On July 11, we continued our dialogue with Renegade Evolution, a stripper and porn performer, moving on to the subject of workplace rules for porn performers. We are happy to see some areas of common ground, with the goal of making life less harsh for people in the industry:
NPN: I would like to take you up on this thread:
RE: If people want to advocate harsher safety measures in the sex industry, better working conditions, for better treatement by law enforcement, making access to net porn harder for kids to get, things of that nature? That shows me they not only care about the people working in the business, but they care for the people who should not be looking at porn and whatnot…those are the folk who I actually think care about peoples “feelings”…I have some suggestions for improving the working conditions of porn performers. How do these strike you?
On porn shoots, a public health officer should be required to be present during filming. The pornographers would pay a fee to the city for this.
RE: Sure, that would be great, but chances are the “fee” would come out of the performers pay…and the health dept would probably have to hire a hell of a lot more employees, which comes outta tax dollars…I mean, are you just talking about for CA porn valley films, or every porn shoot in America? Cause i can tell you, porn is filmed everywhere.
NPN (7/16/07): We would like to see this rule adopted in all locales where porn is produced. Safety rules already apply to stunts in non-porn films. Brian Flemming gives an example:[To film a special effects scene where someone gets shot,] I had to hire a pyrotechnician licensed by the state. I also had to hire a county fire marshal, who monitored the pyrotechnician and had the authority to stop any behavior deemed unsafe. If you add in the city cops I was legally required to retain for crowd control, the actors and crew on my set had three levels of protection provided by government agencies.
We don’t know if the cost of ensuring healthier porn shoots would affect the performers’ pay. One could raise this objection to any workplace safety rule that costs money. The costs of disease should also be taken into account. Caring for an HIV patient in America currently costs about $20,000 per year. To my knowledge, few if any pornographers are paying to treat diseases incurred by their performers. The performers get to foot that bill by themselves.
NPN: Porn performers should be required to be regularly tested for all STDs they might reasonably be at risk for contracting.
RE: Nowadays, that is actually pretty common, testing for almost, if not ALL, STD’s… from hep to herpes to aids, even if the companies shooting don’t require it, a lot of performers see to it on their own.
NPN (7/16/07): We’re glad if many performers are seeking tests on their own, but this is a far cry from having these tests be required. As the movie title “50 Guy Cream Pie” [explicit] implies, a porn actress can be exposed to fluids from many people in a single shoot.
The current testing regime is simply inadequate. One study suggests 40% of porn performers have at least one STD. An actress tells Martin Amis,
“I have herpes,” said [porn actress] Chloe as she drove me to a
smoker-friendly bar. “After you’ve been in this business for a while,
you have herpes. Everyone has herpes…. My movies are all-condom, but
condoms won’t protect you from herpes. They don’t cover the base.
Sometimes when you’re doing girl-girl you’ll say, ‘Honey, I think you
should go and see someone.’ It can be a very stinky scene down
there….”NPN: Condoms and other protective devices should be required when they will reduce the risk of disease.
RE: I think more prevelant condom use would be wise. I do not think, however, if performers who test clean should be required to use condoms if they do not want to…for instance, many porn stars are married to other porn stars…should Otto Bauer have to wear a condom whenever he does a scene with Audrey Hollander, his wife?
NPN (7/16/07): The case of porn performers in a shoot being married to each other is unusual. If you want to carve out an exception for this, fine. In the main, it is distressingly easy to dissuade performers from using condoms. The LA Times reports that a $50 bonus will do in many cases. Moreover, we’re not just talking about protecting the performers, but about the message they send to viewers. Even Carol Queen, sex-positive heroine, thinks it’s time for hetero porn to put on a condom:
As good a job as porn has tried to do in preventing its No. 1
occupational hazard, it falls short for a reason that should be
instructive to everyone. Its antipathy to condoms puts performers at
risk, pure and simple.Extremely risky acts are safer when condoms are correctly used. To porn
fans for whom the sight of a condom is pleasure-squelching, I say: Get
used to it. The (heterosexual) adult industry has for 20 years shirked
an opportunity to help normalize condom use. This doesn’t just put its
own talent at risk. It puts viewers and their partners at risk as well.On the gay side of the industry, this is well-understood…
The heterosexual side of the industry should step up to the plate and
show fans how safer sex works…If there is a lining to this dark cloud [an outbreak of HIV
among porn performers], it might be manifested as a body blow to that
denial, which is as common outside the porn industry as inside. Sexual
contact between people can transmit HIV if one of them has it. Neither
monogamy nor heterosexuality is a protection. The virus likes mucous
membranes. Unprotected penetrative sex puts one at risk.Why do we still have to say this, 20 years later? It is as
basic to HIV education as anything, yet denial and resistance (not to
mention inadequate sex education) impede our understanding. Perhaps in
the next 20 years the porn film industry will stop being a poster child
of heterosexual transmission and become part of the solution.NPN: Excessively risky practices such as “ass-to-mouth” should be prohibited from commercial productions.
RE: Nope. AtM is something people do in their own bedrooms, as well as countless other forms of anal play which inovle a tongue or mouth touching or even penetrating an anus. I don’t agree with banning certain sex acts if people are willing to perform them, and if, yeah, real people also do them, and all forms of anal play, including AtM, do actually occur in some peoples bedrooms.
NPN (7/16/07): It is entirely different to do something ‘on your own time’ as opposed to being paid to do it. The element of money opens up a potential for abuse not present when acts are done without this influence. This is a major reason why prostitution is generally illegal in America while sex is not.
OSHA exists to tell employers there are some conditions they may not expose workers to, even if the workers are willing. For example:
Your employer has to provide a safe and healthful workplace according
to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA).The OSHA Bloodborne Pathogens standard
[link added] covers employees exposed to bodily fluids including blood
and semen. Some of the sections of this standard require the employer
to develop a written exposure control plan, offer exposed employees the
hepatitis B vaccination series, provide personal protective equipment
(gloves, etc.) and provide training to employees.Commercial “ass-to-mouth” clearly violates OSHA rules, and presumably goes on only because the government turns a blind eye to it.
NPN: Performers should have the right to revoke their consent to the distribution of their image, up to, say, 30 days after filming is complete.
RE: I’d say two weeks.
NPN (7/16/07): Even two weeks would be a major improvement over the current regime. It would be a good start.
NPN: I welcome any other suggestions you might have.
RE: Well, if we are, in theory, going to send health officals, independent security people would be good as well, to insure no one is forced into anything. But, like the health official, that’s a pipe dream.
I, personally, think that the minimum age of consent for participation in hardcore (as in, involves penetration) porn should be raised to 21.NPN (7/16/07): Abolishing slavery in America was a pipe dream in 1800, a reality by 1865.
The idea of raising the age of porn consent to 21 is appealing. Garance Franke-Ruta floated a similar idea in The Wall Street Journal in May:
It is time to raise the age of
consent from 18 to 21–“consent,” in this case, referring not to sexual
relations but to providing erotic content on film.Current federal laws bar the
production or possession of erotic images of individuals under 18.
These laws are hardly a matter of long custom: The first was passed
only in 1977, after a spate of interest in child pornography, and until
superseded in 1984, only covered those under age 16…In certain obvious respects, 18
years is old enough to ward off the threat of “child porn.” But the
“Girls Gone Wild” problem concerns adult porn: At what age is a girl
ready to make that decision, one that she will live
with–technologically speaking, at least–for the rest of her life? A
woman of 18 may be physically indistinguishable from one who is 21, but
they are developmentally worlds apart.Think only of the difference
between a college freshman and a recent college graduate, or between a
high-school senior and a young woman with a job and apartment of her
own. Or think of the difference between a 19-year-old girl–intoxicated
by both a Scorpion Bowl (illegally served) and her own newly developed
form–and a woman who has been through her first heartbreak and has had
to think long and hard about what her value is, both in her personal
life and at the office. The second woman is more likely to nurse a
chardonnay with friends than “go wild” in the sense that Mr. Francis’
cameras are so eager to record. Surely the porn industry can survive
without the participation of teenagers.