XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography (4 page)

These were the raw theories spinning out in my head when the only truly offensive comment of the evening occurred. As Leslie finished the account of the Scandinavian encounter, he made a casual remark that went right through me.

"She was gorgeous-totally fucked-up psychologically, but, oh, what an ass!" he exclaimed.

Perhaps I overreacted. Perhaps I was more embarrassed than I realized, but it bothered me to hear a woman's angst being dismissed so lightly, while the curve of her ass was eulogized. I wondered if some of the criticism leveled at pornographers was accurate: Perhaps they did treat women like commodities to be valued, but never respected.

After dinner, we retired to a music-blaring, smoky bar, which spelled death for conversation.

Miraculously, there was an empty chair next to Stagliano's business partner, Patrick Collins. In their company Elegant Angel/Evil Angel, Patrick constituted the "Elegant Angel" half.

Conversation dissolved into screaming sentences at each other. From the snippets I caught, I gathered that Patrick and his wife worked as a team in the industry; she was nicknamed "Buttwoman." He had abandoned an upscale career in investment banking in order to pursue "excellence" in the one area that gave him satisfaction: graphic sex. Collins, with his gentlemanly way of speaking, was an antidote to Leslie. But the screaming was rough on my throat and I finally settled back to watch the crowd.

A young blond woman, with a hard face and an equally hard body, came over and ran her fingers persistently through Stagliano's hair. He had barely acknowledged this, when a brunette in incredibly tight jeans sat down in his lap and began to grind her hips into his groin. From my days of working in television, I'd seen this sort of behavior-in a more subtle form-displayed by women toward TV producers whose favors they wished to garner. It surprised me to see it displayed toward a porn producer. Perhaps I had accepted, on some level, that women
were
seduced and coerced into the industry.

Another theory began to spin out. What if pornography were nothing more than a dark mirror of the movie industry? A more blatant version of everything that goes on in Hollywood? What if the same basic rules of supply and demand, power and persuasion, mirrors and smoke apply to
all
producers and actresses, legitimate or not?

Having spun out this speculation, I began to punch holes in it. One immediate difference came to mind: There were no unions in porn, no SAG, no AFTRA, no ACTRA. Without their presence, pornography did not mirror - even darkly - any other aspect of the entertainment industry.

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There was no protection from courts, which routinely dismiss suits brought by pornographers against distributors as "frivolous." Nor from police, who are far more likely to harass than to protect sex workers. This, too, was a difference of kind, not degree.

There was no genuine respect for hardcore pornography, except on the shadowy fringes of society. No mainstream newspapers, magazines, or TV news shows would review porn movies.

No talk shows would invite the women as guests, except as curiosities. The better the women were at their trade-the expression of sex-the less likely they were to receive respect.

Too tired to speculate further, I walked away from the bar and the unfolding party scene.

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS DARKLY: A DAY WITH THE INDUSTRY

By eight in the morning, most of the regular exhibitors at CES were running at full throttle, demonstrating their products to anyone who wandered by. I had been warned that the Adult Section operated on a different timetable. It would not start buzzing until after noon, perhaps because of the parties that tended to run into dawn. I decided to check out the larger convention and get a better context for the Adult Section.

The size of CES was stunning. A sea of booths hawked the latest in automotive technology, the best in audio and visual systems, the most sophisticated burglar alarms, and much more. The fastest, the biggest, the loudest, the best. And, in many booths, well-endowed women in revealing outfits leaned forward to smile brightly at interested passersby, almost all of whom were men.

With a better sense of CES, I caught the shuttle back to the Adult Section, which was located a safe mile or so away from the more respectable exhibitors. Even within the distant Sahara Hotel, the Adult was isolated. An escalator provided the only access. At the bottom, two security guards checked badges to ensure those who entered were at least twenty-one years old. At the front doors of the exhibit hall, two more guards gave people a similar once-over.

It was nine o'clock and the Adult Section was stone quiet; most booths were unoccupied; most aisles were empty. I wandered around, looking at the displays. Some fifty exhibits offered a broad spectrum of sexual material and information. The offerings ranged from fetish videos to phone sex services to a Free Speech counter. At the latter you could leave a donation in a gold fish bowl sporting a sticker declaring "Stop Censorship!"

I picked up literature and took notes on posters advertising XXX movies. Over and over again, I was struck by how attractive the women were: young, aerobically lean, and overwhelmingly blond. From over their shoulders, bent over peering through the V of their legs, sprawled on beds, looking up from on their knees-they all stared back at me with attitudes that ranged from submission to brazen bitchiness.

On my second tour of the floor, I approached the few people who were available and introduced myself as a feminist doing research on pornography. (After three such introductions, I dropped the word "feminist" because it seemed to alienate people.) Since no women were evident, I tried to get a sense of the "business of porn" from the men.

They were all in a mood to complain. Apparently CES had circulated a memo that morning to the Adult exhibitors, laying down strict rules of conduct. The rules included no full frontal nudity and no display of private parts. A burly red-bearded man, who was demonstrating interactive computer pornography, took particular exception to the abrasive security guards who ensured that photos of women's nipples and vaginas were duly covered by black dots. The hotel management had provided sheets and sheets of these dots.

When I asked security for a copy of the memo, they were strangely unable to find one. Two days later, I got a copy of the memo from Bill Margold, a veteran of the porn industry, who goes by 16

the moniker "Bear." In the meantime, I had received three competing theories from exhibitors about sheets of nipple concealing dots:

· They resulted from an incident of the year before. A buxom actress had gotten carried away with enthusiasm at meeting fans and impulsively bared what have been called "the best two things about her videos."

· They were a backlash against another incident from the year before. An after-hours fund-raising tent had been pitched in one of the hotel parking lots. Entertainment had been provided by several women, who engaged in a public sex act. The City of Las Vegas had laid charges, which included "felony sodomy" and "felony lesbianism."

· Nothing had changed. The rules were exactly as they had always been.

As exhibitors rushed to contradict each other, I began to realize that the porn industry was not a monolith.

As many of them shrugged off the incident, I realized something else: Pornographers were inured to being treated with contempt. What other industry would so blithely accept not being able to display its wares at its own conference? How many other exhibitors at CES would tolerate the intrusive surveillance of security guards, who constantly toured the floor?

MY FIRST INTERVIEW WITH A WOMAN IN PORN

A session of the Free Speech Coalition-an organization that protected porn producers and distributors from prosecution was scheduled at noon. I arrived early to find three people present: Bill Margold; a man engaged in vigorous conversation with Bill; and, Cookie-a thin blond who looked like a little girl. I overhead the man asking Bill whether things had been arranged with Cookie. Apparently, he wanted her to appear in a video he was producing. Bill shrugged and replied, "She's over there. Ask her yourself."

I'd heard Bill was an agent, so I opened a conversation by asking how people usually got into "the business." He referred vaguely to casting calls; then he said something surprising.

"I discourage people from getting into porn," he explained, "because you have to have a death wish to succeed at it." He expanded on this theme. "Pornography gets into your blood and you can never get away from it. No matter how many hard knocks you take, you'll always be part of the industry."

Since I'd met people who
had
left the business, I doubted the truth of this. But Stagliano had made a similar point, when he had enthused about the people in porn being society's "last outlaws, the last renegades." He had explained that being a stripper or a porn actress set you apart from respectable people. You became a social untouchable. Anyone who willingly accepted this stigma did so because they loved what they were doing. There was something inside of them that
had
to come out.

The grain of truth in this was worth puzzling over. I would do almost anything to be a writer, which involves nothing so much as an ostentatious display of my mind and opinions. What if other women felt the same way about displaying themselves sexually? I always prefer to be published by magazines with wide circulations. Why wouldn't they want to be seen by as many people as possible? Was there that much difference in the two forms of exhibitionism?

When Cookie drifted out the door with a clipboard in her hand, I followed. As a veteran of political meetings, I figured she had pulled hostess duty. That is, she was the pretty face delegated to greet people at the door and make sure they signed the mailing list.

17

I resolved to conduct my first interview with a "woman in the industry." Things began well enough. I asked Cookie if she had time for a few questions. She said yes and gave an insecure little girl laugh, which seemed to punctuate all of her sentences.

I asked whether or not she signed contracts with the producers for whom she worked. She looked confused. I explained that there seemed to be no standard in the industry as to whether or when contracts were required. I was curious about what her experiences had been. Cookie laughed, then frowned then said she only worked on videos. It wasn't like she was making movies or anything.

When several men came up to inquire about the upcoming meeting, Cookie seemed relieved to escape my scrutiny. One of the men had "Peterborough, Ontario" on his name badge. I identified myself as a fellow Canadian and we chatted about the adult video store he was planning to open up North as his retirement business. I asked if he would be affected by the 1992 Canadian Supreme Court ruling, called the Butler decision, which restricted the importation of pornography on the basis of the psychological damage it might do to women. He said he wasn't concerned since he didn't carry material that portrayed violence or exploited children. "And that's what people are really going after!" He went on to rail against violence on television and in mainstream movies.

Sitting there, I began to glimpse a political line in the sand that industry people were drawing.

On one side was sex, which was good. On the other side was violence, which was bad. Yet it was the rejection of violence (primarily against women) that was driving the antiporn crusade.

An alleged cause-and-effect link between pornography and violence against women had been the theme of the barely aborted Pornography Victims' Compensation Act (S.1521) of 1992. This act would have devastated pornography in America. It would have permitted crime victims to sue the producer, distributor, exhibitor, and retailer of any book, magazine, movie, or music that victims claimed had triggered the crime. There was no limit to the damages a victim could claim.

In other words, a woman who claimed her rapist had been inspired by a centerfold could sue
Playboy
for "causing" her assault. The organization Feminists for Free Expression (FFE), founded in 1992 to fight censorship was instrumental in defeating this Act. FFE pinpointed the intellectual sleight-of-hand that occurs whenever violent crimes are blamed on words or images, rather than on the criminals who commit them. As FEE commented: "Violence against women and children flourished for thousands of years before the printing press and motion picture.... Correlation studies, in this country, Europe, and Asia, find
no
rise in sexual violence with the availability of sexual material. No reputable research shows a causal link between òbscenity' . . . and violence." [1]

The Peterborough storeowner was one among many industry people who seemed eager to concede that violence on TV leads to violence in the street. Yet, in agreeing that images and words are threats to safety, he virtually conceded the entire antipornography position.

Finally, Cookie was free again. I resumed the interview, which I now realize must have resembled an inquisition. I asked if she had ever been "coerced into performing a pornographic act." The question had one salutary affect: She stopped laughing nervously. She scowled out the word no. I asked if she knew of anyone who had been coerced. At this point the scowl deepened into genuine annoyance. She repeated no and looked pointedly away.

I closed my notebook, put aside my pen, and apologized for not having better questions to ask.

My apology was strategic. Bill Margold had urged her to talk with me and I knew Cookie was insecure enough to blame any unpleasantness on herself. I didn't want her to feel she was to blame.

18

In fact, my questions were precisely the ones I needed to have answered. It was my technique that needed work. I had treated Cookie like a case study, instead of a human being. She was not a lab animal-she deserved courtesy. Thereafter, I asked women about violence only when the conversation provided a natural segue.

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