LOS ANGELES — The Adult Performer Advocacy Committee (APAC) has released a statement signed by "Adult Industry Professionals for Black Lives Matter" concerning the murder of George Floyd and the protests against policy brutality it sparked.
This is their statement:
As adult film production is paused for public health, we are witnessing a large uprising against racism and deadly police brutality. We grieve along with the rest of the country for those lives lost. We have seen, time and time again, that the policing and prison systems are instruments of violence, which overwhelmingly target Black Americans.
This is unconscionable. Countless people’s lives have been stamped out by this institutionalized white supremacy. The lives of George Lloyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Phillando Castille, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner and so many more have been taken by police, with no legal repercussions for the officers. Prisons are overwhelmingly full of Black and brown people. Many are denied their civil rights, forced into plea deals, or wrongly incarcerated. The criminal justice system provides no justice for black and indigenous people of color (BIPOC).These people’s lives have been stolen by the state, under the guise of law and order.
Silence makes us complicit. It is time to say, as an industry, that black lives matter.
This means facing the role our films have in reinforcing racist tropes and racialized fantasies. Those stereotypes feed the same dehumanizing system of racism that allows people’s lives to be stolen by police brutality and prison.
Sometimes performers even appear in a racially charged work without their knowledge or consent. Because films are often shot untitled or with a working title that gets altered later, performers end up with their face and brand associated with a racist title.
The very genre of “interracial” or “IR” only refers, in the porn world, to a black man with a nonblack woman, and is intensely fetishized as taboo. This must stop.
In addition, the adult film industry has a massive problem with disparity in rates. Young black women entering the industry are told that they will have to settle for lower rates than white women with the same level of experience and stardom.
Another insidious practice is that of offering nonblack women higher pay to work with a black man. Many have claimed that this rate disparity is due to the physical challenge of penis size, but this is clearly not the case. The adult industry includes black men with moderately sized penises and white men with huge ones, and the models do not charge rates accordingly. The “IR rate” is a discriminatory practice, and we will not take part in it.
We acknowledge the diverse experiences of adult film performers striving to survive and do not write this letter to condemn other performers for taking any specific kind of work or roles. We understand the intersecting margins at which sex workers exist and wish to honor the struggles of all those in our community.
However, the time has come to focus on the needs of black and brown Americans, whose lives have too long been threatened by the systems of racism in which we live.
By signing this letter, we commit to fighting racism inside and out of our own industry, in the following ways:
- We will uplift and amplify BIPOC voices
- In matters involving race, we will center the voices of the minority group in question, and defer to their lived experience
- We will educate ourselves and one another on the history of racism in this country and the ways in which both media representation and the criminal justice system impact it
- We will not accept or offer extra pay for nonblack models to perform alongside black men. If a model has a “large penis rate” it will apply to nonblack men, as well
- We will offer the same rates to black female performers as their white colleagues
- We will not participate in the creation of erotic media which depicts degrading stereotypes or denigrates Black people or Black Lives Matter
- We commit to informed consent of performers concerning the ways in which their race will be reflected in release titles and marketing
- We will use the term 'interracial' to describe scenes between all people of different racial identities and not just black men with nonblack women, and will give minorities the power to decide whether they would like that term used for their work at all
- When we have opportunities to recommend someone to fill a position, we will be sure to include BIPOC. Better yet, we can choose to only recommend BIPOC
- We will elevate BIPOC to positions of hiring and directorial power and create opportunities for them to tell their own erotic stories in their own voice
- We stand behind Black Lives Matter protestors as they face further police violence while struggling to make their voices heard
And we will say, without hesitation…
Black lives matter.
Signatures by APAC and other adult industry professionals follow.
For the original APAC post, click here.