XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography (27 page)

It needs to begin treating women with more respect, on at least two levels: Women who work in pornography should have better working conditions, including contracts and access to positions of power; and, women who constitute a huge and growing market for pornography should be taken seriously as consumers.

WOMEN IN THE INDUSTRY

Women who work in pornography should have better working conditions, including
contracts and access to positions of power.

Women in pornography have less control over their working conditions than most women do.

There are several reasons for this. One of them is that women often work without contracts.

If feminists are concerned with the well being of women in pornography, they should pressure the industry to institute protections for women.

If feminists wish to protect women in pornography, if they truly care, they must open up a dialogue with those who can exercise influence and control. Pornographers are businessmen and businesswomen, like any others. They respond to customer feedback and social pressure. So far, feminists have been speaking mostly to themselves. They have blithely assumed pornographers would never listen to their point of view. I have found the opposite to be true.

How can feminists claim that the porn industry is unreceptive to their points of view? How many feminists have taken the effort to make an approach?

The following is an edited version of an article I published in
Adult Video News
(AVN), which is the main trade journal of pornography. It is part of my commitment to influence the industry toward treating women better.

AVN not only accepted the following article; the editor with whom I worked, Mark Kearnes, was among the most pleasant I've encountered. The magazine circulated the piece to men in the industry and elicited their comments, which were printed as sidebars. Then, the
Spectator,
California's Original Sex Newsmagazine, requested permission to reprint the article.

"How can the porn industry protect itself? First and foremost: contracts. The issue confronting the industry in the nineties will be violence against women and coercion of women, and producers of XXX tapes may well be called upon to produce contracts to protect themselves against these very charges; that is, the charge that a woman did not give true or informed consent to pose or perform. To be effective, these contracts should be executed before, not after, the shooting; they should be witnessed by two parties (who may be other actors, stage hands, even the director himself); they must explicitly state the scope of sexual activities being agreed to and the purpose of the performance, namely to produce sexually explicit material for distribution. In addition, the contract should explicitly name all the rights-national/ international distribution, use of, etc.-transferred to the producer. The document should also specify remedies for breach of contract on either 107

side (e.g., binding arbitration to resolve differences). Each and every contract should include the standard model release and photocopied documentation of the actress's age.

"Among Hollywood types, and anyone else who deals regularly with contracts, this may seem to be nothing more than common sense, but a woman being put under contract is actually news in the porn industry. In a sense, the industry's way of dealing with the makers of XXX material is patterned by its years-gone tradition of functioning outside the judiciary, and the suspicion (sometimes justified) that the police and the court system can be expected to be either hostile or irrelevant to internecine industry concerns. The whole way of doing business is reminiscent of Bob Dylan's line, 'To live outside the law you must be honest.' But the days of ignoring the niceties of paperwork are over; today's carefully worded contract may be the only defense against a lawsuit two years down the line.

"Yet producers remain almost criminally naive about the need to document informed consent. After criticizing producer John Stagliano in person about not signing contracts with his actresses, I followed up with a phone call. When I harped upon this theme, the generally affable Stagliano snapped back, Ì borrowed some forms. I'm getting contracts, okay?'

"I hope to similarly irritate other directors/producers into operating only on the basis of signed contracts.

"As an outsider looking in, I would suggest two steps the XXX industry could take to protect itself from the growing threat of lawsuits. First, lawyers involved in the Free Speech Coalition, or some other trade organization, could produce a model contract which would emphasize informed consent, detail the transfer of rights, and set forth the forum for remedies in case of a breach by either side. This contract would be made available as a standard for the industry. For a nominal yearly fee, the law firm drawing the contract, or the Free Speech Coalition, or some other organization or individual, could take on the job of registering signed contracts, so that the parties could assure themselves that they are dealing with companies that would be unlikely to involve them in a messy lawsuit. Registering the contracts would also preserve a record of agreements.

"Certainly, there is a legitimate concern in the industry about 'paper trails,' and contracts would, after all, constitute business records easily traceable to a finished product-a product which might be busted in any jurisdiction around the country. However, the type of contract involved here would bear no relation to an obscenity bust, since the finished tape is what's under question, not whether the actors were paid to perform; their performance in the feature is a given -- though a contract would establish that the performance wasn't coerced. Second, a trade organization should establish procedures by which the industry can regulate itself against genuine abuses, such as refusal to pay on a contract, or last-minute cancellation of a shoot. Most industries and professions have some method of regulating themselves. Lawyers have the Bar Association. Doctors have the AMA. Writers have the Guild. Although these trade associations often do not carry the force of law-or even of licensing-they do wield great power in terms of exposing and publicly censuring abuses. Obviously, few of the XXX industry have any wish to àir their dirty laundry in public,' but peer pressure alone can cure many situations. More extreme tactics, like boycotts by performers of a director or a company, are always available.

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"The conflict between the politically correct and those who wish access to sexually explicit material is irreconcilable and, perhaps, inevitable. In this battle, pornography occupies the moral high ground, because it defends the right of a woman to choose her own lifestyle. The porn industry should rush to do its part by making women's choices explicit-in contracts and in establishing procedures that protect women from abuse by unethical producers."

WOMEN WHO CONSUME PORNOGRAPHY

Women, who constitute a huge and growing market for pornography, should be taken
seriously as consumers.

Pornography is like any other business: It is out to make money. This means that producers and distributors listen to the feedback they receive from customers. Here, the much maligned profit motive can work to the advantage of women. The producers who heed their customers' voices will prosper. In doing so, they will also introduce new and higher employment standards throughout the industry.

In talking to producers and distributors, I have found them to be not only open to feminist ideas, but also eager to hear them. At one point, I had to refuse a rather persistent offer to consult on a porn shoot. The Young Turk producer wanted a feminist slant on some of the scenes of his video-in-progress. Fortunately, I was able to plead that such an arrangement might bring my objectivity into question. I say "fortunately" because I found the prospect of watching real people having real sex oddly disturbing. Instead, I offered to review the finished product on an informal (nonfinancial) basis.

My point is: The industry responds to feedback. Feminists are missing a glistening opportunity to provide real protection for women.

The message of this book is
not
that every woman should read or watch pornography. It is that every woman should decide for herself.

109

After the Consumer Electronics Show, I spent several days in Los Angeles, during which I attended a meeting of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), the only national sex worker's rights organization. It was established by Margo St. James in 1972 as a prostitute's advocacy group. COYOTE soon expanded its political scope to represent the interests of all sex workers.

As Executive Director Norma Jean Almodovar explained, "We realized we were all in it together."

Pornography and prostitution have a great deal in common: They both involve sex for money and they share the same enemies. It has long been argued that pornography is a form of prostitution. The only difference between the two acts is that a camera is running while the porn act is being performed.

The debate is heating up on whether being paid to perform a legal act (that is, to have sex) should be illegal. At one extreme of the debate, ex-porn queen "Holly Ryder," a.k.a. Lisa Marie Abato, is crusading to collect one million signatures to put an initiative on the 1994 California state ballot to change the state constitution so as to prohibit the production of pornography in California.

At the other extreme, actress Roseanne Arnold openly admitted to
Vanity Fair
that she had briefly worked as a prostitute. In her own words, "I think prostitution should be legal, because the way any society treats prostitutes reflects directly on how it treats the highest and most powerful woman."[1]

It is no coincidence that this debate is taking place in Los Angeles, where eighty percent of the country's sexually explicit films are made.

It is in Los Angeles that COYOTE is being rebuilt. COYOTE -Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics-is the nation's loudest voice for the rights of sex workers. It has been strangely quiet in the last few years, but this is beginning to change. The Executive Director is now Norma Jean Almodovar, who also heads the influential Los Angeles chapter. Ms. Almodovar, who spent eighteen months in a California state prison on pandering charges, is the author of From Cop
to Call
Girl. With prison behind her, she is concentrating her efforts on COYOTE and on writing a book about her prison experience.

Only sex workers or their advocates are invited to COYOTE meetings-and an invitation is necessary to attend. Since I qualified on the latter count, I found myself-at two p.m. on a bright Sunday afternoon-standing outside an upscale condominium, asking to be buzzed in.

Again, I dressed in feminist drag: Reeboks, blue jeans, and a loose sweater. But, this time, it was for an entirely different reason. Instead of wanting to set myself apart, I wanted to blend into the group. It was Sunday; Norma Jean had assured me the meeting was casual; I didn't want to look like an outsider.

Norma Jean's husband met me at the door with a welcoming smile. Norma Jean stood in the kitchen, wearing a pale blue jeans outfit with a design in metal studs across the top. She was presiding over the preparation of a feast consisting of huge trays of chicken wings, egg rolls, pizza snacks, lasagna, meatballs, garlic bread, and potato chips. "The leftovers from a Christmas party," she explained, sticking the nametag "Wendy" on my chest and handing me a plate, with exhortations to "eat!"

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(Later in the business portion of the meeting she asked for a volunteer to assume food duty for upcoming meetings. A small blonde-in sneakers, blue jeans, and a loose sweater-agreed to phone COYOTE members to coordinate casseroles and snacks. It all seemed so normal, like a church choir meeting I once attended.)

With a full plate of lasagna and chicken wings, I scoped out the living room. Over a dozen people-three of them men-were sprawled across the two couches, various chairs, and the floor. I sized up the group. The women all wore jeans or slacks, with T-shirts or some type of sweater.

Only one or two seemed to be wearing make-up, and none of them had their hair "fixed" in anything but a ponytail. There was an Asian woman, but no other discernible minorities. Except for a woman in her fifties, the average age was about thirty. One of the three men was dressed in a suit; the other two were casual.

I tried to judge from their faces and attitudes as to who they were-sex worker or sexual rights advocate? Was the thirtyish tired-looking woman-the only one to wear heavy makeup-a prostitute? The older woman, who smiled up pleasantly from the floor, did she work a sex phone line? What about the pumped-up young guy, was he a male stripper? And how did they peg me?

At the right end of a large wooden coffee table, an attractive, angry-looking woman sat cross-legged, while an intense-looking man hovered. He placed two sheets of paper in front of her and gestured toward them as he spoke.

I caught the gist of the exchange. His name was Edward Tabash, a Beverly Hills lawyer whose passion was civil liberties. One of the sheets of paper was a photocopy of an op-ed by him from the
Los Angeles Times
entitled "Stop Jailing Women for Their Own Good," with the subtitle, "Prostitution: Forbidding sale of sex by consenting adults is paternalistic and condescending."

The editorial read, in part:

The paternalistic argument ... claims that in order to protect women against such exploitation, society should imprison all women who engage in prostitution. This argument is reducible to a claim that languishing behind bars is a preferable fate for a woman as opposed to allowing her to freely sell her body. . . [2]

The other sheet gave the details of a recent court decision on entrapment. No longer would a police officer who slept with a prostitute be able to testify in court against her, since he was now considered to be an accomplice to the crime.

I asked if they minded my joining the conversation. The woman seemed annoyed-what I later discovered was her pervasive attitude toward everything-and Tabash seemed "professional." He went into the same patter with me as with the other woman. I wondered whether he consciously distanced himself from women "in the business" or whether he was just being careful around someone he didn't know.