Adult Performers Are Adults. Let’s Try Treating Them That Way.
As
expected, since I raised my objections to Tristan Taormino’s
declaration via CNN that she would henceforward require performers to
use condoms in all scenes she directed, I’ve been getting the usual
barrage of incoming bullshit that follows any attempt to take a
reason-based stand on this issue. I’ve been called all sorts of things
by all sorts of people who seem united only in their rancor toward me.
The ranting of Rob Black and the newly retired (how could they tell?)
Gene Ross, who even AHF won’t touch with a barbecue fork, is no
surprise. I’m a bit more amused by Gail Dines chiming in on CounterPunch
to offer her concurrence with my view that Tristan’s new stance is
politically motivated (after making sure her readers knew me as a “maker
of violent pornography”). Thanks for the recognition, Gail, and since
you’re so fond of primitive Anglo-Saxonisms to demonstrate that you’re
not a pearl-clutching prude, I’m sure you’ll know what I mean when I
suggest you take your sarcastic glee in setting one pornographer against
another and stick it right up your bum. I’m not going to be drawn into
rebutting your lies and nonsense any more than I would be the verbal
pollution of Ross and Black, with whom you share a common contempt for
the truth and an adolescent need to shock.
Now,
as to those who actually think that any position I’ve taken ever in my
30 years in this industry opposes the use of condoms, get real. I was
among the very first directors to speak up for condom use back in 1993,
when most of this business thought of latex as an ingredient in house
paint. At that time I declared that I would never work for any company
or on any production that would not allow performers who wanted the
right to use condoms to do so. I have never wavered a millimeter from
that position and I never will. One reason I endured a decade of
bureaucratic bullshit from Adam&Eve is their condom-friendly
policy. I am absolutely not against performers using condoms whenever,
wherever and with whomever THEY choose. I’ve got miles of footage to
prove it. And BTW, I’ve recently been confronted with earlier statements
in which I rejected the contention that condom porn is unsellable when,
in fact, I’ve sold literally millions of dollars worth of it and still
believe, as I did when I said as much to the odious Luke Ford, that
condoms are nothing more than a creative challenge for good directors
and not a menace to the bottom line outside of certain particularly
hardcore genres. But they are a menace to some performers, particularly
female performers, as Nina has explained in her own widely quoted explanation of why she, like me, favors a condom-optional policy
depending on who does what to whom and how they feel most safe doing it.
Let’s
be serious here. In order for that position to be ethical, it’s
necessary for performers to have such a choice unconditionally. In the
same way I’m opposed to AHF, Cal-OSHA and any members of the porn
community attempting to make condom use mandatory under threat of either
legal sanction or economic hardship, I’m unalterably opposed to any
producer or director refusing to allow performers to use condoms or
doing so only after a lot of whining and then scratching the condom
performer from the list of potential future hires. The choice to use
condoms must be meaningful for all performers. If there is to be an
industry-wide position on condom use, and eventually I suspect one will
emerge, it must be one of complete acceptance of performer choice
regardless of all other considerations. The choice to use or not use
them must not subject the performer to economic discrimination on future
productions. Nothing less can be justified if we care to preserve the
credibility of our oft-repeated insistence that performers do what they
do with full consent. Full consent means consent to every act they’re
asked to perform and to the use of barrier protections in addition to
continued universal STD testing if they so desire.
In
1993, I favored mandatory condom use for all because we did not have
effective, quick-response testing of the type we have now and understood
that those performers who wanted to use condoms would be kicked out of
the business unless condom use were made a universal standard. It’s not
1993 now. We do have amazingly accurate testing available to all and
have proven over a dozen years, during which the het side of this
industry has still seen exactly two documented instances of on-set HIV
transmission in the shooting of tens of thousands of bareback sex
scenes, that screening and partner tracing have reduced the danger of
the most serious STD transmissions in the workplace to a vanishingly
rare phenomenon. At this point I’m perfectly comfortable shooting tested
performers with or without condoms, but I’m not the one in front of the
camera and I’m not the one who should be making that call for those
whose bodies are on the line. No one else should either. I don’t care
who seeks to do this or toward what end. It’s an invasive, infantilizing
affront to the intelligence and judgment of consenting adults, and
consenting adults are who work in front of the cameras in porn, full
stop. I do not presume to know better than they do what they need, but I
can tell you with absolute certainty what they don’t need, which is
anyone else telling them how to do their jobs safely under threat of
whatever consequences said somebody can impose.
This
industry needs to accept condom use and get over it. Those both inside
and outside the industry must accept that condom use is the performer’s
business only and get over it also.
I hope this
dispels any misunderstanding of where I stand on this question and
though I know it won’t silence all the lies and distortions surrounding
that stand, I am nonetheless clearly on the record as having taken it,
acted on it and pledged to continue to do so regardless of what anyone
else says or thinks about it. Clear enough for the various
low-information individuals who have attempted to misrepresent it in
every way possible? I hope so but I’m not optimistic. Neither am I
optimistic that the majority of production companies, who have sought to
defend themselves against the threat of intrusive governmental
regulation by insisting that they support performer choice as an
alternative, will actually follow through on making their claim credible
by their actions on the set. Nevertheless, they should and if they
don’t they’ll eventually end up regretting it.
It
is a medical fact that STDs exist in the population as a whole. It is a
medical fact that porn performers, however thoroughly tested and
closely monitored, possess no special immunity to these diseases. There
have been instances of STD contagion, usually of the more minor sort, in
porn production and there will be more in the future no matter what
measures are taken. No protection is foolproof. Testing is not
foolproof. Condoms are not foolproof. Even combining the two is not
foolproof, as not all STDs are transmitted in the same way. Unless this
industry cares to be subjected to the kinds of irresponsible,
politically driven attacks that occur every time someone catches a cold
on a set that have become commonplace, the nudge-nudge-wink-wink
approach to the condom option must be replaced by meaningful performer
choice, or the idea of performer choice is, in fact, just exactly the
meaningless dodge porn’s critics allege. The FSC’s insistence on
performer choice is only defensible where performer choice exists.
Now,
that’s my position and I’m sticking to it, so those who insist that
it’s something else are hereby cordially invited to sit down and STFU. I
do not believe that condoms are necessary for safe porn production
thanks to the testing system and I don’t believe the majority of
performers want to use them for all the reasons they’ve stated. However,
those who do want to use them should be able to without losing work or
taking crap over it from anyone. Likewise those who choose not to should
suffer no repercussions from members of any opposing camps.
And
while I’m defending real performer choice, I want to make it clear that
I am not backing away from my objections to directors appointing
themselves in loco parentis to make decisions of the most
personal nature for consenting adult sex workers. I note that director
Nica Noelle has fallen in line behind Tristan Taormino in insisting that
her performers use condoms whether they want to or not, also in the
full knowledge that these same performers will be working bareback on
some other set the next day so they are really made no safer overall by
such unilateral decrees in such limited circumstances. I find these
heartfelt declarations no less self-serving and hypocritical regardless
of the source and still find them mendacious and cynical given that such
limited policies are unlikely to protect anyone to any significant
extent.
Likewise I find Axel Braun’s declaration
that he will use no performers under the age of 21 in his productions
to be risible. Again, seemingly operating under the assumption that
performers can’t be trusted with their own futures, he declares that
18-year-olds are not in a position to weigh the long-term consequences
of performing in porn, an ability they will magically acquire in the
following three years. This is utter nonsense. At eighteen, anyone is
free to enlist in the any branch of the U.S. military, the long-term
consequences of which can include maiming and death. At eighteen anyone
can work in any of the ten most dangerous trades listed by The Bureau of
Labor Statistics, which remain the following:
1. Fishing
2. Logging
3. Aircraft piloting
4. Refuse and recyclable material collection
5. Roofing
6. Structural iron and steel work
7. Construction
8. Farming
9. Truck driving
10. Mining
Workers
under twenty-one have been injured or killed in every one of these
occupations but no one seriously suggests that they be barred from
entering them until they (presumably) have their wits about them at age
21. In porn, like it or not, economic advantages accrue to early
adopters. For many performers their best earning years will 18-24. Why
should they be deprived of the opportunity to make the most they can out
of their time here by artificially handicapping them from pursuing
their ambitions starting at the same age as someone enlisting for
military service or shipping out on a fishing boat? This kind of thing
may make it easier for directors to don the laurels of nobility, but it
accomplishes nothing of value for performers whatsoever.
Young
performers would be better served by full disclosure of the possible
repercussions of their decisions going in. I doubt that Marine
recruiters take 18-year-old prospects on tours of V.A. hospitals, but
perhaps they should. I doubt most agents, producers and directors take
new talent to a sit-down with Gauge, who retired from porn early,
educated herself for three different trades and found herself excluded
from those trades when her past porn activities became known. Perhaps
they should. But realistically, the most serious long-term hazard porn
performers face is the lasting stigma attached to them by people who
regard porn as vile and that hazard can only be mitigated by broad
social change. I see that change as no more likely than a
reduction of the far greater dangers of military service by a universal
rejection of war as an instrument of policy.
Young
people facing hard choices in a time of declining economic mobility
will not be able to avoid those choices no matter who presumes to
“protect” them by interfering with their ability to make a living. That
is a reality with which performers, producers, directors and
politically-motivated outsiders must learn to cope. I wish the world
were a gentler place that provided safe, well-compensated employment to
all, but it never has been and will never be.
This
does not acquit anyone of the decent responsibility to insist on
reasonable standards of protection and realistic minimum ages for
participation in fields having the potential to make life difficult
later. But in the end, if there is to be this thing we call individual
freedom, individuals must be free to make decisions they may later
regret. The best thing we can do is provide them with the most complete
knowledge at our disposal of what future costs they may incur as a
result of making their own decisions and then getting the fuck out of
the way and letting them make those decisions. They’re the ones who will
have to live with them and the hard choices rightfully belong only to
them.
