From Goddess Damn Lies To Straight-Up Agitprop Bullshit: The AHF "Porn Study" Debunked

You would think by now that the AIDS Healthcare Foundation wouldn't be able to bury themselves any deeper in their own assholes with all the lying in support of their condom mandate campaign. But, you quickly learn to never underestimate the ability of Michael Weinstein to raise the bar, deepen the ditch, and fill it up with more of his bullshit.

And this week, he managed to outdo himself.

On Tuesday, Weinstein had one of his many debriefings with the press where he updated them on the status of Isadore Hall's condom mandate bill, AB 1576, which was scheduled for its first hearing in the California State Senate later this month after passing the California Assembly earlier. However, this time, he also came armed with what he claimed to be the smoking gun that justified his campaign to force condoms down performers' throats against their will: a survey done by the UCLA School of Public Health which, according to Weinstein, proved that there was a "public health danger" involving porn performers having all kinds of monkey sex and catching STI's like dead meat catching maggots. The actual survey numbers are now posted as a PDF file online at AHF's website, but for the presser, Weinstein presented this "pictographic" which attempted to summarize the findings of that survey.

As you can plainly see, the attempt was to paint a picture of porn performers as oppressed, drugged out, abused, exploited, and basically unable to think for themselves on the subject of protection against STI's, such that the state absolutely had to step in and rescue them with condoms.

Never mind the fact that over 600 performers were lucid enough to sign a petition in direct opposition to Hall's bill, or the fact that, as we will prove, that this "study" is essentially cooked, seasoned, and topped with AHF bias from beginning to end.

Both AVN's Mark Kernes and The Real Porn Wikileaks have done fine efforts to debunk this agitprop, but there are some points that even their efforts do manage to miss which deserve additional attention.

First off, the background for the "survey" itself. It was first proposed by the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health's "Performer Advocacy Group" in 2012, during the peak of the Derrick Burts HIV scare. That that particular group was one of the most boisterous supporters of the condom mandate outside of AHF, and whose hearings and seminars on the issue of STI/HIV in porn were mostly biased antiporn rallies featuring the likes of Weinstein and Shelley Lubben, might have just a bit to do with the assumptions they precooked into the analysis. Remember how one such meeting attempted to entrap Mr. Marcus (before his unfortunate encounter with syphilis) into an ambush, forcing Free Speech Coalition head Diane Duke to intervene to give Marcus cover?

The primary hook that UCLA offered for performers to take the survey was simple research into how the industry was affected by STI's as opposed to the general population....but performers were also induced to participate with the promise of $40 gift cards and free followup testing and treatment. In the end, a total of 366 performers lent their bodies to this survey during the August 2012- Jume 2013 time frame.

Another very intriging and disturbing background is the involvement of Talent Testing Services in the formation and development of this "survey". Talent Testing was one of the two adult clinics in Los Angeles which took questions for the survey (West Oak Urban Care Center, which does not test but does offer treatment for those already suffering from STI's, was the other clinic...more on that anon), and TTS head Sixto Pacheco is listed on the byline as a survey author..but only in reference to his main clinics in Miami, not his LA branch clinics.

In addition to that, TTS was at that time locked in a pitched battle with what was then their rival testing clinic, Cutting Edge Testing, which just so happened to have the backing of both the Free Speech Coalition through their then newly hatched APHSS screening/testing system, and the porn production syndicate Manwin (now Mindgeek). TTS had refused initially to join the APHSS system ostensively due to issues they had with database privacy, although it was more widely suspected that TTS back then was more worried about losing exclusive monopoly of performer testing, and that they were in cahoots with certain talent agencies that didn't want a consolidated testing system that could get in the way of shooting could any incident of infection occur. (APHSS ultimately refined themselves into the current PASS system, and the events of 2013 forced a resolution of issues in which TTS ultimately adopted in full the PASS protocols.)

But at least, Talent Testing was a legitimate testing site. West Oak Urban Care Center?? Not so much. Quoteh Mark Kernes (emphasis added by me):

[A]ccording to the study, the surveys were provided to "adult film performers seeking testing for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) at two clinics in Los Angeles." The study as it was released includes no mention of UCLA researchers themselves conducting testing or treatment. Also of note, one of the clinics mentioned in the study, West Oaks Urgent Care Center, is not a testing facility but a treatment facility. In other words, performers do not go to West Hills to get tested, but to get treated for conditions of which they are already aware.

In other words, unlike Talent Testing Service, which was presumably the other clinic that took part in the study, where talent does go to get their routine testing done, the performers who go to West Oaks Urgent Care Center are already either infected with something or seeking treatment for other ailments either work-related or not. But what the West Oaks pool of performers does not represent is a group of performers who, like the study claims, are "seeking testing for sexually transmitted infections." Put simply, as an already-infected or injured group of people, the West Oaks population used in the study are contaminated for the purposes of the study because, unlike the TTS population, there are no non-infected or uninjured performers patronizing West Oak. That contamination would, of course, also pollute the overall findings of the study by skewing them toward the very outcome that AHF wants.

One could only wonder what the results would have been if AHF and UCLA had allowed Cutting Edge Testing to be the other testing agency rather than West Oaks, thusly providing a much more accurate control group for their survey.

There is also this about West Oaks: its lead physican, Dr. Robert Rigg, Jr., was also listed on the byline as an author of the survey. Why is that disorienting? Because...

For one thing, among the people apparently identified as authors of the study, besides Talent Testing Services' (TTS) Sixto Pacheco, is Dr. Robert W. Rigg, Jr., owner of the aforementioned West Oak Urgent Care Center in Canoga Park. Also as mentioned, unlike TTS, neither Dr. Rigg nor West Oak are part of the adult industry's Performer Availability Screening Services (PASS) nor was West Oak an approved testing site even during the AIM era—ask any veteran performer about Dr. Rigg's reputation in the industry. So it's unclear what contribution Dr. Rigg made to the study, since performers attempting to test there could not use said tests to be "approved for work" through the PASS system—an approval required by the vast majority of Los Angeles area adult producers.

It is also noteworthy that APHSS, the predecessor to PASS and the heir to AIM, had only been in operation since mid-2011, and TTS has only been an APHSS/PASS endorsed testing services provider since mid-October, 2012, though it had been sporadically providing some information to APHSS for about four months prior to that time. However, while the UCLA/AHF poster states that the study method was a "Cross-sectional study of adult film performers seeking testing for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) at two clinics in Los Angeles, CA," Pacheco is identified as representing "BioCollections, Miami, FL"—TTS's home base—making it even less clear which clinics provided the data used in the study.

So....why would AHF and UCLA go so far to include Talent Testing Services in their "survey", yet exclude their LA-based testing facilities?

Then, there is the omission of what was one of the main justifications for the survey: HIV. That's an issue because the original request for grant funding for the UCLA "survey" was heavy with the pathos about how STI's - including HIV -- were wreaking havoc on porn performers  and then the general society at large. Here's the money quote from UCLA's Pamina Gorebach in her pitch for the $$$$'s:

Los Angeles is the largest center for adult film production worldwide with an estimated 200 production companies employing up to 1,500 workers at any given point in time and producing and estimated 10,000 films per year. Throughout the course of their employment, adult film performers (AFPs) are routinely exposed to sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and are at high risk for acquiring and transmitting STIs including HIV as a result of high-risk work including multiple and concurrent sex partners over short time periods, high-risk sexual acts such as anal intercourse, and lack of condoms or other barrier methods.

Outbreaks of STIs including HIV have been well documented in the adult film industry.  In 2004, three HIV infections were acquired during filming in Los Angeles, after a male performer infected three female performers.  There is additional data to indicate that as many as one in three performers have other STIs such as chlamydia and gonorrhea.  The STI prevalence among performers is extremely high and demonstrates that despite the industry's practice to routinely test performers for STIs, testing alone is not effective in preventing performers from being infected with STIs at endemic levels. Adult film performers are not an isolated community and performers may serve as a bridge population in passing STIs to and from the rest of the population.  Previous studies of AFPs show that the majority have at least one sexual partner outside of work and the prevalence of unprotected sex with these partners is high.   However, data on sexual networks, sexual risk behaviors, and the extent to which performers serve as a core transmitter group to the larger population is limited. 

It does seem that AHF went into the "survey" hoping that they would find some hidden HIV+ performers lurking within their control group pool....and having found none, they decided to switch the goalposts around and announce a general pandemic of "STI's"...never mind the fact that their original 2010 findings of rampant infections within the hetero talent pool have been proven to be quite fraudulent. It also does not quite square with the basic emphasis of pushing Darren James, Derrick Burts, Cameron Bay, Rod Daily, and other assorted HIV+ "victims" of the porn industry before every open microphone to prove just how the industry is pushing death and destruction on their talent, and only the strong wrapped fist of the government can step in and rescue them from their fate. Also, the original proposal was to also study the rate of syphilis, but apparently that effort failed because of lack of money to perform the necessarily tests.

Once again, though, all this is prelimanary until we look at and break down the actual numbers. AHF decided that the infographic pictured above probably wasn't enough information, so they decided to raid an Centers for Disease Control and Prevention HIV conference in Atlanta with a more detailed inforgraphic. A screenshot of the single page doc follows; the original can be found here.

First off, the base numbers: of the 366 performers who did respond to the survey, 274 were women (leaving 92 men, aside from the possibility of transgendered performers passing as either male or female); and 219 of them were White (though there's no specific racial breakdown of the participants).

Stunning number #1: 80% of the participants reported having done some shooting of porn within the past 30 days. That means that the other 20% -- which translates into roughly 73 performers -- did NOT perform any scenes within 30 days of participation. Of course, that says absolutely nothing about whether they were infected or not with any form of STI, or whether they engaged in some form of sexual activity in their private, not work life. In fact, the fact that one-fifth of the control group did not even shoot any porn to begin with should be the first red flag that something is just not right here...because how can you prove that porn performers are catching STI's in porn and then spreading it throughout society if a significant majority of performers don't even shoot regularly??

The breakdown of condom usage on set is as expected, with the overwhelming majority of performers choosing not to use condoms ever being 196. But, WHOOPS...there's something not quite right here. The percentage graphic listed shows 69% of performers not using condoms.....but my trusty laptop calculator comes out with only 53% (196 never used condoms/366 total sample). WTF?? Now, if you recalculated based on the denominator being those who shot scenes the past 30 days prior to being surveyed (366 - 73 = 293), then you get the posted percentage of 69%. So, why didn't the UCLA surveyors explicitly deliniate between the total sample group and the smaller group of those who had indeed performed scenes? I smell home cooking here, 'ya think?? Plus, there is the inconvenient fact of 30% of performers being able to use condoms at least part of the time while shooting. So much for the thought of "blacklisting" performers for using condoms.

The listing of sex acts performed is equally intriguing....with a distinct focus on the high risk "circus" acts such as double anal, gang bangs, double penetration, double vaginal, "creampie" (internal ejaculation in the vagina or anus) and fisting. Mark Kernes raised the issue, especially involving fisting, that many of those "circus acts" are more an enbodiment of gay male sex, where condoms are more used and HIV is far more prevalent. Considering the overwhelming female base of the survey control group, you could question that analysis.....but fisting is also a very popular act in some quarters of lesbian sex video making. The majority of acts listed, though, were the usual standards of creampie/internal ejaculation, followed closely by rimming, then gang bangs and DP. It should also be noted that the survey does not accurately measure whether any of those acts occur within the same scene or are part of seperate scenes....which would also tend to taint the sample percentage greatly.

Once again, all the percentages are somewhat inflated because they use the base of only those performers who were actively shooting within 30 days, not the entire base of performers responding.

That also impacts the "morals questions" that were asked of the surveyants, which seem to be deliberately put there as a means of propaganda.  Now, any producer who insists on unsolicited sexual favors as a prequisite for performers to shoot for them should be condemned properly and immediately by any respectable producer...but considering that sex is the actual occupation here, I'm not so sure that it should come to any surprise to anyone that extracurrucular activity would occur. As for "injury" during shooting sex? Well...getting your dick snapped by an overenthusiastic cowgirl ride is not the same as bumping your head against the headboard or pulling a hamstring attempting to sustain an anatomically difficult sexual position for the camera. Plus, the protocols specifically state that should someone test for any STD listed in the PASS protocols, they are immediately pulled from the available database to seek treatment. Any STD...not just HIV.

The "perform a sex act that you didn't want to do" question seems troubling...until you realize that many people in porn will often choose to do an act that they personally may dislike in real life simply to move themselves up the totem pole, to satisfy the demand of their fans, or simply to attempt to extend and expand their personal boundaries. They can also easily refuse to do such acts simply by not patronizing such producers.

The "not paid at the end of the job" thing is simply irrelevant pile driving, since that has nothing to do with condoms or STI's, and because it is a fact that most performers are paid for their scenes indirectly through third-party processors, through checks that can appear days after the completion of shooting.

Then we get to the "porn performers are such sluts" portion of the "survey", where the measurement of their private sex lives are supposedly exposed. Problem with that for AHF is, though, that the results reveal a quite passive group, with the overwhelming majority of performers sticking with their significant other or having only one or two other sexual partners for off-the-clock funtime. Naturally, they are usually condom free with their SO's; however, bear in mind that even off the clock, a small minority do choose to use condoms in their private lives.

But that's not all....UCLA and AHF aren't satisfied with merely slut-baiting performers; they must also drug-bait them as well. Hence, the inclusion of data about "substance abuse"...though the main  and most popular "drug" is listed as marijuana, which is only abusive to folk like Maureen Dowd and Puritan wannabes. As it stands anyway, only one-third of all performers are found to be hooked on drugs, and if you add the stoners to the list, you come up to 53% who are either drug free or using what is a relatively harmless product, even maybe legally as medicine. (Also...Xanax and Vicodin are included, but not alcohol???)

And even that is just a prelude to where the tornado really hits the septic tank...in the actual results of testing for gonorrhea and chlamydia. The box score tells the tale:

Actually, it doesn't tell the whole tale, because the raw numbers reflect sampling rather than actual totals based on active testing. Also, the numbers may reflect the same person having multiple infections in different areas being counted as standalone infections to deliberately inflate the count.

Compared to the AHF "infographic", the UCLA graph looks benign in comparison...especially since it breaks down by area of infection. Thing is, though, it only gives percentages, not the total number people who were found to be infected. That's a serious flaw, and potentially fatal, because it has already been established by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health that it is simply impossible to determine the etiology of a particular infection. Remember that one of the facilities used for the survey was a care center specifically for those who have been found to be infected and are undergoing treatment. That alone would introduce crippling bias into the system because the majority of the outside performer pool would avoid getting infected in the first place by screening and testing using the PASS protocols, which West Oaks simply does not use.

But what really grabs your attention is the flip side of what is being said: if 23.7% of adult performers are infected with either gonnorhea or chlamydia at one point in time, that means that 76.3% of adult performers are not infected. Considering Weinstein's assumption that porn performers are supposed to be so controlled by their dicks and clits that they run around fucking and sucking anyone and everyone in sight, the fact that they still remain relatively STI-free is both a testimonial to their discipline and the success of the PASS system.

Besides that, someone may want to pass on to Weinstein that chlamydia and gonnorhea are both relatively treatable and temporary infections which do not even incapacitate a performer for that long, as long as they are consistent with getting the proper treatment. It's not like HIV, which can essentially disable you for the rest of your life. Yes, I am well aware of the latest strains of chlamydia and gonnorhea that are more resistant to antibiotic treatment and are more dangerous, and that should also be taken into consideration when deciding how best to protect yourself, whether you be a porn performer or a civilian.

Basically, the bottom line for Michael Weinstein and AHF and their lackeys at UCLA is that because slightly less than one-fourth of the hetero porn talent pool risks getting infected from STI's, the other three-fourths must be forced to wear condoms and other forms of "barrier protection" for their own good and that of the general population. This isn't just the tail wagging the dog; this is the hair at the end of the tip of the tail wagging the dog.

And apparently, Weinstein isn't even content with merely regulating porn performers' lives on set, either. Another quote from Mark Kernes:

Weinstein also quoted one of the study's (or at least the poster's) conclusions that, "Given that most performers had sexual partners outside the industry with few reporting consistent condom use within the context of any partnership, targeted intervention strategies to limit the spread of STIs both within and outside of adult film work are needed." Weinstein used that "finding" to state that "the concern here goes beyond the adult film industry and that this is leading to a spread of STDs outside the industry as well as within it," but considering the (hetero) industry's testing procedures, isn't the problem more likely the other way around: That outsiders may be bringing STDs into the performer population?

Certainly, Weinstein and AHF have been derided previously as the "condom police," but does Weinstein and/or the study really seek to require adult performers to wear condoms even in their personal lives?

In other words, is Michael Weinstein's real goal to use porn performers as unwilling forced guinea pigs for "safer sex" practices in the general community as a test run for intimately regulating the sex lives of everyone?? That goes far beyond condom policing...Weinstein himself made up the more appropriate term for that kind of policy: "Condom NAZI".


*************************************************************

One final quote from Mark Kernes displays the sheer arrogance and totalitarianism inherent in Michael Weinstein's worldview, as directed towards one of his sternest critics, Nina Hartley, who probably forgets more about sexuality in one day than Weinstein knows in his entire life. His beef was with Nina's concern of excessive condom usage during long shoots leading to "friction burn" and micro vaginal tearage that could potentially invite even further infection.

By the way, the bulk of the 15-minute press conference was spent hitting many of the points dealt with above, but Weinstein went out of his way to bash vocal AB 1576 critic Nina Hartley and several other actresses when he stated, "In discussions by the industry about condoms, [it's said] they're inappropriate because they create a chafing... I won't go into graphic detail here, but you look at a lot of the practices that are being filmed and these defenders are involved in, obviously their bodies took a lot more abuse than would be there with a condom, and this idea of chafing is something that's really unheard of in the public health community." Really? Is there some other statistical group that has sex as frequently and for as long a time period—typically 1-2 hours at a time—that the "public health community" is familiar with and studied? No? So Weinstein really has no idea what he's talking about, does he?

In other words, what Weinstein is saying to Nina Hartley, Kayden Kross, Kylie Ireland, and other female performers who would rather make that choice for themselves, is essentially the equivalent of "Shut the hell up, b*tchez, and take that condom, because a little burn is a small price to pay for saving your wretched life from sure death from deadly disease. What's the matter, you scared of a little lube???" As if Nina isn't a bonafide member of the "public health community" through her years as a sexual rights and women's health activist, or a certified Registered Nurse with an actual college degree in nursing? As if Nina hasn't written books and done videos on safer sex and sexual health during her 30 years of service??

Needless to say, Ms. Hartley had a response to Weinstein's nonsensical whackery. As in, both barrels, and a stiletto boot up Weinstein's ass for good measure.

Hartley herself agrees: "I find it interesting that a man who does not own a vagina, does not work in adult entertainment himself, has not been on a heterosexual adult entertainment shoot deigns to comment on my body and the bodies of my co-workers as to our experience with condom shoots," she told AVN in an interview. "We're sick of Michael Weinstein mansplaining to us our own bodies and our own experiences. He's just a bully; he uses false information, he uses trumped-up stats, he uses non-existent studies to promulgate informatioin he knows is false for his own political ends. It's despicable and he is despicable.

"We are sick of hypocritical politicians like Isadore Hall, whose very own district is full of people who need help with HIV prevention, education and treatment," she continued. "I find it disgusting that there's no AHF clinic in all of Hall's district where they're desperately needed, and yet, Weinstein is still touting a solution in search of a problem, which is the presence of deadly diseases on adult film sets, and that we pose a risk to the general public. We do not. The stats show it, the results show it. Why doesn't he just let it go? Mainly, I'm really upset that he's telling me that my experience with my own body is somehow false or that I'm making this up. It's just astounding."

When Nina Hartley drops "mansplaining" on you, you've been thorougly and properly served.

Memo to Michael Weinstein: You're choking in your own ditch on your own poop. Stop. Digging.

"Porn 101" -- The Remix: Adult Performer Advocacy Committee's MUST SEE Introductory Porn Video

[Personal note by Anthony: Yes, I know, it's been quite a while since I last posted here at BPPA...my night job combined with some sheer laziness on my part has contributed to that. I'm going to do my best to re-crank the posts here more often....and also add some more personal commentary rather than just recapping current porn events. Just be assured: BPPA isn't dead, by any means.]

Way, way, waaaaaaay back in the 1990's, when the LA porn industry was still more like the Wild Wild West in regards to its quasilegality and its means of protection, the idea of having an introductory video for people interesting in having sex on camera for pay might have seemed radical. Back then, though,  testing was still mostly a hit-or-miss proposition via the ELISA antibody test, and knowledge and education of the risks of live sex was spotty at best. That began to change after the 1998 "outbreak", where a performer was confirmed to have gotten infected with HIV (and faked his tests to hide that result); the Adult Industry Medical Foundation was founded soon afterwards, and DNA testing greatly improved the quality of protection. It also helped that AIM founder Sharon Mitchell got some of her best friend porn performer allies, including a well known performer at that time named Nina Hartley, to create a video and circulate it amongst budding ingenue performers. That video, titled "Porn 101", became the standard of that time for introducing newbies to the fruits and the hazards of being an adult entertainerHepa.

Flash forward to the current era...where testing is now worlds beyond even the heights of the 1990s, where the Internet and social media have both revolutionized and terrorized the porn industry, and where the rewards and risks for performing sexually explicit imagery have been amplified even more thanks to the added profit streams. Given all the drama of the past few years with piracy, STI/HIV panics, and the condom mandate, getting performers to speak in one unified voice and offer clearer and safer paths for noobies wanting in on the action is an even dauntier task than ever.

Which is exactly why the formation of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee couldn't have come at a better time.

APAC was originally the brainchild of performer/director Mick Blue and performer Anikka Albrite, who decided after the Great Hepatitis C and Cameron Bay/Rod Daily HIV scares of last year that it was time for performers to get together to represent themselves. Then they got two serious heavyweight high-profile performers, James Deen and Stoya, to join in and develop the core of the organization. From there...well, I'll just quote Mark Kernes' recent AVN article:

"APAC was basically formed by Anikka [Albrite] and me in my kitchen," explained veteran actor/director Mick Blue, "and then we brought James Deen and Stoya into it, and then the four of us started to build the APAC group, and Nina Hartley and all the others came to APAC later."

I should note that APAC is NOT related in any way to the group Adult Performers Coalition For Choice (APC4C), that was formed in the wake of Los Angeles County's Measure B campaign...though the two groups do share common goals.

As part of the process of organizing and educating performers, Blue hopped on the idea of updating that classic "Porn 101" video for the more modern era:

APAC has had several meeting[s] over the past few months, with one of its primary aims being the production of a new Porn 101 video. To that end, according to Blue, Kimberly Kane, Chanel Preston, Jessica Drake, Anikka Albrite and Danny Wylde met as a group to create a script for the project.

"One of the things I want to make very clear is that APAC as a group is responsible for the things APAC does," Blue said. "Kimberly Kane, Jessica Drake and Nina Hartley, they basically thought about doing another Porn 101 many years ago, but it never happened. Then, after the first Hepatitis C moratorium came up last year, followed by the first HIV moratorium, Anikka Albrite and me said, 'We need to make a change now to the industry,' so I started calling people and said, 'Okay, guys, we need to get together; we need to make a change. We need to form a performers' group where we can create a voice for performers, and speak, for example, to the producers and also Free Speech [Coalition] about moratoriums and so on.' When we shot the Porn 101 video, we invited other people to speak in front of the camera. It's now on YouTube."

To say that the Porn 101 remix is impressive is an understatement. Check out the cast:

And it's a hell of a cast. Besides Blue and Albrite, appearing in Porn 101, in no particular order, are Jessica Drake, Nina Hartley, James Deen, Danny Wylde, Stoya, Kimberly Kane, Kylie Ireland, Chanel Preston, Asa Akira, Kelly Shibari, Dani Daniels, Nyomi Banxxx, Bonnie Rotten, Penny Pax, Jon Jon, Casey Calvert, Toni Ribas, April Flores, Wolf Hudson, Xander Corvus, Ryan Driller, Claire Robbins, Chloe Foster, Jay Taylor, Alina Li, Zak Sabbath and Mandy Morbid—many of whom are also members of APAC.

"For us, it's all about the need to make our industry safer and to explain to people that are working in the industry that they have responsibilities to all the other people they work with," Blue said. "It's like explaining to them, 'Look, you need to watch out what you do in your private life because everything you do in your private life can put everybody who is in the industry who is working with you in danger as well, as we've seen in the past three moratoriums.' So we hope that through this video, people are going to get a better idea about our industry and about their responsibilities and also about their own bodies and their own safety regarding agents, producers and so on."

Kernes' article does a much better job of summarizing all the goodness of this video; feel free to go to his article. I'd rather just let you watch for yourself. So, with full thanks and appreciation to APAC for their permission to repost: here you go, folks. (Original here, via YouTube, props also to Kinky.com)

Well done and done well, gang!!!





 

The Rebuttal Too Smart For CounterPunch To Publish: Whereas I Rebuke Gail Dines' Bullshittery

 [Since it is apparent that CounterPunch has no intention of publishing my response to Gail Dines' recent screed at their website, where she attempts one more time to malign and distort the facts of the latest HIV porn scare, as well as attempts some drive-by pot shots at her critics, including yours truly (in the process butchering the name of my personal blog), I thought that it would be a good idea to share with you the essay that I had prepared for them. The original is still up over at my Red Garter Club blog, but I figure that since industry pros read BPPA a lot more often then my personal blog, this might be an interesting read. Do with it as you will, folks.  -- Anthony]

A Rebuttal From The "Red Garter Belt" 

How Gail Dines Fails Miserably On The Latest HIV In Porn "Outbreak"

by Anthony Kennerson


Perhaps I should be grateful to Professor Gail Dines that she mentions me, or at least my Red Garter Club blog (no belts involved, I'm afraid), in passing as part of her latest essay regarding the current HIV scare in the Los Angeles-based pornography industry. Having been one of her most trenchant critics from the Left, and being both a fan and consumer of mainstream porn and an unabashed supporter of what some decry as "sex-positive" feminism, it doesn't surprise me at all that she would tend to avoid folk like me if at all possible.

The problem is, though, that Professor Dines seems to have an inverse relationship with the art of fact checking, and a continuous habit of letting her antiporn ideology get in the way of interpreting facts that don't mesh perfectly with her beliefs and assumptions about porn and its performers, producers, and consumers. This latest essay, I'm afraid, is simply an extension of those previous habits.

First, let's review the trigger mechanisms that spawned all this. In mid-August, a porn performer named Cameron Bay was verified to have tested positive for HIV, the virus associated with AIDS, through the industry's regular testing protocols. Later that week, her long-time boyfriend, Rod Daily, also a on/off again performer, but operating on the gay side of the industry, announced that he had gotten infected with the virus as well. After a two week period of testing of first generation shooting partners of Bay turned up negative, an imposed moratorium against shooting porn scenes was lifted after two weeks....but was reimposed again on September 9th after a third performer was verified as having tested positive for HIV. "Performer #3", as we will refer to her, has been verified to be intimately related with both Bay and Daily, having worked with them prior to entering the LA based industry in early June. Subsequent testing of all her partners have turned up no further infections; and based on that, the second moratorium was lifted on September 22nd. (WARNING: embedded link NSFW)

Meanwhile, the mega healthcare organization, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, under the direction of its president, Michael Weinstein, has been doing its best to exploit the panic of these infections as a wedge to advance their crusade for destroying the screening and testing system that the mainstream porn industry has been using for the past 10 years, and replacing it with a system based on mandatory condom usage and other means of "barrier protection". In effect, AHF and Weinstein wants the "straight" side of the porn industry to adapt the policies of the gay side, in which it is assumed that HIV-positive performers should be allowed to continue to shoot content, and that seromatching HIV+ performers as well as condoms are the more effective approach to preventing mass infection. Given as much as a 30% rate of seropositivity among active gay male performers, and nearly 117 deaths from gay male actors striken with HIV/AIDS in the past 10 years (as compared to only 2 confirmed infections from shoots from the "straight" side during that period), it's an open question which system has proven more effective.

But, AHF's efforts have also been reinforced by some "sex-positive" health activists and reproductive health specialists, who say that requiring condoms in porn shoots would go a long way towards their efforts in non-judgmental sex education of the masses, as well as having a positive effect by "mentoring" the common folk in the repetition of good behavior.

In addition, some of the more avant garde backers of the alternative erotic subgenre known as "feminist porn" have latched on to promoting condoms as both a prominent selling point of "hot safer sex" and establishing a more progressive and eco-friendly sexual ethic. Not all of them have gone fully towards supporting a legislated condom mandate as AHF does advocate, but many have decided to use the present crisis as a boost for their own promotion of "condom only" ethics.

One such person is long-time sex educator and feminist porn producer Tristan Taormino, who announced last week that she would in the future require both testing and condoms for anyone performing in her future shoots. This week, she was joined in her stance by another esteemed female producer, Nica Noelle, who announced her own condom only conversion on the pages of Salon.com.
While both Taormino and Noelle have been generally praised for their conversions and stances within and outside of the industry, there has been some concern over whether the timing of these conversions would serve to divide and conquer and supress legitimate questions about the effectiveness of condoms as a sole barrier against HIV, as well as the aftereffects of undercutting the present screening/testing system that has served the industry well.

Nina Hartley, perhaps known to CounterPunch readers as one of the most eloquent advocates for sexual expression, feminist porn, and sexual safety, as well as being a 30 year veteran of the porn industry as an actor, director, and producer, has posted a very effective essay in which she explicitly makes her case that the condom mandate would be counterproductive in STI prevention, that AHF's crusade is more likely to make porn production less safe by driving performers underground into more dangerous venues, and that true performer choice on whether to use condoms on porn shoots should be left to the actual performers rather than outsourced to legislators or other self-identified "experts".

Hartley's husband, Ira Levine (also known under his producer alias of Ernest Greene), is a decorated porn producer and director under his own right, as well as having been one of the architects of the screening/testing system for the mainstream porn industry during his tenure at the Adult Industry Medical (AIM) Foundation. (Both Greene and Hartley have served on its Board of Directors.) AIM was ultimately driven under due to the efforts of AHF and other pro-condom mandate groups; its functions have been taken over by the Free Speech Coalition through their Performer Accessibility Screening Services (henceforth PASS or FSCPASS). It is the latter which monitors and maintains the current screening program, which uses the latest and most accurate testing assays to isolate and screen out infected people from the performance pool. Both Greene and Hartley were also collaborators and supporters of Taormino who have been respectfully critical of her position change on condoms; see Greene's critique over at the Blog of Pro Porn Activism. (Disclosure: I am Chief Editor of that blog, and Ernest Greene is a regular contributor and commentator there.)

I have posted my own respectful critique of Taormino in two parts at my own Red Garter Club blog, and that is probably what flagged Dines to add me to her hit list, albeit without mentioning my real name and butchering up the name of my blog.

But, that I can forgive and toss out as a case of a rush to print or simply not enough sleep or the rush of deadlines. What can't be so easily forgiven is Professor Dines' slips of half truths and outright misassumptions about the actions taken place, and her rewriting of facts to fit her ideology.

For starters, she attempts to use Cameron Bay's remarks at the September 18th press conference hosted by the AHF as the gospel truth when it comes to the porn industry's alleged abuse of women. That's right, Professor, that would be September 18th, not 19th...you were just one day off.

But that pales compared to the slipshod factchecking that immediately follows:

Last month porn performer Cameron Bay tested positive for HIV, and since then three other performers have come forward, making a total of four who have been diagnosed with acute HIV infection. At first the porn industry expressed sympathy, but now they are circling the wagons and sharpening their knives, going after the infected performers who took part in an AHF press conference on September 19.

That would be partly true that four performers who were HIV+ did speak at that presser. Problem was, the four that did speak weren't the four that Dines implies were affected. Cameron Bay and Rod Daily (whom Dines neglects to mention until just in passing later, and never as Bay's boyfriend) did indeed speak....but the other two HIV+ former performers to speak were Darren James and Derrick Burts..who just so happenn to be paid employees of AHF as well as being the respective Patient Zeros of the 2004 and 2010 porn HIV "outbreaks".

Weinstein did bring forth two former performers -- one live, one via teleconference -- who made a claim that they were HIV+ due to the current "outbreak", but they made no attempt to verify any evidence that they were indeed affected at all.

The "live" addition, a gay male model named Patrick Stone, testified that he had heard of his supposed "infection" from an email sent to him by PASS saying that he was HIV positive...in complete contradiction of stated PASS policy which states that any positive testing performer be physically recalled for followup testing and counseling and informing possible partners. Stone also claimed that he had tested negative in subsequent tests, and was awaiting final testing before declaring his original results as a false positive.

The other "addition" was an unidentified performer who claimed that he had been infected "nearly six months ago"...but gave no other information about where he got his positive test or how he got infected.

For all it seems, these two new additions were just plants by Weinstein to artificially inflate the casulty count in this "outbreak" and scare people into supporting his condom mandate crusade. Yet, Dines simply accepts their claims as fact and recruits them as supports in her general war against porn.

Dines' attempt to recruit Cameron Bay as the prototype victim now under attack by the Vast Porn Corporate Lobby is equally fascinating for the misassumptions and outright lies spilled forth in almost every paragraph. For someone who claims to do detailed research, Professor, would it be a bit of a stretch to actually get FSC CEO Diane Duke's name correct?

After essentially plagarizing Kathleen Miles' Huffington Post reset of Bay's telling of that infamous shoot for Kink.com's Public Exposure,  Dines riffs thusly:

Following the press conference, The Free Speech Coalition (the lobbying arm of the porn industry) did what most industry organizations do: blame the victim. According to Diana Duke, the CEO of FSC, “While producers and directors can control the film set environment, we can’t control what performers do in private. We need to do more to help performers understand how to protect themselves in their private lives”. That the performers contracted HIV in their private lives is now the official line of the porn industry. Mouthing almost the same words, Steven Hirsch, CEO of Vivid Entertainment, is quoted as saying, “Unfortunately, we can’t control what people do off-set”.

What evidence does the industry have for making such claims? According to Mark McGrath of the AHF, “In order to definitively prove how HIV was transmitted, you would need to do detailed molecular analysis of the HIV strains of known cases. This includes genotyping the viral strains, determine nucleotide sequences, then compare these sequences phylogenetically to comparable sequences from available reference strains.” Of course, no such research has been done by the industry; it has been too busy digging up dirt on the performers.

Considering that all subsequent testing of all performers working with Cameron Bay since her last negative test have turned up negative with NO new infections, the conclusion that she got infected from activity outside of porn might have a bit more relevance and truth than what Dines will allow. Then again, if you are willing to get your information on HIV serotransmission from someone like Mark McGrath, whom is one of AHF's chief ideologues for the condom mandate, and who has been implicated in paying Derrick Burts' legal charges among others, then I guess that the truth would seem fungible.

As for Dines' attempt to turn the Public Disgrace shoot into the Point Zero of the current outbreak....well, it doesn't turn out so well. Turns out that the performer who did get his penis cut (by Bay biting down too hard, no less), did in fact offer to step aside before continuing with the scene and allow Rod Daily to fill in and complete things...but Bay decided to continue on, saying that as long as he wasn't hurt, it was all good. And, that performer -- named Xavier Corvus -- has tested negative multiple times since that shoot, as has the only other performer that Bay performed sex on (a blow job).

And, her effort of accusing The Real Porn Wikileaks of a smear campaign against Cameron Bay and Derrick Burts? Nice try, but no cigar...I'll just reference you to TRPWL themselves for that defense. (Warning, potential link NSFW)

But the real cynicism comes when Professor Dines attempts to give a left-handed smack to Tristan Taormino for her change of heart. Keep in mind that Dines has no love lost for "feminist porn" in general and especially "sellouts" like Taormino in particular, since she sees that genre as simply window dressing that cloaks the supposedly far more popular body-punishing "hate sex" that men use to degrade and humiliate women. Nevertheless, any port that can help exacerbate the storm is a good port for Dines:

Not surprisingly, Taormino, the only porn producer who has acknowledged that there may well be health risks on porn sets, is now being hung out to dry as a traitor to the industry. She was until last week the golden girl of the porn industry because she branded herself as a fun, cool, hip “feminist” who could build a female consumer base (even though she has been filming condom-free anal sex scenes for a decade and seems to have shown no concern whatsoever for the health risks until now). Now the industry is after her like a pack of wolves, arguing that her condom-only policy is a cynical PR ploy aimed at building an image of herself as a feminist pornographer who cares about performer safety.

Ernest Greene, a well-known director of violent porn (Roxie Loves Pain, Jenna Loves Pain, McKenzie Loves Pain) and one-time Taormino collaborator, wrote a scathing article accusing the latter of jumping ship because “she tacks with the political wind however she perceives it to blow”.  Similarly, the blogger Red Garter Belt Club denounces Taormino for putting “her own personal enrichment and political posturing above the principle of defending true performer choice and the actual facts and merits of protecting performers,” but doesn’t actually explain how performers are better served by having unprotected sex.

Ummm, Professor Dines??  I do not and did not "denounce" Ms. Taormino; I respectfully disagreed with her position for the reasons I stated in my posts. The same goes for Ernest Greene....though, considering your natural hatred for him and his wife Nina Hartley (Oops, I'm sorry...did I say some bad words, Professor??), I perfectly understand your confusion of critique for "trashing".

And, so sorry, Professor Dines, but nowhere in either parts of my posts do I defend "unprotected sex"; since I happen to believe that performers themselves, as should people in real life, should be the ones to best define how to protect themselves based on their own individual situations. Or, does Dines think that even married couples who are totally clean and monogamous with each other should be forced by the State to use condoms just for the sake of sex education?

BTW....BDSM porn is not "violent", and cherry picking three titles out of the hundreds of erotic BDSM movies that Greene has done over his 25 years of production merely because they contain the word "pain" in them, does not say much about Professor Dines' expertise. At least, nothing other than her lack thereof.

I suppose I should be pumping my chests for being mentioned as one of the industry heavyweights since I moderate BPPA and own Red Garter Club, in spite of not only not receiving ONE RED CENT from the porn industry, and actually paying $50 a month of web hosting fees to keep my blogs alive.
However, that's far from the issue, and I'd never deny Gail Dines her right to make as much money off her book or her activism, however hypocritical she may be calling herself an "anticorporatist". Or, a "radical feminist", in spite of defending a woman whom has a verified criminal record of abusing other women and threatening a fellow sex worker with "gang rape". Or, a supporter of mandated condoms as a "performer choice", in spite of defending a former gay escort whom still can't explain how exactly he managed to get infected on a condom only gay male shoot. (Warning: embedded links NSFW)

Then again, I'd much rather be working poor with integrity and decency and mutual respect, than to get rich off lies and deceit and distorting facts to fit groupthink.

And at the very least, I get the names right. It's called "owning it", Professor Dines. Some of that would do you some good.


[Anthony Kennerson is a part-time blogger on progressive and sexual expression issues who blogs on his off hours when not working his night job. He is the Chief Editor of the Blog of Pro Porn Activism (http://bppa.blogspot.com), and operates his own Red Garter Club Blog (http://www.redgarterclub.com/RGClubNetwork/rgclub3dot2).]

"Adult Performers Are Adults. Lets Try Treating Them That Way." Just Another Ernest Greene Essay

[Note by Anthony: BPPA Contributor Ernest Greene asked me to post this new essay here as a followup to his original post critiquing Tristan Taormino's change in condom policy; and also addressing the recent announcements of produer Nica Noelle (who annouced that she will require condoms for her future films, in effect adopting Taormino's new policy), and producer Axel Braun (who announced this week that he would raise minimum age of eligibility for performer in his films/videos to 21 from 18). As always, the views expressed are his alone, but you are totally free to support or oppose them on their merits as you wish. I have added embedded links for background reference and research support, but the words are as Ernest typed them.]

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.

"Scoundrel Time" Redux: Ernest Greene's Response To Tristan Taormino's Condom About Face

[Note by Anthony: The following is Ernest Greene's detailed response to the announcement on Friday by acclaimed porn producer/director/sex educator Tristan Taormino that she would require future performers of her films to undergo detailed STI testing AND also use condoms in all their sex scenes. Needless to say, Ernest spares nothing in his opinion critiquing Taormino's decision and the repercussions of her announcement on the current battles brewing over Measure B, the recently failed bills in the California Assembly to mandate condom usage in porn via state law, and the broader issues of perfomer choice and workplace safety. I will present it as he wrote it, without annotation or comment, since Ernest's words can stand on their own as his own.]

Scoundrel Time: Tristan Taormino’s About-Face on Requiring Condoms 

"I still want performers to have choices, and they can choose not to work with me if they don’t want to use condoms.”

The message is different, but the tone is remarkably familiar. Producers who refuse to allow performers to wear condoms in their scenes use very much the same language in defending their actions. Performers always have a choice. They can do what the director wants them to with regard to their personal safety or they can work for somebody else, if somebody else conveniently chooses to hire them when they’re urgently in need of work, an ever more common condition as the industry contracts under a hail of bad numbers. Nina and I have both made clear our revulsion at this kind of disingenuous proposition and our unconditional support for real performer choice, free of economic intimidation. We have always offered performers the use of condoms on every production and made a variety of different brands available to those who chose to use them. Likewise, we still oppose any attempt to pressure them, one way or the other, when it comes to decisions regarding their own protection.

By now most BPPA readers are aware that Tirstan Taormino, pioneering director, sex-positive activist and winner of multiple Feminist Porn Awards, went on CNN last Friday and proclaimed to the world that she would henceforth insist all performers in her future productions to use condoms in all scenes whether they like it or not.

“From now on, I will require all performers I work with to test for STIs according to industry standards[1] and to use condoms in their scenes. Until now, I have adhered to industry standard STI testing and my sets have been condom optional, which, for me means that performers truly can choose to use condoms or not and I always have condoms available. I’ve shot several scenes with condoms (and other safer sex barriers), but the majority of the scenes have been condom-free. Because I want to empower performers to make decisions about all aspects of the work they do, I have respected their decisions in the past not to use condoms,” she says on her blog (http://puckerup.com/2013/09/20/porn-feminist-labor-practices-and-the-condom-debate/), concluding with the sentence quoted at the beginning of this post.

In both her written statement and her interview with CNN reporter Elizabeth Cohen, she attributes her change of policy to the recent announcement that performer Cameron Bay had tested positive for HIV. Taormino had Bay “on the short list” for the casting of her next production until the announcement and claims to have been shaken by the possibility that Bay might have infected other performers on Taormino’s watch.

“"It just struck me we need to take a step back and look at how we can give people the safest work experience possible," she says. "I can no longer roll the dice on my set," the director told Cohen. Of course, factually, no such eventuality could have taken place, as the existing testing system, working as it's meant to, revealed Ms. Bay’s status and she would never have been on Taormino’s set, but we’ll move on from that for the moment.

Writing about this is personally painful in more ways than I can describe. I helped secure Tristan’s entry into the world of X-rated production by hooking her up with John Stagliano for the award-winning and hugely popular video “Tristan Taormino’s Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women” in 1999. I co-directed that picture and its sequel with her and since then have done everything possible to support her career, as has my wife Nina Hartley. Nina and I have participated in a number of her non-commercial projects in recent years. Taormino has been a monthly columnist for Taboo, the magazine I edit, almost from the beginning of my tenure there. Until very recently Nina and I considered her a close friend. The loss of that friendship is a bitter price to pay for them, but she has her principles and we have ours. For what it's worth, we find the viciousness of the attacks launched at her on Twitter and elsewhere appalling and uncalled for and wish her no misfortunes regardless of our differences.

But Nina and I agree that Ms. Taormino's actions cannot pass unchecked, given the current situation. Her decision may be her own, but her method of proclaiming it et urbi et orbi has dire implications for all of us and demands a reply.

Taormino’s blog links to Nina’s most recent post here by way of allowing for reasoned disagreement, but she does so without comment, conceding nothing to Nina’s arguments and essentially painting Nina as her adversary when it comes to concern for performer safety. In doing so, she plays into the hands of those who consistently and wrongly charge Nina with being no more than a front for the producers. Gee, thanks oodles and bunches for that. Some in Taormino's close circle have already sought to marginalize Nina as ‘’too mainstream” and “out of touch with the new thinking in porn.” It’s been suggested that Ms. Taormino would make a better public face for the industry. Judging by her recent irresponsible actions, that claim seems little short of preposterous.

There is no denying that by taking her new-found conversion to condom-only director before the public by way of CNN Taormino knowingly tossed a match into the political powder-keg the debate over condoms in porn has become. Though she still claims, rather diffidently, to oppose Measure B and other schemes to legally mandate condom usage in porn, she’s far too smart and media-savvy to have been unaware of the impact her remarks would have at the time she made them.

While other members, ex-members and purported members of the industry have taken similar positions none brings to bear the gravitas of Ms. Taormino, who is routinely lionized as the most important Third-Wave Feminist influence in the business. She is not Shelley Lubben or Derek Burts or Rob Black. When she speaks, attention must be paid.

And that’s already happening. In a matter of hours Taormino’s remarks were all over the porn blogosphere and the object of furious tweeting back and forth between factions. There’s a lot more to come when the rest of the gang that has a beef of some kind with porn lines up to join the fracas. She knows, and says as much, that she’ll make enemies with what she’s doing. The real question that troubles me is what new friends into whose embrace she may retreat. If AHF is prepared to kick down substantial amounts of cash to the likes of Derek Burts and Darren James, we can only speculate what a photo op of Taormino shaking hands with Michael Weinstein might be worth. For the record, Taormino furiously denies any affiliation with the pro-condom-mandate forces, but how long those denials will remain plausible is very much open to question. The superficial guile evident in her proclamation would appear to position her ideally, should she be able to continue directing on her own terms, as the crusader who made the slimy pornographers knuckle under. Should she fail and find herself unemployable and shunned, she can cloak herself in martyrdom and make the loss of a sputtering career look like an heroic sacrifice compelled by ethical necessity. Some will undoubtedly celebrate her behavior in the event of either outcome, but those who know her best are likely to remain highly skeptical.

Having watched Taormino’s career trajectory at close range from the start, it seems to me that she tacks with the political wind however she perceives it to blow. When porn was enjoying it’s moment of mainstream quasi-respectability, she was everywhere defending it and her participation in it, albeit with an eye to her image as a feminist at all times. Now that her own prospects as a director no longer promise substantial revenues or favorable recognition, the politic thing to do is re-charge her alt-feminist cred by parting ways with the majority opinion in an industry that served her well for a number of years but no longer appears apt to do so. It’s pretty easy to declare a new all-condoms-all-the-time shooting regimen when it’s unlikely to be put to the test on very many sets in the foreseeable future.

Of course, this recently declared epiphany doesn’t magically make Taormino’s previous ten years of building a reputation for herself as a director primarily by shooting bareback anal scenes disappear, but now that she’s seen the light I have no doubt all that will be forgiven and forgotten by those to whom she might prove useful, if not by those who were useful to her during her ascent.

If she really had a stake in making porn safer for performers, had experienced a genuine change of heart on how best to accomplish that goal and truly did not want to ally herself to those on a mission from god to destroy the whole enterprise, she had many other alternatives that would have been far less damaging to those who still rely on porn for their livings.

Taormino could have made her blog post, informed whatever companies she still works with and contacted her favored players directly to clue them in. She could have submitted a commentary on her newfound affinity for barrier protections to XBiz, which would most certainly have put it on the front page. Likewise, she could have given AVN a press release with little fear of being quoted out of context, as she insists she was in HLN’s summary of her interview with Cohen (and what do we generally think when politicians cop the out-of-context-alibi after coming under fire for something they said?).

In short, if her real intended audience was the porn community, she might have started by alerting them to her change of position prior to going national with this bombshell where it could only do that community harm. Who watches CNN who has the best interest of porn performers at heart? I’m sure there are viewers who do, but they make up a vanishingly small percentage of CNN’s core demographic.

There is no doubt in my mind, despite Taormino’s denials, that her timing and choice of medium were the result of political and economic calculation. She may very well be correct in the assumption that the anti-condom-mandate side is losing support in quarters where she wishes to be taken seriously, but doing a sudden, highly public about-face after vociferously opposing Measure B on HuffPo has all the appearance of cynically attempting to alter her own record after the fact. As Nina emailed Tristan directly: “I think what you did was cynical and self-serving and can be read as throwing a grappling hook off the sinking ship S.S. Porn and onto the rigging of the S.S. Industrial-Porn-Really-Is-Icky-After-All, as it steams by.”

I’m shocked but not surprised that she’d attempt to distance herself from her previous actions now that they appear a liability to her good name as a feminist pornographer. I doubt the attempt will prove successful, as neither Gail Dines nor Amanda Marcotte is likely to find this abrupt conversion credible, but when you think your prospects are dim no matter what you do, all kinds of dismal alternatives suddenly become attractive. In fact, with the mandatory condom bill now dead in the state legislature and Measure B likely D.O.A. on appeal in the wake of Hollingsworth v. Perry, she may actually be abandoning one shipwreck for another.

Frankly, appalling as I find it, Taormino’s new position is no more corrupt and mendacious than those taken by many on both sides of the condom question. Like numerous part-time Hollywood leftists who found it expedient to cooperate with the blacklist so as not to end up on it, Taorimino can hardly be blamed for trying to make a scramble for the lifeboat look like a courageous attempt to rescue others, claiming to have finally realized that she’d been endangering all hands for a number of years. She can, however, be held accountable for endangering them now by lending credence to a campaign that threatens to destroy the existing system of safeguards that has worked so well for so long. If memory serves, she was pretty quiet when AHF was dismantling AIM, but she's certainly made herself heard now.

What I resent most about this whole sorry business is the way she denigrates the intelligence and good judgment of performers just like everyone else. There’s a word for the behavior she demonstrates in the opening paragraph of this post: paternalism. After arguing for performer choice and making that argument central to her posture as a feminist pornographer, she seems to have decided that performers really can’t make rational decisions concerning their own safety and need someone wiser to do their thinking for them. Reconciling that with everything Taormino has said previously with respect to the agency and autonomy of performers would require a platoon of Jesuits. In the event she does get another directing gig, I would like to hope that performers would be too insulted by her condescension to participate in it, but in desperate times people do desperate things. Taormino clearly counts on that in much the same way that other producers who are busily beating down scene rates and cutting back shooting days do.

And like those producers and AHF, it’s not the welfare of performers that appears the central concern. Taormino’s image would seem to be the foremost motivation for this turnabout. It’s widely understood that the attempt to force condom use in porn by law has already made shooting less safe and if it succeeds, those Taormino claims to want to protect will be put at far greater risk. She’s quite aware of the inherent danger of such a mandate and has said as much in print. She’s simply too smart not to know that going on national TV to proclaim her new-found faith in barrier protections is a huge propaganda windfall for the advocates of a position she claims to oppose even now. How does her star-turn on network TV, despite whatever weak disclaimers are attached, not lend unwarranted legitimacy to their efforts?

Tristan, I don’t believe a word of it. You can forget about being seen as heroic by those who make their livings under the lights. They’re smarter than you give them credit for and your actions in this matter will be just as transparent to them as they are to me. I hope they do just what you suggest: exercise their freedom of choice by refusing to work for you.

Lillian Hellman titled her memoir of the Hollywood blacklist era Scoundrel Time. It would appear that time has come around again.

HIV Porn Scare 2013 - The Series Winds Down: FSCPASS Announces End Of Moratorium By Friday; New 14 Day Testing Regimen

Cross your fingers, because you never can tell what surprises may be in store...but it does look like things are winding down from the peak scare of earlier.

Last night, the Free Speech Coalition's Performer Availability Screening Services (FSCPASS) released their long awaited update on the state of the moratorium on shooting porn scenes that was reimposed on September 6 following the revelation of a third performer having confirmed to be infected with the HIV virus. That followed the lifting of the original moratorium based on the confirmation that perfomer Cameron Bay had been infected, and the further revelations that her boyfriend Rod Daily had announced that he too was HIV positive.

Essentially, the statement was a confirmation of previous results that all first generation sexual contacts of both Bay and the other as unamed performer had been tested and found to be clear and clean of any HIV infections, that they had found no proof that there had been any on-shoot transmissions, and that they were confident that any transmission of the virus had taken place through private extracurricular activity away from any porn set.

FSCPASS had also wanted to further investigate whether or not there had been any off-set interaction between Performer #3 and any of the talent....but the aformentioned performer decided to exercise her privacy rights and refused cooperation, as is her right to do so.

Given the information they did have, and the fact that the 14 day window of testing had passed without any new threat of infection, FSCPASS decided that it was now free to begin the process of lifting the moratorium.

However, there will be some conditions added on to the return of shooting...and some major changes in the testing protocols, too.

According to the statement by FSCPASS (reposted at XBiz.com), this coming Friday (September 19th) will be the day the moratorium is lifted and shooting can recommence. However, all performers will be required to undergo full panel testing beginning on Thursday, September 18th, and only those who test negative after that date will be cleared to commence shooting. In effect, the entire porn database is being rebooted, just like it was on August 19th in reaction to the original Cameron Bay infection news and the related syphilis scare of that month (which turned out to be a false positive).

The biggest change, however, is that FSCPASS will be henceforth imposing a mandatory 14 day testing period for all performers...a significant change from the 28 day regimen that was the standard prior to the latest HIV "outbreak". The 14 day window was chosen to coincide with the 7-10 day window of latency period provided by the Aptima RNA test that FSCPASS uses as its standard HIV test. The protocols also call for a follow up test 14 days following the original test for any firstgen performer who might be vulnerable to an infection if one is confirmed.

This change, if fully enacted, would be the closest to real-time HIV testing the industry has ever been. There are HIV tests out there that can promise results in 24 hours, but they are all more traditional antibody tests such as ELISA that have much longer latency periods (up to 60-90 days), and can often miss acute (new) HIV infections due to lack of seroconversion at its earliest stages. In addition, blood transfusions and certain medications can also mask the presence of HIV enough to throw off traditional tests. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, for example, uses ELISA as a base for their own HIV tests, which they offer at their clinics for free....though their stated position is that testing simply won't work anywhere as well as barrier protectants such as condoms.

In addition to that, FSCPASS also announced last night that they would initiate a performer education program which they would collaborate with doctors, workplace specialists, and performers. This is important because since the demise of the Adult Industry Medical Foundation, there has been no outreach by any porn production group on educating the talent on the risks of contracting STI's and what means could be utilized to avoid getting infected, or to seek aid and treatment if by some chance infection would occur. The most well known outreach prior to this time was the "Porn 101" video that AIM Foundation head Sharon Mitchell produced which featured promiment performers such as Nina Hartley, Jeanna Fine, and others educating new talent on the ways of protecting themselves. Perhaps it would be an excellent time for current FSCPASS head Diane Duke to meet with Nina and create another such educational tool??

All in all, it seems that FSCPASS has atoned itself pretty well for what many say was a huge error in lifting the original moratorium prematurely. Of course, there are those who will reject any move by them as too little and too late, for their own reasons and concerns, but one cannot deny that they certainly acted to defuse the ticking time bomb. Question is....will it be enough when AHF invents and creates the next porn scare......errrrr, when the next crisis inevitably hits?

As always, we'll be watching. Wherever they go, we will follow....too.