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[wingardium-furi0sa]

taking back your mind: a radical feminist approach to recovering from porn use

as radical feminists, we know we live in a society poisoned by porn on a global scale. if you are one of the many women who has fallen prey to the porn industry and are trapped in the cycle of degrading participation in viewing porn, no matter the origins of your usage, just know that you are not alone and that there’s hope for you. read this essay with an open mind - take what works for you and leave the rest.

BE AWARE OF NEUROPLASTICITY first off - your brain is not in stasis (like scientists used to believe!). discovering and understanding the concept of neuroplasticity was a first step in my healing process. neuroplasticity is defined as the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment. neural pathways are simply connections between parts of your nervous system that have formed from patterns of thinking. i’d suggest taking some time to learn about neuroplasticity - there’s some very good articles & videos online!

so what does neuroplasticity mean in relation to porn use? we know that your brain is affected by porn, but you are not permanently pornsick. you are not doomed! here’s what happened: every time you had an orgasm to porn, the neural pathway between groinal response/arousal/orgasm and the stimuli of porn use was strengthened. the neural pathway for groinal responses/arousal/orgasm from stimuli that ISN’T porn is weaker and not in use. that’s why it can feel like porn is the only thing that turns you on or that gets you off, or you can lose groinal response to situations (like consensual & healthy sexual interaction with people you’re actually attracted to) that you feel like you should be turned on by.

 if you’ve been using porn since a really young age and/or extremely heavily, your brain will be more affected, because the effects on your brain are culumative and neuroplasticity is more intense before adulthood. even still: you are not doomed. it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to rewire your brain by avoiding the old neural pathways and using and establishing the new and healthy ones, but with that time and effort there will be progress. a healthy, loving sexuality is worth fighting for.

DON’T HAVE ORGASMS TO PORN so now that we know about neuroplasticity and neural pathways, we know they can be tackled. not having any orgasms to thoughts about porn or porn is the way to do this, combined with working on having orgasms to thoughts of healthy sex! i’m going to share how i did this on a personal level. again, feel free to take what works for you and leave the rest.

when i was having sex or masturbating, if i had any intrusive thoughts about porn or violent/pornagraphic sex, i had a process for stopping those neural pathways from activating. when trying to have an orgasm, if i was thinking about porn/violence, i would physically stop trying to orgasm and then try to clear my mind. when i wasn’t thinking about the porn imagery any more, i would continue. if this was happening over and over again, i would stop all the way and decide i would try again later.

i’ve been asked what to think about instead and it really varies person to person. if you’re not ready to fantasize, try to just focus on the physical sensations and keep your mind clear of thoughts of sex. when you’re feeling ready and less in danger of fantasizing about porn or violent sex, using healthy & loving sexual fantasies is great too, especially if you use them while you orgasm. it is normal to not have the same intense groinal response to these fantasies as you do to porn and doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong or that you’ll never have normal arousal responses. it just takes time.

an important detail: if you have sexual partners, it’s very important to be aware of how your reliance on porn affects the sex you have with them. if you are unable to orgasm with another partner without thoughts of porn, it will most likely be necessary to stop having sex while you work on healing your sexuality, which brings us to the next section. SUPPORT FROM LOVED ONES when you are struggling with porn, you need people on your side. if you have a sexual partner(s), you especially need them on your side. this is an intense journey and involves a lot of shame, especially if you’re a woman with radical politics. shame and isolation are huge barriers to recovery for any person struggling with any kind of addiction. if people don’t know what you’re going through and how you’re trying to fix it, how can they help you?

if your sexual partner is not understanding of this situation, i would urge you to examine that relationship. if you don’t seem to be able to make them understand the seriousness of this situation or if you struggling with this causes serious sexual incompatibility, it may not be the right relationship for you.

dependency on porn for sexual arousal is a very painful and frightening thing to combat, especially when so much of it is accompanied by sexual abuse and trauma. finding friends who are struggling the way you are and having a plan of action together can be really helpful. for example, having a friend who has the information to some sort of parental lock or filter on your phone or computer can be a good barrier. yes, pretty much any filter is by-passable, but that extra step can sometimes be all you need to say wait, i don’t want to do this, and reach out to a friend for help. that help can be serious talk about how porn has affected you or doing something fun and distracting until the urge has passed. feel it out.

KNOW THAT POLITICAL AWARENESS MAY NOT BE A FIX i’ve had multiple women confess miserably that understanding what the women in porn are going through didn’t stop their porn use, and the continued use after that knowledge made them feel even more ashamed and isolated than before. being a female person that uses porn doesn’t make you immune to the effects of it - it causes us to see women as objects. i’ve found that often the lack of empathy for the women we are watching mirrors the lack of empathy we feel for ourselves. many women consume porn that mirrors the kind of sexual abuse they’ve experienced or fetishizes specific oppressions that they face. i don’t think this is a coincidence.

it is frightening and disturbing when your eyes are open to the horror that is the porn industry, the physical and mental toll performing in pornography takes, the sex trafficking involved, and all the other details, and still once that video is on, it doesn’t make a difference. that is what porn does to your brain. it’s an awful truth that you cannot rely on your sense of empathy to help you stop watching porn, because the porn itself has attacked that empathy so wholly. but that brings us to our next tip

MOTIVATE YOURSELF THROUGH RAGE righteous female anger and spite are an excellent motivators. framing your actions to yourself as actions of defiance is helpful in a lot of situations, but i think especially helpful in this one.

on a political level: learning about what women go through in the sex industry isn’t enough - but learning about the men who have created this, fostered this, and prospered from this is a whole new ball game. pimps, pornographers, and sex traffickers want you to watch porn. pornography corporations and pornography CEOs want you to watch porn. they want the ad revenue. they want you to be pornsick so you come back for more. they don’t care how much harm they do to performers or porn consumers, all they care about is the money. on this level, not watching porn is an act of resistance against a violent industry, a capitalist venture that has left nothing but ruin on an unimaginable scale in its wake. they don’t care about rapes or serial murders committed by porn addicts. they don’t care about the new rise of child on child sexual abuse where little kids are molesting and violently raping each other. they don’t care about the suicides and the drug addiction and the trafficking. they just want your mind so they can have your money. are you going to give it to them?

on a personal level, if you were exposed to porn by someone who sexually abused you and/or someone who was sexually abused and just passing it on, i am so fucking angry for you, and i hope you can get angry too. that never should have happened. if someone wanted you to act out porn, or wanted you to think porn was normal, i’m angry at them, and i’m angry at whoever taught them that, and back into that lineage of rape culture forever. porn wants you to feel like a fuckhole. porn wants you to feel like your worth is what a man wants to do to you. porn wants you to feel like an object. and not just you - all your female friends, your female relatives, little tiny girls. do you want us all to feel like fuckholes? no. that’s NOT what we are. get angry. grief comes in many forms and righteous female rage is one of them.

if you get the urge to look up porn - turn to these emotions instead. be angry at who did this to you on a personal or political level. say fuck you, i’m not going to do what you told me i should do, i’m not who you told me i was.

MAINTENANCE ORGASMS your mileage may vary wildly on this point but i’ve known many people who have a lot of trouble falling asleep without having an orgasm, or have their mood affected negatively from not having regular orgasms. but when you’re trying to stop being pornsick, reaching orgasm without porn can become extremely frustrating, causing relapses because you feel like you can’t have an orgasm without porn.

my suggestion is an powerful vibrator and/or lube. i regularly recommend the hitachi magic wand for this purpose. i used it a lot in recovery and when i’m struggling because you can simply induce an orgasm in a really small amount of time, giving you less time to struggle with not using old neural pathways as possible. i know there are debatable downsides of heavy vibrator use so i don’t want to say this is the most awesome solution ever, but if you need regular orgasms to keep an even keel, this can be a solution to that.

IT’S TIME TO STOP USING PORN

you can do this. we can do this! about 3 years after quitting porn (after being introduced to it at a very young age) i started to have normal sexual arousal come back. i still struggle with relapse, especially when re-traumatized or when trauma is coming up hard. this is a journey we’re undertaking, a reclamation of our brains from a sexually violent industry that seeks to destroy us. you can heal your sexuality from porn with time and energy, and it is absolutely worth it.

this year, get angry, get real, and get clean of porn. much love to you all.

[wingardium-furi0sa]

"Tensions at the French mass rape trial burst into the open on Wednesday when Dominique Pelicot’s daughter Caroline shouted at her father from across the courtroom that he would “die alone like a dog”.

!The main defendant said he most wished he still had Caroline's support.

“Some may laugh but it’s my daughter I wish I could look at in the face. It hurts to see her like this,” he said, sitting in a glass box only metres away from his daughter and the rest of his family.

“I would love to see her, I would love to talk to her,” he added. As his voice faltered, Caroline’s rose: “I will never come see you. Never. You will die alone like a dog,” she shouted.

“We all die alone,” he replied. “You especially,” she hit back."

Iconic!

[wingardium-furi0sa]

Radblr hot take here but I believe that men are capable of changing to be better. To say that they are incapable of being good is saying that they aren’t fully responsible for what they do because they aren’t capable of being better.

No. They can be better. And they are morally worse and more corrupt for it. Men can choose to fight the patriarchy and treat their female counterparts with respect and dignity. But they choose not to, because they can reap the same or more societal benefits by being misogynistic.

Baby boys aren’t born misogynistic. Sure, they may be born with whatever male hormonal differences do, but that isn’t even 1% of the reason why they grow up to be misogynists.

As they grow up they learn that misogyny is rewarded. As they grow up they are exposed to porn which they choose to use as a sexual role model. As they grow up they watch their parents model a hierarchal power dynamic. They see all of this, and they like it. They choose it for themselves.

I think that men can change for the better. People here hear this and say “you can’t teach them” or “coddling them won’t do shit” and I agree. What women need to do is stop rewarding and enabling their behavior.

We need to free women from human trafficking and exploitation, and we also need to convince women who make porn of their own free will to stop. We need to punish the men who make it. We need to help women out of their abusive marriages, and we also need to convince women who are in relationships with even slightly misogynistic men to end them. We need to have zero tolerance for casual misogyny. We need to start shunning men who are misogynists. We need to hold accountable women who are enabling the men in their lives to hurt other women. Shun men who watch porn. Shun men who say slurs. Stop having their children.

And for the men sympathetic to our cause, we need to convince them to use their privilege as men to further feminist goals. We need them to vote for women’s rights. We need them to intervene during “locker room” misogynistic talk when women aren’t around. We need them to break up the male solidarity around misogyny in a way only they can do.

But we can’t do this as individuals. Strength comes in numbers. Women do face societal consequences for standing up to misogyny. Other women need to defend her and provide for her needs. And in order to do this we need to educate ourselves. Make money. Be independent of men. Become doctors, lawyers, teachers. We need to do everything we can to support women in places where they cannot do these things.

If we can do all of this, men will change. Maybe not the men who are already set in their ways. But those growing up will see that misogyny does not reward them in life. They will not see porn. They will not see their mothers submitting to their fathers and they will not see women submitting to men. And they will choose to treat women as human beings. Because they can.

Radical feminism is not a doomerist movement. I have a future in mind. I hope you do too.

[wingardium-furi0sa]

tbh I don’t think I’ll ever really forgive the trans movement for indoctrinating so many people into the belief that women speaking about our sex-based oppression is “terfy” and shouldn’t be allowed and any woman who does it wants to genocide trans people. even if they back off of this stance, the damage is done.

me saying “women are oppressed on basis of sex, not gender identity, and we cannot identify out of that oppression” does not mean I think it’s okay to kill or hurt trans people. it does not mean that I agree with right-wingers when they say gender non-conformity is destroying civilization. It does not mean that I am going to vote for politicians who think all gay people/gender non-conforming people are groomers.

it literally just means you cannot change your biological sex (which was never a controversial statement, even among trans people, up until like 5 years ago) and females should have special protections and spaces since we are constantly being preyed upon by males who see us as subhuman sex objects. that doesn’t mean I think all trans people are predators, it means that enough males are predatory toward women that we deserve to have spaces away from them (especially spaces where we’ll be not fully clothed).

we deserve to be able to talk about female-specific oppression without being told we’re evil genocidal nazis. and the fact that they constantly have to misrepresent what our actual beliefs are tells me they know we’re right and it scares them.

[wingardium-furi0sa]

[wingardium-furi0sa]

This tragic surrogacy case is being reported on by pro-life groups as a reason to be anti-abortion, but in my opinion it deeply exemplifies why women's bodily autonomy is so important. It protects us in both ways!

This woman carried a pregnancy and then was given no control over its outcome BECAUSE surrogacy strips women of their bodily autonomy. She felt like a "rented womb" because that is all she was viewed as, legally and culturally. I cannot imagine the trauma she is living through.

I also am looking through the tweets on this case and trying to determine how these pro-life folks read their own writing and reach the conclusion abortion=bad and not the conclusion thar no bodily autonomy=bad. But regardless! Info below.

I went to the comments to hopefully see left leaning folks reaching the same conclusion I was, and was deeply saddened by what I found.

There is some cognitive dissonance happening with the left and I don't know how to resolve it. If you understand a woman has a right to choose whether or not she carries a pregnancy to term, then certainly you understand we have fundamental rights over our own bodies and their outcomes. How are you then comfortable with that disappearing in the case of organ rental? How are you comfortable with the concept of organ rental?

It's frustrating. I don't think I have more to say other than I'm frustrated.

[wingardium-furi0sa]

If every grown ass man who wanted to fuck teenage girls died tomorrow the world would be a brighter place.

[wingardium-furi0sa]

if you believe gender doesn’t exist and all human brains are the same then start referring to everyone as they/them

if you’re so “gender critical”, then why are you so insistent on gendered pronouns?

[wingardium-furi0sa]

Feminists are often asked whether pornography causes rape. The fact is that rape and prostitution caused and continue to cause pornography. Politically, culturally, socially, sexually, and economically, rape and prostitution generated pornography; and pornography depends for its continued existence on the rape and prostitution of women. - Andrea Dworkin

(HUGE TRIGGER WARNING FOR THE CONTENT AHEAD)

My stepdad has been with me ever since I was only a few months old. I am twenty-one now. He’s a loving dad to me and my siblings. He provides for us. He’s always been there when we needed him. He has his flaws, sure, but I think all dads do, right?

Some time ago, I was using his computer to study. I needed to access a website I had been on a few days back, so I went into the browser history: big mistake, as you’re probably already pointing out in your own head. And I guess it would’ve been awkward - but almost to be expected - finding “normal” porn in there. Like, I’d roll my eyes, feel embarrassed, move on.

But, unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

That day, I found out my loving stepdad watches stepdaughter rape pornography. I found out he had been watching a video titled “Feminist raped while boyfriend watches”. I found out he gets off to videos depicting violence against women, specifically the kind that involves scenarios which resemble his real life and women who are just like me.

That was my breaking point to stop consuming pornography and drop all of my support for the industry: I had already been trying to quit for awhile, but having trouble. It was the realization that the men in our lives also access these websites and watch the videos in there, videos that provide them with violent and sick scenarios involving us, the women around them, that finally broke me completely.

Your teachers have access to porn videos of schoolgirl rape. Your pumblers, you electricians, your landlords, your cashiers, your uncles, your fathers, your doctors - all these men you interact with can go home and watch these videos while they fantasize about violently assaulting you.

And what does that mean? For women, these fantasies are very real fears. For women, they’re a threat, they’re crimes which repeteadly are committed against our sisters and ourselves. And how scary is it that men can enjoy such a wide variety of videos depicting these horrors?

[wingardium-furi0sa]

This is very random and out of nowhere but I've been following you for a while and from what I can grasp you're a marxfem right? If so, is there a reason why you are one instead of a radfem? What's the difference and why is it more effective? The impression I get from marxfems is that they mainly think that capitalism is the primary upholder of misogyny even though patriarchy predates capitalism.

It's not really an either-or thing to me. They're not mutually exclusive concepts. The underlying theory is more similar than either tendency likes to admit about the other. They mostly differ in what they plan to do about it.

Marxist feminism doesn't exactly argue that capitalism is the primary upholder of misogyny. It argues that women's oppression is inextricable from the concept of private property. This is what Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State is about. "The overthrow of mother-right, the world-historic defeat of the female sex," which developed alongside the rise of the concept of private property that is owned individually, rather than collectively. It's a really, really hard book and theory to summarize neatly. But the thesis is essentially that so long as private property exists, women are private property. Therefore, marxist feminism holds that women cannot be liberated without destroying the concept of private property.

Quick aside to define private property: It means one person can own the products of another person's labor, simply because they own the means of production. A slavemaster who owns the work a slave does because he owns the slave, a feudal lord who owns your crops because he owns the land, a boss who owns your work because he owns the company, etc. Viewing patriarchy through this lens, a man owns a woman and anything she produces, including (and most importantly), her children - in the same way that he might own a slave or a cow or a plot of land.

The major flaw in Marxist feminism is that it tends to have a blind spot where cultural misogyny comes into play. In Marxist theory, this relates to the concept of base vs. superstructure. Culture and social institutions (superstructure) are a function of the economic base of society (how things are produced), but it also maintains and reinforces that base in a circular loop. Marxist feminim tends to focus on the base to the exclusion of the superstructure. If we change the base, then the superstructure will change, too, right?

Yeah, kinda. But if you want change, you have to attack both sides. That's where radical feminism is very strong.

Radical feminism tends to have a hard time really answering the question "where did patriarchy originally come from?" And many radical feminists fall into essentialist explanations about men just being naturally violent and prone to domination. If that's what men naturally are, what are we supposed to do about it? But without an essentialist explanation, what are you left with? If you can't identify where patriarchy comes from, how do you actually fight it? Radical feminism tends to focus really hard on cultural change. Encouraging women to opt out of and rebel against misogynistic cultural institutions, up to outright separatism, to change the cultural narratives about sex relations.

Ultimately, you need both approaches. They're not at odds with each other. They synthesize well.

So, when I think of what women's liberation looks like to me, it's about 90% economic issues. Or at least, economic change goes about 90% of the way towards solving most of them. Why does the sex industry exist? Mostly, profit motive. Why are women trapped with abusive men? Mostly, because they can't afford to survive on their own. Why does surrogacy exist? Because the wealthy can use money to coerce the poor. Why does the beauty and diet industry exist? Mostly, profit motive. Why are women paid less than men? Mostly, profit motive.

Changing the economic base of society doesn't inherently eradicate these things, but a socialist system goes a very, very long way toward fixing it. Radical feminism and its approaches towards cultural change go the rest of the way.

Ultimately, I feel like the women's liberation movement has gone as far as it can realistically go in a capitalist system. We're fighting twice as hard just to maintain what we have. Actually moving forward is borderline impossible. We're down to making legal changes with minimal enforcement mechanisms (such as fair pay laws or stricter laws against sexual violence), or else fighting for economic crumbs just to relieve our suffering (such as paid maternity leave). It's time to stop running on a treadmill and actually move forward. For that, we need socialism.

[wingardium-furi0sa]

I'm about to write something horrifying (to me) and I don't even know how to preface it. Some extremely cruel intentions, I guess.

So, I'm still searching for a roommate, with my add pleading for only women to respond. Of course, tons of males are responding eagerly, reassuring me they're better than any female roommate, and I say no. In most cases thats that, but I had a few phone calls that have been intense pressure and even difficult to get rid of. About three times now, different males called me with a proposition that they move in with me, and they would pay everything, rent and bills, on their own. This sounded like a nonsense proposition and I would say no and hang up as they're insisting and explaining and promising this would be ideal for me. Baffled by the nonsense, I assumed they wanted to do something illegal in here or wanted to have me kicked out and take over the apartment. But it was weird that it happened three separate times! And always the same proposition. I move in and pay for everything.

I was at the plant lady's house and I started to complain about the nonsense males say to me over the phone, and as I was explaining, her son entered the room and overheard the chat. He looked me in the eye and said 'Oh they want something else from you.'

I froze in embarrassment. Because I hadn't figured it out. And gyns you know me. You know with m*n I always assume the worst possible thing and I hadn't even thought of that. I didn't think, that my add where I'm only asking for a female roommate, would make them go 'Oh I'm going to move in there and make her my live-in prostitute.' 

I stuttered, saying something about how I thought they wanted to do something illegal, and plant lady logically argued it would be easy for them to do that living alone, they want a 'wife'. Disgusted, I protested 'But I didn't put out any info about my appearance, age, they have no idea who I am or what I look like!' 'Oh these people don't care' They both laughed at me. Embarrassed and mortified, I thought more about it at home. 

The only thing they knew about me from the add was that I was a woman, renting a place and looking to half the rent, and that I was unwilling to share my living space with males. And not only one, but multiple males came up with with the same scheme. In this scheme, the woman they're trying to exploit isn't even getting money out of it, only her half of the rent covered. She would have no profit at all, only to keep what she earns otherwise, and to be under the threat of being kicked out of her home if she fights him off.

If I had been someone a bit more naive or desparate, and said yes, can you imagine? Being threatened to be kicked out on the street unless I comply with their rape. They could easily do it if they pay for everything and are stronger than me. I'd become homeless. I did't realize what I was saying no to, because it was such nonsense to me, but a male only heard about it for a second and knew immediately what was up. So this isn't me assuming worst intentions, a male recognized their scheme instinctively. 

I'm sad and upset this keeps happening to me! I can't immediately hang up to any male voice because sometimes they're looking for accommodations for their daughters and I have to be sure. Don't worry though! Someone is coming to look at the apartment tomorrow, and it is a woman.

Stay safe everyone and assume the worst of males.

[wingardium-furi0sa]

People are saying this postpartum psychosis. If that's the case, then postpartum psychosis is caused by a sick society.

As a mother you're not supposed to be the only person your child interacts with all day. Children are supposed to have fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunties, uncles- and be constantly bouncing between different, trusted caregivers. They require 24/7 attention and that attention is not supposed to come from one, single source. In the rare occurrence when my niece is just with her mom all day, my sister gets frustrated and my niece gets in a bad mood. Mother and child need frequent breaks from each other.

Fathers paying zero attention to kids + children having no community of caregivers is pathological and causes mental illness

[wingardium-furi0sa]

Does he look at his mother with those eyes? His teacher? His coworkers?

[wingardium-furi0sa]

m*n have managed to create a culture where they can say 'I'm kinky' and what it means is 'I'm into rape, pedophilia and incest and I expect them to be present or at least emulated in bed' and this is considered normal and common.

[wingardium-furi0sa]

Being and Being Bought by Kajsa Ekis Ekman

[wingardium-furi0sa]

A leaden silence descended upon the courtroom as the videos began to play over three screens.

There was Gisèle Pelicot, the victim in the center of a rape trial that has rocked France, lying on a bed on her side, her arms limp before her, her mouth open. The sound of her snoring filled the courtroom. She appeared to be dead asleep.

In the videos, she did not respond to the touches of the men, who engaged with her body in sex acts.

Ms. Pelicot had fought hard for these videos to be shown publicly in the courtroom because, she said, they were incontrovertible evidence. While most rape victims have only their word and memory of events, Ms. Pelicot has a library of proof in the form of videos and photographs — taken by her own husband.

Showing them publicly was essential, her lawyer Antoine Camus told the courtroom, “to look rape straight in the eyes.”

It was another astounding moment in a trial that for the past month has gripped France as if by the throat and shaken it violently. The case has raised profound questions about relations between men and women, the prevalence of rape and conceptions of consent.

More than 50 men are on trial together. Almost all are accused of aggravated rape against Ms. Pelicot, a grandmother and retired manager at a big company, while she was in an unconscious state. Her former husband of 50 years, Dominique Pelicot, has pleaded guilty to mixing drugs into her food and drink and inviting others into their home, in a village in southern France where they had retired, to join him in raping her limp body.

While Ms. Pelicot, 71, had the right to request that the trial take place behind closed doors, she decided to make it public. She said that she did it not for her, but to protect other women. Shame, she said, must change sides — from the victims to the perpetrators.

The accused men appear to be a gallery of working-class and middle-class French society: truck drivers, carpenters and trade workers, a nurse, an I.T. expert, a local journalist. They range in age from 26 to 74. Many have children and are in relationships. Over four months, their cases are coming before the court in batches of six or seven a week.

All but 15 have contested the charge. Many have argued that they were tricked into coming into her bedroom by Mr. Pelicot, who had offered them a playful trio with his wife. Many say he led them to believe she was sleeping — or pretending to sleep — as part of the couple’s sexual fantasy. Mr. Pelicot manipulated them when they were vulnerable, some of them have said, and directed them in the acts like a stage manager. They said they had blindly followed his orders.

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One said this week that he thought he was also drugged, and had no memory from the moment he entered the room until he returned to his car later. Another said he was so terrified by Mr. Pelicot, whom he regarded as a “predator” and a “psychopath,” that he interacted with Ms. Pelicot’s body calmly in order to “not show weakness, so he attacks me.”

“They took a precise line of defense,” Mr. Camus, one of the lawyers for Ms. Pelicot, told the court on Friday. Ms. Pelicot has said that while the men were perhaps tricked into coming into her bedroom, once they got there, she was so unconscious that it was clear that she could not have possibly given consent.

This is where the videos come in. Mr. Pelicot filmed most of the encounters, often with two cameras, and carefully edited and titled them. Over the course of their investigation, the police found more than 20,000 videos and photographs on his electronic devices, many of them in a digital folder titled “Abuse.”

After initially ruling the videos would not be viewed because of their “indecent and shocking” nature, the judges of the criminal court in Avignon changed their minds after a heated courtroom debate on Friday. Not all the videos would be shown, announced the head judge, Roger Arata — just those videos deemed “strictly necessary” for the “manifestation of the truth.”

A dozen videos and about 10 photos were shown over the courtroom’s three flat screens on Friday afternoon and projected into the overflow room for members of the public, who have continued to line up every day to watch the proceedings and support Ms. Pelicot.

The videos’ titles alone, packed with crude words and read out by the prosecutor, made many observers flinch. Judge Arata said at one point that he didn’t have any “particular desire” to read them out loud any more.

In many, Ms. Pelicot appeared naked, but in some, she wore a garter belt, underwear and white socks. In one, she had a blindfold over her eyes. Her husband told the police he often dressed her up after she was unconscious, and then at the end of the night, he cleaned her and returned her to her nightclothes.

The accused were seen stroking her sides and intimate parts with their hands and mouths. Five were captured putting their penises in her slack mouth. The camera sometimes zoomed in for close-ups. While Ms. Pelicot could be seen moving slightly in some, in none was she seen responding to the touches. She often snored loudly.

The videos played on uncomfortably long. One defendant lowered his face. Many lawyers and journalists stopped looking at the screens.

Thierry Postat, a 61-year-old refrigeration technician who is among those on trial, told the court that he had been involved in swinging and couple sharing since he was 30. He said that in at least three other cases, he had been invited into bedrooms by husbands to have sex with their sleeping wives — only one of whom woke up.

“I trusted Mr. Pelicot,” because most of the time among swingers, Mr. Postat told the court, “it’s the man who organizes things"

But he was pressed by Ms. Pelicot’s lawyer, Mr. Camus: “You really thought you were practicing couple swapping? You see a couple there?” Mr. Camus asked Mr. Postat, referring to the video that had just been shown.

“Yes,” Mr. Postat responded. “The way I remember it.”

Another video captured Simone Mekenese penetrating Ms. Pelicot, while she was lying on her side sleeping.

“You weren’t aware she was unconscious?” asked Stéphane Babonneau, a second lawyer for Ms. Pelicot.

“No,” responded Mr. Mekenese, 43, a driver on a construction site who was a neighbor of the couple’s at the time. “I thought she would participate soon.”

An argument heard repeatedly in court this week was that while they might not have gotten direct consent from Ms. Pelicot, the accused men did not go to the Pelicots’ home with an intention to rape her.

The day before, Mr. Postat had told the court that they might be rapists because they had not received consent, “but we aren’t rapists in our souls.”

After two hours of viewing videos, the court session ended abruptly. People drifted out of the courtroom, and the overflow room, stunned.

“We are in shock,” said Anne-Marie Galvan, 58, a nursing assistant at the local hospital. Her husband, Serge Galvan, stood nearby, tears swelling in his eyes.

“I’m almost ashamed to be a man,” he said. “You could see she was sleeping. It was obvious she was unconscious.”

The couple, and the rest of the crowd, clapped thunderously when Ms. Pelicot passed by, making her way with her lawyers to the court exit. She stopped, looked at the group, and put her hand to her heart.

“We are here for her. We must not let this lady down. We must give her as much strength as possible. It’s important for women,” said Mr. Galvan.

“This,” he added, thinking back to the scenes on the screen, “has to stop.”

[wingardium-furi0sa]

One day men are gonna be putting flowers in their hair and theyre gonna speak softly and be comfortable with open displays of affection for one another and they’re still gonna be violently oppressing and dominating women :+)