A while ago, James Deen, a now infamous pornstar, was accused by nine different woman of sexually assaulting them. Some of these women were fellow adult stars, others were- actually it doesn’t even matter. Right now, to sketch out what’s to come in this article, we’ll just focus on the pornstar’s being raped. There was an episode of Law & Order which touched upon this, and, spoiler alert, she actually lost the case at the end of the episode, with the main idea slithering through the trial being that “pornstars can’t say no.”
Part of the entertainment of porn is the voyeuristic nature of it and the idea that what’s happening in that screen is reality; if this is the commonly held notion, then whoever’s making the porn is doing a fantastic job. Let me blow your mind real quick: Did you know pornstars actually have lives off the screen, and that their personal life is not oftentimes not an imitation of what they do as a profession? Similar to how when an accountant is off the clock they won’t look over your investment portfolio, a pornstar will not have sex with everyone whenever they are off the camera. When your 5 o'clock job ends and your boss comes over and says “hey, go flip this last burger,” you are legally bound not to want to do it, and ultimately, to not do it. When a pornstar is off the clock, she (or he, and while I do absolutely want to cover all spectrums of gender identities who perform pornography/participate in the hookup culture, my attention is solely going to be focused, now, on cisgender women, and therefore I’ll only refer to them as “she/her”) is allowed to say no. As a matter of fact, she can say no on the camera as well if she doesn’t feel comfortable doing what’s being done. Sex is a touchy thing (no pun intended) to perform as a profession and with that there will come a level of shiftiness. That said, there will definitely be times when a pornstar does not want to participate in a scene.
This article very vividly describes, from the victim’s words, the act and the aftermath of her sexual assault, by a local trashcan Brock Turner, a swimmer. I mention his “profession” because it is literally the only reason why he got a 6-month sentence as opposed to a 14-year sentence. The judge said jail would have a “severe impact” on Turner and his swimming career.
……… a “severe impact.”
I’m not going to go into detail about how egregious and ignorant that statement is, however if you need me to color it real quick: someone’s career does not excuse rape. That is what the judge said. The equivalent to his statement would be “the jail time would have a severe impact on how he opens a cash register for the rest of his life.” Think about it for a bit.
What I want to focus on, and the reason why I brought up pornstars in the very beginning, is a claim that the trash can, Brock Turner, made. Apparently, after all is said and done, he will work on “establishing a program for high school and college students in which you speak about your experience to ‘speak out against the college campus drinking culture and the sexual promiscuity that goes along with that.’”
That’s all dandy except for the fact that sexual promiscuity is not the same thing as/does not condone or endorse raping somebody. The speaker said it best, “rape is the absence of promiscuity.” A person being promiscuous, in other words, a person involved in many sexual relationships, does not allow someone else access to their body. Promiscuity warrants consent, as does any sexual encounter- actually any encounter. The talking trash can Brock Turner’s defense also weighed heavily on painting the victim (the article never mentioned her name, at least I don’t think it did) as a fun-loving, alcoholic, sexually free woman who was nothing but eager to head back to his dorm room and let him finger her. No matter how much she loves fun, alcohol, and sex, it does not mean you can rape her.
When someone says no, even if it’s mid fucking sex, you stop. Sex therapists always preach about communication being key to any relationship, so why is it so difficult to just ask for consent, or why it’s difficult to obey orders (and yes, they’re orders. It’s someone else’s fucking body).
I always harp about not calling people “thots” or “hoes” because nothing will ever warrant a person being degraded for their sexual habits. A lot of people will say something along the lines of “ok, but what if she had sex with everyone in the friend group?!” It doesn’t matter! Let someone have sex without judgment! The second you begin to second guess someone’s worth because of their predilections and decisions to act on those preferences is the second you begin to dehumanize another human being. When you dehumanize someone, it’s substantially easier to treat them like less, because you have it stoned into your mind that “I’m better than this person because they have too much sex.” When you treat them like less, you view them like less, and the culmination can and does oftentimes end in rape/some sort of denigration. Why? Nothing is wrong with having sex, or engaging in the hookup culture, despite how oddly colored both may seem at some points. Everything is wrong with unconsented sex, and unconsented attention.
