Porn Stars Are Fighting for Their Rights—and Their Lives—After a String of High-Profile Deaths

[Wilhelm]

 

“I wish that it wasn’t what all my interviews were about.”

Tasha Reign is cheerful and patient, but she’s frustrated. I’m on the phone with Reign, an adult performer (porn star, porn actress, sex worker—many in the industry are catholic about the terms they use) and the chairperson of Adult Performer Advocacy Committee, better known by its acronym APAC, asking about the five porn actresses who died recently within weeks of each other.

I wish the media would cover the adult industry in times of goodness and happiness... instead of just when there are suicides and dark times.

She keeps going. “I also wish that the media would cover the adult industry in times of goodness and happiness. When performers are being the artists that they are, and doing well and creating content and unique things and thriving, instead of just when there are suicides and dark times. I think that’s actually a huge part of the issue in and of itself.”

Her frustration is understandable. The deaths of Shyla Stylez, August Ames, Olivia Nova, Yurizan Beltran, and Olivia Lua all occurred between November, 2017 and January, 2018. The tragic cluster got national media attention from all sorts of outlets, including places which only cover the industry when something outrageous happens—or when talking about the president. There was no direct connection between the deaths, which happened for a variety of reasons ranging from suicide to sepsis to overdose.

“I would love if there were one clear solution for why we’ve lost the five performers in the past few months,” says Mike Stabile, the communications director for the Free Speech Coalition, an industry advocacy group. “I don’t think there is. If there were, it would be so much easier.” Similarly, the mononymed Ruby, the vice president of the Adult Performers Actors Guild (APAG), a performers’ union, points out that the deaths mirror rising rates nationally of suicide and drug addiction. “They were bound to reflect in our industry,” she comments via email.

What Stabile, Reign, Ruby, and other performers and advocates are trying to do is take on a number of issues that affect their sex worker compatriots. They want to make a stigmatized and sometimes economically precarious job safer. And, as with any profession—and certainly this cinematic variation on the oldest one—the way to improve things lies first and foremost in listening to the people who do it.

Suicide, as many of the people I talked to in the industry pointed out, is sadly common in many artistic communities. Mia Li, APAC’s president and an adult performer and cam model, noted that she’s seen more than her share of suicides in the peer groups of artists she knows.

Image via Getty/Chris Hondros

One thing artistic people of all kinds have in common? They’re frequently freelancers, living from short-term job to short-term job. What has come to be called the “gig economy” has workers of all sorts in its clutches, but as with most labor issues, sex workers have been on the leading edge. And the financial stresses of surviving check-to-check can weigh on people who already have to run what amounts to an entire small business by themselves.

“There’s a lot of financial stress,” Li tells me. “It’s hard to predict what your next month, what your next week will look like. What do you do when you do need to take that self care day? What do you do if you get into an accident? Those are things that really challenge us because it’s hard to predict our income since our income is so hinged on our ability to perform.”

And compensation for that performing is on a downward trajectory. Pay for filming movies has gone down since the introduction of widespread internet piracy and its frequent companion, YouTube-style sites like Pornhub (frequently referred to collectively as “tube sites”). Scenes that used to get performers between $1,500 and $5,000 now pay as low as $600, according to APAG Secretary Kelly Pierce.

Not only pay, but the quality of work—and the quality of the performers’ experience—has suffered as well, according to Ruby. “It’s now about clicks and shock value rather than art,” she writes. “It’s hurt the performers in the industry, because it has driven rates down and expectations of what will be shown up.”

Attendees take photos of adult film actress Kissa Sins at the Jules Jordan Video booth at the 2018 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on January 24, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

One thing that has remained constant in the porn world is the stigma. “Once that line is crossed where another person on camera is touching your genitals, or you’re touching theirs, that is a line that can’t be taken back,” Nina Hartley, a veteran performer who has been in movies since the mid-1980s, explains.

Tasha Reign remembers first expressing interest in being in adult films, and having a makeup artist friend take her to a set to see what it was all about. She saw Selena Rose shoot a scene, and was hooked. (“I was like, ‘I’m sold! That’s what I want to do for work,’” Reign says excitedly when relaying the story to me.)

And then a male performer on set offered to take her out to eat after hearing she was interested in joining his ranks.

“When he took me to dinner, he was like, ‘Please don’t do this job. People will reject you and treat you so differently. I don’t think you understand,’” Reign recalls. “And he tried to explain it, but there’s just no way to explain what it’s like to wake up and have your entire community basically turn their backs on you because they think that what you do is morally wrong or there’s something wrong with you. It’s a horrible feeling.”

Siouxsie Q. James, APAC secretary and host of the Whorecast, finds herself in the position of giving similar warnings to new talent.

“I tell people when they enter the industry, ‘If you are on the internet in any capacity as a sex working person, you are now a whore forever.’ And I say that with all the love in my heart, but with all the reality in my heart. Porn is forever. You want to go work in a strip club for a couple of months, keep your face off the internet. Work your shift, make your money, go home. There's a possibility there. But with porn, you have that scarlet letter forever, and it can and it will affect your life, because the stigma associated with our industry is so fierce and so cruel.”

That stigma—that being sexual in public is wrong—spills out into every aspect of society. It can get you fired. It can cause you to be shunned by those closest to you. It can make it harder to report sexual harassment or assault, whether on the job or otherwise. It can even make it tough to find a doctor or a therapist.

James informs me bluntly that something as simple as routine doctor visits can be difficult for sex workers.  

“It was such a slap in the face,” she remembers about attitudes held by medical professionals. “I had medical providers tell me to get a different job, because I came in and had a cold or something. How traumatic is it, in each of our lives, when we go to see our gynecologist, and we talk about what we do? It sucks every time.”

Even finding a therapist can be tough, she continues. “I've had mental health providers ask me on the first day if my job is a form of self-harm. I'm like, ‘I'm here to talk about my mother. The job's fine.’”

“I've had mental health providers ask me on the first day if my job is a form of self-harm. I'm like, ‘I'm here to talk about my mother. The job's fine.’”

“There's this trigger point for so many people in our community of not having safe access to health care,” James sums up. “Be it mental health, or addiction resources, or even just going to the gynecologist. There's a gap. There's a real, tangible gap there right now.”

To Scarlett Sin, a “professional dominant” who has a psychology degree and a Master of Social Work and serves as FSC’s new Social Work and Health Systems Specialist, the issues with doctors and therapists start even before they begin practicing.

“Those problems start out from the programs themselves where people come from,” she tells me. “There really is no focus on what sex work is and isn’t. There’s still the victim narrative of sex workers and assigning fault on why someone might become a sex worker. So that already taints how a mental health professional might approach a sex worker. Pair that with all the other stigmatization, it becomes really difficult for someone who is a sex worker to find a professional. I’m not just necessarily talking about a mental health professional, but any professional.”

Adult film actress/director Stormy Daniels attends the 2018 Adult Video News Awards at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on January 27, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images)

Despite the obstacles, many performers love the work they do, and the freedom it provides them. But sex workers are finding that they are not immune from the country’s changing political climate.

In 2016, the GOP added an amendment to its official platform declaring pornography a “public health crisis” and a “menace” that is “destroying the life [sic] of millions.” And the party’s victorious presidential candidate, who has tied himself in knots in order to win the fealty of the religious right, shows no signs of challenging his party’s stance on porn, despite his own alleged dalliances with those in the business.

Like the many groups with which their population overlaps—LGBTQ folks, people of color, immigrants—sex workers find themselves in the crosshairs over the past year.

“Sex workers are a marginalized community,” Mike Stabile reminds me. “A lot of the people in the community identify as queer. It’s a wide variety of races. I think that in the past year, politically, we have felt under assault. I think that a lot of people who live in marginalized communities have felt devalued or that their existence is at risk. There’s definitely a sense, for a lot of people, that things are maybe not changing for the better for them.”

Scarlett Sin looks at the idea of increasing marginalization under Trump in a slightly different way.

“The way I would phrase the question is: Are there added stressors to people that are already facing stigmatization because of their involvement in sex work?” she clarifies. “If you are a person of color, if you are a trans person, if you are undocumented, if you are a woman—there are so many factors that play in so many communities that I can say with some level of confidence feel under attack.You’re definitely seeing a lot of that trickle into folks in this industry as well. We are not impervious to that kind of bigotry and violence.”

Webcam model Kati3kat accepts the award for Favorite Cam Girl during the 2018 Adult Video News Awards at The Joint inside the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on January 27, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

But despite all of the difficulties, pretty much everyone I talked to is hopeful and actively involved in serious efforts to make things better. Kelly Pierce tells me that APAG is in the midst of creating a suicide prevention line and an online support group, trying to fund a health center, creating a checklist for performers and producers, setting up health care, and more. Tasha mentions APAC’s Bill of Rights. Siouxsie says the organization is helping performers with taxes, and is working on a list of sex-positive doctors and therapists.

“I'm optimistic about the future,” she says. “The adult film performer community knows its power. And now we know how to organize.”

And things on the business side are looking up, too.

Camming—broadcasting yourself online live to a paying audience—has been dominating the adult business over the past five years, not least because the resulting content is much more difficult to pirate than movies. At the most recent AVN Adult Entertainment Expo (the industry’s most famous trade show) this past January, the big booths traditionally taken up by the biggest film companies like Vivid Entertainment instead belonged to companies that provided camming platforms.  

To Nina Hartley, it makes perfect sense. She breaks down the math for me.

“All any individual cam performer needs is 100 clients in the whole world to give her 50 bucks a month, each. Now, the further you are away from traditional beauty standards, the harder it might be to find these 100 people. But when you do, they’ll never leave. Once a fetishist finds their thing, they’re incredibly loyal.”

Image via Getty/Ollie Millington

And the women (and men) still making films are taking more control of their careers than ever before. You no longer need the backing of the studio or a giant crew to make a movie—and that means that performers have more involvement in the business side of the adult business than ever before.

In fact, between camming and the ability to make movies without involving a studio thanks to smartphones, the porn world is undergoing something of a Marxist revolution. More than one person I interviewed for this story talked about performers “seizing the means of production” as if they had just finished reading Das Kapital.

“Performers are also producers, they’re also casting agents, they’re also the marketing directors, they’re also social media mavens,” says Scarlett Sin. “[They] literally have to wear a dozen different hats.”

“I'm just not an adult film performer. I am the CEO of a multi media marketing business,” seconds Siouxsie Q. James. “I'm writing the copy. I'm the CFO. I'm also the talent. I'm also the talent coordinator. I'm also the booker. I'm also the producer. Sometimes I'm the videographer.”

Nina Hartley tells me the multi-tasking necessary now to make a career is actually leading to performers sticking around longer, and in turn to building the kind of community necessary to resist the difficulties the world throws at them.

“We have people coming to stay,” she says. “People who come in are a little more organized; they understand what they’re doing a little better than they did in the past because they grew up in a porn world, they understood what is was about better, and they’re entrepreneurial, they’re aggressive, they’re ambitious, they’re adventuresome young people. They feel more of a community than they did before because they’re staying, and that’s really great.”

Image via Getty/Gabriel Bouys

But community within the business itself can only go so far. Alana Evans, APAG’s Vice President, ends our conversation with a crucial message on what her industry needs from a wider world that needs its product while shunning and stigmatizing the people who create it.

“While the world sees us falling into crisis, there are those of us here who are coming together as quickly as we can to help the people that we care about, which is all of our performers within the industry,” she closes. “And having support and love from the outside world without the hate and judgment is really the biggest thing that we can ask for.”

It’s a sentiment James seconds.

having support and love from the outside world without the hate and judgment is really the biggest thing that we can ask for.

“Humanize us in your interactions with your peers,” she suggests. “When someone comes out to you as a sex worker, support them and be nice. I've had activists compare the situation to being gay in the ‘80s. You didn't think that you knew someone who was gay. But now most of us know several gay people, even if they're not out to us yet.

“It's the same with sex work. You think you may not know a sex worker, but you probably do. And if you display that you're a nice, safe person about sex work, I bet you'll know a lot more sex workers pretty soon.”

[AlphaKing]

thank u for sharing !