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.
The times were different then.
I don’t subscribe to the feminist notion women are superior to men.
Men and women need each other but not every one is suited to a relationship.
Habitual porn use renders men incapable of finding a real woman sexually attractive. That and its difficult to carry on a relationship with a real human being who has needs, wants and desires.
The fantasy of sex free of obligation is seductive but its not where two people should be. You’re always going to feel that person is special in a way you can’t really define.
Feelings are real even when the fantasy is nowhere like what making love to someone is truly like.
No, but how many men do you know who have been drugged and raped by women?
I rest my case.
“When you find someone given birth to her dad’s kid, but only got pregnant when she was 15, would you lambaste her for not having the sanity to run away or tell the police earlier?”
That’s not the case presented to us here, is it? So why bring it up, except to try and paint people who have already commented on a different matter with a broad brush?
Men aren’t any different in what they need. Why do you think God invented marriage?
In the beginning, God created earth and rested.
Then God created man and rested.
Then God created woman.
Since then, neither God nor man has rested.
The latest fad is for women in their 60’s to claim they were raped in their teens.
These days if a woman decides 50 years later that a sexual encounter she had when she was young and stupid was not satisfying, she yells rape.
This story just doesn’t ring true. She married her so called rapist.
Teens don’t know better even if they should.
It takes years and lots of experience to appreciate youth is wasted on the young.
That said, she didn’t deserve to be raped and I’m not at all defending Reed here.
I rest my case.
There is a direct parallel.
Both are circumstances in which girls were abused by highly respected adults with similar outcomes (they stayed with the abuser).
It sounds like you are becoming a bit defensive.
Now, as long as you’d tell off my 15 year old girl in the example, at least you would be consistent. The same with others on this thread.
We have some darn, fine examples of Christian men on Free Republic, don’t we?
What does that have to do with making excuses for women who make stupendously bad decisions?
Any call for prohibiting porn is right.
Porn is a weapon of war against the family.
I have, and it’s much more common than your little world apparently has allowed you to see (or, maybe better put, “comprehend”).
When women make bad decisions, they should owe up to them.
Blaming it on male aggression is an excuse and human nature is full of them.
So you're saying that if male porn describes “bouncing tits” and “hard c@cks”, and mommy porn talks about “heaving bosoms” and “turgid manhoods” all performing the same activities there is no difference.?
She went on to marry him because she felt guilty for non existent feeling among women then that she was damaged goods. In addition, because it was not stranger rape brain chemicals forged a bond.
It’s just the reason she married him. It’s not an excuse.
Such is the life of most women - and men, too.
I agree with your words; however, when a girl is drugged or raped, what are you expecting them to admit to?
Pure dreck. You think I haven’t met any women in my 60 years? My family is full of them and I have actually met quite a few outside the family. The excuses you’re making are pathetic!
Some women do stay in relationships where they’re battered and even killed.
Love is a powerful thing and its hard to hate someone you’ve spent years of your life with.
And domestic violence cases are very hard to prosecute because of that even when the batterer is clearly at fault.
You’re not a Christian, are you?
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