French porn industry in turmoil following shocking revelations of abuse • FRANCE 24 English
The French porn industry is facing its moment of reckoning. A two-year police investigation has blown the lid on widespread abuse of vulnerable women. A Senate report is now aiming to improve conditions by bringing about stricter controls. In this show, we meet three women who are trying to change the way the X-rated industry in France operates.
Read article here‘Hell behind the scenes’: French Senate blasts porn industry after abuse scandal
A rape investigation targeting a prominent French pornography website is prompting actresses to disclose their own experiences of abuse, a moment of reckoning for an industry where speaking out has long been taboo.
Prosecutors said last month that Jacquie and Michel, which bills itself as a hub for “amateur” porn videos, and other sites had been under investigation since July after feminist groups collected testimonies from several women.
Actresses warned that users should be aware that the concept of “amateur” porn is a misnomer and belies the experiences that performers may have had to endure.
“Those who might be tempted need to know that they abuse women,” Estelle, who asked that her real name not be published, told AFP.
She is one of a few dozen women, according to lawyers and women’s associations, who have contacted lawyers since the inquiry was opened.
Estelle said that she was 22 when she set her sights on becoming a “star” for France’s leading porn production company, Dorcel.
Unable to get a break, however, she started making videos with smaller producers, many of which were shown on Jacquie and Michel.
The experience turned into a nightmare.
One director forced her to accept certain scenes ― despite her objections ― that left her in intense pain for several days.
“He said, ‘She’s crying because she’s not used to it. Stop crying, we can’t sell that ― Smile!'” Estelle recalled, saying she was paid 250 euros ($290).
She said that she was forced to perform without a condom with a man who had lied about having tested negative for a sexually-transmitted disease but in fact had a herpes infection.
“They pay you hardly anything for doing scenes that you’ve never said ‘yes’ to.”
– Amateur acts? –
Other women told AFP about directors who suddenly demanded additional sex acts they had not been warned about in advance.
But Marion Lew, 32, who documents her adult film career on Twitter, said: “The legal system has a very difficult time recognising sexual assault.”
Additionally many women hope to force Jacquie and Michel and other sites to remove their videos, arguing they were unaware that they would be available permanently.
“Many women complain first about the images, which have the most immediate impact on their lives, and initially play down the serious violence they have suffered,” said Lorraine Questiaux, a lawyer for the Mouvement du Nid, an anti-prostitution group.
Jacquie and Michel has denied any wrongdoing, saying it only distributes films and is not responsible for how they are made.
But it has promised to stop working with anyone convicted of rape or other crimes.
Many actors and actresses scoff at the claim, saying the site effectively requires directors to meet certain aesthetic standards.
“We really need to stop with this idea of ‘amateur porn’,” said Tony Caliano, who has acted in X-rated films for the past 10 years.
“The women are always paid, and the idea is to make you think the girl next door is ready to fool around,” he said.
He indicated however that the women were not likely to have long-term “professional” careers either.
“Jacquie and Michel’s business model is based on always having a new actress,” he added.
“The average girl who gets into the industry will do just 15 or 20 scenes, over three or four months.”
And the reality is that the vast majority of women are paid just 200 to 300 euros per scene, far below the four-figure payments given to star actresses in “professional porn.”
“Most often, these are women who need to get out of a tough situation,” said Eric Morain, a lawyer representing around a dozen women trying to have their videos removed.
Many believe “it’s easy money, because it only lasts two hours,” he said.
“But in general, it almost never turns out the way it should.”
Activists hope the Jacquie and Michel inquiry will raise awareness and demolish the idea that victims know what they are getting into.
“We’re at the beginning of a #MeToo moment for pornography,” said Celine Piques, of the Osez le Feminisme! (Dare Feminism) collective, which also alerted prosecutors to victims’ accounts.
But others, including actresses, remain sceptical.
“Some are starting to speak out, but it’s not easy,” said Nikita Bellucci, one of France’s most prominent porn film stars.
“None of them have been contacted or been publicly supported” by the industry.
“The girls who talk get floods of abuse on social media,” she added.
“Since they act in porn videos, people say they have no right to present themselves as rape victims.”
Or, as Kim Equinoxx, another star actress, put it: “Some people don’t understand why they complain about rapes. For them, it’s like a boxer complaining that he’s getting hit.” (AFP)
As part of an investigation on the “French Bukkake” platform, an actor is accused of human trafficking in an organized gang and gang rape.
The investigation into the “French Bukkake” pornographic video platform is progressing. An actor was indicted for trafficking in human beings in an organized gang and gang rape to the detriment of two victims. According to a judicial source, which confirmed information from BFMTV, this 39-year-old man was placed under judicial supervision. This actor was arrested on Monday January 23, said a source familiar with the matter.
This is Tony Caliano, said several sources familiar with the matter. On the IAFD reference site, he appears as an actor in the credits of at least 600 pornographic productions between 2011 and 2021, including many productions of “Jacquie et Michel” and a certain number of Marc Dorcel. After the first crackdown in this investigation, in October 2020, he told the weekly Marianne that the actors were “equally responsible for the abuses of the producers”. “By saying nothing, by not speaking with the actress of the scene, they condone what is happening,” he added.
At least 17 people – actors, directors, producers – have already been indicted in this judicial investigation opened in October 2020 for aggravated human trafficking, gang rape or even aggravated pimping. More than forty victims have joined as civil parties, as well as associations.
Suspicions of pimping
According to elements of the investigation consulted by Agence France-Presse (AFP), the platform of “Pascal OP” identified under the name of “French Bukkake”, named after a sexual practice, first attracted attention of investigators: a subscription allowed customers to participate in priority to these collective ejaculations [bukkake], with places reserved for sessions without condoms. This system, aimed at making individuals pay in exchange for organized sexual relations, has fueled suspicions of pimping in the eyes of the courts.
According to the source familiar with the matter, the investigation is coming to an end and should be closed “by the end of the first quarter”.
The French porn industry has been in the spotlight for two years: another survey carried out in Paris since July 2020 targets “Jacquie et Michel”, the embodiment in France of amateur porn and tricolor pillar of this industry. Michel Piron, the site’s founder, was indicted in June for complicity in rape and human trafficking in an organized gang. Three other men are also prosecuted in this judicial investigation also opened for aggravated pimping or rape with torture and act of barbarism.
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A piece of anti-feminist propaganda published in the Guardian recently preaches that yes, feminists can have rape fantasies! And it’s all subversive and revolutionary when we do, of course.
The main gist of this article is that women just intrinsically want to fantasize about rape, and create porn that depicts rape, and they are ashamed of this because of the shaming coming from repressed, anti-sex prudes.
This shit is not new. Sex-pozzie “feminism” has been around for decades as a backlash against radical feminism. The sex-pozzies don’t like when feminists talk about serious topics like rape, incest, pornography, prostitution, and sexual slavery, and they prefer to turn the conversation back to their fun sexytimes. Because they are really fun people who just want to have a good time and they’re not like those ugly, man-hating feminists.
The article begins thusly:
“Can a feminist have rape fantasies?
According to feminist pornography producer Pandora Blake, who runs the fetish porn site Dreams of Spanking and frequently portrays fantasies of “non-consent”, the answer is a no-brainer. “Absolutely.”
The general consensus in the feminist porn movement is that no fantasy, no matter how anti-feminist the subject matter appears to be, is off limits. To tell a woman what she is and is not allowed to be turned on by is just about as anti-feminist as it gets.
“Removing shame from hardcore BDSM desire and rape play and age play and all of the kinky taboos that women just have not been allowed to like ever, that’s the kind of stuff that really draws me into the feminist porn movement,” says Courtney Trouble, the producer behind Trouble Productions and a past Feminist Porn Conference keynote speaker.”
Where to even get started with this “feminist porn” business? The people quoted in this article are suggesting that “feminist porn” can have just as much abusive content as regular porn—they say that nothing is off-limits, including hardcore BDSM and rape. So what is the difference then, between what they’re creating and the rest of the misogynist porn industry?
The “feminist pornographers” explain that in their porn, performers are allowed to cut the scene if they are uncomfortable with something, they talk about consent first, fat people are allowed, and only people who are kinky in real life do kink scenes, so that no vanilla prudes will be made uncomfortable. So basically the only difference between “feminist porn” and regular porn is that no one is outright being raped, and there is more variety in body type. Everything else is the same though—the eroticization of dominance and submission and the portrayal of oppression as sexy is left intact. The same message is being sent to the viewer: the sexual abuse of women is sexy.
When it comes down to it, the main difference between “feminist porn” and regular porn is that in “feminist porn” it’s women volunteering for their own degradation, instead of men enforcing it on them. How revolutionary! But this is what third wave sex-pozzie “feminism” is. It’s when women take over doing the hard work of oppressing women so that men can relax and just enjoy the show. Women volunteer to be oppressed instead of being helpless victims of oppression. Because if we volunteer for our oppression, it isn’t oppressing us anymore. You can fight a revolution without changing the material conditions of women’s lives—you simply rebrand what’s happening to you as something else and voilà—oppression gone!
Back in 2008, Twisty Faster wrote about a “feminist” burlesque show that was a lot like this, in the sense that it was about how it’s a “feminist” act for women to volunteer to be objectified. She wrote one of the best blog titles I’ve ever seen:
Fucking genius.This is a great piece of hers, however short, and it contains these gems, which are applicable to the current “feminist porn” article.
“How is fun-feminism different from regular feminism? Not at all, except that it’s antifeminist. It’s when you capitulate to, participate in, embrace, and openly promote rape culture in exchange for approval, claiming that it empowerfulizes you.”
And…
“The idea that women’s public sexuality can so precisely mirror traditional male fantasy while simultaneously existing in a kind of pro-woman, I-do-it-for-myself alternate universe is the cornerstone of funfeminist “thought.” The flaw in this reasoning is that all women must participate in patriarchy regardless of what they say motivates their participation; patriarchy is the dominant culture, and there is no opting out. Which means there is no opting in, either. Do it for me, do it for you, whatever; the primary beneficiaries of women’s participation — willing or unwilling, ironic or sincere — in patriarchy, are men.”
Even funfeminists should be able to realize, if they bothered to think about it, that when you promote the idea that rape is sexy, the people who benefit from that are rapists.
One of the interviewees, Blake, presents her desire for kink as a naturally-occurring trait that she discovered while growing up, and that she had to work through her shame around it in order to become her kinky self. I call bullshit on that. The idea that a woman’s inborn sexual desires perfectly resemble the oppression that men subject us to is actually a misogynist idea that men have been using against us for centuries. Men have always claimed that women naturally want to submit to men, and that we want to be controlled, used, and abused, because this justifies women’s oppression. MRAs are still saying this today. (Notice that sex-pozzies and MRAs agree on a lot of things?) Of course, if you bring this up to a kinkster, you’ll be dismissed, name-called, and booted out. That’s because they don’t want to think about the social context of their desires or the political implications of what they’re doing. That would totally kill their buzz, and their buzz is way more important to them than liberating the female sex class from oppression.
“What’s hot about spanking is the fear of it, the anxiety and anticipation of what’s coming,” Blake says.
Well I must be a vanilla shitlord, because I don’t believe that anxiety and fear are a part of a healthy sex life. I think that what people should feel during sex are love, joy, arousal, fun, excitement, climax, and release, not fear or pain.
“Feminists routinely fight for sexual agency – a woman’s right to make decisions about her own sexuality, including when and with whom to have sex, and when, if ever, to get pregnant. Feminists traditionally rebel against the forces that would hem in these rights: the puritanical voices that say that a woman who enjoys sex is a slut, that would restrict access to contraceptives, that claim that dressing provocatively is inviting rape.”
Real feminists, not the fun kind, realize that fighting for women’s sexual agency means making material changes in the world that allow women to say no, because when you don’t have the option of saying ‘no,’ your ‘yes’ is meaningless. For example, when feminists fought for the right to divorce, the right to work for our own wages, and the right to access birth control and abortion, those changes all made it easier for women to control when and how and with whom we have sex or get pregnant. By controlling our own lives and not being dependent on a husband we are free to make our own sexual and reproductive decisions. But when funfeminists talk about “fighting for women’s sexual agency” they actually mean celebrating middle-class women’s choices to participate in the exact patriarchal institutions that deny agency to countless women who are less fortunate than they are. Creating your own pornography is only fun for middle-class women. Women who have no real choices and are desperate for money and find that their only option is the sex industry find it a lot less fun.
Funfeminists vaguely understand that there is something wrong with mainstream porn, but because their understanding is very limited, they don’t have any useful solutions.
“Certainly there are things in mainstream porn that I think are stereotypical, or repetitive, boring, or even offensive,” Taormino told me, “but the answer is not to shut down porn. The answer is to make more porn.”
I’m going to use an analogy here that comes from Gail Dines. People call her “anti-sex” because she opposes the porn industry. As she explains, that would be like calling someone “anti-food” because they criticized the fast food industry. The problem with the porn industry is not that a few movies are bad, it’s that the industry as a whole harms women as a group. It’s an industry that profits from male power and sexualizes women’s submission, it teaches that rape is sexy, it grooms entire generations into accepting abusive behavior, it reduces women to a collection of holes to fuck instead of whole human beings. The answer to this industry is not to set up one porn studio that makes so-called “ethical porn.” That would be like trying to counteract the negative effects of capitalism by opening one ethically-run business. That one ethically-run business does absolutely nothing to negate the fact that unethical business practices are institutionalized worldwide and harming most of the world’s people. And by the way, when your porn studio produces rape scenes, “age play,” and hardcore BDSM, then it’s already unethical, even if your actors talk about consent before they shoot the scene.
Let’s talk about what “age play” is. This is a euphemism for acting out the sexual abuse of an underage person. We are even given an example of it in the article:
“like a schoolgirl who knows she’s going to get a caning after school and can’t think about anything else and she’s asking her friends how bad it’s going to be, if it’s going to hurt.”
It should be obvious to anyone that this is the sexualization of child abuse.
“Removing shame from hardcore BDSM desire and rape play and age play and all of the kinky taboos that women just have not been allowed to like ever, that’s the kind of stuff that really draws me into the feminist porn movement,” says Courtney Trouble.
So this “feminist” thinks that removing shame from the eroticization of things like rape and child sexual abuse is a part of the “feminist porn movement.” I disagree. If you are fantasizing about hurting a woman or a child you SHOULD be ashamed. And as for women who fantasize about being on the receiving end of abuse, they have a responsibility to realize that this is not some sort of innate “kink” to celebrate having, it’s a response to being treated in an abusive way and being taught to sexualize that abuse. It’s not necessary to be ashamed if you have internalized harmful messages from your culture, but it’s necessary to realize they are harmful and to avoid defending and promoting them.
“In a world where porn is the de facto sex education for any teenager with an internet connection, socially responsible producers have to think not only about what will get people off, but what people will learn.”
This sentence coming from someone who thinks that “rape play,” “age play” and “hardcore BDSM” are okay? Are these the things that they want teenagers to learn? That’s absolutely frightening.
I will never call these people sex-positive, because they are actually positive toward abuse, not sex. They are as far from being feminists as the average MRA, and they are not fighting a social justice movement. Women already have the right to be abused. What we need is the right to be free from abuse. Only the radical feminists are fighting for that.
P.S.—The mainstream media loves publishing these sorts of articles. That’s because part of the backlash against feminism is a sort of fake version of feminism that gets promoted by people who have an interest in the continuation of capitalism and patriarchy. They promote a neo-liberal version of feminism that is all about women being “empowered” by making consumer choices, and women participating in patriarchy while rebranding it as their “agency” in a deliberate strategy to kill the feminist movement. There is no better explanation of this phenomenon than Gail Dines’ lecture Neo-Liberalism and the Defanging of Feminism. Neo-liberalism has also killed the Left, because it has turned us away from class analysis and toward pointless wanking over “identities.” Anyone wanting to learn about feminism should avoid the mainstream media altogether and just read either Feminist Current, print books by feminists, or anonymous blogs by feminists. Not the fun kind.
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DEMOLITION PORNOGRAPHY, ARE YOU WATCHING? SHE EXCITES YOU? YOU REVOLT?
The damning testimonies of mistreated actresses on French porn sets are multiplying following the investigation of Le Monde last September revealing the degrading practices of the “French bukkake” site and the indictment of Michel Piron, the director of Jacquie et Michel , one of the biggest French broadcasters of X, as part of an investigation by the first judicial police district of Paris for “rape and aggravated rape”, “pimping”, “trafficking in human beings” and “forcible confinement” .
These violent practices do not date from today. They began in the early 2000s when porn sites without means and without any rules multiplied on the Internet, practicing an escalation in sexual violence in order to stand out from classic X productions and attract an increasingly public. jaded, in search of new thrills. This is how “ ultra-hard” sub-genres appeared such as “gonzo ”, “ demolition ”, “ throat gagger ” , “ bukkake ” (“splatter” of sperm together, from Japan ), etc. In 2007, in Gang Bang, an investigation into demolition pornography(Threshold, coll Non Conforme), I had given the floor to several actresses revolted by what they had endured and investigated this ultra hard cinema.
At the time, I was shocked by the arrival of these films of extreme violence, wondering how spectators could endure such scenes of degradation of “actresses” without protesting or being indignant – and paying for their subscribe to it. I then understood that this porn was entering a new phase: it appealed to the sadism of the spectators, to their excitement in front of the sufferings inflicted live, in a gonzo style , on young women. He was selling them a cruel and humiliating “gonzo” reality show to get them hard – the justification being that it was “cinema” not debasement or filmed violence. To find myself the ” next door witness”, the “bystander” of these scenes appealed to me. At the time, a declared intermittent amateur of X, I wrote this book not to be an accomplice. Here are some excerpts – they testify to how long it has been since porn has gone off the rails…
_____________________________
January 2006. Random click on the first “Demolition Porn” site. On the first pages, a few advertising pitches flash: ” THROAT GAGGER ” (Gagged throat), “C’ IS DEMOLITION”. Films are sold there individually or by monthly subscription. Click on a photo. On the screen comes “Natacha”, a frail blonde peroxide in cheap underwear. High heels, thong, silicone mouth. A pretty, pale, slender girl, 20 years old at the drop of a hat. With a small smile, she falls to her knees on the tiled floor in front of a pot-bellied man in socks, whose face we will never see. Immediately the guy grabs her by the hair, opens her mouth with five fingers, spits in her, yelling “Bitch! (Bitch!). The young woman jumps. It’s obviously a bad surprise for her. She may be playing, but nothing is less certain. The man starts again, fiddles with his lips, spits on them, “Bitch! », Grabs her hair, and shoves his whole cock in her throat. Direct. Already, he slaps deep in her face.
Natacha, “18 years old” according to a cartridge that appeared on the screen, emits a kind of liquid squeak, while her nose crashes into the guy’s stomach. Right away, I wonder why I’m watching this. I hate this guy, what he does. My “masculine gaze”, although accustomed to twenty years of erotic magazines and porn films, my “male gaze” (my eye desiring- objectifying the body of a woman spotted by the psychoanalyst Laura Mulvey) does not support the stage. It’s very violent. The big guy blocks Natacha’s face, preventing her from freeing herself. She tries to push him away with her hands. He pushes them away violently, yelling “Without hands, bitch! (No hands, bitch!), and goes back to dabbing it deep in her throat. It makes the funny noise, kind of siphon disgorging. Natacha chokes, rolling wide eyes. She has a spasm of rejection, saliva overflows from her mouth, she vomits.
I stop the movie. I can’t stand what I see. The brutality of the man, the twisted face of the young woman triggered in me an intense emotion of disgust and anger. There is absorption in seeing, incorporation. I don’t want that image in me. Get used to it. Already, I know that it will be difficult to forget. I tell myself that the scene, the filmmaker trapped me. They’ve managed to trigger such a strong, traumatic feeling in me that basically they’re questioning me about what I’m looking for in porn. Isn’t that a strong visual sensation? Isn’t this shock, this disgust, this rejection a form of excitement? Perhaps the film traps me, what I believe to be real is only cinema intended to mobilize my sadism – if it exists?
I click again. It starts again. The fat man hits hard down Natacha’s throat. She drools continuously. She is visibly choking. Suddenly, she pulls away, her head falls back. This time, I’m sure, I see in the hollow of her eyes, in her frantic gestures to wipe himself, revulsion, fear, suffering. She does not play, she endures, she suffers. She hadn’t expected such brutality. She looks groggy. She looks at the guy, visibly distressed, wondering what’s next. Here we go again. Throat gagger. Natacha is suffocating, her eyes go white, she pulls away, shaking. The man drags her like a sack towards a sofa, throws her there, goes back to beating her full face. So he pinches her nose to block the air flow. She rolls her injected eyes. The man makes it last. Natacha hiccups, her gaze fails…
A rustle on the screen, the image jumped visibly. Here is Natacha again planted full throat by the big anonymous. It’s obvious. Her convulsion, her contortions were cut in the editing. The spectator barely had time to notice the vomiting. But we had time to understand. She’s not pretending, Natacha. She does not play violence, she takes it. She did not pretend to return, she pukes for real. The worst happens behind the scenes, between two clashes of images.
I have the feeling of finding myself in a situation of non-assistance to anyone in danger. I am outraged that it is possible to inflict such violence on a woman to shoot an X movie. A scene of violence inflicted and suffered remains violence inflicted and suffered, even under the acronym X. Everyone has already tried to to be surrendered with just a finger on the glottis, everyone knows how Natacha feels. I now understand the meaning of the title block: ” THIS IS DEMOLITION !” and flashing calls announcing to the audience, ” All of our bitches are getting fucked in the throat. ” GUARANTEED ! _ “. On the internet, we’ve gone beyond the “hard” (the hard fuck), we’ve entered some sites in the demolition live. In the imposed suffering – this, without any of the customary manners and precautions of sadomasochistic cinema, with its experts in bondage and whipping, its rituals, its specialized and seasoned actresses (SM, BDSM also increasingly extreme, less and less ritualized, more and more close to the aggression of unfortunates).
Natacha is an anonymous non-rank of this unbridled porn, I will see her again on another video, withered, extinguished. She does not produce a signed “performance” or a provocative film, she does not degrade herself in complete freedom to experience “the extreme sensation of the moment” like an “actionist” artist or the performer Chris Burden; nor is she a hardcore professional, one of those overstrained actresses supporting onslaughts of body-built athletes who rest between two sessions, stopping the game when they get exhausted. She is not a respected star on a set like the French actress Ovidie who refused all sodomy and demanded the wearing of a condom. She doesn’t have the fame of an “X star” who does it several times with each hard scene, before being photographed in lingerie for the specialized press and exhibited at the “Hot d’or”. It is not crossed by the “paradox of the actor” according to Diderot, who knows very well that he is not the character he is playing. She is not an actress according to the Actor’s Studio, somehow possessed by her character, who would vomit from identifying too well with him. She does not embody a “demanding role”.
Natacha suffers the situation. She was seized with several reflex spasms. She vomits during a choking. She couldn’t bear – accepted – the scene. We can only ask the question. What happened during the cut? What about the balance of power between her and the production, her consent and her acceptance, off-screen? Natacha, 18, is unknown to a website among hundreds of other videos presented under the theme “throat gagger”, with dozens of other young women, Vera, Candy, Kinky, only first names, never people, all 18 or 20, come to be abused, humiliated and forced down their throats until they vomit, by faceless guys – a real internet mania today, the “throat gagger”, very trendy.
What happened between the two scenes, during the frame jump? We see nothing behind the scenes of gonzo and the cinema of demolition and “choking throats”. We don’t know anything about ultra-hard off-screen. How is the pornography of pornography? Just looking at Natacha for a single minute portends fierce exploitation.
What does “Carla” (her name has been changed), one of the stars of the X media scene for 5 years, guest on television, making the cover of hard magazines say about it? She is 24 years old, but her black, impassive eyes reveal a strong personality. Her fan club still exists, although today Carla prefers erotic photography and striptease shows. She talks calmly, lucidly, about her past as a hardcore actress. She is proud of what she has done – ” I assume ” – as an underground rock star who has explored where no one goes, she knows what she gives when she releases “Naomi”, her invented character on the sets, “Naomi” which ignites the film. What does Carla think of the “throat gagger”?
“It’s a very ’trash’ practice. It can cause choking and vomiting. As far as I’m concerned, I caught a big bruise on my lips. Gonzo comes from the United States, it’s very violent “hardcore”. In Europe, directors are now doing it in succession, with girls from the East. They follow fashion. You should know that many porn directors have shitty tastes! They are often embittered and failed filmmakers. They love silicone blondes, their approach to sex is minimalist. For them, the guys must be a hit like nags and the girls scream. It’s a shame ! In gonzo, the scenes are shot very quickly, without camera movement, like reporting, always very violent. No games, no dialogue, no fantasy. Anything that would support the excitement,would enrich the sexual atmosphere, is evacuated. When I started, at 20, if I had seen the gonzo films, I would never have done porn. »
Now let’s listen to Raffaëlla Anderson. She played one of the first two roles in the thriller by novelist Virginie Despentes, Baise-moi ( 2000) where two young women kill men with the rage of despair, humiliate them – as revenge after their rape. Before, she shot hardcore X movies. She was the first actress to lift the omerta on certain degrading practices of pornography in her book Hard (Grasset, 2001)). She tells the backstage of several violent filming, describes distressing sessions with “double fist” – two fists in sex scenes that evoke torture. Interviewed in January 2002 in the magazine Blast #4 , she declared: “When I think back to those scenes, it’s simple, I could never watch them in movies, I know how much the girl must suffer! I’ve seen a lot of them bleed, cry. Girls who are 18, super pretty, models. A real mess. They get slaughtered. “She further specified:” At the end of the scene, we told them: “We are going to put a little Biafine on you and tomorrow it will come back on its own!” [Biafine is used for the treatment of second degree burns]. Or: “Okay, you can go wash up… and tonight you sleep with so-and-so!” What do I think of it ? How bad. A woman is no longer even a woman. It’s not even a hole anymore. It doesn’t even have that value. »
The throat gagger. A doctor to whom I showed these films, who treats porn actresses, will explain to me that in addition to the pain, an untrained person can choke during a “deep throat” by pushing saliva back into their bronchi. It can be deadly. Nerves responsible for creating a rejection spasm indeed line the back of the throat, near the trachea, to avoid any dangerous intromission. If your nose is blocked, the repression reflex can take place inside. According to this doctor, this has already happened in hard cinema.
Certainly, one could say that a woman who accepts being abused until she vomits, suffocates, faints, who endures such aggression out of necessity, bad luck, poverty, does so of her own free will. She freely disposes of her body, in a situation of distress, in order to survive. She gives her consent. But isn’t it under pressure behind the scenes, isn’t it forced to go further, beyond itself? Isn’t she subjected to acts of influence, threats, blackmail? And then, this violence would it be consented to – and so badly lived –, should it be tolerated, legal on the set? Should it be given as a show to embellish cinema sites? Should sexually violating, exhausting, damaging a person, making them suffer become the driving principle of a kind of reality show?
In classic X movies, actors mime sex, strike a pose, moan outraged, shout basic obscenities. It’s overplayed, we pretend while doing it, we go back to the same scene several times, we stop if it goes wrong, some expert actresses swallow boners like in the circus of sabers. But they are trained. They are getting ready. They rest between two exhibitions. It is performance, almost martial art or combat sport.The editing, the cutting, certain movie tricks, fake sperm, salacious dialogues help create the impression of a gripping scene. We are sometimes in the sexual Grand Guignol, the Barnum, even contortionist numbers. It’s professional cinema, coded, standardized, heterosexual and terribly macho, often difficult for actresses – trying. But in the internet videos of “Gang bang”, “Demolition”, “Punishment”, “Tournante”, the “Bukkake ”, the women no longer play. The guys let go, the girls endure. Hard banging, throat choking, double or triple penetration, dildos punched, fisted or fisted in the vagina. It’s very hard.
“Gonzo” ads among a hundred others: DOUBLE DROP IN A LANDFILL. These 6 brutes savagely smash a little blonde in a filthy dump! The blonde gets all her orifices bombarded by the 6 cocks! Then fuck the face, smash the pussy, fist and rip the anus wildly by 6 guys at the same time!
NO PLACE FOR THE DEJA – VU ! This blonde only likes anal DESTRUCTION and I can tell you that she is going to take a real punishment. The time has come to introduce him to MONSIEUR GODE. Ten centimeters in diameter to blow her ass off. She looks a little perplexed… The guys literally impale her on it without her having time to understand and force her to get in as hard as she can. She has her ass well demolished. A veritable deluge of anal pounding ensues.
FIRST CAST. Jenny, a 23-year-old Swedish bombshell, is starting to dildo herself just to show that she can fit 40 CM OF DILDO! Once ready, a porn star gives him a deep throat for 5 GOOD MINUTES! If you want to save Jenny, type 1. Otherwise just download this excellent video.
In these films, beyond the standard sexual language of the ad – “I fucked her”, “I blew her”, all this male phantasmagoria, these popular tocsin words of sex – everything happens as indicated. It’s brutal. of the ship. Low budget. No time to take precautions. A camcorder. A few static shots. A young woman harassed by the video. Some sequences recall this dark scene from the film The important thing is to love by Andrei Zulawski, where a tyrannical old mafia, wearing a disturbing strap-on, attacks a drug-addicted teenager. He is going to spin a clandestine reel with her. The girl staggers, we understand that he is going to hurt her, torture her. Zulawski shows us the possible cruelty of porn cinema. He is not mistaken.
It seems to me that if I witnessed a scene of “demolition” in real life, I would intervene. I wouldn’t let these men. I would not behave like a “voyeur”. Besides, a lot of my enraged reaction comes from there: from my inability to stop what the young woman is enduring. To have no other solution than to stop watching, not to stop the ongoing rampage. I feel like an accomplice. To be a “bystander.” A “next door witness”. This Anglo-Saxon term designates a person in spite of himself in the presence of unacceptable violence, sexual assault, abuse of power, and who is indignant. Reacts. The bystander is a neighbour, a passing spectator, a civilian, a colleague, or even a doctor, a nurse, a civil servant who witnesses a war crime, a street attack, a rape, a sexual harassment, an abuse of power. It happens in front of him, at the bottom of his house. He is concussed. So the bystander refuses to be silent, decides to act, to intervene in one way or another. To testify. He wants to “do something”. Let the filth be known. So he comes out of his reserve. He protests. He is ringing the alarm bell. He sounds the alarm. He speaks. He cannot be silent.
I show these films to a writer friend who like me likes cool porn. I need to hear a woman’s point of view on what ultra-hard “actresses” can feel. She immediately points out to me that the girls spit and drool a lot in the “throat smash” movies. In these scenes, always, at the start, they spit on the penis, smear it with saliva. They seem to be drooling with envy, for good, to suck it, while no doubt they moisten it to make the intromission more bearable. The hardest thing to bear, deciphers my friend, is when the blows in the throat force them to make spit clots. It’s as if they ” wet ” through their mouths, “enjoy being choked“, while it is a reflex drool, reactions of rejection. This is what frightens: they vomit, we are made to believe that they enjoy. It is a terrible lie. A cinematic falsehood.
We move forward in “freeze frames”. At first a certain Amber endures the suffocation, blows in the trachea, between two bizarre cries she distributes little automatic smiles. She is paid for that, to look good, to spit, to sink, to collect. Very quickly, the situation deteriorates. The guys force themselves, go deeper, stay longer, take turns, while the others hit her face with their penises, slap her, plug her nose. They have fun making breaking her, suffocating her longer, triggering spasms of disgust. They warm up between them, we hear them. They take advantage of the fact that she has to stay there, to finish the film, to break her resistance. Then we both understand. This is the purpose of the show. Humiliate her. Hurt her. Let it show on the screen. That the viewer has a hard-on out of sadism. Let him see it’s for real. It’s a reality show of suffering, live submission.
In mainstream porn reality show, proven by ‘cum facials’finals (the actor has enjoyed for real), the spectators fantasize that they undertake the actresses who give it to each other on the screen, but that remains a fantasy. Of mental masturbation, accompanying the physical. In the long run, this fantasy is exhausted, the enjoyment remaining visual, scopic: onanism. So the ultra-hard thinks he has found a way to maintain the fantasy excitement of solitaire. He films the degradation of the actress. Her jolts, her reflex reactions to violence, to suffocation, to blows, to dildos. Her humiliation proves that the “hardeur”, with whom the spectator identifies himself, enjoys her for good, takes advantage of her. Its defeat must burst the screen, pierce the virtual. It’s a barbaric reality show. Sadism without a masochist.
What is most disturbing in this logic of the hardcore reality show where the victim offers herself to the pornstar is her virtuality – the dilution of violence in the hollow of Internet screens, throughout videos where pixelated women – the same scene of “choked throat” shown in the theater, with the people in flesh and cries, would be unbearable, the spectators would intervene. Their jolts and sufferings have become electromagnetic chimeras. Derealized images. We have reached the total absorption of the traumatic real by the virtual, by the total screen – what the philosopher Jean Baudrillard calls “the perfect crime “. The pornstar-suffocator and his victim have become “actors” in a degrading reality show where violence itself is simultaneously proven, shown, tracked, sought… and banished, virtualized – and therefore accepted. that’s what it takes to get the sadistic onanist to subscribe to VOD services.
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According to information from BFMTV, revealed this Friday, January 27, a new pornographic actor was indicted as part of the investigation in Paris on the “French Bukkake” video platform for “rape in meetings” and “human trafficking”. human beings in an organized gang”.
New twist in the investigation targeting the “French Bukkake” video platform. A new pornographic actor was indicted this week for “rape in meetings” and “trafficking in human beings in an organized gang” , tells us this Friday, January 27, Vincent Vantighem, journalist at BFMTV. “A week ago, he published his videos on his social networks. But last Monday, he was arrested and finally indicted and released under judicial supervision, “ he said on Twitter.
According to elements of the survey consulted, the platform of “Pascal OP” identified under the name of “French Bukkake”, named after a sexual practice, first attracted the attention of investigators: a subscription allowed customers to participate in priority to these collective ejaculations, with places reserved for sessions without condoms.
XOSE BOUZAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP
Vincent Vantighem: [Info @BFMTV] #FrenchBukkake : Ouverte il y a plus de deux ans, l’instruction du dossier “French Bukkake” continue d’avancer. Cette semaine, un nouvel acteur porno français a été mis en examen pour “viols en réunion” et “traite des êtres humains en bande organisée”.
Last November, Guillaume F., – known in the community under the pseudonym “Rick Angel” and former technical adviser to Michèle Alliot-Marie at the Ministry of the Interior in 2008 – was also indicted for “trafficking in human beings human beings in an organized gang” . On the other hand, he was placed under the intermediate status of assisted witness for rape, which means that the investigating judge considered that he had not gathered at this stage the serious or concordant evidence necessary to initiate proceedings for this qualification. They are now 18 individuals – actors, producers, directors – implicated in this case. More than forty victims have joined as civil parties, as well as associations.
SECTOR OVERTAKEN BY BUSINESS
According to elements of the survey consulted, the platform of “Pascal OP” identified under the name of “French Bukkake”, named after a sexual practice, first attracted the attention of investigators: a subscription allowed customers to participate in priority to these collective ejaculations, with places reserved for sessions without condoms. This system, aimed at making individuals pay in exchange for organized sexual relations, has fueled suspicions of pimping in the eyes of the courts.
The French porn industry has been in the spotlight for two years: another survey carried out in Paris since July 2020 targets “Jacquie et Michel”, the embodiment in France of amateur porn and tricolor pillar of this industry. In June, four men, including the founder of the site, Michel Piron, were indicted in an open judicial investigation, in particular for aggravated pimping, trafficking in human beings in an organized gang, rape with torture and acts of barbarism.
In Frankrijk is een grootschalig en breed gedragen offensief gestart tegen misstanden in de porno-industrie. Het gaat onder meer om geweld, verkrachting en seks met minderjarigen.
De Franse Senaat sprak zes maanden lang met pornoproducenten, actrices en experts. Het resultaat was een snoeihard rapport van 200 pagina’s. De Franse politie speurde online naar daders en slachtoffers en pakte mensen op. Justitie deed onderzoek en kwam met officiële aanklachten.
Meer dan twintig mannen – pornoproducenten en -acteurs – zijn inmiddels in staat van beschuldiging gesteld. Een deel van hen werd in preventieve hechtenis genomen, in afwachting van een proces. Meer dan zestig ex-pornoactrices hebben aanklachten tegen de mannen ingediend.
Seksueel geweld
“De verdachten worden beschuldigd van verkrachting, aanzetten tot prostitutie, mensenhandel en in één geval: marteling”, vertelt Céline Piques van de feministische organisatie Osez le Féminisme. “Het is echt uniek wat er gebeurt, voor Frankrijk en Europa, maar misschien wel in de hele wereld.”
‘Camille’ werd als porno-actrice slachtoffer van verkrachting. Ze vertelt anoniem hoe ze in de pornowereld belandde, en hoe ze daar werd misbruikt:
De aanleiding voor veel van de initiatieven ligt bij een boek van journalist Robin d’Angelo. Hij werkte ruim een jaar undercover op de filmsets van pornobedrijven. En hij was naar eigen zeggen geschokt door de hoeveelheid geweld die hij zag. Zijn boek verscheen in 2018, toen de MeToo-beweging volop gaande was. Seksueel geweld kwam daardoor hoog op de agenda te staan, ook in Frankrijk.
Feministische organisaties stapten met het boek naar Justitie. Alles stond zwart-op-wit, d’Angelo had met eigen ogen misdrijven gezien en daarom was vervolging nodig, zei onder meer Osez le Féminisme.
“Er is volop bewijs van misdrijven. Want veel van die strafbare feiten in de porno zijn gewoon te zien: de video’s circuleren nog steeds op internet”, zegt Céline Piques.
“In zo’n 90 procent van de pornofilms die wij hebben bestudeerd, wordt geweld gebruikt.” – Senator Laurence Rossignol
De Franse politie, en met name de cybercrime-afdeling, ging aan het werk. Twee Franse pornoproducenten kwamen in het vizier. Producent Pascal Ollitrault werd eind 2020 in voorlopige hechtenis genomen. Hij wordt verdacht van verkrachting en prostitutie.
In juni van dit jaar werd oprichter Michel Piron van de pornosite Jacquie et Michel in staat van beschuldiging gesteld. Hij zou vrouwen voorafgaand en tijdens opnames gedwongen hebben tot seksuele handelingen waarmee ze niet instemden. In totaal zitten ruim twintig mannen in de beklaagdenbank. Een proces wordt op zijn vroegst volgend jaar verwacht.
Valse voorwendselen
“Bijna eenderde van al het internetverkeer is porno. En in zo’n 90 procent van de pornofilms die wij hebben bestudeerd, wordt geweld gebruikt”, vertelt senator Laurence Rossignol. Zij deed mee aan het onderzoek van de Franse Eerste Kamer naar de misstanden.
Vaak worden vrouwen onder valse voorwendselen binnengehaald als actrice. Er wordt bijvoorbeeld beloofd dat de film alleen voor een beperkt publiek is, terwijl de beelden daarna wereldwijd via pornosites te zien zijn. Eenmaal op de filmset moeten de vrouwen vaak doen wat hen wordt opgedragen. Verzet of protest heeft geen zin: de vrouwen worden dan met fysiek geweld gedwongen, blijkt uit het senaatsrapport. Actrices die achteraf klagen worden bedreigd en geïntimideerd.
Geen verbod
“Pornofilms zijn ook steeds gewelddadiger geworden”, zegt Rossignol. “Pornoproducenten willen hun publiek tevreden houden. Maar de pornoconsumenten hebben steeds nieuwe kicks nodig om opgewonden te raken. Daarom worden filmscènes gewelddadiger gemaakt.”
In Frankrijk kijken per maand zo’n 19 miljoen mensen online naar porno: dat is bijna een derde van de bevolking. Daaronder vallen ook 1,2 miljoen kinderen jonger dan 15. “Kinderen kunnen getraumatiseerd raken, ze kunnen gewelddadig of risicogedrag gaan vertonen, en ze kunnen een misvormd beeld van seksualiteit krijgen”, aldus het senaatsrapport.
Door critici wordt nogal eens gepleit voor een algeheel verbod op pornografie. Maar Osez le Féminisme en senator Rossignol pleiten daar niet voor. “De wet moet gewoon worden toegepast”, zegt Céline Piques. “Als bij filmopnames strafbare feiten worden begaan, denk aan verkrachting of seks met minderjarigen, dan kan dat gewoon met de huidige strafrechtelijke middelen worden aangepakt.”
Open brief
Door de verschillende onderzoeken is de Franse porno-industrie in het defensief gedrongen. De grote pornoproducent Dorcel kwam met een ‘gedragscode’ voor iedereen op de filmset. Daarin staat bijvoorbeeld dat bij gefilmde seksuele handelingen altijd sprake moet zijn van wederzijdse instemming van de deelnemende partijen.
Een collectief van onder andere pornoproducenten en -actrices kwam vorige maand met een open brief in de krant Le Monde. “Pornografie is niet per definitie altijd crimineel”, schreven zij. “Als sekswerkers zijn wij ervan overtuigd dat het mogelijk is om op een verantwoorde wijze kwaliteitsporno te maken. Een verbod op porno is geen oplossing.”
For more than 3 years, gendarmerie and police services have been investigating the practices of several companies in the pornographic industry in France. Three investigating judges are carrying out sprawling investigations, and have already indicted around twenty people, for “aggravated pimping”, “money laundering”, “rape in meetings”, “aggravated trafficking in human beings” or “concealed work”. The file, which targets the “French Bukkake” site and the “Jacquie et Michel” site, is also closely followed by Le Monde and Le Parisien, who have published numerous testimonials. A Senate report, presented on September 28, 2022, relays some of this gigantic work to alert people to this industry. Please note that the following testimonials are likely to offend the sensibilities of some readers.
“Burn” girls for money
The various journalistic investigations and the Senate report highlight the financial windfall generated by Internet pornography via advertising and subscriptions. An industry that represents a third of global online traffic. The essential starting point for this lucrative business: finding young women to shoot videos. And some production companies would have developed real systems of predation, attacking young adults who are vulnerable and in a situation of great financial precariousness. “It is a question of exploiting them to the maximum, before they are, according to the term of one of the producers, “burned””, writes Le Monde, which has published several long formats on the subject. “Disguised rape under the pretext of videos. Actors and producers had all the freedoms”, attests to the newspaper a man who would have participated in filming of “French Bukkake”.
Acts without consent and humiliation
This is the common denominator of most of the testimonies collected by the courts and by journalists, on the Jacquie et Michel and French Bukkake cases: the cases of unwanted penetration, of violent and humiliating situations, imposed, are described by the victims presumed. The world relays the testimony of Jessica (her name has been changed), who would have been forced into scenes “in which sodomy and the number of partners are forced”. She says she was conditioned to be an active member of the Jacquie et Michel network, for promotional events in nightclubs. “When we went to these establishments, we were objects. I received 300 euros per evening and, each evening, the owner of the establishment had the right to his fellatio, it was included in the price, it was humiliating “, she says.
Tales of rape and assault by the dozens
The testimonies are legion in the investigation reports and in the investigative work of Le Monde. That of Jessica led justice to indict and remand a director. This one, called “Dorian”, who collaborated with the site “Jacquie and Michel”, would have led the young woman to carry out scenes of “submission” promising her that they were “only fake”. However, Jessica claims to have been tied to a tree, whipped, and very savagely abused. “There, eight men arrived, all hooded. Me, I was in pain and I was trying to push back my attackers and I thought I was going to live my last hour,” she reportedly told the police. And to add: “I even tried to kill myself by hanging, but the cable gave way. I felt dirty and submissive, I no longer wanted to live,” she told journalists from Le Monde.
Recruitment “by trickery” and psychological demolition
The testimonies collected would make it possible to identify operating methods, aimed at conditioning the victims to the sufferings they will endure. One of them tells Le Monde the story of a banal encounter with a lingerie photographer, Jack Wood, before he took her to pornographic shoots: “He threw me on the bed, undressed me by force and penetrated me (…) I was stuck, I was afraid of physical violence, I let myself be done”, indicates the young woman. Jack Wood would have actually worked for Jacquie and Michel. He is now on trial. “The first rape plays a very specific function, that of breaking the defences and resistance of women, it is a psychic explosion for the victims, therefore an acquired submission for pimps”, explains au Monde Me Lorraine Questiaux, lawyer for several plaintiffs.
A bloody mannequin lies on the ground after an action by members of the French feminist collective “Les Amazones” in front of the sex shop “Jacquie et Michel” to denounce the condition of women in the porn industry in Paris, on February 19, 2022. (Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP)
Shame, amazement and drugs
The main indicted in the case is Pascal Ollitrault, 60, creator of the “French Bukkake” site. A site specializing in videos showing single women, facing many partners, sometimes 8, sometimes 15 or 50. Some actors are actually “subscribers” who paid 29 euros to access content. “Pascal OP” is presented as one of the figures of extreme excesses implanted without industry; He denied any act of rape and replied to the investigators, faced with the statements of around fifty victims, that they never left the filming. But one element is taken into consideration by the judges: fear and amazement. “There is this pressure from (…) all these men in a room, we are the only girl”, indicates a complainant to Le Monde. Young women have also indicated that they have regularly taken narcotics and alcohol to endure the violence, under the orders of the producers.
“More and more trashy and violent”
It is undoubtedly this state of affairs which conditions all the new pornographic practices. In its report on the subject , entitled “Porn: the hell of the décor”, presented on September 28, 2022, the Senate points to a notable evolution of pornography: “The appearance of increasingly “trashy” and violent content” , “the uploading of often pirated videos, without any control or consideration for the conditions under which this content is produced”. Beyond the testimonies of the victims, the parliamentarians point to a global phenomenon that goes beyond the cases observed by recent judicial inquiries. The senators denounce a “new economic and commercial model in which systemic violence against women have become the norm”.
“When the woman cries, she really cries”
The Senate report takes up elements raised by the investigators of the French Bukkake file, but also testimonies from victims. The document also provoked comments from associations familiar with the case and the recurring accusations against the industry. Claire Charlès, spokesperson for the association Les Effronté.es, insists in particular, with BFMTV, on the poorly perceived suffering of victims of “hardcore” filming: “On pornographic sites, you will find videos by category: the rape category, with unambiguous keywords: anal surprise, taken by surprise, unwanted facial … These are incitements to commit crimes. […] There are also categories of kidnapping or forcible confinement […] It’s not fake. When the woman cries, she really cries,” she said.
“Acts of torture and barbarism”
The Senate report also mentions “imposed sexual practices to which the victims had not consented, physical and sexual violence, a quasi process of ‘dehumanization'”. A young woman told the rapporteurs: “No one can suffer this kind of violence. I say it with a lot of hindsight, what I experienced was of the order of torture, I protected myself by putting myself in robot mode”. Scenes of mutilating sexual violence are notably described. “I am held and another person enters me. (…) This scene ends, I go to the toilet and I bleed, it was not in the scenario. A second scene begins, on the floor. I did not know what was going to happen. From the moment the guy takes off his pants, it’s no longer cinema, I’m afraid he’ll come and take me by surprise. The next morning, I undergo another scene”.
“From the start, they tried to dehumanize me”
A harrowing testimony was collected by the senators in the French Bukkake affair. A young woman recounted having had to “eat the same food given to the producer’s dogs, a chicken carcass as the only meal for several days”: “From the start, they tried to dehumanize me, to treat me like an object. Yet I did, I ate the dog’s food. I had no self-esteem anymore,” said the young woman. Another insists: “No one, apart from women who have experienced similar things, knows what is really going on on these shoots, in this environment. […] We are in pain, we are powerless, we are being insulted, the goal is for us to obey. We are in a form of total submission. And we tell ourselves that we have agreed to be there. Then there was a shooting with another man, another rape, forced sodomy, yet this person was aware of everything that I refused”.
“Specifications” on “abominable” practices
In the “Jacquie et Michel” file, which the police are investigating, the testimonies of victims converge on one element: if the producers and managers of the site would have developed a whole imagination around the “ordinary woman” consenting to “wild” libertinism, the stories reported show real constraints. “The videos must meet certain specifications (…), we are imposed these abominable practices, comparable to torture, mockery, insults”, indicates an alleged victim to World. “I wanted to cry, but I had to pretend that everything was fine.” As the Senate report points out, most porn sites feature violent content. On Jacquie and Michel, the “wild sex category” offers videos where “the pain is intensely proportional to the orgasm they reach at the end. The harder it is, the more they love it”.
Fortunes to remove the videos
Another compensation mechanism has emerged as highly developed in the porn industry: people exploiting actresses would demand huge sums of money to remove videos that young women no longer want to see online. “The amount is much higher than the low compensation they received on the set, completing the financial and psychological ruin”, indicate in particular the journalists of Le Monde. The Senate report even indicates that “the victims informed the rapporteurs of the delegation of their virtual impossibility of obtaining, thereafter, the withdrawal of the videos of the scenes shot”. The Senate adds that in exchange for such a withdrawal, “one of the victims was offered to ‘become his sex slave for life’ or to practice in brothels in Brussels for a lifetime annuity”.
Videos broadcast everywhere and blackmail
The operators of the videos know, moreover, the power of nuisance represented by a potential general distribution of the films shot by the actresses. Actresses have clearly mentioned threats of blackmail in the event of requests for the removal of said videos. To stop these requests, operators would have indicated that it was possible for them to send extracts – often degrading and violent – to relatives, colleagues, children’s teachers, parents or family members. A threat taken seriously, especially since the virality of this content is already creating very serious problems. A victim in particular mentioned a video which “was everywhere, on social networks, on Facebook, on Twitter, on sites accessible from France and abroad”: “It went around the world, until in New York and Montreal. I was harassed at the bottom of my house, I received threatening letters“.
Actresses “sold” to other productions
This is an element that is mentioned by the investigative journalists of Le Monde: some young exploited women would have been “sold to other productions, for a commission”. As the media indicates, if this fact is legally established, then these practices could be requalified as “pimping”, “a legal turning point feared by the pornography sector”. Le Monde notably publishes an exchange of SMS between Pascal OP (quoted above) and a collaborator: “Who are we selling it to? Answer: “Celian [another director] will take it on the bank com [commission]. (…). Big tit obliged”. Then comes this confirmation: “G sent big black to Celian we will ask him 100/150 €”. The alleged facts, despite numerous examples are vigorously contested by the defendants’ lawyers.
A “respectful” pornography, but little distributed
The Senate report is very alarming, it specifies that there are several genres of pornography. Sonny Perseil, doctor HDR in political science, questioned by the parliamentarians, estimates for example that one “can speak of plural pornography or pornographies. They are extremely diversified”. And to add: “There are productions without any violence, with only consenting adults who know very well what they are doing, who master the framework of their activity. They refuse or accept roles according to their own choice and negotiate certain benefits or reject them. The situations are multiple.” However, studies show that 90% of the pornography consumed is “hardcore” and violent. “There is ‘ethical’ porn, but it represents 0,001% of the market, it is not what consumers are looking for”, regrets Senator Laurence Rossignol with the world.
Children exposed very early
The Senate report points to the extreme excesses of certain productions, but also insists on a societal phenomenon: pornographic images and videos – even the most violent – have become very easily accessible by the youngest. “Two thirds of children under 15 and a third of those under 12 have already been exposed to pornographic images, voluntarily or involuntarily. Nearly a third of boys under 15 visit a porn site at least once a month”, can we read in the document, which specifies that “certain contents are undoubtedly illicit and their diffusion is reprehensible.” Figures transmitted by the association Dare feminism! in the Senate indicates Pornhub, global online porn giant, lists 71,608 videos praising the incest and pedocrime, as well as 2,462 videos with the keyword “torture”.
Where are the legal proceedings?
What you must remember:
In France, two judicial inquiries are underway concerning pornographic productions:
The one concerning Pascal OP and his French Bukkake site. In this case, 16 people are indicted – actors, directors – producers – and most are in pre-trial detention.
The one concerning the Jacquie et Michel site, the largest French pornography site. In this case, the owner of the site, Michel Piron, is indicted for complicity in rape and trafficking in human beings in an organized gang.
The senators have formulated ways to regulate practices, avoid abuses and provide more support to victims, including:
Make sexual violence committed in the context of pornography an offense of incitement to a criminal offence.
Impose warning messages on sites, concerning violent content, specifying that these are non-simulated sexual acts, which may constitute criminal offences.
Promote the emergence of complaints from victims by improving their reception conditions, by training the police to collect complaints from these specific victims.
Impose fines on broadcasters, platforms such as social networks, for any dissemination of illegal content.
Require platforms to satisfy free of charge requests for the removal of videos made by the people filmed.
Impose on pornographic sites the display of a black screen as long as the age of the Internet user has not been verified.
“(Asked about his stance on pornography, in response to perceived endorsement of Hustler, who had tricked Chomsky into giving an interview for the magazine.)
Pornography is humiliation and degradation of women. It’s a disgraceful activity. I don’t want to be associated with it. Just take a look at the pictures. I mean, women are degraded as vulgar sex objects. That’s not what human beings are. I don’t even see anything to discuss.
(Interviewer: But didn’t performers choose to do the job and get paid?)
The fact that people agree to it and are paid, is about as convincing as the fact that we should be in favour of sweatshops in China, where women are locked into a factory and work fifteen hours a day, and then the factory burns down and they all die. Yeah, they were paid and they consented, but it doesn’t make me in favour of it, so that argument we can’t even talk about.
As for the fact that it’s some people’s erotica, well you know that’s their problem, doesn’t mean I have to contribute to it. If they get enjoyment out of humiliation of women, they have a problem, but it’s nothing I want to contribute to.
(Interviewer: How should we improve the production conditions of pornography?)
By eliminating degradation of women, that would improve it. Just like child abuse, you don’t want to make it better child abuse, you want to stop child abuse.
Suppose there’s a starving child in the slums, and you say “well, I’ll give you food if you’ll let me abuse you.” Suppose—well, there happen to be laws against child abuse, fortunately—but suppose someone were to give you an argument. Well, you know, after all a child’s starving otherwise, so you’re taking away their chance to get some food if you ban abuse. I mean, is that an argument?
The answer to that is stop the conditions in which the child is starving, and the same is true here. Eliminate the conditions in which women can’t get decent jobs, not permit abusive and destructive behaviour.”
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.
