An investigation for “rape” and “pimping” was opened against the pornographic site Jacquie et Michel and the owner of the site was placed in police custody on Tuesday, June 14. Since then, the testimonies have been linked.
After Nikita Bellucci, it’s Liza Del Sierra’s turn to break the silence. Michel Piron, the owner of the famous pornographic site Jacquie et Michel and four other people were placed in police custody on Tuesday June 14 in an investigation opened in Paris for rape and pimpingin July 2020, indicates BFM TV. Since then, the testimonies of pornographic actresses have emerged to denounce the abuses of the environment.
Of course there is a problem. Under the guise of an amateur, we allow ourselves to do anything while there is profit. And if there’s profit, we’re no longer an amateur
This Wednesday, June 15 on BFM TV, Liza Del Sierra, director, producer and former actress of pornographic films, returned to these abuses. She denounces in particular the absence of rules: “When an actress or a young woman decides to act amateur, inevitably, I think that she is more vulnerable. I sincerely think so because there is no rules”.
If the actresses advise each other, they are also confronted with a sometimes precarious economic reality, details the young woman.
She concludes her interview with our colleagues by saying that she hopes that this case will not harm the “fight led for the recognition of the profession”.
This Tuesday, Nikita Bellucci, actress, producer and activist for “ethical porn” demanded an “apology” from Jacquie and Michel: “The work of justice is going to be very long, but it has to stop,” she warned.
Holly Madison, Rashida Jones’ Hot Girls Wanted, and Miriam Weeks (aka Belle Knox) shed light on a misunderstood phenomenon.
Photo Credit: Netflix
“Who has seen Rashida Jones’ new documentary Hot Girls Wanted?” Holly Madison asked her followers on Twitter earlier this month. “I think every girl should have to see it before she turns 18.”
Five years ago, Madison might not have been the kind of public voice encouraging people to view a documentary on the dangers and exploitation of girls in amateur porn. In fact, it’s more likely that you knew Madison from a little reality TV show called The Girls Next Door, which chronicled life in the Playboy mansion—where Madison lived as Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend.
Madison’s book Down the Rabbit Hole, which tells of her years at Playboy, has spent five weeks on the New York Times bestseller list since its release June 23. It’s a page-turning story of caution and regret. I couldn’t help but notice the similarities I’ve read in stories of women who were exploited in the sex industry.
“Exploited?” A friend gaped when I brought this up in conversation recently. “Holly Madison was living large at the Playboy mansion. She got whatever she wanted and threw huge parties where everyone was at her beck and call. She became a Las Vegas star after that. Who could say that she was exploited? She certainly gained a lot from that arrangement.”
But ask Holly Madison. Ask Tressa, a subject in Rashida Jones’ new documentary Hot Girls Wanted. Ask Miriam Weeks, whose story of trying to pay her Duke tuition bill by moonlighting as porn star Belle Knox went viral last year. Say what you will about these women being willing participants in their sex-based careers. What’s clear from the stories surfacing is that this is an industry with a lot of manipulation and very little regulation.
How do you convince a woman with dreams of a better life that this isn’t a road worth traveling down?
Photo Credit: Netflix (from Hot Girls Wanted)
That’s exactly what Madison’s book is trying to do. Sure, Madison became famous from her connections to Playboy. But did you know that she wasn’t paid for the entire first season of TheGirls Next Door? That once the show was renewed, they pretty much forced her to sign a contract that she couldn’t leave her relationship with Hefner? That she was deceived by Playboy residents into believing that Hefner’s girlfriends were just arm candy for the old man before being pushed into unwanted sexual relations when she was incoherently drunk? That she was offered Quaaludes? Once she was sucked into the “Playboy vortex,” as she calls it, her movements were constantly monitored. She was subject to a strict curfew, had limited access to the outside world, and was literally followed by Hefner’s men when she had a rare night on her own. As Madison puts it, “Many people assume Playboy was my blessing, but most don’t know it was also my curse.”
These examples from Madison’s book are just a few of the similarities her story shares with countless other women who have been involved in the sex industry—unjust distribution of income, tight leashes, deceit and manipulation, and unwanted sexual relations, among others. As it turns out, Playboy, which can seem high-end and almost family-friendly on the spectrum of adult offerings (I mean, Marilyn Monroe appeared in it, right?), is in fact not immune to the same risks and abuses prevalent in other seedier corners of the industry.
Bait and Switch
Watching Hot Girls Wanted, released earlier this year and now viewable on Netflix, is like watching Spring Breakers, except instead of being about girls on spring break, it’s about girls in porn, and the film doesn’t end with the girls having a triumphant shooting rampage (oh, and it is well done and worth seeing). OK, actually it is nothing like Spring Breakers. Except that they’re both dark and depressing.
Hot Girls Wanted shows the behind-the-scenes life of young women doing amateur porn in Miami, Florida. Most of the women have just turned 18 and found the gig by answering online job listings. One of the women interviewed for the documentary, Tressa, says she found the ad “on Craiglist under TV and radio jobs.” According to a male porn actor interviewed in the film, “There’s an influx of girls who wanna do porn. A lot of them know it’s a trap, but the money’s right there in their face; they take it and just hope for the best.”
There’s also the story of Miriam Weeks. Known in the porn world as Belle Knox, or the “Duke University porn star,” Weeks was unexpectedly outed by classmates and has since shared her story in the web series Becoming Belle Knox. Weeks explains, “I thought this would be a part-time job, but I was so naive to think I could do that . . . you can’t just do a part-time job, you have to constantly be your porn alter ego.”
All these stories share, to varying degrees, common elements that should disturb us. These were women in dire financial need who felt they had limited options. Once they were “in it,” their options became even more limited. In many cases the women say they were given a much different picture than reality. They felt pressured to go along with sexual encounters even when they felt uncomfortable; under the control of skilled manipulators, things often happened faster than they could process in time to say no.
Madison was broke and had just been kicked out of her apartment when she was offered the option of staying at the Playboy mansion. The girls in Hot Girls Wanted were 18 years old with little to no other job history. Weeks felt the financial pinch to provide for her college expenses. Do we see a theme? When it comes to women joining the sex industry, most are approached by predators who aim for women who are young, naive, and in financial straits. In Becoming Belle Knox, Weeks reveals her bleak perspective that led to her porn career: “Life is debts, and life is bills, and life is making adult decisions.”
Unfortunately for many women, despite their entering the industry out of financial need, they don’t make as much as they imagined. “There [are] a lot of expenses with doing porn,” Weeks said after counting her earnings from a promotional display at a porn convention and mentally calculating her total income after expenses. “Being a porn star was very expensive,” Tressa echoes in Hot Girls Wanted. “Rent, nails, makeup, food, flights, and then 10 percent for Riley. I only made $25,000 in four months. And after I got out I had $2,000 in my bank account.”
That’s mind-boggling when you consider just how much money is in the business of porn. According to research conducted by Debby Herbenick and Bryant Paul of The Kinsey Institute for Hot Girls Wanted, “More people visit porn sites each month than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined. More and more of what people watch is ‘pro-am’ porn—videos featuring paid amateurs. . . . A vast amount of online pornography can be seen for free, but many pro-am websites featuring brand new girls charge subscription fees. The top three are worth an estimated $50 million.” The porn industry overall makes more than $13 billion in profit every year. For context, that’s more than Hollywood, which makes around $8 billion. That’s also more than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple, and Netflix combined.
Despite women being the main commodity, a male ringleader usually makes the most bank by controlling the women. In Hot Girls Wanted it was Riley, a combo landlord and booking agent who recruited the girls on Craigslist. “I drive my girls to and from shoots, and I make . . . good money,” he says in the film. In the case of Madison and the other girls at the Playboy mansion, the ringleader was the famous Hugh Hefner. Weeks was more of a free agent. She says in Becoming Belle Knox that she’s “so used to being always on the lookout for scammers or people who are going to try to pimp [her] out or traffic [her].” Comments like this are a testament to just how at-large pimping and trafficking are in the sex industry. And how skilled manipulation is often used to lure women into it.
While Madison made enemies in the Playboy mansion for her refusal to participate in prostitution for outside escort services, she found out that many women associated with Playboy were lured in. “Girls were routinely convinced that these men were willing to pay a premium for simply the pleasure of their company and not necessarily for sex—but from what I understand, that was almost never the case,” she writes in Down the Rabbit Hole.
In addition to drawing in those in financial need and taking a cut from their earnings, working in the sex industry offers neither good job security (generally their job lasts only as long as their youthful looks) nor options for employment after they leave. As Madison found out, “Being attached to Playboy can make people not want to have anything to do with you, even in quirky, crazy Hollywood. There were many times the hateful backlash made me wish I stayed the broke, awkward, 21-year-old waitress I’d been before Hef came into my life.”
Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Another glaring issue brought to light by these women’s stories is the prevalence of abuse and rape in the sex industry.
Rough. That’s the word that seems to come to mind first when girls in amateur porn describe a scene they didn’t like. “It was a really, really, really rough scene,” Weeks said about her first dip into porn. “I wasn’t prepared for how rough it was.”
Weeks is referring to her first porn set, where she was physically beaten and choked as the cameras rolled. It’s an experience that amateur porn actresses face on a regular basis—signing on for one thing (a porn scene as it was described to you, for a certain amount of money), but then being forced to do something else while the cameras roll. It’s not uncommon for women to get physically beaten or forced to do a sexual act they weren’t informed of beforehand. Before Weeks’ scene where she is recorded on camera getting “ass-kicked,” Weeks had been told, “It’s not that bad; they’ll be very nice to you.” Despite her initial no, she ultimately agreed; $1200 was “fast, easy money” after all—or, at least, it was fast.
It turns out that formerly agreed-upon terms change very frequently on porn sets—once the actresses have already flown to the location, are in compromised positions, and feel they don’t have the option to decline.
That wasn’t the only scene in which Weeks had an unwanted sexual encounter. As she further describes in Becoming Belle Knox, her agent intentionally didn’t give her details about a porn shoot until she had committed to it. By the time she was informed the man was 50 years old, she felt her hands were tied, and she couldn’t say no. She would get fined and never hired from the company again. She went through with it “for professionalism,” she says. Despite feeling “like crying during the entire scene” and afterward feeling “really upset,” Weeks concluded that “even if your boundaries are disrespected, you should do the scene anyway.”
Employing “force, fraud, or coercion” in commercial sex acts is what is known as the crime of sex trafficking. Weeks may not have a sole person pimping her, but what she’s subjected to is dangerously close to sex trafficking, if not definitively so.
Photo Credit: Netflix
Weeks’ experience mirrored some of those recorded in the Hot Girls Wanted documentary. “Today was just so horrible,” Tressa said after doing a bondage scene. “That last part I hated so much,” a woman named Rachel says after a scene that was particularly painful. For Rachel’s scene, the director told the actors, “You kinda never get that yes,” suggesting that the forbidden nature of the sex act would make it more titillating for viewers. Turns out, in many cases, what’s true for the porn-fantasy script is true in reality. You kinda never get that yes.
At least 40 percent of porn depicts violence against women, according to Hot Girls Wanted. Among such trends are forced blow jobs to the point of making girls vomit (called “facial abuse” in porn lingo). “I was scared,” Rachel told a roommate after a rough scene. “I didn’t know that I could tell him no, or the fact that we had already recorded fifteen minutes that I could f***ing leave . . . then what? Then I understand that that’s how rape victims feel.”
“It’s really not that hard to take advantage of an 18-year-old [who’s] f***ing on camera,” Tressa says, reflecting on her time in porn. “I mean, most girls when I was in the industry would say yes to anything; if it had a dollar sign, sign me up.”
According to Herbenick and Paul’s research for Hot Girls Wanted, “In 2014, abuse porn websites averaged over 60 million combined hits per month—more hits than nfl.com, nba.com, hotwire.com, cbs.com, fortune.com, disney.com, and nbcnews.com.” Other researchers found that 88.2 percent of top-rated porn scenes contain aggressive acts; in 70 percent of occurrences, a man is the aggressor, and 94 percent of the time the violence is directed toward a woman.
As it happens, the forced smiles of women in the sex industry are just a fantasy. Far from enjoying the sexcapades, women are often just trying to grin and bear it. “It wasn’t even arousing . . . a lot of porn is like that,” Rachel says after one of her rougher scenes. “It’s all about the guy getting off.”
Although there was less violence, the same was true in the Playboy mansion. “I have never had a more disconnected experience,” Madison says of her first sexual encounter in the mansion. “There was zero intimacy involved.” That was the first of what became a routine experience twice a week. According to Madison’s book, the girlfriends would be expected to have a night out and then partake in Hefner’s bedroom schedule, which included the girls mimicking porn-like behavior with porn in the background, Hefner going from girl to girl without asking consent, and then climaxing by himself, again watching porn. Madison says that first time “weighed heavily” on her and was just the first on a long list of mistreatments she experienced at the mansion.
The Long Way Around
It may confuse some readers to understand why women don’t run kicking and screaming from scenarios like these. To be fair, many do. But still many others, once they experience something like this, experience a mess of emotions that includes a fear of facing their violation and a desire to feel in control—to own it, in other words. Mix this with a heavy dose of psychological manipulation from someone who’s likely an experienced predator, and you’ve got a girl who might not have an easy exit strategy.
“While I had come into the mansion looking for a temporary safe harbor and a possible stepping-stone to a Hollywood career,” Madison says, “I had fallen down a rabbit hole of nasty girls, a degrading love life, eroded self-esteem, and total fear of judgment from the outside world. . . . I just couldn’t admit to myself that I had made a terrible choice moving into the mansion in the first place. It was cognitive dissonance at its finest.”
Madison further explained, “It took years for me to realize just how manipulated and used I had been. I could never admit that to myself at the time because to do so would have been to acknowledge how dark and scary a situation I was in . . . and how very little in control I was.”
After reading Madison’s book, one can’t help but cringe to hear Weeks say, as she does in Becoming Belle Knox with a nervous laugh,“I have my identity, I know what I need, and I know what I want, sometimes . . . with porn everything is on my terms, I can say no whenever I want to, I am in control.” Viewers hear this moments before she promotes herself at a convention booth. “This movie is coming out; I get gangbanged; they put a collar and a leash on me; it’s really hot. I like rough stuff.” Rough, indeed.
A Line in the Sand
Are Holly and Tressa and Rachel and Miriam total victims though?
Well, yes and no.
Did they know what they were getting into? Yes, to the extent that they knew this was racy; this was risky. They may have even gone to a lot of effort to make themselves look desirable for the industry. But the no is a big no. No, because they didn’t know the extent to which they’d be abused, whether verbally or physically. No, because in many ways they were deceived and conned along the way. No, because they didn’t have full knowledge of the costs.
Did they make bad choices? Sure. (As Madison puts it, “I hope that sharing my mistakes can prevent someone else from making similar ones or give someone the courage to leave a bad situation.”) Can they bounce back? Sure, some are incredibly resilient. But was what happened wrong? Yes. It is wrong for others to gain profit and pleasure off the profound mistreatment of women.
We already have a national crisis of sexual assault and abuse not being reported; it’s only worse for women who’ve signed up for it and feel they don’t have any recourse. Women who are abused in the sex industry and do seek legal help are often slandered or discredited; they have few advocates in the public square besides a small community of other women who have also left the industry.
Photo Credit: Netflix
All the same, the public view of the sex industry, whether porn or Playboy, is that it is something the women freely choose and get justly compensated for. The myth that there’s such a thing as a high-end, no-abuse zone within the sex industry endures. Madison thought that was the Playboy Mansion. Weeks thought that was the California shoot she flew to on a three-day weekend. The young women in Jones’ documentary thought it was the gig in Miami. Turns out that what they had expected was very different from reality; all they had been exposed to was the media’s portrayal as it’s marketed to the public. Which is, of course, just fantasy.
But it’s a tempting fantasy, even for those in it. Many try to suggest, even if just a little bit, that sex work isn’t always bad. There are some humane cases of sex industry work; there are even feminist ways you can portray porn. No one wants to say all porn is bad, lest they sound like a moral extremist or a prude. Even Rashida Jones, who produced Hot Girls Wanted,has said, “I have no problem with porn. . . . I think it’s great that we have the freedom to explore our sexual fantasies and that there are tools to do that. The problem [for] me is that there’s no regulation in the industry.”
But what if these trends we see, from Belle Knox to Playboy to Miami, all point to something—that the sex industry, which exploits large swaths of women, is innately harmful? That it has always relied on the same thing to make money—dehumanizing vulnerable women for profit. To deny this is to endanger future girls. Perpetuating the fake story line for one more girl to buy in to—to think that, yet again, their brush with the sex industry will be different—is something very dangerous.
Toward the end of Hot Girls Wanted, one of the more seasoned porn actresses hears about Duke’s new amateur star, Belle Knox, including her abusive scene for a porn site she, too, knows well. “Facial abuse is, like, extra degrading,” she exclaims. “Not everybody can come back from that. I can tell by the way that she talks about it. . . . I mean, she doesn’t talk about it. She was one of those girls who didn’t know what she was getting herself into.”
The more we perpetuate the myth of healthy, happy porn careers, the more we make believe that it’s possible to have Marilyn Monroe’s highs without her lows. And, sadly, the more women will wander down the rabbit hole, thinking they’re the exception, not the rule.
Belle Knox, the infamous Duke University porn star, is in a documentary where she discusses the realities of her life in porn and her true self, Miriam Weeks, who chose this as her profession to pay her way through college.
It’s a story from last August yet it’s still relevant because the underlying truth of the industry is still the same.
As her alter-ego, Belle Knox, Miriam has spent her first year in the porn industry touting her beliefs that porn is “empowering,” “freeing” and “the way the world should be.” She also portrays her choice in finding a way to fund her tuition and graduate free of debt as something akin to noble in the documentary.
However, the realities of Miriam’s life choice clearly weigh heavy on her.
Weeks did a series of interviews for an upcoming documentary. In them, she paints a much different picture than the freeing, empowering, sex-fueled fantasy world her fans and porn supporters claim she inhabits.
“The sex industry has a way of making you very cynical and very bitter,” a tired-looking Weeks tells an off-camera interviewer, “In a way I’ve started to become kind of a bit bitter and a bit cynical.”
“It teaches you to be street smart and not to trust people…I’m so used to being on the lookout for scammers, people who are going to try pimp me out or traffic me. I think my experiences have aged me. I don’t have the mind of an eighteen-year-old. I have the emotional baggage of someone much, much older than me.”
There is a deeper, darker reason that Miriam entered into the world of porn. She was raped and victims of rape have serious issues with control.
In many interviews, Weeks talks obsessively about how porn gives her control over her own sexual destiny: “In porn, everything is on my terms. I can say no whenever I want to. I am in control.” Later on, we discover why this is so important to her: Weeks reveals that she had been raped. “What porn has done for me,” she says firmly, “is it has given me back my agency.”
Miriam’s thinking is erroneous. She has sold herself into a perverted industry wrought with danger and humiliation for the sake of “control.”
Miriam herself admits that her first scene, shot for a company she refers to as “Facial Abuse,” was “a really, really rough scene. I wasn’t prepared for how rough it was. It was weird having some random photographer watch me have my a** kicked on camera.” She talks about getting literally torn up during porn shoots. She admits that porn shoots in which she was physically beaten up until she sobbed were probably shoots she should have refused. Yet she didn’t.
The truth is the industry controls her. In many cases, if she wants to work, she often must agree to a shoot without knowing the scene and who is in it. Once she agrees she is fined for walking out and the penalty is steep, the risk of not working again.
For one shoot, Miriam recalls almost tearfully, her agent wouldn’t tell her who she had to “work with.” When she arrived at the set, she realized he was fifty years old. She wanted to leave, but then she’d have to pay a 300 dollar “kill fee,” the director would have been furious, and, she says, she could never have worked for that company again. So she did it.
The reality of her choice weighs heavy on her and the consequences are great.
“I felt like crying during the entire scene and afterwards I was really, really upset,” Miriam says tearfully to the camera, looking like nothing more than the hurting 18-year-old girl she is. “I just thought of my mom, who was always there for me and always protected me…I think about my mom a lot when I do porn scenes. Just how sad she would be that her little daughter was doing this.”
Miriam is a lost soul who has been a victim of sexual assault resulting in choices where shame has become her partner leaving scars of self loathing, literally.
One day looking in the mirror, she became so overcome with self-hatred that she smashed the mirror and cut herself, slicing the jagged letters “FAT” into the flesh of her thigh.
While Miriam has her dark moments that hint at unhappiness and regret, she continues down this tragic path.
What is sickening is that there is even a demand in our society that has turned into multi-billion dollar industry that preys on the Miriam’s of the world. As I contemplate Miriam crying wondering what her mom thinks of her doing porn, I wonder what the dad’s of our culture would think of their 18-year-old daughter doing porn.
There have been numerous reports of human rights abuse in the adult film industry. The inappropriate and rash themes such as ‘bondage’ and ‘sex slaves’ shown in the adult-movies have affected the lives of its actors and its viewers. Women are portrayed as enjoying forced-sex and enjoying being whipped, choked and beaten which indirectly promotes and normalizes rape culture. Various Human Rights treaties have conferred upon the mankind, various fundamental rights, which are inalienable.
It is certain that the adult film industry has devastated its actors and has become a hub of trafficking. This article gets into the details of how the adult film industry has directly violated the human rights of its actors. The article further includes case laws and confessions from female porn actors who have acted in such movies. Other major issues i.e. child-pornography and human trafficking have also been dealt with.
By Jasmine Siddiqui, a 4th year student currently enrolled in B.A. LL.B (H) from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
Introduction
The adult film industry is considered as one of the biggest industries in the world. Porn is watched in almost every second house. It is a pre-conceived notion in our society that the industry is one that of leisure and fun. It appears to be all gold and glitter but the reality is far away from this.
The world of adult films is humiliating and the lives of its workers are dull and shady. The industry has portrayed ‘bondage’ as if it were right and common. The portraying of women as sex slaves and whipping them on their private parts are some of the main themes of pornographic videos. Many people love passionate sex but bondage and slave sex is not a form of passionate sex. It is sheer violence and inhumane behavior towards the porn performer and further promoting cruelty and torture among its viewers.
It is reported from time to time by various human rights organisations how women are forced to be part of the porn industry and are coerced to be slaves or servants of influential clients. The porn actors’ human rights are violated due to violent and humiliating pornographic acts which they are often forced to perform. Trafficking, child abuse, non-consensual sex and fake contracts are some of the other human rights violations.
Apart from the actors, the viewers are also highly affected by such content. They get exposed to such uncommon and unacceptable sexual behavior that they often desire to have same type of sex with their partners. They imitate the actors and start turning hostile towards their partners which results in increased sexual crimes/assault cases toward women.
Many porn websites purchase homemade porn videos and allow their upload on their portal. This tends to men capturing their intimating scenes with their partners, mostly with hidden cameras which they later sell in return for a good price from porn websites.
Trafficking In Adult Film Industry Is Unreported But Not Uncommon
The viewers of adult videos believe that the porn stars are performing in such videos by their will. They defend pornography by saying that if porn stars didn’t enjoy what they were doing then they would have quit the industry. This may not be the case every time. Trafficking and porn industry may seem unrelated but the reality is far opposite.
Article 3 of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children defines Trafficking as, “Recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.”
Sex trafficking is a form of human trafficking which involves trafficking of women and children for the purpose of commercial sex or sexual exploitation. The term “commercial sex act” is defined as “any sex act on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person.” [1] The term ‘sex trafficking’ is not particularly defined in the UN conventions but a Parliamentary Act of the United States defines it.
According to The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) sex trafficking is defined as “Recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of an individual through the means of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of commercial sex”.
Sex traffickers target victims through false promises. The adult film industry includes escort services, brothels, clubs and fake massage parlors. The International Labor Organization asserts that there are 4.8 million people trapped in forced sexual exploitation globally. According to a report by International Human Rights NGO based in Japan, there have been numerous cases in which Japanese women were coerced to appear in adult pornographic videos.
Very recently in 2016, young women were contracted to be models or actress but later they were forced to do pornographic videos. The porn companies make them sign the contract and later coerce them of penalty or other similar threats. They are forced to perform sex scenes and later their videos and pictures are circulated among adult cinemas and internet. The report further claims that many derogatory roles are assigned to the porn actress which includes the role of being a slave or debt bondage. In many cases, it has been revealed that young innocent actresses who are new to the industry gets duped by an agent under the pretence that she is assigned a simple role but in reality she is forced to do ‘rough sex.’
The Case Of United States V. Bagley
In the American case of United States v. Bagley, a husband and his wife were accused of trafficking a minor. The victim ran away from a foster home at the age of 16 years and was taken into their home by a married couple. They treated the victim as their property and forced her to sign a contract to be their sex slave. She was made to forcefully dance at clubs. They not only beat her but also whipped, flogged, choked, caned, skewered, drowned, mutilated, hung and caged her. She was tattooed on her arm with a Chinese character for “slave.” She was electrocuted and suffered cardiac arrest for which she was hospitalized at the age of 23.
In yet another case of the Netherlands, four people were found guilty of kidnapping asylum seekers from North America and forcing them to take part in pornography. The victims were taped and recorded while forced to have sex with men and animals. One of the victims escaped and reported the local police. This depicts the hidden reality of organized human trafficking of women especially of women coming from vulnerable places.
Adult Film Industry Promotes Rape Culture & Sexual Exploitation
More and more porn stars are now coming up to speak about the terrifying reality of the adult film industry. Female porn stars have reported that they have to shoot films which contain brutal acts. One porn star was reported saying, “I agreed to do the scene, thinking it was less beating and only a punch in the head. He had worn his solid gold ring the entire time and continued to punch me with it. I actually stopped the scene while it was being filmed because I was in too much pain.” [4] Abuse and sexual violence are that common in the porn industry.
The adult film industry through its abusive and pervasive videos promotes gender stereotypes. Pornography changes the way the world sees women. There is nothing like love and affection in the porn videos and women are depicted as sexual objects with insatiable sexual desires who are always ready to please men. Pornography has made the outer body only criteria for judging women.
Women are expected to have perfect body figures just as the appealing body figures of the female porn stars. Porn websites contain male domination and female submission videos as if these are the expected roles. The viewers of ‘bondage’ and ‘rough sex’ porn videos often start lacking empathy for women. Their behavior towards women turns dominating and sexually imposing.
A study consisting of data from seven countries found that effects of pornography include increase in verbal and physical aggression. [5] Another study found that males aged 14 to 19 who viewed pornography have more often sexually harassed a female peer. [6] Many women have reported that their partners turn aggressive during sex and perform rough sex without even asking for the other partner’s consent. Though sex is a person’s choice and many couples enjoy unnatural sex; including oral and anal sex but this becomes a matter of fear and concern when the male partner starts enjoying to see her female partner in pain, crying and begging for his mercy. These brutal sexual acts leave women in fear. Choking, gagging, spitting are among some humilities usually done by their male partners.
The question is how and why young people find it alright to be abusive with their partners? The answer is ‘Porn’. Usually young children grow up watching porn. Sex-education is not common in most of the countries like India. The adult videos websites are flooded with submissive sex videos that it becomes the new normal for these young adolescents. It is an accepted fact that pornography has a higher impact on adolescents. They tend to believe that women are designated to be sexually exploited by men.
A report from November 2019 surveyed some British women which found that a third of them below the age of forty have been victims of choking, slapping, gagging or spitting during sex. 20% of these women said they were left frightened by the incidents. [7] Yet another study by Debby Herbenick who is a sex researcher found out that nearly a quarter of adult women in the US have reported unwanted choking during sex. [8]
Top 50 popular pornographic videos were analysed and it was found that 88% of scenes contained physical violence, 49% contained verbal aggression, 87% of aggressive acts were against women, and 95% were neutral expressions. [9]
Not only physical violence but verbal abuse has also become an intensive part of the adult film industry. Women are often called with names like “bitches”. They are portrayed and used as sexual objects. Such occurrences have affected the dignity of women in real life also. There is an increase in the performance of rough sex between real life couples where women are considered as mere sexual objects. These occurrences have direct correlation to the extreme violence and verbal abuse typified in pornography. [10]
There is a fine line between pleasure and pain but through these pornographic videos the porn websites are depicting that inflicting pain upon women is a pleasurable and fun activity; for both men and women. The BDSM category videos promote rape, sexual abuse, cruel and inhumane behavior. While shooting such videos, the porn stars go through highly painful experience. They are not even allowed to leave the shoot in between. This is nothing but rape. If we go by the definition of rape, penetration of penis or any other object into the sexual parts or mouth of a woman without her will and consent amounts to rape.
In a survey conducted, the interviewer did not even mention about pornography yet out of 193 cases of rape, 24% rapists mentioned that they were stimulated by pornographic materials including videos and writings. These rapists insisted that the victims enjoyed rape and extreme violence. [11] Another study by FBI researchers concluded that out of 36 serial killers 29 were attracted to violent and rough sex pornography which they tried to do with their female partners and ended up killing them. [12]
In March 2020, Pornhub was accused for profiting from rape and abusive videos. An online petition was circulated against Pornhub for facilitating sexual trafficking and for weak protection policies. In a reported incident, a couple’s intimating video was stolen from her mobile phone and later sold to Pornhub. She got trending in top five ‘soft porn’ videos category until it was removed after few days. [13] In yet another incident, a 15 year old girl was raped and her videos were later uploaded on Pornhub and other porn websites.
Porn sites are also accused of giving a platform to ‘revenge porn’. A revenge porn victim felt extremely embarrassed when she found out that her intimating videos with her ex-boyfriend had been uploaded on Pornhub which crossed 600,000 views. [14] This is how giant adult websites such as Pornhub and YouPorn are promoting non-consensual sex and are profiting from this.
The Case Of Adult Film Actress, Linda Lovelace
Linda Lovelace, a former porn actress revealed her experience in porn industry. Many books and movies have been written and filmed depicting her life story. Her autobiography titled ‘Ordeal’ reveals that she was forced into the porn industry. She shared that her first shoot in the adult industry included gang rape by five men. Her husband forced her into prostitution and private porn and he threatened to shoot her from his pistol if she did not cooperate. She wrote, “They treated me like a plastic doll. They were playing musical chairs with my body parts. I engaged in sex acts for pornography against my will and consent in order to save my life and my families’ lives.”
Child Pornography Flourishes In A World With No Borders
In legal language, a child is a person below the age of 18 years. In recent times, child pornography is on the rise due to easy accessibility on internet. In 1996, World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children defined commercial sexual exploitation of children as “sexual abuse by the adult and remuneration in cash or kind to the child or a third person or persons.”
It includes prostitution of children, child pornography, and child sex tourism. Further, if a child enters into sexual activity in return of money, food, shelter or any other necessity then also it comes under the purview of commercial sexual exploitation. Cases where sexual abuse are not reported by the family members due to benefits derived by the family members from the perpetrator also amount to commercial sexual exploitation. The production, promotion and distribution of child pornography, child sex tourism and use of children in public or private sex shows are also within its ambit. This broad definition is acknowledged by the International Labor Organisation in its 2015 report.
According to the UN Special Report on the Sale of Children and Child Prostitution, it is estimated there are around three quarters of a million people on the internet searching for child pornography videos. The report also claimed that child pornography has now turned into a billion dollar business. More than one-third producers of child-pornography are the child’s family members and more than a third people who are guilty of possession of such pornography live with the children.
In a 2015 report by Pornhub, India holds third position in the list of most porn watching countries while USA and UK bagged the top positions respectively and Indian viewers are more interested in ‘teen porn’ [15] despite the fact that India has very strict laws against child pornography. According to the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, child pornography includes “any representation of a child engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities or of the sexual parts of a child for primarily sexual purposes.”
According to Section 67B of the information technology Act, child pornography is illegal and any person browsing for child pornography videos can be punished with five years of imprisonment along with a fine of Rs. 1 million. India has also accepted the Convention on the Rights of Child on 11th December, 1992. In 2012, The Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act, was enacted. Its aim was to protect the children from sexual assault, sexual harassment, pornography. Article 39(f) of the Indian Constitution provides for the State to secure children against exploitation.
The Optional Protocol to the (U.N.) Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, The Council of European Convention on Cybercrime and The Council of European Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse are three effective International treaties to combat sexual exploitation and abuse of children. These three contain provisions for providing punishment to the perpetrators.
Pornography Affects The Dignity Of Women
Pornography violates porn actor’s human rights by affecting their dignity and constituting forced labor and trafficking. All human beings have equal and similar human rights. As per Article 1 of the UDHR, humans are born free and as per Article 1 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, the dignity of every human must be respected and protected. Not all, but many porn actors are humiliated and made to perform sexual acts without their consent. This is disrespect towards their dignity.
Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights gives every human the right to life, liberty and security of person. Article 5 of the UDHR and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights state that “no one shall be subjected to torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. It is evident from previously mentioned case studies, that the porn industry treats women in an inhumane way. They take advantage of poor and vulnerable minorities.
Article 4 of the UDHR and European Conventions on Human Rights prohibit slavery or servitude. Article 23(1) prohibits human trafficking. There are several conventions and treaties which the Nation-States sign in order to protect their citizens’s rights. Article 6 of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women obliges the State parties to prevent trafficking and exploitation of women. The Convention for Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, considers trafficking done for the purpose of prostitution as evil and incompatible for human dignity and welfare.
Pornography is illegal in India under sections 292 and 293 of Indian Penal Code. In India, Article 23 of the Constitution prohibits trafficking in human beings and forced labor in any form. The Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act penalizes trafficking for ‘commercial sexual exploitation’ with imprisonment of 7 years to life imprisonment. India is also a signatory to the Prevention of Suppression of Women and Children Convention.
Conclusion
Every person has a right to choose a profession of his/her own choice. Prostitution and being porn stars does not make them less humans. They also do have equal and similar human rights as persons following other occupations. A porn star’s rights against forced sex are also a matter of human rights. The defense that the porn actors take up the work with consent is not a valid defense because ‘consent’ in the porn industry becomes very difficult to prove. The ambiguity remains intact as for what purpose she consented to.
Did she consent to do simple sex or sex in any form or her consent was gained by faking the terms of the contract. All these points become difficult to prove. Rising aggression and hostility towards female partners are effects of aggressive porn videos. These industries only focus on earning profits rather than the worker’s safety. Not only the porn industry but such content is publicized even by Hollywood like the movie- 50 Shades of Grey. The international and national laws are good on paper but when it comes to implementing these, the gap is never filled.
References:
Sex trafficking, National Human Trafficking Hotline, https://humantraffickinghotline.org/type-trafficking/sex-trafficking
U.S.A v. Edward Bagley, http://www.justice.gov/usao/mow/news2011/bagley_indictment2.pdf
Jorge Keek, The dark side of the adult film industry, Film Daily (July, 3, 2020), https://filmdaily.co/news/female-porn-stars-abuse/
PJ Wright, A Meta-Analysis of Pornography Consumption and Actual Acts of Sexual Aggression in General Population Studies, Journal of Communication (Dec, 29, 2015), https://academic.oup.com/joc/article-abstract/66/1/183/4082427?redirectedFrom=PDF
European Centre for Law and Justice, Pornography and Human Rights, European Centre for Law and Justice (July, 2019), https://eclj.org/geopolitics/pace/pornography–human-rights
Ruth Akinradewo, The Dark of Pornography, Press Red (Dec, 05, 2019) https://pressred.org/2019/12/05/the-dark-side-of-pornography/
Debby Herbenick, Feeling Scared During Sex, Journal of Sex and Martial Therapy (Apr,4, 2019) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2018.1549634
Ana J Bridges et al, Aggression and Sexual Behavior in Best-Selling Pornography Videos: A Content Analysis Update, Violence against Women (Oct, 26, 2010) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077801210382866
Supra note 7
Robert W. Peters, Laura J. Lederer, Shane Kelly, The Slave and The Porn Star: Sexual Trafficking and Pornography, The Protection Project Journal of Human Rights and Civil Society Issue 5, Pg.13 (2012)
Supra note 11
Kate Issacs, PornHub Needs to change or shut-down (Mar, 9, 2020), https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/09/pornhub-needs-to-change-or-shut-down
James Melley, My sister found me in revenge porn online, BBC NEWS (Feb 25, 2020) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-49583420
Souvik Ray, Top 10 most porn watching countries in the world: India on 3 rd India Times (July, 3, 2020, 4:51 P.M) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiatimes.com/amp/news/world/india-3rd-most-porn-watching-country-in-the-world-up-from-4th-last-year-249212.html
Understand Everything About The Survey On The “Jacquie Et Michel” Porn Site
16-6-2022 18:49:46
The owner of the “Jacquie et Michel” site was placed in police custody on Tuesday in the investigation opened in July 2020 in Paris for “rape and pimping”
The owner of the “Jacquie et Michel” site, Michel Piron, and four other people were placed in police custody on Tuesday in the investigation opened in July 2020 in Paris for “rape and pimping”.
“Jacquie et Michel” is a group born in 1999 and which based its success on the purchase of amateur videos at low cost in France.It announced 15 million euros in turnover in 2016.
Back to the “Jacquie et Michel” affair, a thunderclap in the amateur porn industry.
For a year, exceptional court cases have forced French porn to react and change its practices, a difficult step for an environment where consent is sometimes an abstract notion.
At the center of this file, the pornographic site “Jacquie et Michel”, currently under investigation for “rape” and “pimping”, and the sprawling case targeting the practices of “French Bukkake”.
A platform that offers extremely violent videos featuring young women often making their debut in the industry.
It would be the first time in France that porn actors have been prosecuted for “rape”.
While this Tuesday, the owner of “Jacquie et Michel” was placed in police custody,
20 Minutes
takes stock of this case which is shaking the amateur porn industry.
“Jacquie and Michel”, what is it?
“Jacquie et Michel” is a group born in 1999 and which based its success on the purchase of amateur videos at low cost in France.
The group, which notably owns the pornographic site in its name, announced a turnover of 15 million euros in 2016. “Jacquie et Michel” gradually professionalized its production, to come to now compete with the Dorcel group and ranks among the leaders of the pornographic industry.
Where are we with the investigation for “rape and pimping” concerning him?
The owner of the “Jacquie et Michel” site, Michel Piron, and four other people were taken into custody on Tuesday in the investigation for “rape and pimping”.
Nicolas Cellupica, the lawyer for the Arès group, chaired by Michel Piron and owner of the famous eponymous pornographic site, announced the placement in police custody of his 64-year-old client as well as his wife, Araceli, aged 60.
Michel Piron is retained in particular for “sexual assault” as well as for complicity in several offenses, including “aggravated rape”, “aggravated pimping” and “trafficking in human beings”, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.
Three men, presented as “actors” by a source close to the case, are in particular in police custody for “aggravated rape or in a meeting”, “trafficking in human beings” or even “pimping”, still according to the prosecution.
When was the investigation?
The Paris public prosecutor’s office launched this investigation in July 2020 for “rape and pimping”, entrusted to the 3rd district of the Paris judicial police, after a report sent by Dare feminism, the Effronté-es and the movement of the Nest.
These three associations relayed the testimonies of several actresses.
In essence, these ensure that many actresses are forced to perform “unconventional and painful” sexual practices when they are not consenting.
And that they then undergo the dissemination of their image, even of their identity, without having the slightest control over this dissemination.
“This is why we qualify pornography as an act of torture and barbarism”, summed up
Claire Quidet, president of the Mouvement du Nid, in this description at
20 Minutes .
The starting point of this whole affair?
The broadcast by the Konbini site, in February 2020, of the testimony of two actresses recounting having undergone sexual acts for which they were not prepared.
According to the prosecution, “the procedure has seven complainants” to date.
The fact remains that the platform, popularized by the formula “We say thank you who?
is just the tree that hides a gigantic forest of other porn sites on which the videos are also distributed in order to multiply the income triggered by each viewing.
Another survey, conducted in Paris since 2020, thus targets the practices of the “French Bukkake” platform.
At least 12 people, including the producers nicknamed Pascal OP and Mat Hadix, are being prosecuted in this case, exceptional in its scope and open for “aggravated human trafficking”, “rape in a meeting” or “aggravated pimping”.
Since then, investigators have identified around fifty victims.
What the law says ?
This is a subject that still angers in the porn industry: the distinction between “professional” and “amateur”.
Following revelations about violence in the sector, French platforms such as “Dorcel” or “Jacquie et Michel” announced in November 2020 their desire to adopt ethical and deontological charters.
The fact remains that on Tuesday, at the announcement of the placement in police custody of his client, Michel Piron’s lawyer again hammered home that “pornography had never been equated with prostitution: a porn actress is not a prostitute and a producer or broadcaster is not a pimp”.
