RAPE PORN INDUSTRY
While Hollywood reels from the fallout of #MeToo, another film industry is imploding under the weight of its own storm of sexual misconduct allegations. The only issue: that industry is porn. Which means not everyone is willing to listen. Catriona Innes i
‘DO YOU WANT TO SNIFF MY TESTICLES?’
There was a satisfied look on his face as he said it. He ignored the woman when she raised her head, looked him straight in his eyes and replied “no”. He wasn’t taking that for an answer. So he asked again. The reply was the same. “No.” So he took matters into his own hands, reaching for a fistful of her hair and pushing her backwards onto the mattress behind her. Then he began to pound his crotch repeatedly in her face. Again. And again. And again.
Barely a metre away a crowd of people had gathered. No one said a thing.
Until recently, stories like this weren’t spoken about. Not publicly anyway. They were uttered in whispers, passed from woman to woman, warnings not to “deal” with certain people, to watch out for themselves.
Then, one woman decided to speak out; her decision caused a snowball effect – others began to tell their stories, and name names. Not just this man, but others. Lots of others.
For the first time, people were listening. People cared.
You think you know this story. But you don’t. The woman who claims this happened to her is an adult performer who has starred in over 60 pornographic films. In the majority of films, what happens to her on set is consensual; a job. But in this case, she says what happened wasn’t. As for him? We don’t know. Those watching may have thought it was part of the scene. He might have thought it was, too. It’s what makes something that should be simple a lot more complicated.
James Deen is not your average porn star. He has dark ruffled hair, artfully placed stubble and bright blue eyes. Squint and he could be Gossip Girl’s Penn Badgely, or Zayn Malik, a clean-cut TV or pop star whose poster young girls might hang on their walls. In 2012, his fame broke through porn circles and into the mainstream: there were gushing profiles written about him in both GQ and Esquire. He once starred in a (non-pornographic) movie, The Canyons, with Lindsay Lohan, and his relationships with fellow adult performers Stoya and Joanna Angel were tabloid fodder. He used to tour up and down America speaking at high schools and colleges on matters
“One by one women came forward”
of sex education and consent. His intelligence and seemingly feminist principles earned him the nickname “the Ryan Gosling of porn”.
And then, in late November 2015, his ex-partner Stoya took to Twitter. In two public messages she wrote,“James Deen held me down and f*cked me while I said no, stop, used my safeword. I just can’t nod and smile when people bring him up any more.”
He responded with his own tweet: “I want to assure my friends, fans and colleagues that these allegations are both false and defamatory. I respect women and I know and respect limits both professionally and privately.”
Yet it set off a domino effect. One by one, more women came forward, each with their own claims regarding Deen’s behaviour – on and off set. Amber Rayne – who had considered herself a friend of Deen’s before her death from an accidental overdose in 2016 – told of a point early on in his career, where he carried on with a scene so violently, despite her bleeding, that she eventually needed stitches. Joanna Angel, also a former
partner of the star, told of multiple occasions of sexual violence while they were together. Tori Lux spoke about how he “pounded his crotch in her face” on set, an incident that left her “messed up, for a long time”. In total, 10 women came forward. He was never charged. When we contacted him for this feature we received no reply. Later, in an interview with
he went through each allegation one by one, offering his own explanations. Most he flat-out denied, or says were grossly distorted stories of what actually did happen. “When you take porn activity into a polite society it sounds really twisted,” he said, adding that, “All the accusations are from either ex-girlfriends or events that happened on set.” His break-up with Stoya was “not a clean break-up”. When asked why he believes allegations have surfaced, he said he knows a number of former adult performers who, once out of the industry,“change their desires and perceptions about things that have happened in the past”.
Even before Deen was in the industry, there have long been rumours of sexual foul play in the world of adult film – both male (largely on gay adult productions) and female stars subjected to scenes they did not want, or agree, to take part in. They have largely remained silent – with performers telling me that there’s a fear of bullying, work being withdrawn in reprisal and a perceived prejudice of authorities keeping them silent. Some didn’t want outsiders to take these incidents as a black mark against the entire industry – feeling they already faced enough judgement.
But Stoya’s tweet encouraged others to come forward with claims – not just against Deen, but others within the industry. They wanted the outside world to listen, but they also wanted people to understand that they deserved the right to a safe working environment.
In the adult industry, just like in Hollywood, there are the superstars. There are awards shows, just like The Oscars and The Golden Globes, and there are production companies who only cast the best of the best. Poppy† was one of the very best. (Due to the nature of the allegations she has made, we’ve had to mask her identity – as well as those of her alleged abusers.)
“I was so happy with how my career was going,” she tells me, in her soft American lilt.“I had a name in my industry, I’d been doing [porn] for over 10 years. And then… I was violated.”
On the day in question, Poppy showed up for work as normal – thinking she was filming a “boy/girl” (a heterosexual scene with one other male star). But then things went in another direction – she says that during filming, she was subjected, by two others on set, to violence that made her bleed. Then, despite her yelling “Cut!”, they carried on with the scene.
“My consent was violated, my pleas to stop were ignored. I never agreed to have [name retracted] touch me, let alone assault me and slap and choke me,” she tells me.
She says she was then made to film an exit interview (a process some films have in place where performers say, on camera, what happened was consensual) to say she agreed to the scene.“I was so desperate to get out of there, I was in shock, I was afraid,” she says.“I thought,‘If he wants me to say yes to everything then that’s what I’m going to do.’ I had to get out of there.”
When she went to the police, Poppy had believed without doubt that she would be taken seriously.
“I thought it would be no problem,” she recalls.“What happened to me was on tape. It was black and white.” But that was not how it worked out. “I remember I was all choked up, I couldn’t get the words out. And the police officer mocked me. I wanted to leave, I felt so ashamed. [Since then] I’ve asked a few [other porn performers] and they’ve said they were taunted by the police, they were laughed at…”
Experiences like Poppy’s are not uncommon. Every single performer I spoke to for this feature had a similar story of going to the police and finding – whether what happened to them was on set, or not – that their career was brought into the allegations. Larkin Love, who largely produces her own dominatrix and fetish videos, told me of a time she was beaten up in her personal life – an incident that caused permanent damage to her head and neck. When that case was taken to court, her career made up the majority of the defence’s case. “[They said] ‘Because she works in BDSM porn, how do we know it wasn’t consensual?’
“There are so many things working against you as a woman reporting sexual assault,” adds Poppy. “But if you put working in the adult industry on top of that it’s 100 times more difficult.”
Pornography often appears violent. Hair-pulling, spanking and being slapped are regular features in the videos you’ll find on the free streaming sites. More specialist BDSM sites take it a step further. Then there is the subgenre of rape porn, in which depictions of sexual assault take centre stage. The latter is illegal in the UK, but in the States “fantasy” rape simulations between consenting adults are not a priority for the police. Law enforcement agencies concentrate on cases where they believe a crime has been committed in the production.
I’d like to add in here that most of what you watch online – whatever your particular fetish – is consensual. But I can’t. What I can tell you is that all the performers I spoke to enjoyed their work, on the whole. One told me how she loves having her hair pulled, apart from that one week when she had freshly pierced ears. When she asked her co-star to stop, he listened. Another likened the work to “yoga but with penetration”.
Because how can you tell – from a film – what’s real and what isn’t? As
“My pleas to stop were ignored”
with all acting, the more realistic it seems, the better the content. One production company’s films make it look as though stars are being punished in a grotty, dank basement: but in reality the set is a rubber floor. The chains have a rust effect on them and are, in fact, thoroughly sterilised.
In his only interview regarding the claims, Deen said, “At a certain point I feel like people have to step back and analyse this stuff in context. Most of these are descriptions of things on BDSM or rough-sex sets. When I am on set I am under instruction of the company who is paying me… I will just say this: my job as a performer for rough-sex companies is to engage in certain acts. If at any point I pushed the boundaries past the point of comfort, I am sorry. I have always tried to respect people’s limits.”
Having an attack captured on camera should, in theory, provide valuable evidence for a case – but when what’s on that film has happened consensually at other times, it seems to muddy the waters. Leaving it, as is the case with most instances of sexual assault, as his word against hers.
This is demonstrated in Poppy’s case, where – after a full investigation – it was dropped.“The DA [district attorney] said that it would be really hard to prove to a jury,” she says. “It’s on film but [that can’t prove] it wasn’t acting, that I really was violated.” In news reports, the DA said the case was dropped due to “insufficient evidence”.
But there are boundaries on set, with each performer having their own “dos and don’ts” list – a living document that includes co-stars they don’t want to work with and acts they don’t do. Safe words are used for certain scenes, and if any performer yells “cut”, the director stops the filming. Exit videos are filmed post production, where performers say they consented to the scene.“For the most part it’s safe, there are people taking care of you,” explains Lux. “If you voice a concern or boundary or violation, people listen. But it’s a microcosm of the rest of the world – there are bad apples.”
If you’re new to the porn industry, the consensus is that to keep yourself safe, you get an agent. They act as a barrier for you – filtering out the genuine production studios from the nobodies online with a video camera; negotiating rates and also being there for you if something does go wrong. For that work, they’ll take, on average, 15% of whatever you earn.
As for what you can expect to bank: unless you have a huge fanbase, you’re unlikely to command the big rates (around £1,500 per scene). In fact, newbies have been known to earn as little as £250 for a scene. Want more? There is another way. You could do something you’ve never done before. “Firsts” tend to generate more traffic – so a first threesome would come with a higher fee, as an incentive to give it a go. And, as with any marketplace, rarity adds value. Happy to partake in a scene 10 others wouldn’t? Your rate will be higher. And if it’s something where you could end up hurt, damaged or out of the game for a while, the danger makes that rate even higher still.
But what if you end up with an unscrupulous agent? One who cares more about getting their 15% than your wellbeing? Because it wasn’t just stars and directors who performers were naming as abusers: it was agents too.
“These girls are signing contracts that give their agents so much power,” an anonymous performer tells me. “And that’s abused, as the money from the scenes goes directly [to the agents]. You always hear girls saying,
“Girls say, ‘But my agent said I have to’”
‘But my agent said I have to,’ because of the scare tactics they use.”
These threats, she explains, could be anything from telling them that unless they do a certain scene they’ll never get work again to withholding fees as a means to exert power.“I’ve known agents to say,‘You will be hungry enough to do what we want you to do,’” she tells me. “Because they can. The contracts mean they can literally cut off their money.”
In the early noughties it was easy to make money from porn. All the good stuff was kept behind a subscription paywall online, on pay-per-view TV channels or on DVDs. And then, with the dawn of streaming sites, such as Pornhub and RedTube, work dried up. People were no longer paying for porn, so production companies stopped producing as much.
Those in the top rung of the industry had to get smart. Shoot only with those guaranteed to bring in revenue – a star with a big fanbase, who will always offer something that people will want to pay for. Deen makes money and the allegations against him have never been made official. He has his side of the story, and his accusers have theirs. Some production companies severed ties, and a sex toy in his likeness was pulled. But he continues to shoot for his own company, as well as a handful of others. To many, there’s no reason not to work with him.
As for some agents, if they’re unable to make as much from their 15% as they used to, and they can pressure their client into doing jobs they can charge more for, they will. And with those abused feeling unable to speak out – either from internal pressure, or fear they won’t be believed by the authorities – it’s just going to carry on.
“I’m scared,” says Poppy, “as abuse that’s not being spoken about goes on. It happened before me, and it will happen after me. It’s made me think very differently about an industry I once loved.”
But there is another way. With the dawn of streaming sites, performers have got creative. Like most freelancers, it became all about having multiple income streams. Sites like OnlyFans allow them to reach fans directly. Some began making custom films, where they tailor-made videos acting out the explicit fantasies of those willing to pay. But it also gave them something else: control.
“One of the main ways boundaries get pushed is because of economic pressures to comply and get the shoot done,” says Larkin, who now shoots “99%” of the work she does herself. “For me, the more diversified my income streams, the less pressure I’ve felt to just go with it, because of wanting that cheque and needing to make rent. I always tell younger performers to have at least one thing that you own, because it gives you more power to walk away.”
Both Joanna Angel and Stoya own – and now largely work for – their own companies. The work they produce allows them to control the content they star in and create a safe environment for the stars they employ.
That content – whether it’s through an ethical, paid-for high-production site or something more amateur on a social-media platform – still features the kink and bondage that turns people on, but it also comes with a guarantee: the entrepreneur behind it may look to be submissive, but she’s in complete control.