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.
Exactly. Everyone makes some bad decisions and how you deal with them and look back on them is what makes the difference between a victim and a self aware person. It’s called personal responsibility.
There’s shame, there’s embarrassment and maybe the feeling they secretly enjoyed it.
Rape by someone you know isn’t really easy to deal with because that’s someone you also trust.
The law isn’t good at addressing relationships that go off the rail between people who are couples.
No, I’m not. You don’t seem to be either unless you’re equating Christianity with the culture of victimhood.
So do men.
Yeah, I think I know what you mean. I’m over the hill yet still searching for that gal I left in LA decades ago, Rene Talbot. No rest for the bleary ...
I was speaking of the excuses you made not hers. I have not found women to be "mostly physically weak and too emotional to handle the world on their own."
Brings up a song:
“This is a mans world!!!
This is a mans world!!!
But, it’d be nothin without woman”
There is a big difference between giving it all away and having it taken by force.
Christianity in America has embraced a less virulent form of feminism, but virulent all the same. It teaches men to be a Don Quixote seeing virtues in women who do not have virtue. These white knights run to rescue their imagined Dulcinea del Toboso virgins. The christo-feminism supplants the authority of men in the marriage,as taught scripture, for relationship which is really just the appeasement of the wife’s discontent. It implicitly models that women are spiritual and men are carnal. It believes the woman accuser without due process and denies the obvious fact that women lie. It continues its synthesis with the radical ugly feminist all while in denial. So you see many do equate Christianity with the culture of victimization; too bad the Bible teaches we are more than conquerors.
She was 19, so only barely still a teen, and certainly legally an adult responsible for her choices. If she really was raped, it’s a shame, but I have trouble believing anyone is really stupid enough to go marry the man that rapes them on the first date.
“ is revealing that beneath the Hollywood glitz she was repressing a secret: She had been raped”
I think she already revealed that ages ago in her autobiography (if I recall correctly). So nothing new here.
So you’ve been married to a passive/aggressive woman too! Ain’t it a b*tch? Some of their traps and games linger even decades after the judge ends the struggle.
That is a most unfortunate phenomena.
“She was 19, so only barely still a teen, and certainly legally an adult responsible for her choices”
In 1952, 19 was definitely adulthood and 19 year olds acted like it. Not so much today.
Young once, but never stupid.
She thinks that, does she? Funny, I don't know any men like that.
Oh, please spare me.
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. --Romans 3:23
Thank God I’m married.
I’m simply referring to the tripe from the men on this thread. Men, not including myself, are berating girls for decisions they made as they dealt with criminal abuse cases.
So, yes, I have a problem with that. If you were the one drugged and raped by a gay guy, I’d on your side, as well.
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