The company at the centre of Stoya’s rape allegations against James Deen has announced a ‘bill of rights’ – we interview an adult film actor and a porn lawyer on what this means
The company at the centre of the James Deen rape allegations — kink.com — has just announced a new ‘bill of rights’, intended to keep adult performers safe. The move follows the allegations of rape and sexual assault against James Deen made by Stoya and other performers last year.
The move comes as the porn industry faces unprecedented levels of scrutiny. Stoya’s courage in coming out against Deen — who had, deliberately or otherwise, cultivated a PR halo as a ‘feminist porn performer’ — opened the floodgates for other women in porn to share their experiences of having their consent violated. Since then, over ten other women have come forward with allegations against Deen, in a move which threatens to derail major production houses such as Kink.
Other porn companies have come out with performers’ ‘Bill of Rights’, such as Wasteland.com, which published a set of performance guidelines last month. However, Kink’s new rules will attract particular scrutiny given that it is currently involved in multiple lawsuits alleging that it has a ‘worker safety problem’.
The new rules state, amongst other measures, that performers will be escorted to and from shoots and bathrooms on set — a nod to the allegation from Ashley Fires that Deen assaulted her in a bathroom at Kink’s headquarters. Other measures include that if a performer is uncomfortable with a scene they can request for the shoot to be terminated — but they’ll only be paid for the proportion of the scene that has been filmed.
“So if someone is abused on set, they have to continue with a scene otherwise they won’t be paid in full? The more I read this document, the more I think that describing it as a bill of rights is deeply disingenuous”
In a statement given to Vocativ, Kink spokesman Michael Stabile said “the James Deen allegations launched a period of really intense debate within the Armory (Kink’s headquarters) about how this happened, and how it could have been prevented.” He went on to add that the Bill of Rights was “just the beginning of a process” that will “help us identify places where we can strengthen protections.”
We interviewed Pandora Blake, the self-styled ‘kinky feminist pornographer’, and Myles Jackman, a lawyer specialising in the porn industry, to find out whether a ‘bill of rights’ will actually keep adult entertainers safe.
From Jackman’s legal perspective, “this doesn’t look like a bill of rights in any meaningful sense. It’s more a purely legal document between the organisation and performer. Were it a real declaration it would have the model’s right to bodily autonomy right at the very top of the document, in a mission statement”.
As a porn producer and performer, Blake doesn’t feel the document goes far enough. “It's not enough to have performers sign an agreement acknowledging their rights — those rights also need to be pro-actively protected during the shoot, and this is the responsibility of crew, not just the performers themselves.”
In her view, the bill of rights places “too much onus on performers to protect themselves. Ethical production shouldn’t be about holding performers responsible for their own safety — it should be about producers stepping up and holding themselves accountable for anything that goes wrong on set.”
Jackman agrees that Kink is shifting emphasis on performers to protect themselves — rather than actively trying to keep its employees safe. “Nowhere in the document does it refer to Kink’s responsibilities. It looks to me like they’re just trying to cover themselves against being sued again in the future, for example by making someone accompany performers to the restrooms”.
The clause stating that performers won’t be paid in full if they end a scene early is also worrying. “So if someone is abused on set, they have to continue with a scene otherwise they won’t be paid in full? The more I read this document, the more I think that describing it as a bill of rights is deeply disingenuous.”
As a porn performer, Blake feels that it’s often hard to stop a scene when it gets out of hand. “I know from my own experience that during an intense BDSM scene, my ability to communicate my thoughts quickly might be compromised – I might be in an altered state of mind, or so immersed in physical sensations that it's hard for me to verbalise thoughts quickly.”
As a result, the production team needs to be completely on-the-ball. “The producer, director and crew all need to be hyper-vigilant, and there needs to be a supportive culture of communication on set where it’s totally okay for people to call “cut” and ask “are you okay?”
Ultimately, Blake feels a wider cultural shift in the porn industry is needed to ensure all adult performers are safe. “The wellbeing of performers has to come before the end product. End of story.”