Linda Marchiano, known as Linda Lovelace, is the star of perhaps the most famous porn film of all time, Deep Throat (1972). She gave this testimony to the Minneapolis Government Operations Committee on December 12, 1983. It is published in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.60-68). I literally became a prisoner. I […]
Porn Industry
New Citizen Blog Fights Adult Enterprise in Berlin, CT
Congratulations to Laura Michaud for launching NO V.I.P. in Berlin, CT. She is doing a great job organizing opposition to a giant new Very Intimate Pleasures store attempting to set up in Berlin. The proposed store is less than 250 feet from homes, in clear violation of Berlin ordinance and common sense. V.I.P. general manager […]
Free Book Download: Diana Russell’s Against Pornography: The Evidence of Harm (explicit)
Diana Russell, a longtime activist against pornography, has kindly permitted us to make Against Pornography available for downloading at no charge. Please use the links below.Dr. Russell is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Mills College, Oakland, California. She has been active in the women’s liberation movement since 1969, and is author or editor of 17 […]
Ask Calvert to Divest from Porn Distributors
Calvert claims that it “is one of the nation’s largest socially responsible mutual fund firms with approximately $14 billion in assets under management.” Among other things, it refuses to invest in companies that produce porn, saying: Calvert believes that consumers have a right to products and services that are safe, of high quality, and not […]
Types of Porn and Their Occupational Safety Risks (explicit)
The AIM Health Care Foundation is a “non-profit corporation created to care for the physical and emotional needs of sex workers and the people who work in the Adult Entertainment Industry.” This AIM handout (PDF, explicit) tells porn workers, “THE FOLLOWING SEX ACTS CAN PUT YOU AT RISK FOR THE FOLLOWING STDS. THINK CAREFULLY BEFORE […]
Carolyn McKenzie: Undercover with the Viewing Booths; Disease, Intoxicants Prevalent Among Strip Dancers (explicit language)
One night in Memphis about 15 years ago, Carolyn McKenzie accompanied a vice cop on a tour of adult bookstores, strip clubs, and a “modeling studio”. This mother of four and former public-health nurse had organized protests and filed complaints with the district attorney’s office over the porn shops and strip clubs that dotted suburban […]
Academic Defenders of Porn Need to Engage with Reality (explicit language)
Gail Dines is a Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Wheelock College in Boston, and a long-time anti-porn activist. She writes in Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (1998, p.163-166): I have met hundreds of women and men who have stories to tell about pornography and the devastating impact it has had on […]
2004: Cal/OSHA issues citations to adult film companies for failing to protect employees from health hazards
After an HIV scandal rocked the porn industry in 2004, California workplace regulators fined two adult film companies for safety violations, issuing this press release on 9/16/04: SAN FRANCISCO – Cal/OSHA, the state’s occupational safety and health program, yesterday issued its first-ever citations to employers in the adult film industry. Two employers, Evasive Angles and […]
Carol Queen: Time for the Porn Film Industry to Stop Being a Poster Child of Heterosexual HIV Transmission
Carol Queen is no anti-porn crusader. She’s the author of Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture. That doesn’t stop her from advocating for condom use in porn films in this 2004 article for the San Francisco Chronicle: As good a job as porn has tried to do in preventing its No. 1 occupational […]
Lizzy Borden: We don’t shoot “all the lovey-dovey stuff that there’s not a big market for” (explicit language)
Lizzy Borden, born Janet Romano, runs Extreme Associates with her husband Rob Black. This porn production company lives up to its name with films like “Forced Entry”, which, according to Salon is “the story of a serial killer and his gang who rape and murder a series of women–an 18-year-old virgin, a pregnant woman, etc.–before […]