This pamphlet was originally written for Swedish readers. But the oppression of women and children in and through pornography is international. And the exchange of experiences across borders is one of the prerequisites for a further internationalisation of the struggle against pornography.

     Therefore, we wanted to distribute this information internationally at the World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children held in Stockholm, Sweden, in August 1996.

     But we discovered that although it was possible to get state funding to produce a pamphlet to be distributed in Sweden, it was absolutely impossible to get economic support for production or distribution of any publication directed towards an international readership. Thanks to economic support from individual women and an enormous amount of voluntary work from other women, we can now distribute this translation of our Swedish pamphlet to you.

This pamphlet
is not going to deal with what most people in Sweden think of when they hear the word child pornography; one single perpetrator; a disturbed, middle-aged man abusing a little boy, filming or photographing the abuse.

     It is for several different reasons that this is the image that comes up when people in Sweden today think of child pornography. One reason is the confiscations of large quantities of child pornography that the police have carried out during the last few years, and the media's way of reporting on this. During the 1980s, child pornography was an issue that hardly anyone discussed, and the confiscations forced people to open their eyes and realise that child pornography is documentations of child sexual abuse.

     The image of the isolated perpetrator corresponds to a very small part with the reality of child pornography, though. Just as in cases of incest and other forms of child sexual abuse, the majority of the children who are used in child pornography are in fact girls. And the isolated perpetrator's documentation of his abuse constitutes only one section of child pornography. Far more extensive is the commercial distribution of the glorification of child sexual abuse that the profit-hungry porn industry is engaged in.

     Most people condemn child sexual abuse. The mere thought of such acts fill most people with a feeling of disgust. One imagines the perpetrator as being sick, disturbed, psychopathic and bestial; in any case very different from normal men, the men that are close to oneself.

     The conception of the consumer of child pornography as disturbed, sick and/or psychopathic does not hold water, though, if we look closer at the workings of pornography – and if we see how widespread it is. That is why we want to bring up the discussion about the commercial, mass distributed pornography, which reaches an immense number of people, many more than just the small number of disturbed, isolated perpetrators of the myth. We are referring to the pornography that is to be found everywhere around us; in foodstores, at newsagents and in video rental stores. This sort of pornography, just because it is everywhere, affects us all. We want to take a close look at the porn industry, what products they actually sell and what the consequences are.

     In this pamphlet we will be looking at commercial pornography from the viewpoint of how it depicts children and sexual abuse.

Stockholm, August 1996

Folkaktionen mot Pornografi
(The People's Organisation against Pornography)

Project group:
Bettan Andersson, Gerda Christenson & Christina Nilsson.
© Text & Photography:
Gerda Christenson/Artemis Systrar (The Sisters of Artemis)
Translation to english: Sofia Hildsdotter.

Feel free to quote this pamphlet, but please state the sourse.