$13mn compensation for pornography

[Chocolatemice]

Its gone now, but there was an article in the New York Times about women who were being awarded compensation for being tricked and bullied into pornography. One woman who stood up to her abusers had the film sent to people in her professional and personal life.

I saw the story on BBC news earlier. Apparently the ‘company’ pride themselves on amateur first time ‘porn stars’ and were telling the women they were for a private collection or for overseas sales and then uploading them to a subscription service and uploading clips onto free porn sites.

I posted about it here, yesterday

[https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3783537-Reddit-thread-about-porn?msgid=92764562]

sorry try that again link

It's truly awful. Sorry about the Guardian link but they have covered this:

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/03/girlsdoporn-site-pay-127m-women-didnt-know-videos-posted

Oh shoots, I saw that thread. Sorry, I didn’t realise we were talking about the same thing.

I can’t imagine how those poor women must feel. The West really isn’t that far ahead in its attitude to shaming woken.

GirlsDoPorn: Young women win legal battle over video con www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50982051

How people can watch these videos if they know that the women are being lied to, plied with alcohol & drugs etc... it needs to be more widely reported and discussed that that is the case. It’s false advertising, is it not a trading standards thing apart from the whole sexual assault/rape angle (coercing someone into sex under false pretences).
Gross. I really feel for these women.

I've just gone onto one porn clip site and searched for "girls do porn", it gave half a million results.
Those videos will become more popular as the news gets out. sputniknews.com/society/201912021077458630-indian-rape-victim-becomes-most-searched-on-porn-site/ is another example.
How people can watch these videos if they know that the women are being lied to, plied with alcohol & drugs etc

Men get off on the fact these women and girls are lied to, plied with alcohol and drugs etc. It's not that they aren't aware.

I'd say this is the standard. Young women being tricked and not told exactly what will happen. It's heartening that the women won this case - I hope it will make more victims dare to come forward and sue. Sue the entire fucking porn industry, destroy it. It's based on abuse.

Hang on a sec.

These women knew what they were doing - they agreed to take money to appear in porn. They had sex with strangers knowing it was being filmed for financial gain. In so doing, they actively contributed to the misogyny, hate and violence that women face every day from men but figured that their need for cash was more important than solidarity with other women.

Don't make them victims, infantilising them by calling them 'young girls' or making out that they were exploited. They demeaned themselves and betrayed other women out of greed and are now only upset because lots of men masturbated over them and not just one.

Sounds like you dont understand consent hippo.

Don't patronise me, QuentinWinters. They consented to appear in porn for money and they're just pissed off because it reached a wider audience than they expected.

I think people are maybe seeing these women as being like those poor women who agree to private photos and videos in the context of a relationship, only to find that this private consensual material has been shared around or uploaded on to commercial porn sites.

They're not.

They answered adverts for porn actors, attended auditions, signed contracts, had sex with strangers in front of a cameraman and sound recordist (presumably with professional lighting) and then took money for their 'performances'. Not a lot of victimhood there, is there? No-one forced them to go through all those stages - it was their choice to appear in porn for financial reward.

You need to read this FluffyHippo:

www.documentcloud.org/documents/6469234-Pratt-Wolfe-Complaint.html

They were deceived, groomed, coerced and raped.

This is worth watching for insight into the industry. I don't know if girlsdoporn, girlsdotoys, BLL Media, Plus One Media, Begin Modeling, Bubble Gum Casting, Bubblegum Films, Bubblegum Media or Clockwork Productions Inc are connected to MindGeek. Pornhub, one of the sites the videos ended up, is a subsidiary though and it's the same shitty business model.

According to the affidavits Rubin Andre Garcia is a serial rapist. He raped and assaulted women both on and off set.

Anonymous emails were sent to their families, universities and friends, linking them to the videos.

This is the part that really fucking gets to me. It's just such an utterly cruel and vile thing to do for no other reason other than to get off on ruining the lives of these women. Don't get me wrong, grooming, raping and deceiving the women about where their videos would be made available was wrong. But I can see how the company owners could be doing it for profit with the women seen as nothing but collateral damage in their business model. It's fucking hideous but would mean that profit was their main motive.

But going on to send the video links in emails to everyone the women knew was something else. In fact it was something that would end up destroying their business model because having the women not know what happened to their videos for as long as possible was essential to allowing them to operate for longer. So for these men, actively destroying young women was clearly the number one goal. The profit was an incidental bonus but not the purpose. They actively set out to ruin women's lives for their own perversion.

Nah, I'm not buying all this hand-wringing. These women willingly agreed to get involved in an industry that degrades, abuses and hurts women as a matter of course and now they're the victims? If you choose to swim with sharks, expect to get bitten.

I think some of you need to read some of the excellent threads on here about how porn harms women, both as an industry and a major contributor to toxic masculinity. Then ask yourself: is a woman who agrees to get involved in this stuff selfish, greedy or just plain stupid?

They consented to appear in porn for money and they're just pissed off because it reached a wider audience than they expected.
They were never going to be the perfect victims, but I understand it was a bit more exploitative than that.
Creating a line between "good" women who have their private videos stolen and "bad" women who agree to have sex on tape for money ignores the fact that there is a massive industry that encourages and profits off both in the same way.

is a woman who agrees to get involved in this stuff selfish, greedy or just plain stupid?
It doesn't matter if she is all three!
The woman who agrees to get involved is invariably mistreated, cheated out of money and doesn't profit much from her involvement. I don't see why you would focus on her.

Did you read the affidavit I linked Hippo?

I hope not because anyone who can read that and still post 'serves them right' type stuff is a disgusting human being.

I don't see why you would focus on her.

It's to take the focus off the men. It happens whenever the sex industry is discussed.

That’s awful, and I can’t believe some of the victim blaming comments on here. My feminism is for all women because all women are hurt by patriarchy. My feminism doesn’t go ‘nope love you can fuck off, you’re on your own because at age 18/20/22 you didn’t have enough sense to reject all the cultural messages females are bombarded with from birth about how we only exist to please men’. A choice made within the context of grooming isn’t a choice. A choice made because of financial necessity isn’t a choice. A choice made in the context of living in a patriarchal society which conditions all women and girls to comply or suffer the consequences isn’t a choice. Ffs what is wrong with some people

FluffyHippo’s posts are a very helpful example of when feminism becomes so extreme that it moves into misogyny.

Just as the far left and far right extremes of political movements often resemble one another, some elements of feminism, when taken to extremes, are basically misogynist.

FluffyHippo’s posts here are a very enlightening opportunity for those who are skeptical about the misogynist narratives inherent in some discourses around sex work to educate themselves about the reality of the situation.

As regular readers here will know, I have very serious reservations about pro-sex-work and sex-positive campaign groups and activist movements.

I believe that there are good and bad elements to the activist groups at both extremes of the spectrum and that the reality is nuanced and complex.

If anyone is interested in reading in depth about this particular scam the Daily Beast has been covering this story as it unfolded.

Most recent piece, with links to earlier reporting, here
www.thedailybeast.com/amateur-porn-company-girls-do-porn-hit-with-dollar12775m-in-damages-for-exploiting-young-women

Don't patronise me, QuentinWinters. They consented to appear in porn for money and they're just pissed off because it reached a wider audience than they expected.

I do not believe that QuentinWinters was patronising you

Just calling you out on your lack of understanding about consent. And reality.

You see when a woman agrees to do one thing but is coerced or tricked into doing something she didn't consent to that is a violation.

Being a sex worker does not remove a person's right to make choices about a range of issues. Unless the sex worker concerned is living under Daesh or some other oppressive regime, or under your bizarre Gilead type version of feminism

hth

I love when I get told that 'my' kind of feminism isn't the right kind of feminism by a bunch of women who're trying so hard to be cool girls that they've lost sight of the basic fact that we're all responsible for our actions and how they impinge on other women.

Jesus, do you really want to make this the hill you die on? A bunch of wannabe porn stars having their contracts breached? Really?

Jesus, do you really want to make this the hill you die on? A bunch of wannabe porn stars having their contracts breached? Really?
"A bunch of wannabe porn stars" are still women, they were still lied to, coerced and had their lives ruined. I'm happy to stand for all women, even ones you might think are stupid or selfish. Because they are victims whether you think they deserve what they got or not.

'my' kind of feminism isn't the right kind of feminism if you are selective in which kind of women you support you aren't a feminist. I would argue that if you blame women for their poor choices and fail to recognise the circumstances in which the odds were stacked against them you aren't very analytical either.

I love when I get told that 'my' kind of feminism isn't the right kind of feminism by a bunch of women who're trying so hard to be cool girls that they've lost sight of the basic fact that we're all responsible for our actions and how they impinge on other women.

I was groomed, trafficked and tortured by a pimp.

I am a former sex worker.

I would just like to aplogise to the whole of woman kind for the bad choices I made that, er, hurt other women.

There I was thinking that I'm a survivor and doing my best to help other women (and sometimes vulnerable men too), but now thanks to your epic and illuminating thoughts I can see that all the time I was being groomed trafficked and tortured that I was really just an oppressor. Oh and trying to be cool. Or something.

Thanks so much for helping me see the light FluffyHippo

Ever thought of a career as a life coach? You'd fit in very well with life coach community whose views resonate very closely with your own