by Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com.
If you’ve been keeping track of adult industry-related news, then you know that a measure called AB 1576, which would expand the existing requirement to use condoms in the production of pornography beyond the Los Angeles area into a statewide rule, just made it through the Appropriations Committee of the California State Assembly. Next stop, the full Assembly for another vote, which it will likely pass, as well.
Read on…
For the most part, the people backing this measure describe it as an effort to protect the health of performers who appear in adult movies and of the general public, but there’s another central element to the mandatory condoms provision that has been trumpeted by Michael Weinstein, the head of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the group primarily responsible for this legislation gaining traction in California. On multiple occasions, Weinstein has asserted that porn depicting sex without condoms sends a message that “the only hot sex is unsafe sex,” and has expressed concern that viewers will act upon that notion in their own sex lives, eschewing everything they’ve been taught about safe sex in order to emulate the explicit imagery that crosses their screens.
Whatever your opinion of the idea of mandating condom use in porn, I believe it’s a serious mistake to allow reasoning like Weinstein’s to creep into the way we regulate expression protected by the First Amendment. If we allow ourselves to be seduced by the notion that there’s a “monkey see, monkey do” danger to be found in fictional depictions and various forms of entertainment, we’ll soon enough find ourselves with very little in the way of acceptable depictions that are also actually “entertaining.”
Do the Fast and Furious films encourage reckless driving? It’s hard to say, but you know what they say: “If we can save even one life, it’s worth doing.” That settles it; let’s ban reckless driving and car chase scenes in Hollywood films!
Don’t fret, action film fans: so long as the ban is narrowly tailored to cover only depictions truly reckless driving – you know going way too fast and steering way too furiously – Hollywood movies could still have car chases in them; the criminals would just need to be depicted trying to escape in ways that conform to all relevant traffic and safety laws. That could still be exciting to watch, right? (For the record, the correct answer is a resounding YES; anyone who thinks otherwise clearly doesn’t care about people, safety, civil rights, ethics, or the ongoing global tragedy of rubber tire abuse.)
How about sports like boxing or mixed martial arts? People emulate those all the time, and they’re dangerous in a very direct way to the athletes who participate in them, so clearly those sports need to go, too. What does it matter that the fighters themselves are completely aware of the risks and knowingly choose to take those risks, anyway; this is about public safety, dammit, so their opinions (and their livelihoods, for that matter) don’t really count, isn’t that right Mr. Weinstein?
And don’t even get me started on food advertising! All those salacious images of artery-clogging beef covered in even more fattening cheese? It’s time to legislate them out of existence. Clearly it’s not enough to merely ban advertising such food, in needs to be eradicated in restaurants and private kitchens, too. After all, we can’t afford the risk that some people will continue to eat these Killer Foods, even once they’ve informed of their health-degrading properties, so we positively must take the choice out of their hands. Let them eat bread! (Uh… gluten-free bread, of course.)
It’s not enough to go after new depictions and products, either; if watching porn in which the performers don’t use condoms is endangering the public, clearly all the porn without condoms in it, even porn that was made before the ban, must be pulled from the shelves, pronto. Granted, this “Total Porn Recall” might prove somewhat difficult in an Internet context, but you know what they say; where there’s a Weinstein, there’s a way!
The more I think about this, the more it seems like a pretty solid Weinstein-like case can be made against just about anything we humans enjoy, from riding motorcycles and playing darts to making fun of each other on the Internet – because mental health counts too, you know, and it’s important to remember that any time someone criticizes you in a way you don’t like, they are either “bullying” you, “shaming” you, or both.
Sure, that’s not what the law says, yet, but give it some time. With enough handwringing activism, Nanny State elbow grease and Congressional lobbying, perhaps this nation’s new mantra will someday become “Safety First.”
That’s right: with any luck, we’ll soon be living in an America that has been ‘sanitized for your protection’ – whether we like it or not.
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