Anonymous Rex’s Weblog

Forward: Since moving to WordPress, the title of this blog has earned A LOT of attention. If you are reading this, it is statistically likely that you were surfing for porn and are in search of titilation. In fact, this blog has been linked to by a site called “fleshmerchants.com.” Since you’re here, please take this opportunity to read what I have to say about flesh merchants. We all want to see naked people, but you really, really shouldn’t be paying for it.
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In this, the final installment of the blog, I will tackle the question of whether the American sex-trade can be redeemed so that consumers can enjoy their smut without contributing to the horrors of its production.

Schlosser’s book contains a brief interview with Nina Hartley. Hartley describes herself as a pro-sex feminist and is also an adult film actress. She claims being an adult film actress in genuinely fulfilling and argues that through her role as a sex-worker, she can promote the image of a strong and sexually autonomous woman. She has also attempted to unionize the adult film industry.

First of all, I want to point out that simply giving creative control to a woman in no way redeems the sex-trade. Case in point Janet Romano aka “Lizzy Borden.” Romano and her husband run the porn company Extreme Associates—which in 2003 was indicted for distributing obscenity. Extreme Associates managed to attract the attention of the federal government through films such as “Cocktails” where women drink vomit, and “Forced Entry”—where women are abducted, tortured, raped, and killed. Romano is unapologetic for these films and has compared them to the stunts performed on “Jackass.”

I think that if the sex-trade is going to be redeemed it is going to be through government regulation or a grass-roots alternative (this second option sounds weird—and it is. I will discuss it presently.) However, Hartley’s attempt to reform the sex-trade from within is doomed to failure. As long as sex remains a business, money will talk louder than sex-workers.

There was almost no interest in Hartley’s attempt to unionize the adult film industry. The porn barons did not have to loose sleep over it, because it never got off the ground. No one wanted to join the union for the reasons described in the part III: Adult film actresses just want to get rich and go home. Hartley mentioned in describing the failure of her union efforts that the majority of registered voters in the porn industry vote Republican. And like Reuban Sturman, most of the producers have no interest in sex, only money.

Furthermore, Hartley’s claims that adult film can be used to promote a new role for women is undermined by her own capitalist stake in the industry. The Nina Hartley love doll complete with vibrating vagina and anus runs for about $145. (I did some fact checking: http://www.adulttoyreviews.com/dolls/nina.html) Now honestly, is this promoting a woman’s sexual autonomy or Hartley’s bank account? Isn’t an inflatable doll with its mouth hanging open pretty much the antithesis of a sexually autonomous woman?

Finally, the sex trade is a business and as such will always have to meet the demand of the market—not the artistic vision of the performers. Hartley can only succeed, so long as her third-wave feminist agenda dovetails with the desires of the consumer.

So what kind of government regulations should be placed on the adult film industry? Well first of all, the government has always seen its role as protecting consumers and not sex-workers. This has to change. Allowing women to become sex-workers at age 18 is absolutely insane. 18 is no time to decide whether footage of you having sex will be on the internet for the rest of your life. We don’t let teenagers drink. We don’t give them a good rate on renting cars. I know in Texas, they can’t rent firearms. So why do we let them take their clothes off and drink vomit on film?

Nina Hartley and her mentor Juliet Anderson both entered the industry very late in life. (Anderson was nearly forty.) Both of these women claim to enjoy the industry and find it liberating. They received an education and did interesting things with their lives before doing porn. They are not likely to regret their decision for the rest of their lives or become drug addicts.

Raising the age to something like 25 might be able to solve some of the biggest problems in the industry. It would get rid of those horribly obnoxious Girls Gone Wild videos. It would cut the number of B-Girls thus raising salaries and giving performers more leverage. Most importantly, it would force young women to put more thought into their lives. The attitude of “I don’t need to go to high-school because in one year I can be just be a stripper” would be gone. (Instead of high-school or stripping, the choice would now be college or prostitution.)

Now the community option: Conventional wisdom states that you aren’t paying a prostitute to have sex with you, you’re paying her to leave afterwards. There are ways for consenting adults to enjoy sexual depravity without inviting the evils of capitalism. I am referring of course to things like fetish groups, munches, and swingers clubs. Although swingers may strike the average person a total sexual deviants—this practice is clearly more ethical than consumption of the sex-trade. In these communities, no one is a sex worker and everyone is there because they want to participate in . . . whatever is going on there. (One time on HBO they covered a “clown sex” party . . .)

Now here is what’s interesting: a lot of people would feel no shame about seeing a ping-pong show in Bangkok, a donkey-show in Tijuana, or an 18 year old mother stripping in America. And yet these same people would be quick to brand swingers as freakish or sick. I think this has to do with the issues laid out in part II: you can watch people from another culture do any degrading act, but seeing your own kind behaving that way somehow seems incestuous.

I propose that if you’re not willing put your name on a list like “Atlanta ping-pong enthusiasts,” show up at a community center, and eat potato salad with like minded people, you don’t deserve to see a ping-pong show. The best things in life are free. When you pay for the sex-trade, you are really paying to keep your sexual activities compartmentalized from the rest of your life—to pretend that you aren’t a scumbag; the sex-trade is really built on the fees are willing to pay to maintain hypocrisy.