james deen, 7 instead of 40

In the last week, 7 women have come for­ward to say they were as­sault­ed by porn star James Deen. As his ca­reer rapid­ly ends – with all kinds of ma­jor adult film pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies cut­ting ties with him – in spite of his fame, in spite of the ab­sence of po­lice re­ports and tri­als, the in­dus­try is be­ing ap­plaud­ed for its pro­gres­sive stance on vic­tim sol­i­dar­i­ty.

Now, I do not deny that in com­par­i­son to the rest of U.S. cul­ture, yes, this is in­cred­i­bly pro­gres­sive. And con­sid­er­ing that many anti-sex work left­ists wish to con­stant­ly dis­miss the world of sex work as in­her­ent­ly and con­tin­u­al­ly vi­o­lent, ac­knowl­edg­ing that pro­gres­sive­ness is im­por­tant.

Re­mem­ber, it took Bill Cos­by decades and forty ac­cusers to see any con­se­quence. In this case, though, it still took James Deen about five years and sev­en ac­cusers.

But that, right there, is the prob­lem. Two of the women who have come for­ward – Stoya, Joan­na An­gel – are not just ac­tors; they are pro­duc­ers, cre­ators, and ac­tivists. The ma­jor­i­ty of the oth­er ac­cusers have been in the in­dus­try for years and have sol­id rep­u­ta­tions.

Why did it take Deen this long to be called out? Why are we pre­tend­ing the agents that said “it’s a good sign for your ca­reer that such a fa­mous man want­ed you this bad­ly” don’t ex­ist, and fur­ther­more are not equal­ly cul­pa­ble?

Why are our stan­dards so low for the cul­tur­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­vent sex­u­al as­sault that he’s been al­lowed to have this much suc­cess, WHILE cham­pi­oning as a Kink fem­i­nist dream­boat, and we just keep stat­ing that his even­tu­al re­jec­tion is pro­gres­sive with­out more nu­anced con­sid­er­a­tion?

—mel­ony ppenosyne

Flom­mist Mel­ony Ppenosyne is a writer and weird artist type. In the last year alone, she’s trav­eled to Vir­ginia as a com­pet­ing poet, co-writ­ten a play on men­tal ill­ness that is present­ly be­ing pro­duced, and craft­ed a pub­lished es­say check­ing the priv­i­lege and scope of art gal­leries. Copy­right © 2015 Mel­ony Ppenosyne.

MOR D’ARTÍCULOS  MOR FLOMM !

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