Whether to Vilify Underage Porn Models?

[JamesXR]

It upsets me a little that this industry buys into a lot of right wing bullshit. Seriously speaking, in terms of decision making capacity, my understanding is that the science has people mentally maturing between 22 and 24. The religious right likes the age of consent lower because they'd like to marry kids off earlier. Meanwhile, people become sexual beings much younger than 18, and denying it is just silly. The most honest reason I ever saw for trying to block underage kids from adult websites is that they're non-converting bandwidth wasters. A lot of adult webmasters pay lip service to protecting kids from porn, but frankly, if they're looking for it, they're probably of age to be sexually active anyway. Really, are porn preview pages any worse than the wondercum spam, that claims that no woman is satisfied with a man who can't ejaculate a pint and a half.
As for deceptive underage porn stars, it's not like we don't set precedents with underage drinking, R-rated movies, underage porn consumption,and speed limits. These are all rules that our culture (US culture) accepts or glorifies the violation of. Given that, forget mental maturity, without a real understanding of the legal issues involved for the porn producers, how do these kids know that it's more serious than breaking all the other laws they're supposed to break?

[Rob Ragan]

I happened to be the sales rep at Pacific Sun when all of this happened with Brent(Sean) I was also working for a company (Western Visuals) when the whole Tracy Lords thing came down in the 80's. Bottom line is this... When we as an industry support anybody that does anything to injure our already wounded status within the government,that individual removes another piece of our ability to earn away from us.

I see other posts from people with opinions that have never been directly involved with the ramifications of either 2257 inspections or being fingered as a provider of underage porn. If any model defrauds a producer such in the cases of Brent Corrigan or Tracy Lords and anyone chooses to still offer work,promotion or even carry films or content that they appear in,they are just as guilty as the model and should also be boycotted from anything they try to do thereafter.

They are destroying any chance we have to be able to operate under the same conditions as any other film company in this country. The more we strive for equality, the worse it looks when we encourage companies that are uncaring in how their actions effect others.

[JamesXR]

Can you really win anything from the government? Is any congressman going to stand up and say, "Hey, those porn producers have been so responsible lately, we should ease up on them and spend our money pursuing real crimes." No, that's not going to happen. They're going to harp on about protecting children from porn, video games, and locusts. No matter how well behaved the porn, video game, and locust producers are, they won't take notice, but if one messes up, they'll remind people how they were against them from the beginning and support more draconian rules.
This isn't to say that the porn industry should get sloppy and stop covering their asses, but it is to say that acting really responsibly isn't going to get noticed. You're also not going to see some congressman stand up and say, "I was at my local adult video store browsing through gay porn, and what did I see, but that Brent Corrigan fellow is starring in a DVD by Falcon, why that's almost like rewarding him for sneaking into the industry early. In fact I still haven't gotten a refund on my poolboy DVD. We should punish those porn producers by making them issue recalls and refunds to everyone who ever bought a DVD that turned out to have underage content. That would make them think twice about checking the age of their models, dagnabbit!"
Forgive me if I'm not the best writer of southern Republican politicians. If a politician witnesses porn in which a model is sodomizing a three year old they'll keep mum about it because they won't admit to having been on a porn site in the first place. You are their whipping boy, to be publicly whipped when you mess up and to be ignored when you're good. Trying to be good for the government is like a physically abused child trying to be good for their physically abusive parents. It's an unhealthy relationship.
Alright, a lot of emotion went into that and I suppose my arguments will be cut down. I do think things like the Brent Corrigan fiasco could encourage more kids to try to break into porn early so long as that kind of thing is rewarded, and that's good reason to be more vigilant in age checking, but I don't think that the government cares if you crucify the models and block them from the industry.

[Rob Ragan]

Maybe not ever will any congressman or state official say any of the things your asked if they would. One thing for sure though.....I sure the hell would rather them never say anything about me then allow them to be able to lump me in to one of the companies or individuals that allow such practices. Any day of the week and twice on Sunday!!

[JamesXR]

Maybe not ever will any congressman or state official say any of the things your asked if they would. One thing for sure though.....I sure the hell would rather them never say anything about me then allow them to be able to lump me in to one of the companies or individuals that allow such practices. Any day of the week and twice on Sunday!!

I guess my point is simply. If you're going to be responsible and do what you feel to be the right thing, do it for yourself, your customers, and the industry. I just can't believe that the government will take notice when they come for the adult industry. I really just have very little faith in the government to do the right thing, or ever to sacrifice popular rhetoric to do the right thing. I think silence is the most that anyone can hope for. Really, is your relative conduct in the porn industry taken into account in an obscenity suit? Would not the current administration hit every single adult company with an obscenity suit if they could win them and get away with it?

[Lee]

If you're going to be responsible and do what you feel to be the right thing, do it for yourself, your customers, and the industry.

Most of us do, there are some however who dont and wont take responsibility because this is just a hobby to them or they simply dont care about the future of the business.

Case in point, Brent Corrigan, the fact that his name is still coming up and people are still working with him and considering working with him.. WHY?

Regards,

Lee

[Trixie]

I don't understand how it's anybody's business if someone's working with someone of age and making $$ off his notoriety. It sounds like something fun to gossip about, but if the kid is 18 or over now then WHO CARES?

Of course if you think he's a murderer and untrustworthy and a big liability for your company and all of that, then it totally makes sense to make a decision for your own business not to work with him, but I think it's silly to act like the whole industry needs band together to punish this person or that it reflects poorly on the entire industry or that working with or NOT working with him will have any impact whatsoever on what future scammer kids with fake id's are likely to do.

[Trixie]

Can you really win anything from the government? Is any congressman going to stand up and say, "Hey, those porn producers have been so responsible lately, we should ease up on them and spend our money pursuing real crimes." No, that's not going to happen . . . . . Trying to be good for the government is like a physically abused child trying to be good for their physically abusive parents. It's an unhealthy relationship.
Alright, a lot of emotion went into that and I suppose my arguments will be cut down. I do think things like the Brent Corrigan fiasco could encourage more kids to try to break into porn early so long as that kind of thing is rewarded, and that's good reason to be more vigilant in age checking, but I don't think that the government cares if you crucify the models and block them from the industry.

Right on.

[gaybucks_chip]

IF the industry could establish a set of best practices that actually had teeth, and IF a significant number of the industry players would sign on, then we might be able to make a difference and send a message, both to producers and to models.

But... like everything else, you can never get people in the industry to agree on much of anything. You'd never get universal agreement on a standard of that sort because some greedy studio would always take the bucks over the ethics. And you'll never get universal agreement on other best practices because there are plenty of studios that do all sorts of shady stuff, whether it's twisting models arms into having sex with the studio owners, giving models drugs, failing to test models for STDs, lying about serostatus of models, or avoiding paying the models... or, for that matter, shaving affiliates, slow or no-paying designers, etc.

I do think that a set of best practices that actually outlined ethical, professional business practices, condemned unprofessional, inappropriate, or illegal behaviors, and set out reasonable precautions/protections/safety standards for models would go a long way toward improving the image of the industry and perhaps even getting subscribing studios and groups a certain amount of clout in the industry, and perhaps as the industry as a whole continues to mature, we'll eventually see that.

In the meantime, all we can do is individually do what seems right (or whatever we feel like if we don't give a fuck)