Porn Valley

On April 2, the Labor and Employment Committee of the California State Assembly voted almost unanimously in favor of Assembly Bill (AB) 1576, which would mandate condom use, testing protocols and require adult companies to keep detailed health records of performers. The bill was sponsored by assemblymember Isadore Hall III. Tomorrow, it goes to the Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism, and Internet Media Committee for a vote. If it passes, it will head to the Appropriations Committee, then hit the state legislature floor.

Over the past few weeks, Chase bank has been mailing members of the adult industry informing them that the bank is closing their accounts. While we’ve seen this kind of attitude from financial institutions before, we’ve never seen anything of this magnitude. Banks and payment processors have become incredibly risk-averse in the wake of efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice to combat fraud, but some suspect this exaggerated response is a ploy from financial institutions to garner bipartisan support and get the government off its back.

On Valentine’s Day, the Duke Chronicle ran a piece about a Duke freshman who spent her breaks in Los Angeles shooting porn. The student, who was given the pseudonym “Lauren”, told reporter Katie Fernelius that the idea to go into the adult industry first came to her while grappling with the question of paying for her education. This is the story of what happened next.

Last September, Michigan’s Grand Valley State University removed a pendulum sculpture after several students used it to emulate the music video “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus, in which the pop singer rides the steel ball used in demolitions. But the students at Grand Valley State aren’t the only ones parodying the music video. From evolution to Chatroulette, here’s a rundown of some of the best ones yet.

Everyone you speak with in the adult industry is fast to spell out the evils of copyright infringement online. Everyone except Farrell Timlake, that is. Timlake is the founder of Homegrown Video, a 31-year-old company with over 800 videos in its main series. Timlake thinks there is something to be gained from the sort of community free helps to build — something he learned while selling tie-dye shirts on a number of parking lots as he followed the Grateful Dead around the nation.

I saw some of the photos that Kendall Jenner posted for her 18th birthday blur past during a cursory glance of Instagram last night and my first thought was “oh, God, here comes the avalanche.” Sure enough, this morning, the celebrity gossip site TMZ is reporting that at least six adult companies have pinged this young member of the Kardashian clan with offers. Of course, Jenner isn’t the only one to get pinged by porn studios this year. Can you guess who? Bet Paula Deen isn’t the first person who comes to mind.

Pornography is work that deserves to be safe. Like nursing, boxing, and other bodily-fluid-intensive jobs, that safety is going to be complicated. What I do know from my brief time as the Nancy Drew of dick identification is that a lot of the laws that get proposed to make porn safer have unexpected side effects—some of which are just as bad as the original problem. We’re far more likely to help porn performers if we treat them less as victims in need of protection and more as workers with a stake—and an interest—in their own safety.

Adult performer and The Canyons star James Deen has been working on a web food porn series with the digital adult studio WoodRocket since the beginning of the year. There’s nothing really pornographic about it — James Deen Loves Food, which usually runs between five and 10 minutes, features Deen procuring, making and eating his way around Los Angeles. This week, Deen set out to McDonald’s, all geared up to explore its menu until a manager killed the fun — and the $89 order.

“Why is there porn explicitly only for women?” adult performer James Deen asks. “By saying there needs to be porn for women, you’re basically isolating women as a gender, and saying, ‘This is how women should think. This is how their sexuality should be.’ It’s counterproductive (from what I understand) to the equality movement. Who says that one woman’s take on sexuality is the right way to think?”

The story here isn’t a cautionary tale about the dangers of sexual appetites. Nanula isn’t a bad guy because he likes sex or wants to sleep with a lot of women, some of whom are sex workers. Nanula is a bad guy because he knew that some of these women wouldn’t consent to a specific sort of act with him so he deceived them. It doesn’t matter if you don’t think there is a difference between porn and prostitution. At least two of the women involved do see a difference. They ended up doing something they didn’t want to do. Richard Nanula lied to them. That’s why he’s a bad guy.