Sex Industry: Porn is Who's Moneymaker? (Faith's Post)

I was compelled to talk about the sex industry because I recently watched this documentary on Netflix called “Hot Girls Wanted.” The documentary was created to expose the horrors of the amateur porn industry. Amateur porn stars are only “hot” or “in demand” for a few months, it’s rare to make a whole year as an amateur porn star. The documentary goes on to show how this one guy goes to the internet to find girls and bring them to Miami, Florida to work in the porn industry. About 10 girls live together in this house and each one of them take different jobs while they are there. They are split up into different categories like MILF or Tweens. The girls that resemble younger girls are more popular which is sickening to me because that means there is something about our society where young girls being sexualized is more appealing to men than an average aged woman. The guy who brings the girls to Florida makes an online ad with the header “Hot Girls Wanted” and he says he gets many responses. He searches the girls social medias to see how they look. If they they fit the standard (of course there is body image discrimination within the porn industry) than he books them a flight. Once they get to the home that’s when they realize what they have actually signed up for. They are living in a house full of strangers and they are working with random people that are semi-professionals. They are encouraged to have unprotected sex because those scenes are more popular and they will get paid more for them. They also have to take “morning after pills” after each one of these shoots. The guy behind this whole operation though is the one I want to focus on. They try to equate porn work to a higher standard than prostitution. But to me it is all the same. The guy who brought them to Florida pays for their flight, their living expenses, and books all their shoots. That doesn’t sound any different from a pimp, to me at least. Also, he takes a certain percentage from the girls after each one of their shoots. He also reminds them that the girls owe him, how they wouldn’t be where they are if it wasn’t for him. You can obviously tell that this guy is only in it for the money. He is making a gold mine off these girls because they usually come with zero experience so he has complete discretion to tell them whatever he feels they need to hear to make them do a scene he wants, it’s all a business.

The other side of things that I want to point out is how porn is a multi billion dollar industry. Millions of people tune into porn per hour. But let’s take a look behind the scenes. If the actress or actor is making $500-1500 per scene they still have to pay 10-15% to the person directing the film. If we do the math every scene of porn we see the people behind the scenes are making money off every single person being shot. They not only degrade women within this industry but they also are robbing them blind. The money they do make they usually have to put towards wardrobe for their next shoot, makeup, and etc. Let alone living expenses. So once that money is gone they have to continue to do more scenes (for amateurs) making it a vicious cycle that would be hard to get out of if they don’t want to go broke.

The point I’m trying to make about the sex industry especially surrounding the documentary “Hot Girls Wanted” is the men who run these porn sites and that run these brothels (which I am saying the house that the girls stayed in Florida is) are making a lot of money off these amateur porn stars and these girls don’t know what they are really getting into. They think that they are just going to make a couple thousand dollars and leave and they soon realize it’s not that easy. Once they let them go they are done. Is that how it should be? Totally up to the discretion of the men? The women get little say so in what they do. They have to pay up for their services of course. It’s interesting how some women feel empowered by sex work but not the sex industry, there’s a difference. I’m curious to see what you all think!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nica-noelle/sex-work-can-be-empowering-but-the-sex-industry-isnt_b_6875630.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-the-sex-industry-looks-like-in-8-us-cities-2014-3

http://www.therichest.com/expensive-lifestyle/money/money-in-pornography-one-of-the-most-misunderstood-industries/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/13/hot-girls-wanted-is-pornsploitation.html

Sex Industry: Classes of Sex Workers - Amber

I find America’s fascination with and repulsion of sex and sex work very intriguing. What is a pretty widespread aspect of society, to me, is in fact seen as something that cannot be talked about, admitted to, or even worse, enjoyed. (This article in the Nation is a lot longer but well worth the read if you’re more interested in the stigma associated with sex work and some reasons behind why we might want to move past it.) What interests me even further is a rather striking socioeconomic status divide for sex workers who engage with their clients physically and are not filmed.

Even in the words used to describe certain sex workers, there are certain connotations to their value. “Hooker” and “whore” are used not only as insults and slurs but denote a lower class standing – of both the sex workers and the clients – while “call girl”, “escort” and especially “Madam” seem to dance around the job that these sex workers perform and connote a much higher class standing. Why is there even a distinction?

For most of it, I think money can be made accountable. Oftentimes prostitutes who charge a couple hundred dollars for some of their services are seen as lower class whereas a call girl who charges a couple thousand dollars for the same services are seen as a higher class. Why? I originally thought this could be related to the clients that certain sex workers have access to. If you are a street-level prostitute who has no connections to the industry, a capitalist perspective on getting money would be to lower your prices to bring in a larger customer base. However, Ava Xi’an provides a different explanation that is related to self-worth in this New York Times article: “Tell a guy you’re $100 and they’ll treat you one way -- tell them you’re $1,500 and they’ll treat you better.” This struck me as it reminded me a lot of the ideas of street-level prostitutes being “worthless”. They have huge rates of physical violence and are considered “fair game” when it comes to assault because they are not seen as humans, according to Dr. Phylis Chessler in this Women’s Issues article. Charging more for the same services seems to imply worth to the client – and seems to discourage violence because there is a larger sum attached to the woman. This is yet another example of how we conflate violence with oppressed groups in society.

Further, sex work seems to be "more empowering" for the higher-class sex workers – who can also double-up as part-time “girlfriends”. They do a lot more than just sex during their job hours – this article from the New York Daily News is very blunt about the time spent with clients: "Let's just say that sex lasts for about two minutes and the rest of the time the girl is schmoozing him and feeding his ego." And it seems to take an upper class upbringing to be one of the so-called “escorts” who can afford to charge such amounts for their time and services: “The women were educated, could converse on political issues or on philosophy or in another language. They were women you wouldn't feel embarrassed about taking out to dinner with your business colleagues” (NY Daily News). To me this immediately looks like the needs or wants of the client (often male) supersede those of the sex worker (often female) – and some men don’t want to “dirty themselves” by “slumming it” to have sex. Is this really empowerment if the escort is there to make a man feel better about himself? It also makes me feel like the only way to make a lot of money doing sex work is if you already come from a family that had a lot of wealth and resources - which can also reinforce the stereotypic idea of a poor or working-class street-level prostitute who is "dirty" both literally and metaphorically.

I feel very much conflicted about this topic as a whole – while I want people to engage in work that they find beneficial to them in some way, I am also very alarmed at how much sex work seems to reinforce the patriarchy and socioeconomic inequality. To me, it feels wrong to criminalize and discount sexuality when it is, for a lot of people, a large part of everyday life – but it also seems to be doing a lot of harm to some of society’s most vulnerable individuals. I really look forward to engaging with this topic with all of you on Monday.

Here are the reading links in order of appearance:

http://www.thenation.com/article/lets-call-sex-work-what-it-work/

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/nyregion/16call.html?_r=0

http://womensissues.about.com/od/rapesexualassault/a/Wuornos.htm

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/high-class-call-girl-job-includes-sex-article-1.290524

Sex Industry: A Culture Of Gendered Shame

In looking at the sex industry through the specific lens of gender, some very compelling contradictions can arise. Take, for instance, the fact that the website Pornhub got an average of 2.1 million visits per hour in 2014, but when it was discovered that a Duke University student was performing in scenes to pay her tuition under the name Belle Knox, she faced abuse and harassment from newspapers, classmates, and the internet at large after the story went viral. Apparently women can be filmed having sex and that’s all fine and dandy, but do it while also trying to go to school and then it’s a news story, complete with threats of rape and death. Here we have another example of a situation in which people are obsessed with the sexualization of women’s bodies and how that can so often turn negative, through violence, intimidation, and endless cyberbullying.

This is no less true for transwomen, who likewise find their bodies caught between sexualization and violence. For many transwomen on and off-screen, sex work can be a method of survival in a world that has made it extremely hard (and sometimes a fireable offense) to both work and live as their authentic selves. Janet Mock, and even VICE have written on how men (who identify as straight) find themselves attracted to transwomen, and the backlash that can ensue as both these men and the society we all live in struggles to categorize them.  From that same Pornhub Year In Review, the phrase that placed second for Top Gaining Search Term was “[derogatory word for a transwoman] fuck girl” with a gain of 191% in searches in 2014. At this point, I feel compelled to point out that that same year, The Advocate noted that approximately every two days, someone in the world died for expressing gender non-conformity. Let that juxtaposition sit with you for a minute. Contemplate how yet again, sex and violence find themselves side by side.

Sex as an industry is a very contentious issue within social justice spaces, and I can very much see why. On one hand, even when we sexualize transwomen, we do so with epithets and slurs, and there is no shortage of stories about abuse occurring in this industry. On the other hand, who are we to be controlling women’s bodies and telling them not to do this? I want to name that this writing would be woefully incomplete without the naming of race as a factor. As Janet Mock notes on her website, it is predominantly trans people of color who are making their money in “underground” economies such as sex work. Indeed, she writes, it is through sex work that she (and many others) have found sex work necessary and even empowering.

Personally, in developing my own thoughts on this, I know there’s no simple way to look at this, and certainly in ~750 words. Though many people are more comfortable with absolutist declarations of right and wrong, I embrace the complexity of the issue. I’m not supportive of the ways the sex industry can dehumanize and mistreat women, but at the same time I think that a puritanical declaration of wrong-ness is inappropriate, and also not something that I, as someone who is middle class, the recipient of both white and cis man privilege* and not a sex worker, should feel entitled to comment on. I think it can sometimes be easy for people involved in social justice to turn our noses up at something and declare it problematic without looking deeper, and I don’t want that to happen here.

In summary, if I were to have to deem something problematic, it would be how we as a culture relate to women’s bodies, and not the women who find themselves in circumstances in which sex work is the most viable option. In unpacking this issue, the ways in which SES, Gender, and Race are in play need to be accounted for. It is no accident that so many trans women of color make their living through sex work, just as it is no coincidence that as an identity group they are the targets of abuse and violence in ways that white and/or cis people do not face, in addition to the poverty that so often leads to sex work. This week, like my two lovely co-writers, I am interested in your thoughts on this issue. I want to think critically about something that we as a culture can barely talk about. I’m excited to get into this on Monday with y’all.

http://www.pornhub.com/insights/2014-year-in-review

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/20/duke-porn-star-belle-knox_n_4995159.html

http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2014/11/20/transgender-day-remembrance-those-weve-lost-2014

http://janetmock.com/2014/01/30/janet-mock-sex-work-experiences/

*I make this distinction because I want to name my strange relationships with whiteness and being a man while also naming that despite my own internal complexities and questions, I still receive privilege in these areas.

Prescription Drug Abuse & Misuse in Academics-Elkena

This is topic that I hear about often but I honestly know very little about. I remember hearing jokes and references to drugs being used when I got to the University of Michigan. I would hear things like “Oh you are at the Business School all of those smart students taking all of that Adderall to stay up late.” I had never heard of things like Adderall before. Today I still wonder if that is because of my Race or SES? Through our research we confirmed that abuse and stigmas around prescription drug usage have been preventing the people that need it most from getting it.

My attention has been draw to the effects that mental health has on the African American community. What struck me the most from the NAMI article was the fact that suicide was listed as a mental disorder most common among African American males.  I think back to a guy from my high school that recently community suicide but had a history of posting suicidal and depressed messages on his social media. I was never close enough to follow him on those social media pages but our community was heartbroken once they saw his continuous cries for help that appear to have gone so unnoticed by our community. I was also drawn to the fact that exposure to violence can lead to depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress order. I can think of all the people in my family that we call “crazy” and how they are the same ones that had the roughest upbringings in extremely unsafe neighborhoods. It was so easy for me think of instances where I remember this happening in my family or to friends but it is very rarely named as a mental illness but more so something “people need to snap out of” in my community.

I think it is also powerful and note worthy that “only about one-quarter of African Americans seek mental health care, compared to 40% of whites.” We see that race truly plays a factor in mental health diagnosis and prescriptions. The Root article really gets at how harmful ignoring this when it comes to academic performance. Many African American students are written off as non-smart the minute they show disruptive behavior instead of giving them the attention that they need. And in other cases like the one Idris (a black male), he wants the medication but his parents are afraid. While other times students are diagnosed with mental disorders when the problem is actually the teachers poor education skills. This is a major issue in terms of African American males due to toxic perceptions of them not being as smart being perpetuated through media and informing the way we interpret their behavior. This makes it so easy for society to count them out and write them off as disabled.

The Root article even mentions “Some doctors admit to prescribing Adderall and other ADHD drugs to low-income kids, not because they have a disorder but just to help them do better in school.” This is super important because low SES usually comes with poor academics and parents that are not around due to long work hours so if they can use medication as a quick fix for their children’s academic issues many of them roll with it without questioning it. So we see that prescription drug abuse is real in academics, specifically Adderall but it is not random and even being suggested to us by the people closest to us. In terms of the Black community I feel like prescriptions drugs are being misused more so than abused in academics. They are being used to label problematic students, typically black males, as having an issue and prescribing them medication without proper investigation into the cause of the misbehavior for example.

Although our focus has been on prescription drug abuse and misuse in academics, we recognize that this topic also relates to other usages, such as for the purposes of losing weight. So I have included an additional Shape article about women and body image in terms of using prescription drugs like Adderall. Please feel free to refer to this in your reflection.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/02/black_children_and_adhd_biology_or_culture_clash.html

https://www.nami.org/Find-Support/Diverse-Communities/African-Americans

http://www.shape.com/lifestyle/mind-and-body/adhd-or-overachiever-women-and-epidemic-adderall-abuse

Prescription Drug Abuse- Rachel

Hi Everyone!!  

A few notes: 

Please be sure to read both of our posts, as they address the topic through different lens, and we both have utilized different resources.

I apologize if this post appears weird... I can't quite finagle it correctly so that the text appears uniform. I C&Ped from a google doc and the formatting is a little strange and a little distracting.

Without further ado...

There is an immense amount of pressure to succeed on campus: after all, we are “The Leaders and Best”. To be one of the Leaders and Best, one must often serve up sleep as a sacrificial lamb. When this occurs many of us resort intake of caffeine to stimulate us enough to get through our classes, assignments and exams. During midterms and finals, many of us crank up our caffeine intake to an absurd level just to get through all of the information one must know for the exam the next morning. Within this heightened caffeine consumption, there is a subset of individual who go farther than 8 cups of coffee and make the choice to illicitly obtain and use psychostimulants such as Adderall.

”Unafflicted abusers of the drugs claim that they are endowed with supreme powers of concentration and intense activity.” (Kingston Man, 2007).

Regardless of whether Adderall is used as a performance enhancer in the classroom or as a performance enhancer at the parties during the weekend there are serious consequences to its abuse. Almost always these consequences are framed in a way that benefits the non medicated users. They are warning about the potential psychosis a healthy individual can have, about the possibility of addiction and overdose. In public discourse individuals who have need of the medication are seldom addressed in the consequences of prescription drug abuse. The Michigan Daily article: The doping scandal in your biology class, is one rare piece that sheds light on how prescription drug abuse affects the individuals who need the medication:

“Students who bend the rules to illegally obtain prescription drugs dilute the reality of psychological illness for legitimate sufferers. The 8 percent of users who don't need the drugs ruin it for the 3 percent who do. Real brain diseases are cast into doubt and legitimate sufferers are written off as lazy or unmotivated” (Man, 2007).

In addition to perpetuating the stigmas and stereotypes surrounding students with ADHD or learning disabilities, individuals who chose to use Adderall illicitly are able to amplify their already privileged minds to set the already high standard one must meet to be a “leader and best” even higher. Using the drug as a party stimulant further could not be a more antithetical abuse. As an individual who requires psychotropic drugs to function in an emotional plane similar to that of my neurotypical peers, it angers me that people make light of and tokenize medication--that is an critical need for many people--in party environments. It completely undermines seriousness of the medication and that of the biological disorder.

Some key things to consider when framing your response:

Findings cited in both the Michigan Daily articles assert that nonprescription users are most likely: a member in a sorority or fraternity, white, male and have a high family income. The Michigan Daily article also names Jewish religious affiliation as a risk factor (I am curious as to why Jewish affiliation was named, perhaps it has more to do with the sometimes true intersection of Jewish affiliation and high SES rather than Judaism itself?). These findings suggest that Adderall is more accessible to individuals with “stacked” privileges: SES, Male, White.

For me what is most glaring is that it is white, male, upper SES individuals who have the most access to illicit drugs and are most likely to use them. This is not surprising to me, as these identities especially when stacked on top of one another inundate individuals with great power. Not only do individuals with these intersecting identities set the standard for success on campus, they set the standards for success in almost all areas of life.  

Other things to consider:

Why is it that the consequences of abuse/misuse are framed in a way the benefits the abusers (as warnings)? Why is that the perpetuated stigmatization and the diluted reality of psychological illnesses are rarely addressed in public discourse surrounding prescription drug abuse--namely that of Adderall/Ritalin? Why is this still a pervasive problem 7 years after the Daily article: The doping scandal in your biology class was published? Has this problem gotten worse, have the consequences for both parties changed? Are we as a campus culture more critical of the problem 7 years later?

Michigan Daily Articles from 2007 and 2014 respectively:

https://www.michigandaily.com/content/kingson-man-doping-scandal-your-biology-class

https://www.michigandaily.com/section/statement/one-night-one-pill-one-tragedy-%E2%80%94-and-mother%E2%80%99s-mission

Missing White Woman Syndrome - Rachel

            “Missing White Woman Syndrome” is a term to identify the types of people that the media focuses on when identifying on a missing person. The media is much more likely to highlight stories about white, upper or middle class attractive women who went missing, than people of color. It is a question of who has access to media, and what is the most likely to draw emotion from the public. As sad and terrible as this is, a young, attractive, white female will get much more attention and emotion from the public than women or men of color.

Recently, at the Indiana University, a Black male named Joseph Smedley went missing, and was later discovered dead by a lake. Indiana University did not take the proper steps and media campaign to find him, which is supporting evidence of the “Missing White Woman Syndrome.” (A student at Indiana University writes about this recent event in the article http://theodysseyonline.com/indiana/the-death-of-joseph-smedley-how-indiana-university-went-wrong , on a website where anyone can write an opinionated article). Why is it that white, attractive females get more attention from the public? In “Missing White Woman Syndrome: How Media Framing Affects Viewers’ Emotions,” Conlin and Davie talk about the “damsel in distress” view, that we pity white women just like in princess and hero movies and want them to be rescued. We are socialized to root for the ideal picture of a woman, while the media simply does not acknowledge other tragic occurrences. The media then frames missing women to cater how the public would like to view it, as a helpless beautiful woman subject to the evils of our society.

It is not only with attractive women, but the media does also not focus on missing children of color. In circumstances of death and murder, we rarely hear about people of color but more often hear tragic accounts on the media of white upper class people. How do the intersection of race and class impact the media coverage, to create the “Missing White Woman Syndrome”?

In addition, I think that gender plays an important role in the syndrome. I am struggling with the fact that while women are more likely to be victims of assault, does the media frame women in a way that they are helpless to the physical power of males? In the case of kidnappings by males, not specifically to mothers murdering their children, a woman is subject to the physical power of a man, and the media perpetuates this oppression by only focusing on the cases of missing women, such as in the case of Joseph Smedley at Indiana University. Could male privilege and power in society be an underlying reason for why the media did not sooner cover the Joseph Smedley story?

To summarize, three social identities come into play here: race, social class, and gender. Two of these identities are privileged, yet one is oppressed. How is it that these three identities come together to create the “Missing White Girl Syndrome,” and what effect does it have on our society?

LINKS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Lauren_Spierer

http://theodysseyonline.com/indiana/the-death-of-joseph-smedley-how-indiana-university-went-wrong

http://enx.sagepub.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/9/1/36.full.pdf+html

Missing White Girl Syndrome - Sarika

Growing up I didn’t realize that through the American movies, Disney cartoons and media I watched, I was slowly being introduced to the picture of what The Girl should look like. The heroine in movies, the petite, pretty one everyone sympathized with, the popular one, etc. She was always white. It is, what I think, fueled the power dynamic in my school between the popular white students and students of color. But this just shows how the early stages of socialization can influence how we see the world around us. All my life people of color were actively being marginalized in the media and I never questioned it. I didn’t realize that could have some extremely dire consequences.

I was so used to seeing white people get attention, it didn’t even hit me that parallel stories occurring for people of color were going unacknowledged. This is something that needs attention, especially when it comes to news coverage of important stories the public should be aware of. Social norms perpetuate the idea of “attractive, young, middle/upper class, white women” being the population the public would most sympathize this. The media exploits this, and thus the “Missing White Girl Syndrome” was developed.

              According to the article the death of Joseph Smedley and how Indiana University went wrong, 42% of all missing children in America are black. However, very rarely do these cases get importance. This is appalling for many reasons, one of the obvious ones being that not giving these cases importance in the media reduces the possibility of the public helping in getting these children back. As seen in Joseph Smedley’s case, the media perpetuates racism by actively valuing the life of a white girl over the life of a person of color, when they should be given equal importance. When the case of Joseph Smedley, a man of color, was brought up in a media source used by university students, it was mostly ignored. However, the university members had the opposite reaction when the victim was a white woman.

I find it slightly disturbing that the media’s ideal “victim” is a woman. How would the media react if the victim was a male (of any race)? I think I am unsettled by the fact that the sympathy is probably rooted in stereotype of women being vulnerable and weak, and that is being viewed as “attractive” for this gender. After all, while the media is there to spread information, it is still a business with the goal being to attract as many viewers as possible. By only seeing injustice happening to women, specifically white women, their value in society is being heightened, and barely any thoughts are being spared for what is happening to the people of color.

While this raises issues of oppression of people of color, oppression of people of lower class and people who don’t fit the description mentioned above, I’m curious to see what other viewpoints the class comes up with related to the “Missing white girl syndrome”.

Resources:

http://theodysseyonline.com/indiana/the-death-of-joseph-smedley-how-indiana-university-went-wrong/184653

http://theodysseyonline.com/indiana/indiana-university-student-hannah-wilson-found-dead-man-arrested/103536

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome