Porn Industry #BLM and #COVID Support: Lack of Sarcasm Ahead!
Normally, if there’s one thing on which you can count on Calico to be, it’s silly. And maybe cynical. And, yes, OK — full of bad puns and even worse analogies.
Every so often though, there’s sex or porn-related news about which she feels something strange, something mysterious, something that… well, compels her NOT to try to make a joke out of everything, for a change.
In some very rare cases, the news which inspires a brief flurry of seriousness in Calico is even good news, believe it or not — or if not good news, news in which the adult entertainment industry isn’t being demonized, caricatured or lambasted in some fashion.
Even in the middle of a pandemic, despite the tumult of riots and righteous anger, several such stories have surfaced in the last couple months — and it has been enough to shake Calico from her routine and inspire her to do something she normally studiously avoids: Write a post with almost no jokes in it. If that doesn’t sound like too disappointing a prospect, read on and enjoy — or perhaps merely persevere through — her latest post, “Warning: Lack of Sarcasm Ahead!
As someone who has spent close to half her life working in and around the adult entertainment industry, it’s always been interesting to see how people outside the industry perceive the porn business and what sort of behavior, character and beliefs they ascribe to those of us who work within it.
These days, there are far more relatively adult industry-friendly media outlets (or more outlets that are less reflexively hostile to the industry, at least) than there were when I first started, of course – and I have to say it’s nice to see.
Adult Company Helps Out, World Doesn’t Freak Out
One sign of this change is that these days, when an adult company makes a charitable contribution, it actually receives some appreciation, rather than just cynicism that they must be doing it just for some good publicity, or a sense of shock that an adult company would do such a thing.
For example, I love that when VICE reported on SexToyDistributing donating personal protective equipment (PPE) to Los Angeles area hospitals, there was none of the “You mean to tell me a pleasure products company did something positive?” vibe that I’ve seen in so much mainstream reporting over the years. In the article, Samantha Cole (who has written extensively about the industry and does a consistently great job of it, I should mention) even gives readers context about why it wasn’t a surprise that a sex toy company would make such a contribution.
SexToyDistributing wasn’t the only company in their sector to make such a donation either. Jimmyjane stepped up to help hospitals in L.A., too. And why wouldn’t they? I’m sure a lot of socially conservative people and groups would like to believe otherwise, but adult companies and the people who staff them are part of their communities, too. And as Jimmyjane Vice President of People Tami Aguilar noted, it was an opportunity to chip in and assist those on the frontlines of a crisis which is impacting us all.
“In the face of this pandemic, doctors, nurses, and support staff are true heroes and deserve access to PPE,” Aguilar said about the donation. “We are grateful for the opportunity to help.”
Sticking Out Their Necks for a Cause
What got me thinking about this was a report about a much smaller adult business than SexToyDistributing or Jimmyjane, an adult shop called The Garden located in the Short North neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio.
Sure, the article refers to The Garden as an “unlikely protest hub,” but the tone of the piece is nothing like the exaggerated surprise at decency coming from an adult company that was once so common in the reporting about our industry.
So, how did The Garden become a “protest hub”, you ask?
“Friday night (May 29) was pretty chaotic, so we wanted to come down and check on the store,” store manager Doug Cuckler said. “One of our kids was pepper sprayed pretty badly, so we got her cleaned up and took her home. At that point it was like, ‘We have to do something, because this isn’t going to stop,’ and we didn’t see anyone else doing anything.”
Cuckler then turned to (where else, these days?) social media to let local protesters know The Garden was there to support them, posting a message to his Facebook page to get the word out.
“I think the general idea was we were far enough away (from the protests) that if anyone needed anything on their way down we could provide it, but also close enough that if they needed to get a friend here quickly they could,” Cuckler said. “And things just spiraled from there.”
Doing Better in the Court of Public Opinion – and in Actual Court, Too
It’s not just the media where attitudes towards the adult entertainment industry and the broader world of sex work are shifting. Back when it was first reported that adult companies need not apply for COVID-19 disaster relief through the Paycheck Protection Program, the first thought a lot of people in the industry had was “we should sue!” The second thought many of us had, however, was “Yeah, like we’d have a chance in hell of winning.”
But a funny thing happened after that. In two different states, courts found that the government can’t deny strip clubs PPP loans simply because they are strip clubs.
“While Congress may once have been willing to permit the (Small Business Administration) to exclude these businesses from its lending programs, that willingness evaporated when the COVID-19 pandemic destroyed the economy and threw tens of millions of Americans out of work,” one of the judges wrote in his order. “Simply put, Congress did not pick winners and losers in the PPP.”
You know, while I’d love for federal government to have simply picked us as being among the “winners” in the first place, given the history of how that institution has treated the adult industry, I’ll definitely settle for a judge telling them they can’t just term us “losers” and be done with it.
Anyway, sorry for writing a post that isn’t funny, or ironic, or sarcastic, or meanspirited, or entirely too stupid (I hope?), but it’s not every day I get to read positive coverage of the industry in which I’ve spent so much of my life working. So, when it does happen, I reserve the right to be both happy and serious about it.
Don’t worry; this sort of thing doesn’t happen very often, so next post I’m sure I’ll be right back to my usual fare – by which I mean a few groan-inducing puns, plenty of sophomoric jokes and oodles of unfair criticism leveled at people who don’t remotely deserve it.
Coleen is a writer, photographer and film maker at Wasteland and Sssh.com.
Here at BDSMCafe.com, she is editor and curator of this comprehensive library of BDSM fiction, informational articles and other educational features that date back to the early days of the internet in 1996 when the site was first launched.
