Assault at kink.com, torture porn production company

***Warning: may be triggering***

As reported on the Prostitution Research & Education Traffick Jamming blog:

"kink.com is a torture pornography production company. In January 2007 kink.com purchased a large building in San Francisco, in the Mission District, a community that is in need of affordable housing, that has many at-risk youth, and that for many years has been identified as the Latino heart of San Francisco. In February 2007, the Mission Armory Community Collective demonstrated against kink.com's use of a large and valuable piece of San Francisco real estate - for torture pornography production. Instead of using the block-long building for torture pornography, the Mission Armory Community Collective has proposed that we use of the Mission Armory for affordable housing, a community center, and a space for community nonprofits.

Torture and humiliation are commonplace in pornography. Kink.com is where women and some men are filmed for pornography named Men in Pain, Wired Pussy, Hogtied, Water Bondage, Ultimate Surrender, Fucking Machines, Sex and Submission, and Whipped Ass. Pornography like that on kink.com is real action taken against real women. Observing the making of torture pornography at kink.com, author Stephen Elliott commented: " This is not fake. Satine and Donna are truly in role. Satine is feeling submissive and Donna is definitely on top. Donna is hurting Satine; Satine is being hurt."http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/02/07/kink/

kink.com advertises filmed prostitution. Prostitution is advertised online on sites like kink.com where it is indistinguishable from pornography. Pornography is a specific type of prostitution, in which prostitution occurs and, among other things, is documented. The women whose prostitution appears in pornography are prostituted women. The Internet is one way that women are trafficked into prostitution.

Another reader of Elliott's Salon.com article said the site was reminiscent of African women's genital mutilation. Why is there such a great silence regarding the torture of women in prostitution during the making of pornography? Here in San Francisco some embrace torture pornography as hip, sexy, liberal. Lots of folks are afraid to criticize pornography for fear of being labelled fundamentalist, antisex, or homophobic. "Yet when we criticize McDonald's for its unhealthy food, environmentally destructive business practices, and targeting of children through manipulative advertising, does anyone ask whether we are "anti-food"? Of course not, because no one conflates McDonald's with food; we recognize that there are many ways to prepare food, and it's appropriate to critique the more toxic varieties. The same holds for pornography; pursuing a healthy sexuality does not mean we have to support toxic pornography." Bob Jensen and Gail Dines http://www.alternet.org/story/47677

The existence of state-sponsored torture is decried by social critics on the Left, yet the identical treatment of women in prostitution is ignored by those same analysts. Many view torture by the United States of prisoners at Abu Ghraib with shock and horror, yet at the same time consider the identical acts perpetrated (and photographed) against prostituted women to be sexual entertainment. Condemning the Bush administration’s tolerance for torture in the war on terror, one journalist noted the “gleeful sadism” of guards at Abu Ghraib. Yet political pundits maintain silence regarding the same gleeful sadism of men toward women and gay men like that seen at kink.com.
Specific acts commonly perpetrated against women in prostitution and pornography are the same as the acts defining what torture is according to international conventions: verbal sexual harassment, unwanted sex acts, sexual mocking, physical sexual harassment such as groping."

Here is Melissa Farley's complete report of the of assault at kink.com, which was posted on January 16, 2008:


"A post about a woman who'd been brutally assaulted as part of a production at kink.com in San Francisco appeared on Luke Ford's blog www.lukeisback.com on January 10, 2008. There were 18 responses, including my own. After 5 days, the thread was removed from his site. I have reason to believe that this account is substantially true. What is really going on at kink.com? What can we do about it?Melissa Farley
January 10, 2008, 4:59 PMKink.com Runs Another Girl From The Business (from lukeisback.com)

Director Ricky D. writes:

I usually don’t post this kind of stuff, but I really don’t like to see talent get taken advantage of.

A close friend of mine worked for Kink for her third time recently, and had the most traumatizing experience of her life. (No, she didn’t do the Training of O everyone is always talking about) Her injuries after the shoot include numerous lumps in both breasts (from being slapped, whipped with a bamboo cane), bruises and rope burns from head to toe, bleeding from both her vagina and butt, and soreness everywhere from being constantly shocked when she made it known she didn’t want to do it. On top of that, it was shot in a room with running water flowing through the room that was so cold that during the shoot you can see the talent’s breath. On top of that, she can’t sleep because of the pain and flashbacks from the scene in her dreams. She officially quit the business right after the shoot. I’m sure she’s not the only one they’ve driven to leave. It seems as though once they get you in that building, they torment you as much as they can get away with until the talent won’t work for them, or at all, anymore.

People in this industry know the hush money they pay talent to shut the fuck up. I know quite a few girls that they’ve taken advantage of and felt the need to give them extra money after the fact. I’ve talked to producers, directors, and talent - the only people saying positive stuff about them are the ones making money off them.

I know what people will say, this girl is looking for attention: if she was looking for attention she’d post here herself. And no she’s not a drug addict; she had some medical issues as a child that would kill her if she takes almost any recreational drug.

This is just a warning to any girls looking to work for them and people looking to push traffic to them. I just hope you’re okay with promoting sites like there’s with people like that."

A few pro-pornography and pro-prostitution folks came up on this PRE comments thread to ruthlessly defend those vicious woman-hating industries. This is what I replied to those defenses of the sex industry, on January 18, 2008 (please excuse my few typos, I was in such a hurry to reply to those cruel comments defending such an exploitive trade in women):


"prostitution is a completely valid profession. It has existed in some form or another throughout the world, throughout history and pretty much comes with being human. Don’t tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her body." [quote from a pro-pornstitution guy]

Blah, blah, blah...

Prostitution is NOT the world's oldest profession. The first recorded forms of prostitution occur after humans invented slavery! (Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy;1987).

We do know that many women choose enter the sex industry, but under which conditions do they choose? The sex industry has done a great job in focusing the debate on "women's choices", while the focus of any discussion on the subject should be on the consumers who CHOOSE to use pornography, and, in the case of prostitution, on the johns who CHOOSE to buy women for sex.

Most prostituted and pornographized women are survivors of child sexual abuse. Some studies estimate that, in the U.S.A., the percentage of women in prostitution, who are survivors of child sexual abuse, is closer to 85%.

Other social factors such as poverty, unemployement, or homelessness can make some women enter the sex industry.

On top of that, some women who seek "careers" in the pornography industry because this whole pornified culture promotes the "porn star" job as a glamorous job. From hit movies to music videos, the images of the stripper and "the happy hooker" are shown as "liberating" and "empowering" for women. Some young girls unfortunately get to believe the pernicious ideologies that the media industries (whose owners, managers, producers and broadcasters are predominantly men) want them to believe. This culture obviously trains women and girls to be sexually available for the pleasure of men. However, even those women and girls -- who "choose" to enter the stripping or porn industry after having had a harmful pornifed cultural and social training -- do not choose the conditions in which they will "work".

Also, sex trafficking occurs either domestically and internationally. Selling human beings' (especially women's and girls') bodies is one of the world's most important sources for trafficking, besides the trafficking in guns and drugs. There is no need to try to differentiate prostitution from trafficking. Trafficking is merely prostitution on a globalized scale.

There are methods of control pimps use to break down their victims' emotional, psychological and physical resistance and to season them into prostitution and, sometimes, the making of pornography. These techniques of control and domination involve beating, raping and torturing women and girls into submission. They also involve showing women pornography to instruct them on how to "perform" in prostitution. Through the great amount of research that has been made on prostitution, there is a good reason to believe that pornographers probably have the same techniques of control. It becomes so obvious when you read about it. Once, she has been seasoned by a pimp, a prostituted woman or girl is expected to do anything the john wants. She has to endure all kinds of bodily violations and invasions and must service many anonymous men every day, while pretending that she enjoys these violations. Whatever are the circumstances in which she entered the sex industry, a woman or girl often endures pimps' techniques of control.
No matter how a woman who is in pornography has entered the industry, she will have to face the highly likely:

-- psychological harms, such as PTSD, or "dissociation", which means that she has to mentally "split" to be able to put up with what she does and survive the brutal uses of her body. Fragmenting the mind into parts as well as separating mind from body are essential. That's all part of the dissociation process. Of the 854 prostituted respondents interviewed by researchers, 68% met the criteria for PTSD;

-- bodily harms: considering the fact that pornography producers always have to make increasingly more violent and degrading materials due to the increasingly desensitized users' demand to push the envelope, the unbelievable amount of bodily harms these women suffer is abject. Taking a close look at pornography in a non-sexual way makes obvious that these women suffer daily: choked until they cry, forced to perform extreme sexual practices, beaten, slapped, tortured and bruised, these women must horribly suffer inside of that industry. Tears in the body and throat must be awfully painful. Sometimes, during the scenes, the women forget to act: they do not even attempt to fake moans of pleasure anymore, they are in pain and focused on being able to survive through the scene;

-- emotional pain: Women in pornography and prostitution cannot always mentally dissociate properly and they often undergo serious depressions and nervous breakdowns due to the emotional pain of being sexually degraded and having their bodies being awfully used and abused. Many prostituted and pornographized women suffer various mood disorders;
-- health risks: The use of condoms in the American porn industry is below 20%. As a former porn performer once put it: "We get tested monthly but we know testing isn’t prevention. Besides worrying about catching diseases from porn sex, there are other harmful activities we engage in that are also very dangerous. Some of us have had physical tearing and damage to internal body parts..."; and

-- drug addiction: Just like in any other form of prostitution, pornography actresses use drugs (both illegal ones and prescription ones) in great amount to be able to numb themselves to the continual objectifying intimate use of their bodies and the pain of being used and abused.

A former porn performer once said: "What I saw were women just like myself who were desperate, addicted to drugs, homeless, and I'm sure probably at least 80 percent of them suffered from sexual abuse as children. I saw them re-living their childhood experiences by getting into that industry. They were looking for attention, pleasing men, and being abused. And that's all they know. They think it's great. They think it's wonderful. I could've looked you in the eye ten years ago and told you that I loved being in pornography, was proud of what I was doing and that I was having a great time. But now I can tell you that it's so far from the truth. I was very convincing. I could convince you. I mean, I could walk up to a porn star today and she could tell me the same story and I can remember being in that place."

The idea that women in porn make a lot of money is itself a distortion, fueled by intense media focus on the few Jenna Jamesons of the world. Most women in porn do not get rich, particularly since they have a very brief "shelf life" -- so even if they initially command a high rate per scene or per movie, their market value as "fresh meat" declines rapidly.

For more information, please check out these pages:

https://www.againstpornography.org/takeacloserlook.html

https://www.againstpornography.org/womeninsexindustry.html

Prostitution is far away from being about sexual freedom! Prostitution and pornography are inherently forms of sexual exploitation and violence against women (inside and outside of the industry)!

80% to 95% of all prostitution is pimp-controlled.

The average age of entry into prostitution is 13 years or 14 years.

Of 100 prostituted women interviewed in Vancouver (Canada), 90% had been physically assaulted in prostitution; 78% had been raped; 75% had suffered bodily injuries; and 67% had pornography made of them.

Legalization does not stop the exploitation. A Critical Examination of Responses to Prostitution in Four Countries (Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Sweden) concluded the legalization in Australia and the Netherlands led to a dramatic increase in all facets of the sex industry, a dramatic increase in the involvement of organized crime in the sex industry, a dramatic increase in child prostitution, an explosion in the number of foreign women and girls trafficked into the region, and indications of an increase in violence against women.

What happens on Kink is beyond horrible!

This is "Gynocide" (i.e. as Dworkin explained: gynocide is the mass-raping, crippling, or killing of women by men.) That's what pornography is: Gynocide! Looks like times haven't really changed. Looks like the slaughter of nine million women as witches or any other major crimes against women weren't enough to satisfy HIS hunger for female pain and suffering. The patriarchist always wants more!

In a patriarchal society, 'choice' or 'consent' depends mostly on who is really in power! It is so easy for the sex industry to focus the debate on women and girl's choice. While, in fact, a more fair conversation whould take into account the fact that men CHOOSE to use pornography, they CHOOSE to buy women for sex! What about them, the users, huh? How about turning the conversation toward them, instead of focusing it on so many women who have been so harmed, so muted, so silenced by mass-sexual abuse.

It is easy for some people to speak of Kink as just being some bad, terrible, sadistic porn (i.e. "not the kind of porn they would watch"). However, a recent study, "Mapping the Pornographic Text: Content Analysis of Popular Pornography" (2007), by Robert Wosnitzer, Ana Bridges and Michelle Chang, concluded that 90% of contemporary mainstream pornography contained scenes of aggression.

Pornography is the "graphic depiction of women as being the lowest type of whores" (according to the history and etymology of the word "pornography"), by the way. Thus, rejecting pornography's cruelty and misogyny does not mean being against sex! The pornographic sex is all about the disconnection from truly meaningful feelings and the objectification, humiliation and degradation of women. Sex can be much better than this narrow definition of sexuality as "domination/subordination". Sex can be about humanity, connection, tenderness, love and respect for the other.

And besides, research has shown that prolonged exposure to pornography resulted in:
-- a loss of compassion toward women as rape victims and toward women in general;
-- a desensitization to violent, hardcore pornography;
-- an increasing acceptance of rape myths; and
-- a need for more explicit, rougher, and more degrading images to get the same "highs" and "sexual turn-ons."

If only men learned how to be real human beings with genuine respect and love for others, they would stop using pornography, they would stop buying women, they would stop this atrocious and widespread crime against women!!!