Sylvia’s Grandmother makes a porno in 1920

“Ruth Howard made a porno? Oh, my god! This is too much, Ida…did your mom tell you the rest of this story?:” “No. Even as a little k**, I could tell she was pretty intense, overwhelming a lot of the time. Totally blunt about anything she had to say, no matter when or where. Even so, she never told me about this, and I understand why. She could have gone to jail and lost her k**s if she got busted for making these movies. Ruth Howard wrote the “screenplay” and cast the roles in the fifteen or twenty movies that she made. There were very few women at that time who knew how to make movies, let alone write, direct and star in them, but Ruth was that kind of woman. She fucking scared people, Sylvia. Here’s the cool part. She was friends with Margaret Sanger, Do you know who she was?” “No, I…” “Don’t worry. They have tried really hard to erase her name from the history books, but around the time of the first world war, women were on the street, demanding the right to vote, and they were fighting for the right to use some form of birth control to limit the size of their families. Birth control and porn were totally i*****l then, and Ms. Sanger went to prison for fighting for the welfare of women…how come you are not getting this in school ?. Ruth and some of her friends got an idea about how to raise bail money for Margaret because she got busted a lot! Ruth wrote these scripts and cast her trusted friends to play the roles. When they were done with the shooting, she had friends, women, who processed the film, and other women friends who put the film onto reels. There was a guy who was in these movies, also one of her many lovers, who sold them to male lodges like the Elks or the Moose as “stag” films. Ruth and her friends used the money to support all kinds of women’s programs and especially, to bail Margaret Sanger out of jail or to pay her many fines, This is a true story. Didn’t your mom ever tell you about..> “Nope, I think my mom and her mom fought a lot.” “Oh sweet Lord Jesus, did they. Your mom wanted to be a singer and Ruth thought that was a big waste of time and energy. Even worse, she thought it was “counter-revolutionary”! She wanted your mom to be more of a political radical like her, but Deborah isn’t wired up that way. Speaking of your mom, who do you think people call when they need to end a pregnancy in southern California, safe and quick? And cheap? There are a couple of hundred women in that area who were able to get an abortion, thanks to your mom. If you ever heard about THAT, it was a mistake. She could have gone to jail for a long time for that. Do you want to see more of your grandmother as Clara, the randy barmaid?” I was so blown over by all this news that I had no words, except “Sure, I’m dying to see…”