NoPornNorthampton: Anti-Porn, Anti-Prostitution News and Strategies

Massachusetts: Anti-Human Trafficking Bill Signed into Law

Welcome news from Massachusetts State Senator Stan Rosenberg:

On November 21st, Governor Patrick signed into law a House-Senate anti-human trafficking bill that is being hailed as one of the toughest laws of its kind in the nation.

 

     The new law includes criminal sentences up to five years in prison for attempted human trafficking, up to 20 years for trafficking adults, and up to life imprisonment for the trafficking of minors. Businesses involved in trafficking would face up to a $1 million fine for the first offense, with a mandatory minimum of 10 years to a maximum of life for a second offense. These offenses also carry a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence.

 

     The law also removes any statute of limitations for trafficking crimes and creates a 15-year criminal penalty for trafficking human organs, and it updates sex offender registration laws to include human trafficking and the enticement of a minor into prostitution through the use of electronic devices. Anyone convicted of these crimes would be required to register in Massachusetts as a sex offender.

 

     To further protect and help victims, the law creates the "Victims of Human Trafficking Trust Fund" which will be funded from fines and convicted human traffickers' forfeited assets. Additionally, items used in the commission of the crime (buildings, cars, boats, etc.) are subject to asset forfeiture with all of the proceeds going to the victims fund.

 

     The legislation also:

  • Establishes an Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force, comprised of state officials, law enforcement, victims' services organizations and trafficking victims to investigate and study rates of human trafficking, prevention, and the treatment of victims;
  • Increases the penalty for soliciting a prostitute, and increases the penalty for soliciting sex from a person under 18;
  • Allows defendants who are victims of human trafficking and charged with prostitution to establish a defense of duress or coercion;
  • Establishes a "safe harbor provision" that allows the Commonwealth, defendant or court to request a hearing for a child arrested for prostitution to instead receive protection services;
  • Requires the Department of Children and Families (DCF) to provide services to sexually exploited children and to immediately report to the district attorneys and the police any child the department believes to be a sexually exploited child;
  • Amends the mandated reporting law so that mandated reporters, such as doctors, social workers, teachers and probation officers, must report to DCF when they have reasonable cause to believe that a child is sexually exploited;
  • Establishes a process for victims of trafficking to bring civil actions; and
  • Increases potential sentences for "Johns" to 2 ½ years in a house of correction and creates a mandatory $1,000 fine.    

See also:

Demand Abolition: "Boston Sex Buyers Report"

New Report: "Targeting the Sex Buyer - The Swedish Example: Stopping Prostitution and Trafficking Where It All Begins"

Pioneer Valley Gets 300+ Posters This Week to Protest Valley Advocate Escort Ads (3/21/10)
NoPornNorthampton in conjunction with Our Voices Matter is putting up over 300 posters (download full-size PDF) throughout Pioneer Valley this week. Contact Daily Hampshire Gazette/Valley Advocate Publisher Jim Foudy and ask him to drop massage/escort ads from the Valley Advocate.

Posted by NPNAdmin at 12/12/2011 10:25 AM

Shocking Footage of Women Abused on the Porn Set (a California workplace)



See also:

Shelley Lubben: Truth Behind the Fantasy of Porn

Ex-Porn Star Shelley Lubben Talks about Days on the Set: Tedious, Intoxicated, Painful, Risky

Why Jersey Jaxin Left Porn

Porn Stars Speak Out: STDs, Drugs and Abuse

Amazing.net Milks Pain for Profit (explicit)
 

Posted by NPNAdmin at 12/11/2011 8:38 PM

Former Porn Star Jessie Jewels Story

Porn defenders like to claim that "choice" and "consent" shield the industry from criticism, but the lived experience of porn performers suggests the validity of this consent is often questionable. Jessie Jewels tells her story at the Pink Cross Foundation:
First thing, gives a cocktail beverage on the scene. I took it. I was nervous as hell and knew by looking at him that I was going to need it just to get through my solo scene. He had me sign a consent without explaining it the way it should of been. He completely made it seem like no big deal and oh its just legal jumbo that says you need to be 18. Pressure pressure pressure. I said I’m doing a solo scene for this much and that’s it. He said sure. Just sign the bottom.

I knew very little, if that, nothing, about what I was signing. Well if I knew just by looking that I was signing a legal document with Satan maybe I would of stopped, but he deceived me. Brandon Iron lied to me to make sure his evil and selfish needs were met. He took advantage of young girl who knew nothing. If I could afford a lawyer I would of sued him for all his worth. This man pressured me repeatedly. I said no after no after no after no. He continued to pour me alcohol beverages one after the next. His intentions were morally wrong. He deserves to be in prison, but because of who he is in the industry, because I was just another "broken-home porn whore" to him, he didn't stop when he should of never started. Giving alcohol to a minor is illegal period. Slipping illegal drugs into a minor drink and forcing her to have any type of sexual foul play is 100% against the law in the State of California...

All I knew was what the agency (MetroTalentManagement.com) and I agreed on which was one solo foot fetish scene and it turned into more than that I found out later when the movies came out. I was sexually violated while being drugged by the director/producer Brandon Iron.

Click to continue

See also:

Ex-Porn Star Shelley Lubben Talks about Days on the Set: Tedious, Intoxicated, Painful, Risky

Why Jersey Jaxin Left Porn
“The main thing going around now is crystal meth, cocaine and heroin... You have to numb yourself to go on set. The more you work, the more you have to numb yourself. The more you become addicted, the more your personal life is nothing but drugs... Your whole life becomes nothing but porn.”

“I was a drinker. I drank a lot. Vodka was my drug. Vodka was my numbing toy. Before sets, after sets, and if it was a set where people didn’t care, they’d have it there waiting.”

Porn Stars Speak Out: STDs, Drugs and Abuse

Porn Past Haunts Women Long After Pictures Taken
She begged and pleaded to return the money she was paid in exchange for her photos being removed from the sites for which she’d posed. I had to let her know there is nothing I can do for her. There are hundreds of producers around the world, all of whom have models that change their minds and want to reverse their decision to work in the adult industry. The companies to whom we sell our content generally ignore all requests for removal.

Pornoland's unwritten law: "if we tell the truth about what's really going on here, the fan will get turned off"
Bill Margold, a veteran porn star who now counsels young people entering the business, says 18-year-olds are too young to make the potentially life-altering decision to go into porn. "I get 18-, 19-year-old girls who just don't understand that once you do this, you are sociologically damned forever," he said.

Posted by NPNAdmin at 11/21/2011 6:56 AM

Green Sexuality Concept Gets Its Own Blog

We've created a new Tumblr blog to give our concept of Green Sexuality its own space to develop. Have a look!

"It's a fascinating concept and reflects some new thinking in the anti-porn movement."
- Voices of American Sexuality


 

Posted by NPNAdmin at 9/3/2011 12:17 PM

ABC News: "HIV-Positive Performer Shuts Down L.A. Porn Industry"

Reported yesterday on ABC Nightline:
A porn actor's positive HIV test, which prompted a temporary shutdown of Los Angeles' billion-dollar adult film industry Monday night, has reignited the debate over mandatory condom use in X-rated productions...

"Testing is not a substitute for condom use, and it never will be," said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in Los Angeles. "No test can detect HIV from the moment of infection. There will always be a window period," which might not reflect recent infection...

"You can't dangle from a 30-story building from a rope; you have to wear a harness," he said. "The idea that hurting these performers is a matter of freedom of expression is simply wrong."
 
Click for the full article


See also:

Hampden Superior Court Lets Capital Video Reopen Viewing Booths in Springfield; A Proposed Solution (9/30/08)
A search of the term barebacking on its Amazing.net/Goflix.com website today brings up the following and more:

Bisexual Barebacking #6
Barebacking Tag Team
Unsafe Sex with Transsexuals Barebacking #2
Raw Bois #3 - A Twink Barebacking Adventure
Adventures in Barebacking

The title below was prominently on display at an Amazing.net store in Massachusetts on September 28. The character at the bottom of the box cover says, "Go Forth And Be Unsafe My Son!"





AIDS Healthcare Foundation: "Tell Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky that LA County Must Enforce Condom Use in Adult Films!" (8/31/09)

Los Angeles Times: "Groups to file complaints against 16 porn companies" (8/20/09)

Advocate.com: "Business Before Pleasure?" (8/12/09)
Though there are no scientific statistics, there is a quiet acknowledgment among adult industry professionals that a significant number of gay male porn performers are HIV-positive. A survey conducted by TheSword.com of nearly 100 gay male performers says 30% of them responded as being either HIV-positive or status unknown.

Mandatory testing of gay porn stars would all but bar HIV-positive performers from appearing in films...

Stephan Sirard of NextDoorMale.com is one of the very few studio heads who requires condoms and monthly testing for all: straight or gay, male or female, for partnered or solo scenes.

“Condoms break. Condoms come off. And with testing there are window periods. Combine both for best practices. Studios that don’t use condoms and don’t test should be in court for murder,” Sirard says.

Porn Worker Conditions: "Who failed Lara Roxx?" (explicit language) 
[To film a special effects scene where someone gets shot,] I had to hire a pyrotechnician licensed by the state. I also had to hire a county fire marshal, who monitored the pyrotechnician and had the authority to stop any behavior deemed unsafe. If you add in the city cops I was legally required to retain for crowd control, the actors and crew on my set had three levels of protection provided by government agencies.

Lara Roxx had zero protection by government agencies. There was no cop on that set. No fire marshal. No doctor. Nobody had a license. And nobody broke the law by paying a teenager to accept the uncovered penises of two men into her anus.

Condom Use Below 20% in American Porn Movies
"In any sexual interaction where condoms are used, consumers tend to drift from that," said Graham Travis, head of production at Elegant Angel Video, a production company that turns out as many as eight new releases a month. "What the consumers want to see is performers without condoms, something that's as real and intimate as possible..."

Sharon Mitchell, a former adult-film actress who earned a Ph.D. in human sexuality before co-founding the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, said on Monday that condom use in the industry had gone up after the H.I.V. outbreak to 23 percent from 17 percent and that it was now back to about 17.5 percent.

Los Angeles Times: "In California's Unregulated Porn Film Industry, an Alarming Number of Performers Are Infected With HIV and Other Sexually Transmitted Diseases. And Nobody Seems to Care."

Sexual Ecology: Porn, Promiscuity, and AIDS (explicit language)

Posted by NPNAdmin at 8/31/2011 9:21 AM

The F Word: "The Myths of Bedford v. Canada: Why decriminalizing prostitution won’t help"

Laura Johnston provides an excellent rebuttal of pro-prostitution arguments in The F Word:
The argument that decriminalizing prostitution will improve conditions for prostituted women sounds appealing on its surface. The first time I heard it I thought it made sense. But when I began volunteering in a rape crisis centre and shelter and met women in prostitution, I realized that decriminalization wouldn’t address the reality of women’s lives. This piece is my analysis from my experiences doing front line work, and in working on the Bedford v. Canada case. I’m going to argue that the idea women can be made safer by decriminalizing prostitution relies on a number of myths. I don’t think the position taken by the applicants or the government will help prostituted women, and in my conclusion, I’m going to discuss a third alternative, which was proposed by the intervener I did research for – the Women’s Coalition for the Abolition of Prostitution.

Click for the full article

See also:

New Report: "Targeting the Sex Buyer - The Swedish Example: Stopping Prostitution and Trafficking Where It All Begins"

A Closer Look at Sweden's Success with Reducing Prostitution; Skeptics Rebutted

"‘Big Tent’ feminism? Sounds great. Feels a lot like the status quo."

NOMAS: "Does Consensual Prostitution Exist?"

MSNBC Investigates Human Trafficking and Prostitution in the US; Valley Advocate Advertises "Foreign Fantasies" Where "Everything Goes"

Posted by NPNAdmin at 8/8/2011 1:16 PM

Demand Abolition: "Boston Sex Buyers Report"

Last month we noted noted Newsweek's article on "The John Next Door". Here is more detail on the underlying report, published in July with support from Demand Abolition and the Hunt Alternatives Fund:
Why do some men buy sex while others abstain or even decry such damaging and degrading acts? If we are to eliminate demand for illegal commercial sex, we must understand the attitudes, backgrounds, and behaviors that prevent some men but allow others to purchase a woman’s body.

Melissa Farley of Prostitution Research and Education sheds more light on these critical questions in a new report based on 202 in-depth, face-to-face interviews with men in the Greater Boston area. The report, “Comparing Sex Buyers with Men Who Don’t Buy Sex”, received financial and logistical support from Demand Abolition and Hunt Alternatives Fund.

The report brings to light significant findings:
  • Men who buy the bodies of others for sex differ from non-sex buyers in their self-reported likelihood to rape; they acknowledge having committed significantly more sexually coercive acts against women.
  • Buyers are far more likely than non-buyers to commit substance abuse, assaults, weapons, and crimes against authority.
  • Men know what they’re doing. Two thirds of buyers and non-buyers recognize that a majority of prostituted women are lured, tricked, or trafficked into “the life”.
  • Buyers of sex justify their behavior by declaring that prostituted women are essentially different from non-prostituted women.
  • Compared with non-buyers, significantly fewer buyers (70 to 46 percent) report that they were taught about respect for women in sex education classes.
The “good” news is that the men interviewed shared ways they would be deterred from purchasing sex, including being arrested, paying increased fines, spending significant time in jail, facing public recognition of the crime, being placed on the sex offender registry, and receiving education about how prostitution harms the women and children.

The study is a powerful tool that policymakers, criminal justice professionals, educators, and practitioners—not only in Boston, but around the nation—can use in creating policy, programs, and public discourse around eliminating demand for commercial sex.
Click to access the full report and related media coverage

Here is a 5-minute MSNBC segment on the report featuring an interview with Demand Abolition's Lina Nealon:
 

 
 
See also:

New Report: "Targeting the Sex Buyer - The Swedish Example: Stopping Prostitution and Trafficking Where It All Begins"

Guardian: "Why men use prostitutes"

CNN.com: "'John schools' try to change attitudes about paid sex"
 

Posted by NPNAdmin at 8/7/2011 5:54 AM

Newsweek: "The John Next Door"

Here are some excerpts from an outstanding article in this week's Newsweek that reports on a new study by Dr. Melissa Farley, director of Prostitution Research and Education:
Farley’s findings suggest that the use of prostitution and pornography may cause men to become more aggressive. Sex buyers in the study used significantly more pornography than nonbuyers, and three quarters of them said they received their sex education from pornography, compared with slightly more than half of the nonbuyers. “Over time, as a result of their prostitution and pornography use, sex buyers reported that their sexual preferences changed and they sought more sadomasochistic and anal sex,” the study reported...

Sex buyers often prefer the license they have with prostitutes. “You’re the boss, the total boss,” said another john. “Even us normal guys want to say something and have it done no questions asked. No ‘I don’t feel like it.’ No ‘I’m tired.’ Unquestionable obedience. I mean that’s powerful. Power is like a drug.”

Many johns view their payment as giving them unfettered permission to degrade and assault women. “You get to treat a ho like a ho,” one john said. “You can find a ho for any type of need—slapping, choking, aggressive sex beyond what your girlfriend will do.”

...johns prefer to view prostitutes as loving sex and enjoying their customers. “The sex buyers were way off in their estimates of the women’s feelings,” Farley reports. “In reality, the bottom line is that prostituted women are not enjoying sex, and the longer she’s in it, the less she enjoys sex acts—even in her real life, because she has to shut down in order to perform sex acts with 10 strangers a day, and she can’t turn it back on. What happens is called somatic dissociation; this also happens to incest survivors and people who are tortured.”

... Clearly worried about growing social pressure, the [Village] Voice attacked the antitrafficking campaign last month, charging that it has exaggerated the extent of the problem. The most common estimates, oft-repeated by major media, suggest that 100,000 to 300,000 children are trafficked in the United States every year. The Voice reported that this statistic identifies children at risk and claimed that the number of those who are actually trafficked is only a fraction of those figures. But the Voice’s calculations were promptly dismissed as unreliable...

Click for the full article

See also:

Vanity Fair: "Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door"
We're glad to see this impressive 5/24/11 article is the most popular at VanityFair.com today. Among other things, it notes how escort ads in The Hartford Advocate facilitate prostitution. As Northampton honors the abolitionist and feminist legacy of Sojourner Truth this weekend, perhaps our local Valley Advocate will take a long, hard look in the mirror.

NOMAS: "Does Consensual Prostitution Exist?"

New Report: "Targeting the Sex Buyer - The Swedish Example: Stopping Prostitution and Trafficking Where It All Begins"

Guardian: "Why men use prostitutes"

CNN.com: "'John schools' try to change attitudes about paid sex"

Escort Prostitution: A Response to Tom Vannah, Editor of the Valley Advocate

Abolishing Prostitution: The Swedish Solution - An Interview with Gunilla Ekberg by the Rain and Thunder Collective
 

Posted by NPNAdmin at 7/19/2011 7:30 AM

Secrets of Relationship Happiness You Won't Learn from Porn

If you watch a lot of porn, you might begin to think that "Use 'em, Abuse 'em and Lose 'em" is what a man should do. You might think treating your partner roughly was normal. You might think that satisfying long-term relationships are impossible to sustain and not worth it. And you'd be wrong. A new Kinsey study finds:
Couples in the study that frequently hugged, kissed and caressed their partners and had sex more often reported being more sexually satisfied, researchers found. Both men and women noted being happier the longer they stayed together. For women, the sex got better the longer the couple was together. Those who'd been with their partner for 15 years or more reported an increase is sexual satisfaction.

Click for more on MSNBC
Pornographers have incentives to lie about relationships. Violence and aggression stimulate the release of testosterone - an addictive short-term rush. And, too, happily married couples consume less porn.

See also:

Porn Use Correlates with Infidelity, Prostitution, Aggression, Rape-Supportive Beliefs
 

Posted by NPNAdmin at 7/7/2011 12:09 PM

Porn Stars Speak Out: STDs, Drugs and Abuse

An excerpt from Shelley Lubben's blog:
Male Porn Star states on his blog "Christian Sings the Blues" January 28, 2008:

Drugs are a major, major problem in my business. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. I can't tell you the number of girls who have disappeared and dropped out of the business because of their drug problems (I could list them, but that's not really important). It is unbelievably sad to think about, and seeing some of them fall into a downward spiral hurts me more than others. But I think we all can agree that a huge majority of drug users will never change unless they get professional help. I have seen all manner of drugs on set, at parties, in cars, everywhere. If I had to guess, I would put marijuana use at 90 percent of ALL people involved in the industry (performers, directors, crew, agents, drivers, owners, office workers, etc.). I have been on a set where a girl has passed out DURING a sex scene with me (she was abusing oxycontin). Just recently a girl overdosed on GHB (a party drug that is the scourge of Texas, a clear odorless drug that doesn't mix well with alcohol) on set. I have seen a girl win a prestigious (lol) AVN Award, not show up to accept the award, and then fall into the throes of drug use that caused her to lose at least 50 pounds and drop off the face of the earth.

Read more

See also:

Why Jersey Jaxin Left Porn

Ex-Porn Star Shelley Lubben Talks about Days on the Set: Tedious, Intoxicated, Painful, Risky

Jenna Jameson's Tragic Backstory; Seeking Virgins with Paris Hilton
...Jameson had acquired a devastating crystal-meth (amphetamine) habit. It nearly killed her. Rescued by a friend, she was sent back to her father to recuperate: she was so emaciated that she had to be put on the plane in a wheelchair, and when he came to meet her at the airport, he didn't recognise her.

Posted by NPNAdmin at 7/5/2011 6:35 AM
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