Yes, Sex Workers Can Also Be Victims of Rape
Several adult-film actresses have levied allegations against James Deen. (Photo: Getty Images)
Update: There are now six women who have accused Deen of sexual assault, and another ex of Deen’s, Joanna Angel, has come forward to say her relationship was abusive.
On Saturday afternoon, adult film performer (and yes, indeed, star) Stoya tweeted: “That thing where you log in to the internet for a second and see people idolizing the guy who raped you as a feminist. That thing sucks” and then: “James Deen held me down and f***** me while I said no, stop, used my safeword. I just can’t nod and smile when people bring him up anymore.”
Deen is something like the Taylor Swift of adult film; Jezebel even went so far as to ask if he was a “feminist hero.” A true crossover artist, his “nice guy” demeanor and “wholesome” looks have made women who would have shunned the genre interested in his career. Deen even co-starred with Lindsay Lohan in her comeback that wasn’t, The Canyons, and, until yesterday, penned a sex advice column for The Frisky.
Since Stoya made her allegations on Twitter, five more adult film performers — including Tori Lux, and Ashley Fires — have come forward to say Deen also assaulted them.
“We believe Stoya, Tori Lux, and Ashley Fire, and we believe survivors,” Shaunna Thomas, the co-founder of UltraViolet, said in a statement to Yahoo Health. “One in 5 American women will survive a rape in their lifetime — from college students to military professionals and yes, sex workers. Despite the fact that falsely reported rape is vanishingly rare, women still face extreme scrutiny when they come forward, just as Stoya is today. For women who are a part of marginalized communities, including sex workers, reporting can be downright dangerous. Standing up to rape culture starts with believing women, believing survivors, and standing with them when they tell their stories. We urge anyone affiliated with James Deen to break their ties and prove that there are real consequences beyond a court room to rape.“
Lorelei Lee, an adult film performer and author, tells Yahoo Health: “In the course of my fifteen years doing adult films and other forms of sex work, I’ve been told again and again that the work itself is dangerous. That if you choose to do this work, you can expect abusive men to hurt you. In my experience, that attitude by the general public is exactly what allows abusers to hurt sex workers and get away with it.”
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Heather Berg — a doctoral student at the University of California Santa Barbara who holds a master’s in public policy and women’s studies from the George Washington University and whose research focuses on the adult film industry as a site of feminized labor — tells Yahoo Health that, in her opinion, “anti-sex work feminists have done such a good job convincing the public that sex work is rape, it becomes hard for people to understand that taking on a job in sex work doesn’t mean signing up for abuse. Insisting that sex work is violence normalizes violence when it does happen. It also makes it incredibly hard for sex workers to disclose when they do experience violence.”
Kate D’Adamo is a National Policy Advocate for the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center in New York. She tells Yahoo Health that the issue of consent and sex work is absolutely critical.
“When people are victimized when they work in the sex industry, there are already so many barriers [that keep them from coming forward and receiving necessary support services],” D’Adamo says. “There’s the added stigma and assumption that sex workers don’t understand their own boundaries, or their own bodies, and it causes a lot of harm.”
Most dangerous about thus supposition, she says, is that “when you remove the ability to consent, you lose the ability to come forward and get justice. The stigma attached to this industry effectively removed that ability.”
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Concurs Lee, “In my experience, that attitude by the general public is exactly what allows abusers to hurt sex workers and get away with it. … When it happens to women in the sex industry, people say that is the problem, let’s stop production. But that attitude is what prevents victims from speaking — we don’t want to lose our jobs or be re-traumatized by the public.”
D’Adamo also points to the problem of the public at large conflating sex work with rape. Furthermore, she says, “It’s looked at as a pox when you trade sex. There is incredible dehumanization of people in the sex trade. And when commercial sex is conflated with rape, it undermines the basic dignity of a person to know their own body.”
The inability to trust women tells them, “You are not the expert on your own experience, and you do not have the right to determine what’s right for you and your body,” D’Adamo says. Which is why first step to addressing general understanding of sex is letting victims — including sex workers — tell their own stories.
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“There is a slippery slope when people start to judge what women do with their bodies,” says Lee. “When you start to say that there are things good or smart women don’t do with their bodies, you head down the path toward telling us we deserve punishment for doing those things. And of course, this should be self-evident — since being “good” or “smart” has never actually protected women from rape.”
Additionally problematic, says D’Adamo, is the belief by some that “if you do not immediately and unequivocally go to law enforcement, you can’t be trusted or believed. After seeing what’s happened on college campuses and what’s happening to Christy Mack, we know that’s not true.” Furthermore, she explains, that it’s often not an option for those in the sex trade to go to law enforcement to report sexual assault or rape, and that for all those who survive sexual violence, the process of prosecuting a rape case can only re-traumatize a victim.
She also notes that at the Sex Workers Project, those in the sex trade — in both legal and criminalized occupations — may seek out counseling services, legal services, and general advocacy for support should they need to proceed with law enforcement.
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