“We were in a piledriver, he was fucking me in the ass and I said something like, ‘Yeah fuck me like that you son of a bitch.’ His face twisted and he came down on my face two times—close-fisted,” says Rayne. “I was punched in the face while he was still in my ass and then he starts going crazy on my butt—extreme, brutally fucking it. He just starts shoving things in to the point where he ripped it and I bled everywhere. There was so much blood I couldn’t finish the scene.”

Released in 2006, in a scene some fans call the “weirdest in porn,” the director, the late Chico Wang, alluded to these issues in a forum post about the movie's release. “It seemed I went a bit overboard when one of the girls, Amber Rayne, suddenly couldn’t finish her scene because of backdoor problems.”

She remembers hearing the director say, “Oh, shit.” The director’s assistant took her into the bathroom to assess the damage. In his opinion, she needed stitches (which she later received). Ever the consummate professional, Rayne said, “I’ll be fine,” determined to finish the scene, somehow. She and the director decided on a multiple-guy BJ scene (sans Deen) featuring her face instead of the injured rear.

“It took many years before we worked together again… my agent showed up at the end of that scene and said, ‘We’re taking you straight to the hospital.’ He was pissed,” says Rayne. “I was a big money-maker and I was out of commission.”

Years later she consented to working with Deen—again under the supervision of a trusted director. “I went in waiting for a battle, ‘I’m going to take you on now.’ It was a challenge, like, ‘I will break you,’ and it ended up being a really sweet scene. At the time, people really liked working with him and it was that scene when I realized why,” says Rayne. “It seemed like he’d grown up significantly, at least in his interactions with me, and I grew into a stronger person as well.”

Looking back, Rayne says she rationalized the incident by thinking of Deen as really young and new to the business. But now that so many others have come forward, the newbie excuse no longer applies. “I can’t blame it on immaturity anymore. I can’t blame it on being new to the industry and being some young kid. No, you know better.”

Despite the rhetoric of feminism and women's rights, as well as on-the-job safety, the coverage of the scandal's aftermath was largely silent on what had been improved for women like Stoyadinovich, like Wren.

Indeed, Sevilla pled bafflement to all of the accusations against him, and there have been no charges filed against him, or against the pornographers who watched the rapes happen, packaged and sold some of them.

These women stepped forward with a common accusation - a man who makes his living fucking women for the camera somehow had some deep-seated rage and misogyny issues. He continues to be enabled by the deep-seated rage and misogyny issues that seemed to have been best exhibited as production crew stood around and "high-fived" each other during the brutal attacks.

Did Meghan Wren, a woman who loved the outdoors, animals, and described herself as a "normal woman" despite her profession, did she seek drugs or suicide as a result of this culture of violence?

Is there any way to reform the porn industry? Or are the deep seated issues at the heart of packaging women for mass sexual gratification too entangled in the industry itself?

Either way, like Christy Mack beaten and raped to within an inch of her life, are we able to adequately support these victims of domestic and occupational violence?

Did the outrage at Sevilla's actions result in any major changes to the way the sex industry operates?

Or was this lack of response, of material and emotional support past "#istandwith____" possibly what kept these women silent in the first place?

"Ever the consummate professional", Wren was pressured - whether she realized it or not - to continue working after she received injury that required stitches and inflicted god-knows-what on her psyche.

It's possible that the scars of her admission being relived every day online, as well as the professional ramifications that come from taking a swing at one of the more powerful players in the industry, as well as the fact that women in porn so rarely last past their thirties, drove Wren to commit her tragic last act. But is a feminism that demands acceptance while gaining no traction in actual reforms somehow responsible for her death? Do we have lazy activists to blame? Or is it a culture of misogyny that might share responsibility for the death Meghan Wren?

The trending hashtag for her death is "She has a name" - but what is that? Who are we mourning, and why?

Edited by drwhat (April 8, 2016 23:44:32)

88888 posted:

its out of our comfort zone so we meekly give our upvotes and hope someone else will start the discussion, op. this was discipline's area of knowledge, and anyone who didn't agree with her while she was here probably does after they saw what went down with molly & crew.

hell, if even manyfesto was still up, we could get something going, trade fav articles, etc. alas...

she put it back up
https://manyfesto.org/

MarianneSadd posted:

So, there are no women on this website? Or do men here just feel uncomfortable discussing this?

well, both things are probably true to varying degrees, but also this forum is a lot slower than you might think, especially for more serious topics where people feel that they need to compose their thoughts or they generally agree but don't have much to add

swampman posted:

Does anyone have any good suggestions for anti-pornography activities that we can all engage in beside not buying it? I despise porn but don't feel particularly empowered to fight the sex industry.

It seems really difficult to fight, especially since the introduction of broad-band internet has basically eradicated neighborhood porn stores. I remember back in the old days, feminists would actually occupy stores and smash them up. Now it seems the only place you could picket would be the AVN awards, or something.

The very nature of sex work seems to discourage meaningful mass organization, as so much is "freelance", and since the bosses are so fluid. It's also gig-oriented, so it would be difficult to organize a strike against the most exploitative studios, such as Vivid, where I understand a lot of these attacks took place. At the end of the day, it seems as though these women are working in an industry that is run by men, and it seems as though there is never a lack of new talent to scab out on organized workers.

Now you have "alt" porn stars arguing that it is a job like any other, and "woke" male allies who enjoy porn as much as the next guy, but see it also as a pretty harmless thing. Not a whole lot of room for maneuvering. I mean, wasn't this whole industry started by the mafia anyway? They're the ones who were in charge of breaking picket lines in the first place.

MarianneSadd posted:

I guess what I'd like to explore is whether the whole sex-worker-acceptance media pulpit, if unmoored completely from any kind of action or, at least, proposed support structure, is anything but cynical punditry.

Laurie Penny wrote something in Time Magazine that opened with "How much can you change the world with 55 words?" but I've yet to see any way the world has been changed by her 55 words, or all of these other women putting their reputations and trauma on the line for clickbait articles.

At the worst, most paranoid: this kind of moralizing punditry seems to hit the most established feminists hardest, silencing them and excluding them from discussion. Then, these pundits sit around and tweet and write op-eds, and no action whatsoever is taken. In it's simplest form, it seems as though the "acceptance" discourse actually squashes movements that might seek to provide support.

Maybe I'm wrong? I don't know what the history of second wave feminism and outreach/support for sex workers was, and I don't know for sure if there were any improvements made after the James Deen scandal. But it seemed to me as though it all died down, and nothing changed. At the very least, a lawsuit might have been an option for these women, either against Sevilla or the employers who watched the abuse happen and did nothing about it. If this new brand of feminism is so concerned with legalizing things, where are the lawyers who might help with a case?

it's honestly a shame that discipline has withdrawn for the time and her posts are hidden, since this is something she talked about more than once. read the link that glomper posted above for something she wrote about it.

glomper_stomper posted:

https://manyfesto.org/2014/07/15/the-weaponized-naked-girl/

elemennop posted:

dipshit420 posted:

Porn is a complex issue on par with abortion, I'd say. Those who want to abolish all porn likely run the risk of forcing it underground, to the point where the workers can be exploited by a criminal class without legal recourse. These abused workers would be punished for their own work by the system in place. This is what many pro-porn advocates foresee, and think the act of selling sex should be a free choice and the workers should be afforded basic human rights and protection from predatory producers. A communist society would not have "porn actor" as part of the planned workforce, so really the writing is on the wall.

I mean, I can't help but that think that's used as more of a cynical argument on behalf of porn-advocates. There are many countries who have almost completely effectively banned the production of pornography. The production of pornography is much easier to control than abortion, since it's by nature meant to be viewed.

I would disagree, in that porn seems to be obtainable in any area with a black market if it is illegal. Where it's legal, it's still kept behind a buffer, even if gasstations carry porn magazines they are obscured by opaque paper, and porn retailers are always located in the lower class areas of urban centers It has ties to the world of prostitution, which has been tied to criminal elements since the dawn of civilization. However, my main point is that the reason people will say they did porn is "for the money." If the state makes porn profitless, the reason for doing it evaporates. As humans are sexual creatures, porn is an inevitable byproduct of capitalism.

dipshit420 posted:

elemennop posted:
dipshit420 posted:
Porn is a complex issue on par with abortion, I'd say. Those who want to abolish all porn likely run the risk of forcing it underground, to the point where the workers can be exploited by a criminal class without legal recourse. These abused workers would be punished for their own work by the system in place. This is what many pro-porn advocates foresee, and think the act of selling sex should be a free choice and the workers should be afforded basic human rights and protection from predatory producers. A communist society would not have "porn actor" as part of the planned workforce, so really the writing is on the wall.
I mean, I can't help but that think that's used as more of a cynical argument on behalf of porn-advocates. There are many countries who have almost completely effectively banned the production of pornography. The production of pornography is much easier to control than abortion, since it's by nature meant to be viewed.
I would disagree, in that porn seems to be obtainable in any area with a black market if it is illegal. Where it's legal, it's still kept behind a buffer, even if gasstations carry porn magazines they are obscured by opaque paper, and porn retailers are always located in the lower class areas of urban centers It has ties to the world of prostitution, which has been tied to criminal elements since the dawn of civilization. However, my main point is that the reason people will say they did porn is "for the money." If the state makes porn profitless, the reason for doing it evaporates. As humans are sexual creatures, porn is an inevitable byproduct of capitalism.

i agree the watching of pornography probably cannot effectively be banned, but i was talking about the production of it.

dipshit420 posted:

banning the production just sets up the potentiality of it developing it's own, more profitable underground economy.

this is almost certainly false. whatever money there is in porn in say south korea it's trivial to the size of the american pornography industry.

elemennop posted:

dipshit420 posted:

banning the production just sets up the potentiality of it developing it's own, more profitable underground economy.

this is almost certainly false. whatever money there is in porn in say south korea it's trivial to the size of the american pornography industry.

nearly all films in south kkkorea feature incredibly graphic softcore fucking you'd only see late night on showtime here

ilmdge posted:

88888 posted:

its out of our comfort zone so we meekly give our upvotes and hope someone else will start the discussion, op. this was discipline's area of knowledge, and anyone who didn't agree with her while she was here probably does after they saw what went down with molly & crew.

hell, if even manyfesto was still up, we could get something going, trade fav articles, etc. alas...

she put it back up
https://manyfesto.org/

fuck yes