In August 2013, a bunch of performers in adult entertainment got together to talk about our industry and said: “Shit’s fucked up. The shit in question is more fucked up than it was a few years ago. Someone ought to do something.”
Rather than wait for someone to become an actual person who will fix things, we collectively pulled on our grown-up pants and decided to do something ourselves. Thus began the organisation called the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee.
We’ve got grand utopian dreams. We’ve got practical short term goals. We’ve got Nina Hartley (who, if the United States had a monarchy, should have been given the title of Dame by now) teaching us phrases like “best ethical practice guidelines”.
The first project we put together was an educational primer on performing in the adult film industry. We collected all the lessons we learned the hard way, and all the lessons we watched other performers learn the hard way. We cut out the personal opinions.
We prioritised the most important concepts and mercilessly edited them until they fit into 15 pages of solid dialogue. Medical professionals donated their time and expertise. People with experience in workers’ rights and the fight for recognition of sex work as real work gave their wisdom.
On 5 January, we shot the video. Thirty performers showed up on very short notice. As I was listening to the script being read over and over, I noticed that almost everything boiled down to three subjects:
Are you really really sure you want to make the decision to have sex on camera?
Here’s all this sexual health information you need to know.
Let’s talk about consent and boundaries.
I was overjoyed at the amount of support shown by both the performer community and people who have absolutely no stake in the adult film industry, but I also couldn’t help thinking that it’s kind of absurd that people sometimes make it to 18 or 22 without knowing at least the basics of this stuff.
For instance: “You always have the right to say No, and you do not have to defend or explain your choice. ‘I don’t want to’ is a perfectly good reason for saying No.”
Before you assume that inability to express limits is a porno problem, think about how many times you’ve heard a friend talk about not knowing how to say they’re uncomfortable with something at work or during sex. Toddlers are generally fantastic at saying No. How do so many people lose their ability to say No to things between the terrible twos and adulthood?
Not only is there a sad lack of publicly accessible education regarding physical sexual health, there’s a sad lack of discussion about mental sexual health.
A person’s first condom, strap-on, or lacy thong doesn’t come with a pamphlet explaining active consent. Tampon companies don’t print statements on the back of their boxes encouraging teenagers to express their desires and ask for the desires of their sexual partners. Someone should do something about this.
It would be extremely inappropriate for me to march into high schools and begin expounding upon communication, respecting other people’s limits, and taking responsibility for expressing your own. What I can do is expound upon some basic guidelines on the internet and hope the core concepts trickle down. So, here they are:
1. Ask the people you will be having sex with what their preferences and limits are. This fosters active consent and encourages communication.
2. In order for a sexual partner to be able to give you what you want, you have to tell them what your desires are. A sexual partner can’t respect your limits if you don’t express them.
3. It is completely OK to retract your consent during a sex act. You can say that something is more intense than you thought it would be and you are no longer OK with it. If you do not speak up your partner(s) have no guaranteed way of knowing that you are unhappy or uncomfortable.
4. If a sexual partner says something hurts, uses a “safe word” or other signal to communicate that they want the sexual interaction to stop, or just looks unhappy, freaked out, or generally not OK, you need to stop what you’re doing and check in with them.
5. If your partner(s) are drunk or high, their ability to consent is questionable. If they’ve previously expressed distaste for anal sex and are slurring “Fuck my asshole” you should politely decline and bring the subject up later when they’re sober. This applies to any sexual act that you have not previously engaged in with this person.
6. As a general rule, don’t penetrate an orifice, pee, vomit, or bleed on someone, or slap them around without discussing the act first.
7. If your sexual partner(s) express a limit or ask for something to stop and you do not respect it, you are stepping onto a scale that ranges from “jerk” to “full-on rapist”. Personally, I don’t want to be on that scale at all, and I don’t want to engage in sexual activity with anyone who does hang out on that scale.
8. If one of your sexual partners steps on to the jerk-to-full-on rapist scale, call them out on it. You have the right to end the sexual activity you are engaged in and to decline sexual activity with them in the future.
There you are. If any condom companies want to use those bits on their wrappers, hit me up.
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