In this film, Lorelei Lee talks about the treatment she receives when people find out she works in porn. She wants to be accepted as a person who goes to work like any other – and why not – but this is a woman who’s paid to perform in films in which a woman will be anally and vaginally fisted, with electrodes attached to her nipples and labia, clothes pegs on her thighs, the soles of her feet beaten with a cane, her mouth gagged with underwear, her face slapped and urinated on, and her buttocks pulled apart for her distended anus to be spat on, whipped and electrocuted. After the shoot she’ll say it was awesome and amazing. She wants us to be fine with this because it’s an expression of sexuality and only the repressed would see anything wrong with it, but it’s the torture that’s the problem, not the sexuality or the expression. The sexual desire these films cater for is sated only by watching someone experience extremes of degradation – a desire that is unlikely to fade when the credits roll. Lee says she wants to make the films so she’s there by choice, as are the other performers, but choice is a tricky concept. Child labourers and factory workers on 15 pence an hour turn up for an 18-hour shift every day, their presence indicating that, technically, they choose to be there. But their acquiescence doesn’t represent their consent – all it represents is their lack of choice. Lee wants to be accepted in her entirety, which means everyone being fine and nonjudgmental about her job, but she’s peddling torture. She thinks, by making what she does for a living known, she’s challenging common misconceptions about the porn industry, but really she’s giving her approval to the violation of human rights that would be tolerated in no other arena. Why she thinks the porn industry should be any different, I don’t know.
Bondage and consent
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