XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography Read Free Page A

police had made it clear they would prosecute any hardcore sex video that went past certain unofficial, but well-known, limits. These limits included: no more than three fingers in a vagina or anus (no fist fucking); and, no urination or defecation. Although mild images of violence were still tolerated, the slapping of breasts and faces was in a legal gray zone.
    Those consumers who wanted hardcore pornography with more extreme images of violence could still find it-but only from expensive imported tapes. Expensive, because their importation was illegal.
    As to coercion into pornography-the claim that women are forced to commit sex acts for the camera-Stagliano described how his company, Evil Angel, screened the women they hired as actresses. At casting calls, he and his partner Patrick asked the women which sex acts turned them on. From their answers, the two men knew the roles in which to cast the women. "Only if a woman enjoys what she's doing," Stagliano assured me, "can she give a convincing performance."
    As an example, he recalled a shy woman who had come in on an open casting call earlier that week. Physically, she was what he considered perfect: young, a good hard body, a pretty face.
    But, after the first few questions, he'd decided not to use her. She didn't seem comfortable enough with sex to project real enjoyment to a camera. Then, Patrick asked her about bondage and she reportedly "came alive." The woman was hired for a bondage scene.
    When I pressed on about the possibility of coercion, Stagliano readily admitted that the industry was huge. Some women were almost certainly abused or misused. "This happens in every business," he explained, "from Standard Oil to banking." The most common abuse came from producers who manipulated women into performing sex acts to which they have not agreed in advance. Usually, the manipulation was in the form of peer pressure. For example, the director might comment, "No one else objects," or "You're holding up production for everyone else."
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    Stagliano had heard of a producer who refused to pay a woman for past work unless she performed a sex act to which she objected. The woman knew it would be useless to sue, because courts do not have a track record of sympathy toward sex workers. This gave the producer a strong hold over her.
    The conversation drifted on to whether or not there was such a thing as a snuff movie. This is a movie in which someone is actually killed in front of the camera during a sex/torture scene. (My question had political significance. In New York, over a decade ago, when a porn movie purported to be a snuff film, feminists had almost rioted outside the theater in which it played.
    This incident was the beginning of the "Take Back the Night" movement, under whose banner feminists still march through the streets of major cities to protest violence against women.) Stagliano had no first-hand knowledge of snuff movies. But "a reliable source" had assured him that the movie that had caused such a sensation had been a scam. The producers had wanted to make more money. They thought a simulated killing, advertised as real, would make the ticket price skyrocket. They were right.
    Stagliano interrupted Leslie's preoccupation with food to ask if he knew of any snuff films. The answer was no, but Leslie conceded the possibility of amateur snuff films. As he put it, "There are a lot of really sick sons-of-bitches out there." But no one "in the industry" would be stupid enough to put a murder on tape so that it could be used against them in criminal proceedings. In over thirty years in pornography, Leslie said he had never seen a snuff film, even though he had seen almost everything else, including what looked like real violence in Japanese videos.
    As to the original film that caused such a furor, Leslie informed me that if I took the time to watch the video, I would see how the postproduction editor had simply spliced new scenes into an old movie. The older movie