Lights. Camera. Exploitation? شباب وبنات في مجال الدعارة ،هل هم ضحايا أم لا ؟
Lights. Camera. Exploitation?
Film pornography is booming, and champions of sexual liberation are, on the whole, pleased – apart from a nagging doubt about the human costs. Johann Hari asked some leading performers how they felt about their work
Thursday, 25 September 2008
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Girls and boys on film: can porn films ever really be victim-free?
We are living in the Age of Porn. In every home, tens of thousands of anonymous strangers are a second away from being splayed before you, staring out of the screen into your eyes. This has never happened to human beings before; it confuses our evolutionary wiring. Of course, the Romans had pornographic murals, and Kingsley Amis swapped smudged dirty pictures with Philip Larkin – but the volcanic-spurting scale of porn today is unprecedented. Hardcore porn is now mainstream – and leaking into every e-mail inbox on earth.
Like all liberals, I am torn on porn. I believe in sexual freedom, and detest the Puritanical view of consensual sex as shameful. So this Dionysian bonfire of taboos – this eruption of sexual self-expression – seems at first glance to be something to celebrate, a glorious rutting end to the old hang-ups. And yet, and yet... Are the "performers" being exploited? Seventy per cent of prostitutes have been sexually abused; as they lie on their cheap beds waiting for our double-click, are porn stars chasing the ghost of a childhood rape? We know the film that sucked porn into the mainstream – Deep Throat – is actually the record of a rape: its star, Linda Lovelace, revealed that she was forced to "perform" on camera by her psychotic pimp husband. Doesn't the thought of the nations of the world masturbating over abused or raped women suddenly make the language of liberation look like a squalid trick?
I decided that the only way to resolve this debate in my own brain was to journey into the world of porn-performers. I was told by one editor who used to work with porn stars that there is a "strict code of Omerta in porn... They will all tell you they love it and nothing bad ever happens. Porn stars don't air their dirty laundry in public – well, except on camera."
Phil – a well-known 25-year-old gay porn star – suggested meeting one afternoon in the Café Nero on Old Compton Street in London's West End. He was sitting at a steel table sipping coffee, a long, lean tree of a man with a surprisingly soft voice. I asked – a little awkwardly – how he got involved in the industry. "I've always had a streak that likes being watched. I started porn when I was 18," he said, leaning forward. "I sent some photographs in and they had me in for a photo shoot. Then they asked if I wanted to do a scene, and it was a couple of hundred quid, so I said yes. And I've had some of the best sex of my life on porn sets."
"That little bit of cash becomes addictive," he said, looking down into his coffee. "You're making £250 a scene. The industry sells a lie to teenagers – boys and girls. They say you'll get more and more money, people will like you more, it'll prove you are sexy and people want you. But it doesn't happen – you don't become a big-earning star, not in Britain." He seems to have an abstract, almost Zen distance from it, as if he is talking about somebody else.
"When you're 18, you don't really think about the consequences of what you're doing," he said. "After I had been doing porn for a few years, I was really lost at sea. I used a lot of drugs – coke, K, ecstasy. I started having unprotected sex in my personal life. I thought – I'm going to end up dead. That's what scared the shit out of me. At this health clinic they suggested I see a psychiatrist. It's the best thing I ever did. Because..." his sentences stopped now; he spoke more haltingly. "It's difficult to... I was sexually abused by a neighbour."
And his real story emerged: the truth behind the groaning. Between the ages of six and 12, a neighbour periodically raped him. His mother was being so violently abused by his father she didn't see it happening. "I thought I had done something wrong," he said, the calm barely breaking. Do you think that exploitation led you to porn? It was the first time he paused. "Maybe. Maybe you think you can control it when you're being filmed. You can't. It's just a different kind of prostitution." And then: "I don't know." Do you think this has happened to a lot of porn stars? "I don't know."
Why was he giving up? "I only ever do films wearing condoms. But I was told by a producer if I didn't do bareback [sex without condoms] I'd lose my career because the industry is moving to bareback. One of my friends turned up to do a film for a low-production company and they didn't even check his HIV certificate. He was having unprotected sex without anyone knowing what his status was. I can't get work because I insist on safe sex. But if I was 18 now? Yes, I would have done it too." He looked away. "I'm hanging up my hat now. I'm not doing it any more. You know, I'm very political and I would have liked to have been a politician. Obviously I can't do that now."
I had arranged that same night to meet a female porn star who was very anxious to not be identified: she wanted it in writing. When she arrived at my flat, I was expecting another horror story. Hannah was 40, and slim, and tense; she asked for a glass of water. "I hope you're not going to portray us as victims!" she said. "I'm not a victim. I have been treated badly at work – but never in porn. When I was a nurse, I used to get pains all down my side from the stress of being shouted at and treated like shit all day for terrible wages. Now everyone says I look so much better, and I'm happy too. At the end of the day it's sex. It's a great thing! I enjoy it. I'm not hurting anyone. When I told my mother [about her job] she said 'You're selling your body!' and I said – we're all selling something."
Hannah used to be like me. She used to think (as she put it): "Down-trodden, low self-esteem, male-dominated." But, she said: "I have been treated with such respect on porn sets. Women earn more, and your boundaries are totally respected. Sometimes it's like the men are walking on egg shells to respect what you've said your limits are."
Hannah was thoughtful. She admitted that there are "dangerous" ends of the industry – "sleazy amateurs who can exploit you" – and people who are too vulnerable to be there. When I asked her what she would say to people who thought she was kidding herself, she said: "I think I would know. I am genuinely enjoying myself. How can that be a delusion?" She said she felt "liberated", adding: "I had a boyfriend who used to call me a slut during sex and I hated it and told him to stop. Now I don't feel that. The way that word is used in porn – it's empowering for me. A slut is a woman who's happy with her sexuality and enjoys sex. That's me. Yes, I am a slut. Deal with it."
I don't think she was lying. And yet as I walked her to the Tube, I felt a strange sensation: the desire to protect her. Was this a leftover of the old Puritanism, lingering in my supposedly liberated mind – or a rational fear?
Over the next fortnight, I met more porn stars – young women at the start of their careers, and older men who'd been round the porn-block and back again. They all insisted they knew what they were doing, and they liked it. They all spoke in awe of the Queen of British Porn: Daisy Rock. When I called her to ask if I could come to see her in Hove, she said with a flirtatious laugh: "It depends. What do you want to do to me?" Oh, don't worry, I'm gay, I added. She replies: "Darlin', I learned everything I know from gay men."
I arrived at the converted stable where she lives, and within minutes she was showing me her vagina. She had logged on to her website, and said: "I want you to see how in-your-face it is... See, this is the section where I fuck fans who have written in to me..." And it is in-your-face. Or rather, in hers.
Sitting at her big wooden table, Daisy looked like a small, lovely blow-up doll. Discovering the porn-world was, she said, like a gay man discovering the scene. "My mum was always calling me a slut when I was a teenager, but I never saw what was wrong with liking boys. I was always a very sexually charged person. When I did normal jobs, I was always being sacked for flirting too much. I got fired as an air stewardess for being too filthy. So finding the porn world... you know all the black sheep? We've all got together and we're making films. It's like you're not a freak any more. You feel comfortable."
Daisy became a stripper in her twenties, and says she "loved it." That led to porn – and in the decade or so since, she has made more than 100 films. "It makes me angry some people think it's OK to invade countries but not to watch sex. I'd rather a teenager watched two people having sex than people being blown up and stabbed on the news. I have the most amazing life. I enjoy my work. For me, it's an art form, it's a way of self-expression. I make films for couples to watch together to get in the mood. How can that be bad?" She spoke passionately, like the Martin Luther King of anal sex. She has a dream that one day, a little white penis and a little black anus will come together.
She said she had had one crisis of confidence. "Yes, I'm scared now. I've been so close to STDs and it makes you think. I started to think about all those religious people who say STDs are a punishment. You know – why do you get cervical cancer if you have too much sex? Why is there all this disease? I concluded it was bullshit – religion is just an imaginary friend for weak people – but I did think about it. It got me worried. I'm tested every two weeks when I'm working, and I think everyone else should be too."
Daisy seemed bizarrely sorted – so I told her about Phil. "There wouldn't be many porn stars if it wasn't for sexual abuse," she remarked casually. "Look at Jenna Jameson, or all those early porn stars." But surely that's pretty shocking? "I really believe this: you shouldn't be reprimanded for having had a hard life." She lit a cigarette. "For a lot of these girls it's a safe outlet. Where else are they going to go? Do you run away from what's happened to you, or do you wrap your arms around it and bring it under your own control? I think it's changed now," she said quickly. "People look for people who actually enjoy the sex. I can't think of one porn star now who has been purely sexually abused." Purely abused? "Who is doing it just because they were abused." Were you abused? "No," she said, "I wasn't."
I kissed Daisy goodbye and reeled across the Brighton seafront. I was – and am – as conflicted as when I began. Yes, there are people such as Daisy who do it because they love it; I did believe her. But there are also people like Phil sitting in a café on Old Compton Street, confused and abused. It seems repellent to build our liberation on his nightmare. When you log on, you have no way of knowing which you're getting. That, for me, leaves a damp fog of sadness hanging over our long triumphant Age of Porn
