XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography (23 page)

But feminists are so angry at men they will not listen to dissenting opinions-and especially not to men's pain, their voices or their needs. As she put it, "We're still just so angry at them and their penises and their need to put it in us. It is a very anti-sexual response." Their anger. prevents feminists from realizing that men are as oppressed as women are by sexual, social, and political attitudes, if only in different areas of sexuality.

I asked Nina if she had ever had a dialogue with an antiporn feminist, like Dworkin. Nina declines to debate such women, because they are irrational zealots who are not interested in listening to her. "Why should I put myself through that?" Nina's afraid she'd get more flustered than she likes to be in public; instead of arguing, she might just sit there, saying over and over, `You're full of shit, you're full of shit."

About the hatred and fear directed at her by Christians, she seems more philosophical. "These are the people who are truly obsessed with sex. Sex with them is still a very big issue and they are not at all comfortable with it. Then, there I am ... poking them with a sharp stick." She tries to be sensitive to their pain, but admits "their pain amazes me, because I have no background on which to pin it." Mostly, she fights an urge to scratch her head and walk away.

Next, I asked about the prospect of women like her rising to positions of power in the industry.

"The business is not that old, and back in the seventies men ran everything. The pornography business, like most businesses in the United States, is predominantly male-controlled. However, there has been matriculation up through the ranks and, certainly, Candida Royalle is the most thrilling example of that. Individual women have made individual deals to direct."

But even an actress of Nina's stature does not receive royalties, residuals, or any of the niceties that women in any other branch of entertainment have come to expect from a contract. Indeed, most of her contracts are verbal, not written, because-after all -what court would uphold them?

Nevertheless, things are a lot better in porn than they used to be, from small things like providing 92

a hot lunch and a shower after scenes, to large and exciting things like women beginning to direct. "In another twenty years, we might be unionized ... who knows?"

I pointed out that many reactionary industries have been revolutionized in the last twenty years and women in them are now well represented. But pornography has not kept pace by integrating women into positions of power. She explained, "A lot of the original people are still alive who were in power when it was still illegal." The old guard is the wrong age, the wrong gender, and the wrong attitude to be of assistance to women. Also, porn has been isolated from political and social change because society has pushed it off to one side. One reason for this is that producers of porn do not have advertisers and backers who threaten to withdraw their money, as regular TV

or film producers do. "Fortunately," she added, "the pie is huge."

I concluded by asking Nina what was the one thing she wanted women to know about porn. She didn't miss a beat in answering, "Sex isn't something men do to you. It isn't something men get out of you. Sex is something you dive into with gusto and like it every bit as much as he does."

CRYSTAL WILDER

Crystal Wilder was the only woman I interviewed who made me feel protective.

Bernie Oakley of Adam and Eve had given me Crystal's fax number and encouraged me to use his name as an intro-a common method of networking in the industry. He had also provided me with a bit of data on Crystal. She had started out as a dancer and proceeded on to videos as a way to boost her into "feature dancer" status. I was intrigued to hear she was now in transition from actress to producer, playing both roles in a company she co-owned and operated with her husband. This was a smart woman, who wanted to keep the profits that resulted from her own performances.

Crystal's company, Wilder Productions, is a new business venture that produces X-and R-rated movies. The company's first release is entitled
Wilder at Heart;
the latest one is an R-rated documentary on the Miss Nude Universe Contest. In order to control quality, Crystal's husband handles postproduction, but I was heartened to hear that Wilder Productions uses outside scriptwriters. This means the company is less likely to fall into the trap of producing amateurish films that are shot spontaneously.

In our first phone call, I scheduled a convenient time for Crystal to be interviewed. She was bubbly at the prospect-an enthusiasm that was entirely missing when the appointed time rolled around. From the tone of her voice, I suspected a problem and immediately switched tactics by asking if there was anything she wanted to know about the book or me. Yes, there definitely were things she wanted to know. What was my educational background? What were my qualifications for writing this book?

I realized that in the intervening week Crystal had been having second thoughts, perhaps about my motives or whether she would be fairly treated in the book. Given how most feminists treat sex workers, who could blame her? Fortunately, in porn, the names of those you know often serve as credentials for who you are, and I had carefully constructed a network of solid contacts.

I briefly answered Crystal's questions about my credentials, then referred to some prominent people in the industry who had offered me the use of their names as calling cards. Crystal relaxed.

I began by asking if she had ever been coerced into a pornographic act. "Never," the adamant response came back, then her tone softened. "I wondered about that before I was in the business, before I was a dancer, and I'm glad to say `never.' " Nor did she know of anyone who had been coerced. But she had seen borderline things. While watching a hair-pulling scene, for example, she became convinced that the woman-although technically consenting-was not enjoying herself.

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She suspected that the woman was new to the business and just going along with whatever the director wanted. "This happens a lot to newcomers," she assured me.

Moving from consent to contracts, I asked what paperwork she was used to signing before making a video. Although the twenty-six-year-old actress had acted in over a hundred videos, she had never signed anything beyond a release, which protected only the director. Crystal worked on the basis of a verbal understanding. So far, no director had refused to pay her, and only a few checks had bounced. Her worst experience? Being shorted money by a club owner in Canada, with whom she
did
have a contract. Knowing that no judge would take her seriously, Crystal wrote the money off. She refers to industry contracts as "a joke," because they are unenforceable.

If she had been shorted by someone in video, Crystal would have had some recourse. A few well-placed phone calls would have resulted in pressure being brought to bear on the erring party.
Adult Video
News-the most influential periodical in the industry-makes a point of gently policing business practices. Powerful men like Phil Harvey, owner of Adam and Eve, are known to take strong ethical stands. But such self-regulation is not the norm on the dance circuit, which crosses borders and is not represented by centralized organizations. There is not the same sense of community.

Having cleared away the obligatory questions about coercion and contracts, I asked Crystal how she got involved in the industry. Her first experience, on the fringe of porn, came when she posed for some magazines. What impressed her the most were the women; they were "very, very nice people." From here, she almost stumbled into exotic dancing: She and her husband were on vacation and happened to go to a dance club in Nebraska. On a lark, Crystal entered a wet T-shirt contest and won $100-a fortune to her at the time. Thus encouraged, she checked out a local dance club, which she found to be clean and tasteful. "Nothing nasty was happening there, and the girls were having a good time."

As for progressing into porn videos-a lot of dancers do this in order to work their way up the financial ladder to "feature dancer." In this, Crystal has been overwhelmingly successful. These days, she travels from club to club with a truckload of over $30,000 worth of lights, which add glitz to such dance routines as the one in which she dresses up like an ice cream sundae and slings her toppings around the stage. As she explains, "I don't want to just take off my clothes.

People can see that in a video." I pulled the conversation back to how Crystal had gone from her first dance club to her first video. "I met an agent," and through him she arranged to make a "couple of movies" to see if she liked the work. At this point, Crystal made a statement to which I would later return and which would ultimately define the interview for me. She said, "I figured if I made only a few of them, no one would know. I didn't want it to be known all over my hometown, I guess." This was a theme I did not immediately pick up on.

Sensing that Crystal's ambitions extended beyond acting in porn-and, perhaps, beyond producing it-I asked whether she wanted to cross over from porn to more legitimate films, like Traci Lords was attempting to do. "Yes," but she felt "branded" from having done porn. This comment, coming on the heels of not wanting it to be known in her hometown, began to flash a red light in my mind.

When I asked what-besides money-made porn worth being branded over, she talked about the dance clubs, where male fans lavished attention on her. "They think I am an ultimate fantasy.

Some of them call me a superstar and come into the clubs for no other reason than to see me. It is the greatest feeling in the world," she bubbled on, "to be taken so seriously for something that most people don't see as legitimate. It makes everything worthwhile."

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Here it was for the third time. She did not want to be known in her hometown; she felt branded by porn; she was delighted to be
finally
taken seriously. This was a woman who craved acceptance and expected rejection. Yet, Crystal was also clearly proud of her work and craved recognition for it. There was a tension and ambivalence about Crystal that contrasted with the self-confidence of Nina Hartley and the political sophistication of Bobby Lilly. A major male producer had assured me that Crystal lived up to her name: She was "Wilder" than most. To me, she seemed vulnerable.

I picked up on the theme of being branded by porn. I asked how the people in her small Midwestern hometown reacted to her being in the industry. "They know about it, but they don't acknowledge it. It is not really discussed, but they accept me because we are family and friends and we were prior to the porn. They realize I'm the same person."

Do they think there is something wrong with you? "Yes." How did you feel about that? "You know what? At first, it really did hurt my feelings, but being brought up in the Midwest, I understand that a lot of people are very closed-minded and it is something that is hard to overcome. As far as what I do, I know my parents look upon it as something totally unacceptable. I can understand them now because I have become a lot more understanding and nonjudgmental ... but I wish they could open their hearts and understand that I'm doing what I want to do and I'm not hurting anyone."

I wondered aloud whether she had found more acceptance from people since moving from the Midwest to California.

Yes and no. She bonds with other women in the industry, but hardly ever tells outside people what she does for a living. She is painfully aware that "regular" women view her as an "outcast."

This keeps her from getting active in political or social causes, because people might ask her, "And what do you do?"

At one point, I started describing a party I'd attended at which pornography had become a hot topic of discussion. I had a point in mind, but I never managed to reach it, because Crystal broke in. "I really miss going to things like that," she said.

"It [the ostracism] hurts me a lot because I enjoy being around people and having close friends and they [regular women] just can't look at you in the same way once they know what you do. I guess I am just really afraid to get close to women who are not in the industry because I don't like being judged and every time, when I am asked by a female what I do and I'm honest about it,
that look on their face! ...
All they are seeing is what I do. They are not looking at me. It's a hard thing to overcome."

As we spoke, Crystal's voice kept sinking until I had trouble hearing her. For the first time in the course of my interviews, I felt impelled to stop being impartial. I just talked to her, like I would to any other human being. I explained that one of the things women in her position do not appreciate is how intimidating and threatening they are to ordinary women-to housewives or even to a happily married career woman like me, who is approaching forty and starting to sag faster than I can prop it up.

I reminded her of what she had said: The men come into the club and say, "You're my ultimate fantasy." Well, most of those men have wives or girlfriends, yet they are saying these words to
her,
not to them. Crystal should understand how that makes these women feel and how easy it is to blame her for it. They are threatened and intimidated.

"The women don't find me intimidating," she objected; "they call me sleazy."

"But if they said, `You're intimidating,' " I replied, "that would give all the power to you; you're so powerful, you threaten them. If they say, `You're a sleazy, sick bitch,' that makes you the 95

wrong one; it makes you pathetic and not them. When you make people feel insecure, you also make them angry."

Women like Crystal are a socially safe and convenient dumping ground for the jealousy and insecurity of others. Most women cannot live out their fantasies nor have what they want sexually. This is the nature of reality: Not many of us can have it all. Perhaps we are not attractive enough or too inhibited or just unlucky. Even women who are reconciled to not having "it all" are likely to resent women like Crystal, in much the same way the rich. After all, there she is dressed up like an ice cream sundae, to the applause of their husbands.