The claim that porn is a “sex positive” activity for women does not reflect reality. Denying the internal shame and trying to re-brand it will not redeem people.
Calling what a 19-year-girl who committed suicide after filming an adult video “sex positive” makes one a conspirator complicit in her degradation. Forcing people to deny their shame eliminates their ability to redeem themselves. We cannot retrain ourselves to what is an unnatural inclination without consequences. Shaming women for having pride and selectivity when it comes to sex is what’s wrong here.
If you trick a person into believing their actions have no meaning or carry no consequence for their soul, they will fail miserably.
In case you missed it, this was Alyssa’s story
The first thing a person might notice about Alyssa is that she is stunningly beautiful, but she is so much more — a straight-A student, and a freshman at the University of Wisconsin’s River Falls campus with big dreams.
“I want to be a major in biology, minor in chemistry, and I want to be an anesthesiologist,” she said while sitting on a casting couch.
Yet, it was no ordinary job interview. Taped earlier this year in Las Vegas, it was the seemingly normal prelude to a pornographic movie from a company called Casting Couch Videos. In a few minutes, Alyssa — who goes by the name “Stella” in the movie — will be seen on camera, having sex with a total stranger.
“I’m Stella Ann. I’m 18, from Minnesota, and I’m really looking forward to get started,” she said.
Just a few days after that video was posted online, Alyssa began getting taunting messages on Twitter and Facebook — mostly from old classmates at Stillwater High School, where students were abuzz and they were not kind.
Students huddled around their phones in the cafeteria, looking at the video. One student sent a tweet that said, “Wow your a thot” — slang for a prostitute — “Does her dad know?”
Another wrote, “Nothing brings a school together like a porn star who graduated last year. I guess you could say news spreads fast here at Stillwater hahah.”
Alyssa responded with her own tweets, “famous for dayzzz” and “pornstar status, a-okay” — but everything was not okay. Two weeks after the video was posted online, on April 16, Alyssa bought a 12-gauge shotgun, drove to a picturesque boat landing on Big Carnelia Lake and killed herself. She was only 19-years-old.
Some are blaming the people’s reaction to her filming this video, calling it “shaming.” We may never know what drove this girl to such extremes that resulted in her taking her own life. Was this video an act of her “self-expression” or a sign of a girl in trouble? The suicide soon after does imply that whatever theoretical “empowerment” that was gained by allowing herself to be filmed having sex with a stranger certainly wasn’t positive enough to inspire her to continue with that career path.
Are people wrong to shame this girl for the video?
No, social norms are often enforced by feedback from peers. Why is there an irrational demand from some radical feminist quarters that no one should have an opinion regarding how to value sex? What’s wrong with believing that sex should have some more meaning than a handshake?
Maybe that’s the point behind the relentless push to make women conform to such low standards. The same group of women lamenting that this girl was “owning her sexuality” should clarify how appearing in a video where your character, beliefs, and words aren’t featured does so. Instead your main value is “how many ways we can get up-close shots of penetration?” After watching the video, it’s depressing that this is meant to titillate. Yes, visual imagery itself is stimulating in a workmanlike manner. If you spend a moment contemplating the people in the situation, it starts to feel more like a bad Animal Planet documentary. There’s no compelling reason for their interaction or a real attraction. People have used more care in ordering food than is used to choose a partner in porn. How sex actually feels between two people is the last thing being conveyed by the video. If anything it ruins how amazing sex can be by reducing it to such rudimentary mechanics. Sex “positive” makes sex look pretty ordinary.
There’s never an explanation for how separating sex from a meaningful interaction is a winner for women. Did this girl really believe that when it became public that everyone would embrace her choice? For the shaming to have driven her to suicide, logically she must have been surprised by it. Instead, as stated above, she took pride in it and shared statuses such as “famous for dayzz” and “porn star status.”
Do women believe that people won’t see them differently if they choose to feature themselves as an object? There’s nothing better than the “feminist” in the vagina costume complaining that men see her as an object. The entire concept of aimless, un-selective sex as a positive undermines one of women’s main assets.
Walking into a boardroom filled with men trying to break a glass ceiling will be even harder if you are fighting fellow women who are complicit in promoting an image of your gender as simply a receptacle. Women are — or were — known for being selective. Women decide how and with whom sex proceeds. Women are the gatekeepers for a reason. They bear the majority of the physical responsibility of the outcome of sex. That selectivity and thoughtfulness translates well in many other areas of life. Broadcasting your disregard for a fundamental female skill weakens the case for all women to be taken seriously. Being at war with your own instincts and preferences will not pave the path to female empowerment. The women who proudly proclaim themselves pro porn are fueling an industry that abuses women. One can imagine these same women getting up in arms over child labor laws and abuse of the workers overseas, but they remain silent when it comes to abuses of women in porn.
Once upon a time women were striving to not be seen for just their bodies. But now we find ourselves with “feminists’ who insist porn is positive even though women rarely consume it. That doesn’t mean porn couldn’t be produced that interested women, but you would be hard-pressed to sell to me the idea that porn is currently made to appeal to women. It’s clearly engineered from the male perspective. As Rosie O’Donnell jokingly said in an otherwise terrible movie called Exit to Eden:
“How can I fulfill your fantasy?” asks the barely clad young man assigned to please Sheila. “Go paint my house,” she replies.
While it’s meant as a joke, there’s a kernel of truth to it. Women value men demonstrating commitment. Women report sex is better in committed relationships and have found sex outside of relationships to be less satisfying. Shaming women who would not consent to filming or supporting porn as uptight is far more damaging that being shamed about being in porn. “Shaming” is just the enforcement of what women know is true. You are better off treating yourself with respect. If porn is so great, why aren’t female elites embracing it as their own career path?
Let’s look at how women in porn admit to how they deal with filming porn
Madyson Marquette, whose porn film name was Fayth Deluca, told LifeSiteNews that “after shooting porn, it seemed as if all the girls were depressed, including myself. We would shoot a scene and immediately after we would go do something to where we wouldn’t have to think about what we had just done, whether that was getting so drunk we just blacked out, some type of drug like Xanax, cocaine, or ecstasy.”
“The drugs contained our depression,” she said. “It took us to a fantasy world because the reality we were living was a nightmare.” Ironically, she said, their nightmare is what so many men “use as their fantasy.”
To this day, Marquette says she “struggle[s] with depression, years after being out of porn.”
“Women were not created to separate their emotions and sex, so if you are doing porn as a woman or a young girl, depression will creep in quick and fast,” she said
Empowering, right?
If you want to read more stories like this from women who have done porn, there are plenty. In a country where you can’t rent a car until you’re 25, your car insurance rates drops after 25, your risk of divorce drops if you marry after 25. Hell, you are considered so irresponsible that your parents can keep your on their healthcare policy until you’re 26 — yet we think it’s okay for an 18-year-old girl like Alyssa to legally consent to film that video.
Might it not be reasonable to let kids emotionally mature their risk assessment skills before we condone running directly from an abusive household right into an abusive career?
In the end, Alyssa is just another victim in the war for defining female empowerment. While the shaming should have been expected, because porn is not a positive choice for an 18-year-old girl, what you wish had happened was one person reaching out to her to help.
For the few women who appear to have ownership of their career in porn, all too often it’s a sign of a girl in pain.