Autonomy, Ignorance, and Porn
Some readers may have heard about the recent kerfuffle over a high school newspaper that carried an article based on an interview with a senior (eighteen years old) at the school who was working in porn. When the school administration heard the article was in the works, they asked to be able to see it before the paper went to press. The paper’s faculty advisor, a journalism and composition teacher at the school, refused. She was subsequently threatened with disciplinary action up to potential firing, which made national news. (Note: For anyone who doesn’t understand why it would be such a big deal for her to have allowed the administration to read the article before it was published, it would be the equivalent of the United States government’s requiring that media outlets run things by them before printing them. I hope that illuminates the debilitating chilling effect such would have on the press. Indeed, it represents the antithesis of the purported purpose of the press in the US.)
I first appreciate the teacher’s steadfastness in refusing the administration’s demand even in the face of potentially losing her job. (The appalling behavior as such of the administration is an entire subject in and of itself that I am not covering here.) I also find the uproar about writing an article about a student legally and consensually working in porn both maddening and disheartening. It’s as though we sadistically cannot handle a sex work narrative that doesn’t fit with the collective view we seem to have of the suffering, exploited, defeated sex worker. I feel saddened by this because wouldn’t people rather discover that someone is not suffering the way they assumed than be right? Even if we have to let go of our preconceptions and misguided notions based on (sometimes innocent) ignorance, is it so much to ask to listen to sex workers and allow them to have credibility on the subject of their own lives and experience?
On top of that, I then saw an online comment about the story that quite increased the ire I experienced. I’m sorry that I have to paraphrase it here as, even after a valiant search, I was unable to relocate the comment. Here was the gist of it:
“What the article should be about is people luring young girls into this kind of work, because does anyone believe she really didn’t start until she turned eighteen? That idea is ridiculous, and people in the porn industry need to stop preying on children.”
To some degree the ignorance this commenter displays is understandable because one would not necessarily know of US Code 2257 if one has not worked in the porn industry. If one has, however, they are likely aware that they are not going to find any legitimate producer who does not require two legal forms of ID that indicate that any performer is at least eighteen years old. Said producer will make photocopies of these proofs of identity and keep them as legal records. Why? Because if they don’t have that information available and are questioned about it, they are in violation of 2257 and may face steep legal repercussions as such.
The 2257 law relates to record-keeping and was purportedly created to prevent underage participation in pornographic endeavors. Essentially the law requires, among other things, that anyone owning and producing depictions of sexual acts acquire and maintain proof of the age and identity of any person visually portrayed performing such acts. So if Person A sees a pornographic video with Jane Example in it and says to a law enforcement agency, “I want proof that Jane Example is at least eighteen years old,” 2257 allows said law enforcement entity to indeed ask whoever displayed Jane Example engaged in sexually explicit acts or positions for proof that she is at least eighteen years old. If they don’t have it, they’ve violated 2257 and can face prison time. It doesn’t matter if Jane Example appears to be fifty years old and is very obviously not under eighteen. The law states that under circumstances in which an individual appears engaged in sexual acts, legal proof of that person’s identity and age of at least eighteen must be accessible to law enforcement via whoever is in control of displaying such content to the public or others.
The notion that people producing adult pornography at this time would be willing to risk the significant legal penalties of having anyone underage work for them when it is relatively easily to obtain proof that someone is not, and when there are a plethora of available workers that are of age, is frankly ludicrous. Thus, a comment like this is patently indicative of the ignorance that pervades on the subject of sex work and this rather baffling assumption that underage involvement in that industry is undifferentiated from consensual adult participation in it.
So yes, commenter to whom I wish I could refer by name, I do believe Ms. Fink did not start in the industry until she was eighteen. Were you to read the above, I hope you would, too.
Love,
Emerald
“The whole damn world is just as obsessed with who’s the best dressed and who’s having sex…”
-Bowling for Soup “High School Never Ends”
