relation of pornography to the advent of AIDS.
Gloria Steinem is the founder of Ms. Magazine, and the author of many books on feminism and women including Revolution from Within and Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.
John Stoltenberg is a founding member of Men Against Pornography and the author of Refusing to Be a Man.
http://www.nownyc.org/press/flint.htm
This page was last updated Jan 12,1997. If questions about these press releases, or the issues they address,
Email or
Call the NOW-NYC office at 212-627-9895 and leave your name and phone number.
Larry Flint's daughter Tonya joined Gloria Steinem and other women and civil rights leaders to address this question on Tuesday, Jan. 7, 1997. Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler Magazine, is celebrated in Milos Foreman and Oliver Stone's new movie, The People v. Larry Flynt, featuring Hollywood celebrities and Donna Hanover Giuliani.
While lionizing Flynt, the movie presents Hustler as benign if taseteless. It ignores Hustler's racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic cartoons and jokes, its promotion of child sexual abuse, and its often violent and always demeaning pornographic portrayals of women. Critics have followed suit, heaping praise, awards, and accolades on the movie as they studiously ignore Hustler's content and its creator's deeds. The movie is considered a serious contender for one or more Oscars.
At the press conference, speakers exposed the truth about Hustler by showing cartoons, jokes, and pictorials published in Hustler since its founding in 1974. Speakers also unmasked Larry Flynt, revealing him to be a pimp, a vicious pornographer, a proponent of Klansman bigotry, and the molester of his daughter Tonya. Said Susan Brownmiller, author of the landmark book on rape, Against Our Will, "What we are seeing is a total denial of the most virulent hostility aimed at women." Norma Ramos, general counsel of Women Against Pornography, stated, "Hustler targets women of color for violence and discrimination."
In an interview published in The Daily News on July 7, 1996, Tonya revealed that her father started sexually abusing her before she was 10 years old and continued until she was 18. She described her father sending her a Christmas card when she was 12 filled with hundreds of dollars and a picture of Santa having sex with a nude woman. "I cried so much about that card," she stated. "Since I was a little girl, I was surrounded by (pornography). I had to go through so much pain and grief to survive."
Dwayne Tinsley, the creator of the Chester the Molester cartoon, a Hustler feature showing preteen girls of all races being stalked and molested by a middle-aged white man, was convicted in 1990 of sexually abusing his daughter. In February 1996 Hustler publisher Joe Theron was arrested in Britain with 400 videos imported from South Africa, among them child pornography and pornographic videos showing extreme violence against women.
Tonya Flint's Statement from Jan 7. 1997 NOW-NYC Press Conference
My name is Tonya Flynt. I am here to tell you that the portrayal of my father, Larry Flynt, in Oliver Stone and Milos Forman's movie is a pack of lies. My father, the founder and publisher of Hustler Magazine, is not a hero who has sacrificed everything to fight censorship and protect freedom of speech. He doesn't give a damn about freedom of speech. All he cares about is making millions of dollars out of the sexual exploitation of women and children.
My father is a pornographer, a pimp, and a molester of children. I say this with pain and sorrow because in spite of everything he has done, I still love my father. I also say this with fear, because my father has threatened me and my daughter. But I feel I have a responsibility to expose the truth about my father. Making Larry Flynt a hero justifies and makes invisible the harm he has done to women and children. It silences their voices and muffles their cries of pain. This is exactly what Oliver Stone's movie has done.
This is the real story behind Hustler. Before my father owned his first bar, he was a small-time pimp with a string of women. That's how he got the money to open his first bar and strip club. During the time he owned strip clubs, my father continued to pimp the women who worked in the clubs. He would make the women have sex with customers and give him a cut of the proceeds. That's how he made so much money so quickly.
My father got involved with my mother when she was only fourteen. He tried many times to pimp her out, but she refused. Althea, another of my father's wives, was a sixteen-year-old prostitute when he started a relationship with her.
Why does the movie ignore the connections between my father's financial empire and the prostituting of women and girls? Why doesn't it say that Althea was a child prostitute? Why doesn't it say that my father made his early money pimping? I guess it's easier to glorify a pornographer than a pimp.
To my father, women have always been objects to dominate and control. He showed his power through sexual use and abuse. One of my father's favorite sayings was, "The man who controls pussy controls the world."
My father used his power against me when I was a little girl. I worshipped my father. Part of that worship grew out of the fact that he lived in unimaginable luxury while my mother, my sister, and I lived in dire poverty. He didn't feel any obligation to support us. We were always one step away from destitution. We would go visit him at his mansions and have a taste of wealth and privilege. Then we would be back at home, worrying abut how to pay the rent. The movie doesn't talk about that.
My father used his power against me in another way too. He sexually abused me. On one occasion, my Dad was angry because I wouldn't stop crying. He came in, out of control with rage, and beat me over and over again with a belt. That night he came into my room and sexually molested me. He penetrated me with his fingers. He made me tough his penis. He had oral sex with me and made me have oral sex with him. I hadn't celebrated my thirteenth birthday when he did this to me.
On many occasions, he would touch my breasts or grab me between the legs. One time he came into my bedroom, took my panties off, and fondled me.
When my sister and I visited my father, he made no effort to shield us from any of the brutal and humiliating pictures. He was proud of them. Twice he sent me pornographic Christmas cards stuffed with money. AT 8 or 9, my father made me and my sister go into a go go bar, dress up in revealing outfits, and dance for him on the stage like strippers. I can't tell you the damage these experiences did to my feelings about my body and to my sexuality. These are issues I will struggle with for the rest of my life.
My father wasn't content just to molest me. I have been told by a close relative that he makes trips to Bangkok and buys little girls there. I was also told he brought back videotapes of child pornography from Bangkok. It causes me so much pain to realize that what he was doing to me he does to little girls pushed into prostitution by poverty.
Pornography and prostitution turned my father's heart stone cold. It made him see even his own daughter as an object to use for his sexual gratification. I am the mother of a nine-year-old daughter, and when I look at her I thank God that I have been able to protect her from the abuse I was subjected to.
Hustler says it's funny and sexy to molest little girls like my daughter. And Oliver Stone says that Hustler is about freedom and liberation. That's a dangerous message.
I ask you to look at these pictures and ask yourself: who benefits from them and who is harmed? Is this freedom?
As long as we put our heads in the sand about pimps and pornographers like Larry Flynt, women and girls all over the world will continue to pay the price for this so-called freedom.
Speakers attending the Jan 7. 1997 NOW-NYC Press Conference
Susan Brownmiller is the author of Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, Femininity, and Seeing Vietnam.
Anne Conners is the President of the New York City Chapter of the National Organization for Women.
Laura Cottingham is an art critic whose writings on feminism and art have appeared in many recent anthologies, including Sexual Politics, The Power of Feminist Art, Bad Girls, and New Feminist Criticisms. She is also the author of two collections of essays, How many "bad" feminists does it take to change a lightbulb? and lesbians are so chic.
Tonya Flynt is the Director of Medial Relations for the Coalition Against Pornography and works closely with the Justice Coalition, a victims advocacy program in Jacksonville, Florida. She is the daughter of Larry Flynt.
Dorchen Leidholdt, a feminist activist and attorney, is the director of a legal services program for battered women in New York City and co-executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, an international nongovernmental organization with consultative status to the United Nations. She has represented hundreds of victims of prostitution, rape, and battering.
Norma Ramos is an environmental lawyer, an ecofeminist activist, and General Counsel for Women Against Pornography.
Vera Rivers is the president of the National Council of Women, one of the oldest continuing organizations in the United States, founded in 1988 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her suffragist colleagues.
Florence Rush is the author of The Best Kept Secret: Sexual Abuse of Children (McGraw Hill/Tab), an AIDS activist, and the member of a support group of mothers who have cared for and lost their adult children to AIDS. She has written and spoken widely on the subject of child sexual abuse and on the relation of pornography to the advent of AIDS.
Gloria Steinem is the founder of Ms. Magazine, and the author of many books on feminism and women including Revolution from Within and Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.
John Stoltenberg is a founding member of Men Against Pornography and the author of Refusing to Be a Man.
http://www.nownyc.org/press/flint.htm
