XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography (5 page)

The experience with Cookie made me rethink my methodology. I decided to squelch the skepticism I had about what people were telling me. This was difficult, because I tend to doubt most of what I hear. With people in the industry, my skepticism was heightened by at least three factors:

1. Pornography is filled with people who are good at a con. This may have more to do with their being in entertainment than being in porn. Anyone who can raise money to produce a picture, or who can draw a performance out of an actor or actress, is good at manipulation.

2. I was new to the real world of pornography. Most of my information came from the sex-bashing rhetoric of radical feminism. I was beginning to realize how much of this was misinformation. This left me with no sense of perspective, no background against which to check the probable truth or falsehood of statements I was hearing.

3. I had a bias: I wanted women in the industry to be mentally competent adults. I didn't want to believe that they were like three-year-olds who should be stripped of the right to make choices. I was entering the situation with a prejudice. This was not an insuperable barrier, but it definitely raised a red flag.

I began to critique my own methodology as though it was that of a stranger. The first thing I'd want to know about the researcher was his or her underlying assumptions. Mine have already been detailed.

Next, I would object to the anecdotal nature of the report; that is, it does not contain hard statistics or double-blind studies. Fortunately, my research was aimed at countering accusations against pornography, which are also anecdotal. For example, the allegation that women are coerced into pornography is based on first-person accounts, such as the one provided by Linda Lovelace. Perhaps the most appropriate response to such data is "in kind."

A third problem with my methodology was the sweeping statements I made based on a limited exposure to the industry. Was I generalizing from too few particulars? Fortunately, for my purposes, generalizations were not necessary.

The antiporn claim is that
every
woman in porn has been coerced into the industry, either through direct violence or indoctrination. All I had to do was to discover
one
woman who had not been so coerced. This would disprove the accusation. (This follows the old logic-book example: All that is necessary to disprove the assertion "All swans are white" is to find one black swan.)

In the final analysis, I settled for offering an honest account of my impressions of the industry.

Short of laboratory conditions, no one could do more.

THE UNDERLYING POLITICS OF PORN

As I returned to the room, the meeting commenced with a dramatic flair. Bill Stolbach (nicknamed "Pinkie"), the president and founder of the Free Speech Coalition, had suffered a heart attack the day before and was still in a Las Vegas hospital.

A woman named Carol read the speech Pinkie had prepared before his heart attack. It began by stating the original purpose of the organization: to help all manufacturers, distributors, and storeowners combat the problems they had with the justice department: "to stop the cancer of 19

censorship that is killing the industry" by providing an organization in which everyone stood firm together. Unfortunately, Pinkie noted, industry politics were destroying the Free Speech Coalition.

In his words... only a few give a shit as to what happens to others. In this industry, it seems that people are only out for themselves.... We have had people go to jail, people who are now facing jail sentences and big fines for no reason at all.... There are so many of you out there who would not join the organization because someone on the Board would not give you special pricing or some other stupid reason.... Does anyone here think that because you have an organization the government will just roll over and give up?"

In conclusion and in frustration, Pinkie resigned as president of the Free Speech Coalition. His speech closed: "I hope to God that no one else in our industry will have to go to jail. God bless all of you who have supported us."

An uncomfortable silence hung over the room. Without commenting on the resignation, a series of speakers presented their analysis of the "political state of porn." I was familiar with one of them, attorney David Wasserman, because of his writing on freedom of speech. Wasserman began by declaring that although the Clintons were in power, the battle wasn't over; it had only changed. I found this encouraging, until Wasserman called on the audience to support "our President."

This was the same President who had appointed Janet Reno, the woman who'd threatened television producers with stiff regulations if they did not squelch violent images, like those contained in Bugs Bunny. Her reasoning: People imitate what they see on TV. (Ironically, this is the same point Dan Quayle made when he suggested that shows like Murphy Brown were partially responsible for the increase in illegitimate children. Media people went crazy over Quayle's comment. They screamed out that Murphy Brown was a fictional character. But when Reno took a similar stand, there was silence.)

Industry people seem to be lulled by Clinton's imagined sexual tolerance. The result?

John Weston stood at the podium and declared, "Look at this. Nobody's here. In recent years, this room has been the hardest ticket to get into . . . two-thirds of the seats are empty. Where is everybody?"

Fewer than one hundred people were present. In a
Newsweek
article (January 1994), Catharine MacKinnon had informed readers, "Pornographers are worried.... They do sit around in rooms and figure out how to try and discredit what we're doing and destroy our credibility." (Obviously, this planning session was one I did not attend. More's the pity!) The meeting dissolved into Q&A.

The most interesting audience comment came from a video storeowner from New York City. He had attended a task force meeting called by the Mayor of New York, who wanted to ascertain if the sex industry should be regulated. The storeowner said that everyone who got up spoke "so bad [sic] about people in the industry" he felt embarrassed to be there. When his turn came, he told the task force that he was a resident of the city, a parent who paid his taxes and swept the sidewalk in front of his store. He told them, "You may not like my product, but I have a right to be there."

After he'd finished speaking at the task force, a female sex worker had risen to say, "I am a parent as well and taxpayer and a past president of the PTA in Greenwich Village."
The New
York Times
picked up the story. The storeowner said he had learned something from the task force meeting: It was important for people in the industry to be good neighbors who "got along."

20

They should stop being on the defensive, and start standing up for themselves as a legitimate business.

MEETING THE WOMEN OF PORNOGRAPHY

It was after 2:30.

The Adult Section was a buzzing hive of activity. The aisles were crowded. Behind booths, women in peek-a-boo gowns and skimpy costumes assumed poses for the fans; they signed photos and handed out membership forms for their fan clubs. I encouraged my husband to stand in line after line for autographs so I could stand beside him and observe the women give him the "fan" treatment.

Some lines were quite long. The pleasanter the woman was, the longer the line, since she chatted and accommodated requests for photographs. One petite brunette had about thirty men (and me) waiting: I found myself standing behind an impatient fan in a T-shirt that read "Will work for sex." When he reached the front of the line, the brunette scanned his chest and asked with admirable innocence, "Do you lay the?"

In booth after booth, I watched how the women handled themselves. Some looked tired; some were obviously playing a role; others seemed-as one woman phrased it-"high on life." But at least two things were constant:

All of the women treated fans well. I remember one blonde in a tight and sequined emerald-green gown that made her look like a mermaid. She was posing with a shy Asian man who'd requested a photograph. Handing the camera to a friend, he placed a tentative right arm around her waist, letting the left arm dangle at his side. She reached over and placed his left hand on her hip. The man beamed. Off to the side, a burly bouncer watched the interaction closely, ready to step in at any sign of the woman's being mistreated.

All of the women seemed to have fan clubs, which cost money to join. Membership costs ranged from a one-time fee of about twenty-five dollars to a similar yearly sum. The fee seemed to depend on what the clubs offered for the money. All of them advertised "personal" responses to letters. All of them entitled members to "very special gifts," "truly daring photos," and "items never made available to the general public." The ones with yearly fees seemed to have the added incentive of monthly newsletters.

My favorite club featured the blond and buxom Kitty Foxx, who promoted "XXX-Rated Videos of Mature Women in Hardcore Action." True to the ad copy, Kitty was a fetching older woman with the rounder curves that come with maturity. The videos she hawked were entitled
Older,
Bolder and Better
Volumes One and Two, both of which had been produced by her own company. After talking with her, I got a photo picture inscribed "Love your attitude! Kitty."

Next, I stopped at a booth that sold
Hot Spots -
a guide to hot nightclubs and novelty shops. The co-author, "Jane" (a.k.a. porn queen Veronica Hart), was signing autographs and greeting fans.

When I reached the head of the line, I went into my patter. "Hi, I'm a writer who's covering the Adult Video Section of CES, and I wanted to see how things are going for you." Somewhere, the word
feminist
arose, because "Jane" erupted: "I don't need Andrea Dworkin to tell me what to think or how to behave." She seemed genuinely angry. "And I don't appreciate being called psychologically damaged! I have friends in the business who call themselves Ànarchists in High Heels.' They'd love to have a word with her."

I must have looked stunned, because she abruptly stopped talking. She was the only woman at the convention to bring up radical feminism, and it threw me so totally off guard that I still don't remember how I responded. At the words "Anarchists in High Heels," I looked straight down at 21

my Reeboks. "Jane" shook her fist in the air and declared, "Don't worry, we'll fight for your right to wear sneakers, too!" I suddenly felt outradicaled.

Another fan took advantage of my confused silence to catch her attention. A perplexing emotion consumed me: I was depressed. My husband kept asking me, "Are you okay?" Finally, I admitted that the exchange had depressed me and I didn't know why. He burst out laughing.

He explained it to me. "Jane" was the first woman to challenge me on my own intellectual ground.

I had to admit: He was right. I felt threatened. I felt bested. I realized that my defense against being sexually intimidated by these women was a belief in my intellectual superiority. My trip to CES was the political equivalent of missionary work in deepest Africa, where I had found a native who spoke English with an Oxford accent. No wonder my husband was laughing at me.

It was a chastened feminist who returned to the exhibit floor. The first booth I visited was Crystals, a company that does the artwork on the box covers of about eighty percent of the porn videos in America. There, an older and hard-looking woman explained that she'd been around the business for a long time. She made a point of telling me she'd put four children through college with money made from the industry.

"This convention's far more tasteful than it used to be," she assured me. "Of course, it used to be four times as big as it is right now," she conceded. And exhibitors used to be able to sell their product from the floor, whereas now they could only take orders to be shipped later. In the olden days, some companies used to make up two sets of invoices: a real one and a bogus one that read "Free samples only." The customer showed the bogus invoice to guards at the door. The tax people shut this practice down.

When I asked whether she thought more repression of pornography was coming, she assured me, "Reagan and Bush and that Meese crowd are out on their asses. I'm not worried about Clinton. I mean he's a liberal and I think he's even for pornography, isn't he?" Is he?

THE PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE OF PORN

The only male star I saw signing autographs was Randy West, a blond with a wall-to-wall chest and a Dudley DoRight chin. I didn't get his autograph, but I picked up an ad for his new movie
(Up & Cummers).
It included a paragraph on his formula for producing pornography: "I find the best looking, hottest new babes with up and Cumming star potential.... Find out what turns them on & who they would like to be with, put them together and let them go wild. Live, for real, no script, no acting, no fake orgasms."

Producers seemed fond of giving their philosophy of porn. In another handout-this one an ad for
Sodomania: Tales of Perversity
by Elegant Angel-Patrick Collins described his slant on pornography:

"Sodomania is dedicated to all of us who hate watching women fuck that don't like fucking! ...

But if you like girls who like getting fucked in the ass, girls who like to lick cum off their toes, and girls who just love to suck.. .Then this is the tape for you!"

As I read these accounts of "real action" and "natural sex," I wondered if pornography was relegating itself to an amateur status. After all, art is not natural; it is the opposite of nature. The best scripts and acting are consciously conceived and painstakingly sculpted; they come from skill and hard work, not from spontaneity. Pornography seemed to be eagerly defining itself out of the artistic realm.

This was confirmed by the fact that home porn is the fastest growing aspect of the industry.

Home porn is short videos produced by "real" people, with ordinary bodies, who then sell the tapes of their sexual encounters for public viewing. Several short subjects are spliced together, 22