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There Is a New Video Of Giant Panda Tian Tian Rolling Around In the Snow
Mother Jones
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My hometown of Orange County isn’t in the news much, so it’s a little sad that our latest brush with fame is the escape of three inmates from the central jail in Santa Ana. Here’s the long version of how they did it:
Cut steel screen in Mod F Tank where inmates were housed 2/5 #ocjailescape pic.twitter.com/Rf8mTEErp0
— OC Sheriff, CA (@OCSD)
Cut steel screen where inmates made access to plumbing tunnel from tank 3/5 #ocjailescape pic.twitter.com/xXb8ukD4Y7
— OC Sheriff, CA (@OCSD)
Roof area of CMJ where razor wire was compromised and is believed inmates repelled down to ground 4/5 #ocjailescape pic.twitter.com/IFf9p0CpMF
— OC Sheriff, CA (@OCSD)
Makeshift rope made with linens, utilized in escape 5/5 #ocjailescape pic.twitter.com/rWDIkONtxA
— OC Sheriff, CA (@OCSD)
And here’s the short version: They cut out a vent cover and climbed to the roof. Then they rappelled down by tying together a bunch of sheets. This is what passes for brilliant in Orange County. Sigh.
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Here’s What Passes For a Brilliant Jailbreak In Orange County
Mother Jones
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A political action committee with a track record of questionable tactics is attempting to use the recent death of a Ben Carson campaign volunteer to raise money. The group has no connection to Carson’s presidential effort, and a spokesman for the retired neurosurgeon who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination tells Mother Jones that the Carson team was “disgusted and appalled” by the ploy.
On Sunday, the Sacramento-based Defenders of Freedom and Security PAC sent out an email blast urging recipients to donate whatever they could and to join its email list to “help Ben Carson carry the baton of freedom to the next generation!” The message, which includes language suggesting that donations will be used to directly support Carson’s presidential bid, begins with a not-very-subtle attempt to grab potential donors by their heartstrings: “The Carson campaign dealt with a tragedy this week when a student campaign worker died tragically in a car accident in Iowa.” This was a reference to 25-year-old Braden Joplin, who died when a van carrying Carson campaign volunteers was involved in a crash on icy roads in western Iowa on Tuesday.
Far from using the volunteer’s death as a fundraising gambit, Carson suspended campaigning for two days, and the campaign sent a private jet to fly Joplin’s family to Iowa. When Carson resumed campaigning, he dedicated his stops to the young volunteer. When told of Defenders of Freedom’s fundraising email, the Carson campaign criticized the move.
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A Shady Conservative Group Is Fundraising Off the Death of a Ben Carson Volunteer
Mother Jones
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Against my better judgment sometimes, I have focused most of my campaign reporting energy on making the case against Donald Trump. But there are other candidates out there who are plenty loathsome in their own way, and when you say the word “loathsome” Ted Cruz comes immediately to mind.
Over at the mothership, Tim Murphy and David Corn make the case that Ted is really one of the all-time huge pricks. Take this quiz first to test your knowledge of Cruzology, and then go read it.
Answer: All statements whose ordinal number takes the integer form 2n+1 or 2n-1 have been invented. The rest are real
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Last week, education officials in New York City approved a controversial school rezoning plan that will reassign some affluent, white children to a high-poverty Brooklyn school that is 90 percent black and Latino. The city’s department of education proposed the plan to reduce overcrowding in the predominantly white Public School 8, which serves kids from Brooklyn Heights and Dumbo—home to some of the most expensive apartments and condos in the country. Meanwhile, their new school, P.S. 307, serves mostly kids from the nearby public housing project, the Farragut Houses.
Many parents at both schools fiercely opposed the integration plan. “When rich people come in, they have the money to force people to do what they want,” said Farragut Houses resident Dolores Cheatom. Citing historic precedents, Cheatom and others argued the rezoning would change the school to benefit wealthy newcomers and slowly push out students from the Farragut community.
The parents whose kids are now bound for P.S. 307 said they were most concerned about the school’s low standardized test scores—which is no surprise, since that’s a common argument against sending white kids to schools that serve large numbers of low-income black and Latino students. The assumptions behind this argument go something like this: (1) Integration mostly benefits poor Latino and black students by allowing them to attend “good,” majority-white schools with better test scores, and (2) sending white children to schools that serve students from diverse racial and economic backgrounds will hurt the academic outcomes of white children.
But here’s the thing: The academic and social advantages white kids gain in integrated schools have been consistently documented by a rich body of peer-reviewed research over the last 15 years. And as strange as it may sound, many social scientists—and, increasingly, leaders in the business world—argue that diverse schools actually benefit white kids the most.
Here’s a summary of some of the most convincing evidence these experts have used to date:
1. White students’ test scores don’t drop when they go to schools with large numbers of black and Latino students.
In 2007, 553 social scientists from across the country signed an amicus brief in support of voluntary school integration policies for a Supreme Court case known as Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District. The brief continues to serve as a treasure trove of some of the most important research in this field, and in its 5-4 decision in favor of integration, the justices concluded that the academic progress of white children is best served in multiracial schools. Soon after the seminal court case, Harvard researchers Susan Eaton and Gina Chirichigno launched the One Nation Indivisible initiative, which now serves as a clearinghouse for the most rigorous current research on the benefits of integrated schools.
When it comes to the impact on standardized test scores, research cited in the case—as well as the most recent data from the federal government—confirmed that there is no negative impact on the test scores of white children. Some studies found that test scores of all students increased, especially in math and science. Others found that they stayed the same. The debate on whether test scores increase in integrated schools continues, but there is overwhelming evidence that they don’t drop when white students go to economically and racially integrated schools.
2. Diverse classrooms teach some of the most important 21st-century skills, which matter more than test scores.
Psychologists, economists, and neuroscientists have done some really exciting research in education in the past 10 years, synthesized in the best-selling book by Paul Tough, How Children Succeed. This research tells us that some of the most important academic, social, and emotional skills—curiosity, complex and flexible thinking, resilience, empathy, gratitude—are not captured by standardized test scores but are keys to a successful and productive life.
Other researchers, including Stanford’s Prudence L. Carter, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Linda R. Tropp, and Loyola University of New Orleans’ Robert A. Garda Jr., have found that skills like cross-cultural collaboration, critical thinking, problem-solving, effective communication, reduced racial prejudice, and empathy are best fostered in diverse classrooms. Many of these researchers argue that we need to expand our definition of academic advantages to include these important skills, which are captured mostly through qualitative assessments like presentations, group projects, and student surveys.
3. Graduates of socioeconomically diverse schools are more effective in the workplace and global markets.
Researchers who have been trying to figure out which office settings allow for the most powerful breakthroughs in innovation have consistently come up with the same answer: daily practice and comfort with diverse perspectives, according to Scott E. Page, the author of The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies. Virginia Commonwealth University’s Genevieve Siegel-Hawley argues that daily classroom interactions with students from different racial and economic backgrounds help students develop the ability to view and understand complex problems and events through multiple lenses. Research also shows that an integrated workforce helps companies design and sell products more effectively to a wide range of customers.
Notably, the average white student today goes to a school where 77 percent of her or his peers are white. Schools are as segregated and unequal today as they were shortly after Brown v. Board of Education was decided. This means that too many students, especially in suburban schools, are being socialized in environments that deprive them of one of the most important skills in the global economy: the ability to communicate and collaborate with people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Research is clear that such skills are difficult to teach without daily exposure to integrated communities—a trip abroad, a diversity workshop, or an ethnic studies class taught in a predominantly white classroom isn’t enough. And because students of color are much more likely to interact with diverse people in their neighborhoods and schools, in this sense integrated schools give greater advantages to white students.
Garda writes that getting involved in the issues of income and racial inequalities at the policy level is often too daunting for many parents. But choosing a school or a neighborhood is actually one of the most meaningful ways in which parents can act out their values and help reduce income and racial disparities.
As journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones reported in her important This American Life segment last year on integration, our country made the largest gains in reducing achievement gaps at the peak of integration in the mid-1970s. And then the country gave up, mostly because white parents were afraid to put their kids in the same classrooms with students from “underperforming” schools. “We somehow want this to have been easy,” Hannah-Jones, who as a child lived in a working-class African American neighborhood in Waterloo, Iowa, and was bused to a majority-white school across town. “And we gave up really fast.”
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3 Ways White Kids Benefit Most From Racially Diverse Schools
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Five-time Jeopardy! champion Tom Nichols1 writes today about why so many people are attracted to Donald Trump. Nichols is a Republican,2 but he makes it very clear that he deeply loathes Trump (“hideous,” “narcissistic,” “creepy,” “stupid,” etc.) and will never vote for him. So what’s his take on Trump’s popularity? Is it due to economic insecurity? Inchoate anger? Bubbling racism and xenophobia? Hatred of the Republican establishment?
Nah. He says Trump’s rise is basically the fault of the left:
To understand Trump’s seemingly effortless seizure of the public spotlight, forget about programs, and instead zero in on the one complaint that seems to unite all of the disparate angry factions gravitating to him: political correctness. This, more than anything, is how the left created Trump
Uh-oh. That’s not going to go over well. For what it’s worth, Nichols is clear that he isn’t referring to garden variety political correctness, which is basically little more than avoiding terms that are obviously insulting or exclusionary. At worst, that stuff is annoying but well-meaning:
Today, however, we have a new, more virulent political correctness that terrorizes both liberals and conservatives, old-line Democrats and Republicans, alike…The extremist adherents of this new political correctness have essentially taken a flamethrower to the public space and annihilated its center…Any incorrect position, any expression of the Constitutional right to a different opinion, or even just a slip of the tongue can lead to public ostracism and the loss of a job.
…Gay marriage is a good example. Liberals wanted gay marriage to win in the Supreme Court, and it did. Leftists wanted more: to silence their opponents even after those opponents completely lost on the issue…I could reel off many other examples. When the New York Times tells the rubes that it’s time to hand in their guns, when The Washington Post suggests that Jesus is ashamed of them for not welcoming Syrian refugees the week after a terrorist attack, people react not because they love guns or hate Syrians, but because their natural urge to being told by coastal liberals that they’re awful people and that they should just obey and shut up is to issue a certain Anglo-Saxon verb and pronoun combination with all the vigor they can muster. And if they can’t say it themselves, they’ll find someone who will, even if it’s a crude jerk from Queens who can’t make a point without raising his pinky like a Mafia goon explaining the vig to you after you’ve had a bad day at the track.
…For the record, I despise Donald Trump and I will vote for almost any Republican (well, okay, not Ben Carson) rather than Trump….But I understand the fear of being silenced that’s prompting otherwise decent people to make common cause with racists and modern Know-Nothings, and I blame the American left for creating that fear.
…How long this will go on, then, depends on how long it will take for those people to feel reassured that someone besides Trump will represent their concerns without backing down in the face of catcalls about racism, sexism, LGBTQ-phobia, Islamophobia, or any other number of labels deployed mostly to extinguish their dissent.
This is hardly a new critique. Conservatives have been complaining about “being silenced” forever. The only difference between Trump and the rest of the GOP field is that Trump’s complaints are a little earthier than Rubio’s or Bush’s.
Still, even if I think Nichols is overstating things, it’s not as if he doesn’t have a point. Even those of us on the left feel the wrath of the leftier-than-thou brigade from time to time. I don’t generally have a hard time avoiding objectionable language myself because (a) I’m liberal, (b) I’m good with words, and (c) I write rather than talk, which gives me time to get my act together. But even at that, sometimes I cross an invisible line and get trounced for it.
But for someone without my advantages, I can easily see how it might feel almost impossible to express an unpopular opinion without tying yourself in knots. And let’s be honest: We liberals do tend to yell racism a little more often than we should. And we do tend to suggest that anyone who likes guns or Jesus is a rube. And the whole “privilege” thing sure does get tiresome sometimes. And we do get a little pedantic in our insistence that no conversation about anything is complete unless it specifically acknowledges the special problems of marginalized groups. It can be pretty suffocating at times.
For the most part, I don’t mind this stuff—and conservatives do themselves no favors by harping on supposed PC idiocy like the “war on Christmas.” But the reason I don’t mind it is that I can navigate it reasonably well4 and I mostly agree with the aims of the PC police anyway. People who have trouble with navigation obviously feel a lot more constrained. So while I don’t really buy Nichols’ argument—conservatives built the monster named Trump, not liberals—I do think he has a germ of a point. Donald Trump is basically telling ordinary people that ordinary language is okay, and since that’s the only language they know, it means they feel like they can finally talk again.
1Okay, fine: He’s also a professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College.
2Former Republican, anyway: “I’m a conservative independent and a former Republican. I quit the party in 2012 because of exactly the kind of coarse ignorance that Trump represents. The night Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary on the thoughtful platform of colonizing the moon, I was out.”
3 I included that second sentence only because it tickled me.
4 Much of this I’ve learned from reading stuff by academics, who are the masters of acceptable language. As an example: If you were to call something “black behavior,” you’d probably get mauled. The solution? Call it “behavior stereotypically coded as black.” This accomplishes so many things at once. However, it’s also phraseology that no ordinary person would ever think of. This means they literally have no acceptable way of expressing the original thought, which makes them feel silenced.
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Mother Jones
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Ah, the holidays—more time to binge on your favorite TV shows and catch the midnight showing of the new Star Wars flick. Or maybe instead you’ll want to close your eyes and sink into the latest media craze: podcasts. Pull out your phone right now and you’d find hundreds of thousands of shows to choose from. Nearly a third of the podcasts currently listed on iTunes launched after June 2014, the month that marked the release of Serial, the hugely popular murder mystery series hosted by Sarah Koenig. While it quickly shot to fame and attracted more listeners than any podcast in history, Serial isn’t the only smart, timely audio show out there. Here are some of our favorite lesser-known podcast gems of 2015:
Whistlestop. Hosted by political wonk John Dickerson—the all-star moderator of the second Democratic debate—Whistlestop is an antidote to the head-splitting news coverage of the desperate race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Dickerson, a veteran political correspondent for Slate and the new host of CBS’ Face the Nation, takes his listeners deep into campaign history, from JFK’s struggle to convince voters to look past his religious identity to the worst answer to the question “Why do you want to be president?” in history. Whether it’s the historical precedent for Donald Trump or the rise of talk shows mirroring today’s rise of social media, the electoral politics of yesteryear put today’s presidential race in context.
Reply All. One of several shows recently launched by industry newcomer Gimlet Media, Reply All explores the culture of the internet through stories of human greed, mischievousness, vulnerability, regret, kindness, and wonder. Why are there so many fake historical photo accounts on Twitter? What’s it like to navigate online dating as an Asian woman? How do you delete a sent email? Hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman, both former staffers at WNYC’s On the Media, play resident ecologists of the internet, pointing out the treasures and travails of the age of technology. This show isn’t just for Reddit dwellers or the Twitter-obsessed, but for anyone who’s grown accustomed to living in the digital age.
#GoodMuslimBadMuslim. Comedian Zahra Noorbakhsh and writer and activist Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed used to tease each other about which one was the “bad Muslim.” Noorbakhsh drinks, eats pork, has sex, and prays. Ahmed shuns alcohol and pork but rarely prays. Walking a fine line between “good” and “bad”—both in Muslim communities and in post-9/11 America—Noorbakhsh and Ahmed host laughter-filled, unvarnished conversations about politics, pop culture, and Islamophobia. With anti-Muslim sentiment prominently on display in the wake of the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, Noorbakhsh and Ahmed’s candid conversations are a much-needed breath of fresh air.
99% Invisible. Still going strong after five years, this curious podcast zooms in on the unassuming objects in our lives that we rarely give a second thought. Radio host Roman Mars reveals the hidden stories behind neon lights, a 90-year-old building in New York, silly putty, the couch where Sigmund Freud saw his patients, and barbed wire (a.k.a. “the Devil’s rope”). Mars has such a loyal following that he holds office hours at a local cafe where his admirers can ask him about his work. At one of those gatherings, he told a young journalist that he chooses the stories based on what he’d want to tell people at parties. So if you’re searching for conversation fodder for your family reunion, look no further.
The Mystery Show. Self-styled detective and radio host Starlee Kine investigates the little ordinary mysteries that bug us—the origins of a childhood treasure, a confounding lunchbox illustration, or the exact height of actor Jake Gyllenhaal. In the short time it has been on the air, this Gimlet Media creation has made its way into the Top 20 most popular podcasts on iTunes. As Kine says in one episode, “If you have a mystery,” (no matter how small), “you carry it with you always.” That is, until Kine shows up to break the case wide open.
Another Round. Another pair of sharp and charismatic ladies talk about race, culture, politics, feminism, identity, and life in this weekly show. Fueled by booze and bad jokes, hosts Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton—two black women writers for Buzzfeed—interview everyone from comedians and mental health professionals to cultural and political heavyweights like Melissa Harris-Perry, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Hillary Clinton. Nigatu and Clayton are always entertaining, and they offer a break from the usual string of white, male voices. The A.V. Club writes that they “have very quickly established themselves as funny and insightful hosts, bringing their infectious personalities to conversations that range from squirrels to self-care to microaggressions in the workplace.”
Gravy. Yankee radio journalist Tina Antolini presents portraits of the changing American South through the lens of food. In one recent episode, Antolini zeros in on the cuisine at the Kentucky Derby—not the food served to the spectators, but the food eaten on the go by the stable workers, most of whom are from Central America. One week, Antolini talks to a struggling Louisiana fisherman. Another week, she reflects on fried chicken, at once an iconic comfort food and an ingredient for a hateful racial stereotype. Antolini navigates questions of changing demographics and economic power through heartfelt tales of home-cooked meals. Warning: Do not tune in on an empty stomach.
Guys We Fucked. Originally banned by iTunes for its racy title and now listed as one of its top five comedy podcasts, each episode of Guys We Fucked showcases a running, profanity-laced conversation between two female comedians and their guests, who have included Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead, sex columnist Dan Savage, and adult film star and writer Stoya. Dubbed “The Anti-Slut Shaming Podcast,” Guys We Fucked is on a mission to reclaim female sexuality. Even though it’s a comedy show, it has ventured into taboo subjects like pedophilia, sex work, and sexual violence. Creators Corinne Fisher and Krystyna Hutchinson describe their target audience as people who are “ready to stop living a suffocated, shame-filled bedroom life.”
The Specialist. The brainchild of KALW public radio in San Francisco, The Specialist offers brief glimpses into jobs we don’t think about and the lives of those who do them. In one particularly fascinating episode, host Casey Miner interviews the women of Comb it Out, a California hair salon dedicated to removing lice from the scalps of their unlucky hosts. In another, she interviews a woman in charge of preparing food for zoo animals. The episodes are short but engrossing, offering windows into the most obscure sectors of our economy.
Death, Sex, and Money. Pop quiz: What are the three things you’re not supposed to talk about at the dinner table this holiday season? Hint: You’ll find them in the title of WNYC’s second most popular podcast (after Radiolab). Through intimate interviews with celebrities and everyday people, host Anna Sale, whom Vulture has called the most likely successor to Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, delves into subjects like why people don’t have sex and how you get elected coroner.
The Thomas Jefferson Hour. Humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson is a Jefferson expert and has been impersonating the nation’s third president for more than 30 years. Producing The Thomas Jefferson Hour from inside a converted farmhouse in North Dakota, Jenkinson answers listeners’ questions in the voice of Thomas Jefferson, based on the former president’s writings and actions in life. When Mother Jones asked what would most disturb Jefferson about our society today, Jenkinson replied in character, saying he was terrified by “your national debt, your capacity for violence, including war, but also domestic violence.” Jenkinson’s TJ is more than just an entertaining impersonation. It’s a vehicle for discussing political theory and the values that shaped our nation—both for the better and for the worse.
Startup. This show documents the origin story of Gimlet Media, founded by Alex Blumberg, former host of NPR’s Planet Money. Blumberg left the public radio world—one of many defectors joining the podcast movement—with the goal of starting his own media company, which he hoped would become the “HBO of podcasting.” As he embarked on this new adventure, Blumberg turned the microphone on himself, his wife, and his co-workers. The result is a trying story of the emotional up and downs of starting one’s own business.
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Mother Jones
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America’s notorious gender pay gap isn’t the only inequality hurting women’s pockets these days. According to a new study, gender discrimination practices creep into everyday shopping experiences, costing women significantly more for nearly identical products aimed at men.
The study, released by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs this week, compared 8,000 different products ranging from children’s toys to shaving razors, and found that items specifically targeting women were on average 7 percent more expensive than their male counterparts, even when the products were virtually identical beyond their gender-based packaging.
For instance, as pointed out by Danielle Paquette at the Washington Post, Target sold two Radio Flyer scooters: one red, for boys; one pink, for girls.
“The only significant difference is the price,” the Paquette explains. “Target listed one for $24.99 and the other for $49.99.”
Items targeting women cost more 42 percent of the time. Men’s products were more expensive only 18 percent of the time.
NYC
While the study only focused on New York City stores, many of those analyzed were national brands and retailers, including Neutrogena and Rite Aid. It’s therefore likely the pricing discrepancies uncovered by New York exist far beyond the city.
But could progress be on the horizon? According to the National Women’s Law Center, the gender pay gap closed by one whole cent this year! So word of advice ladies, don’t waste your shiny new penny on “women’s products.” It’s time to start shopping like a man.
(h/t Washington Post)
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For the past two years, car-hailing app Uber has tried several legal maneuvers to quash an ongoing class action lawsuit filed by a number of its drivers in California. They contend that they’ve been wrongly classified as contractors, instead of full employees, and that Uber has withheld some of their tips. On Friday, the $50 billion company deployed its latest tactic: An updated driver agreement began popping up on Uber apps nationwide that drivers were required to sign before being able to accept any new rides over the weekend, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. But many see this agreement as the company’s most recent attempt to knee-cap the class action lawsuit.
In 2014, Uber rewrote its driver agreements to include an arbitration clause that stripped drivers of their right to sue the company in regular court. On Wednesday, a federal judge in San Francisco threw out that agreement, making it possible for the ongoing class action to include all of the 160,000 drivers who have worked for Uber in California since 2009.
Two days later, Uber added language about arbitration to its driver agreements that could skirt that ruling, preventing new drivers from signing on to the class action lawsuit. Binding arbitration clauses require workers to resolve disputes in private, confidential sessions with paid arbitrators rather than in court. They also usually prohibit workers both from appealing the initial arbitration decision and, as is the case in Uber’s new driver agreement, participating in class actions.
“We believe this is an illegal attempt by Uber to usurp the court’s role now in overseeing the process of who is included in the class,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, the Boston-based attorney who is leading the lawsuit against Uber, told the San Francisco Chronicle. Liss-Riordan is filing an emergency motion that will be heard by Judge Chen on Thursday, asking the court to prevent Uber from enforcing this new agreement.
If drivers manage to get to the final paragraphs of the complex 21-page agreement, they’ll discover that they don’t have to sign off on the new arbitration clause at all. By emailing Uber directly with their decision to opt out of being forced to resolve their disputes with binding arbitration, they would be able to continue to drive. The new agreement also won’t affect those drivers who are already participating in the lawsuit.
The ongoing lawsuit challenges two aspects of how the $50 billion company treats workers: first, it claims that Uber has misclassified its workers as contractors, depriving them of crucial employee benefits such as vehicle maintenance expenses. It also alleges that the company has been manipulating ride prices by incorrectly assuring riders that a full tip is included in the fare when, in fact, Uber has kept a portion of those tips rather than remitting them fully to drivers. The suit asks Uber to reimburse drivers for lost tips and expenses, plus interest. If the group of plaintiffs grows by 160,000 drivers, the civil penalties requested in this suit could get very expensive for Uber.
Liss-Riordan explains that Uber is trying to thwart the class action because the alternative—lots of individual lawsuits—would be much simpler and cheaper for the company to handle. The time and money involved in hiring a lawyer would deter many drivers from ever pursuing an individual lawsuit. “And of course, Uber does not want to be sued 160,000 times,” Liss-Riordan told Mother Jones in October. “What it wants is for most of these drivers just to go away.”
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Mother Jones
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For the past several years, porn star James Deen has been at the top of his industry. Known for his mainstream crossover appeal and popularity among women, Deen once told reporter Amanda Hess it was his “nonthreatening, everyday look” that gave him a leg up in the industry. (Indeed, one woman called him “the Ryan Gosling of porn” on Nightline in 2012.) Though he doesn’t identify himself this way, lady mags and news outlets alike labeled him a feminist.
Then, on November 28, porn actor and producer Stoya tweeted that Deen, her former boyfriend, had raped her. The revelation rocked the relatively small adult-film community, and sparked a Bill Cosby-like cascade of allegations—some of which involved on-set incidents. At least 13 women have shared stories so far, ranging from excessive roughness to rape; Deen has since denied the claims.
American pornography, an estimated $10 billion industry, has years of knowledge to contribute to the cultural and legislative debate over how to define sexual consent: According to sexologist Carol Queen, porn has been grappling with these questions for decades. This week, as porn’s practices have come under scrutiny following the allegations against Deen, we decided to ask adult actors, researchers, and advocates about how they handle consent. Here’s what they had to say.
How does the porn industry talk about consent? “There is a more developed everyday conversation about consent that goes on in the industry than you can find anywhere else,” says Constance Penley, who teaches a class on the history of porn at the University of California-Santa Barbara.
The conversation starts during contract negotiations, Penley says, when actors, often represented by agents, agree to the number and gender of partners, the kind of sexual acts, and how much they’ll be paid for a shoot. The formality of the arrangement tends to increase with the size of the production company, ranging from verbal agreements on minor shoots to the three-page “limits” packet that performers fill out for Kink.com, a major producer of BDSM pornography.
Still, consent in a contract is just paperwork. Sovereign Syre, who’s been in the business for six years, says that before every shoot she’s done, she also has talked to her co-stars about boundaries and preferences. The conversation continues throughout the scene. Even directors she’s known for years, Syre says, will ask before tucking in the label on her underwear or rearranging her hair. If, during filming, things get too intense, actors on BDSM shoots use agreed-upon safe words. To stop, “red.” To slow down, “mercy.”
“Being on a porn set, there should be far more room for you to convey those boundaries,” says Cyd Nova, a porn performer, producer, and the program director of the St. James Infirmary, a sex-worker-friendly clinic in San Francisco. Even if someone doesn’t say no or use the safe word, professional adult actors are better equipped to notice when their partners are bothered or unenthusiastic, Nova says. “You’re paid to understand and engage with people sexually.”
Doesn’t money change things? Of course. The mental, emotional, and physical calculus that most people use to determine their sexual boundaries shifts on set, where adult actors also have to consider their income. When they’re under financial pressure, they might feel as if they can’t afford to have a strict “no list.” “When you’ve got $1,000 on the line, there’s a psychology at play that says, ‘I’m willing to do it because I need the money,'” Syre says. Still, “that doesn’t mean that they deserve to be abused.”
It helps to be able to say no. Newcomers to the industry might not know they have that power, or they might be concerned about losing work, explains Conner Habib, vice president of the Adult Performers Advocacy Committee. (APAC is the closest thing porn actors have to a union. Deen resigned from its board after the allegations began to surface, though it’s still headed by his girlfriend). In part, it depends on the director: Most are receptive when performers ask to stop or change the scene, while Habib says others have asked him to reconsider his limits. A few are more insistent. “I’ve said no and had a director be like, ‘You’re not the director,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, I don’t care,'” Habib says.
Performers also may agree try new sex acts on camera, signing up for more extreme shoots to make extra money, only to realize later that they felt traumatized by whatever they agreed to do, Syre says. “There’s this larger dialogue going on about how can you consent to an act that is dynamic,” she says. “There have been jobs I’ve gone on where I went home and I said, ‘I don’t want to do that again, or I don’t like that person.’ I don’t think I’ve been traumatized by it. But I see that potential.”
Habib says his consent has been violated on camera—it’s just not anything he would label as rape. “I’ve definitely done scenes where I had a performer who just kept sticking his thumb up my ass,” Habib says. He stopped the scene and told the man to quit it. “And then he did it again.” Habib walked away for a few minutes. “When I came back, he said, ‘I just totally forgot.'” They finished the scene, but Habib created what he calls an “inward boundary”: If the man did it again, Habib would quit the shoot. “In my opinion, he’s someone who shouldn’t have worked in porn because he wasn’t able to listen.”
What are porn actors’ options for reporting rape? For now, there’s no protocol for reporting rape aside from going to authorities outside the industry. One obvious option is law enforcement—not an attractive choice for many people facing the stigma of sex work. Tori Lux says she decided not to tell the police that Deen raped her on set because of the common belief that women in porn can’t be assaulted. Likewise, Nicki Blue told the Daily Mail that she was afraid the police wouldn’t believe her story about Deen: “When you’re an adult actress, especially in BDSM, and you go to a cop and say, ‘Oh I’ve been raped by this guy after doing a scene,’ they are not going to take you seriously, like if you were a normal person.”
Alternatively, actors could file reports with the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which investigates reports of workplace sexual assault (the industry is based in the San Fernando Valley, with 60 to 70 percent of US adult films shot in Los Angeles county). But several performers told us that battles over mandatory condom regulations have alienated workers from the agency, and Cal/OSHA has not received any sexual-assault complaints from the adult entertainment industry in the last 10 years.
Still, actors who consider reporting sexual assault to their producers and directors may be afraid of backlash, Habib says. A woman identifying herself by her initials, T.M., told LAist that she was afraid talking about Deen would hurt her career; Kora Peters says her agent at the time of her alleged rape told her she should be “honored” that Deen wanted her. The fear of blacklisting isn’t far-fetched, according to Nova: “If you say that you’re assaulted at work, some producers may decide they don’t want to work with you because they see you as a liability.”
In the absence of mechanisms for reporting and accountability on set, performers try to warn each other about actors who push limits—the same kind of rumors some performers reported hearing about Deen. According to Syre, some circles of performers have successfully shut out men who became known for abusing their girlfriends. But for those who are new to the industry or lack connections, word of mouth is “not very foolproof,” Nova says.
How will the Deen allegations affect porn moving forward? It’s difficult to say for sure, though at APAC’s last meeting of performers, directors, and producers, attendees discussed designing a possible industry-wide reporting system. What is clear is that just because porn has its own “best practices” doesn’t mean that people follow them. Even with Kink.com’s limits checklist, Ashley Fires, Nicki Blue, and Lily LaBeau all allege that Deen assaulted them under its supervision. There are rules, and then there are rule breakers—just as in any industry, Penley says. “This does not represent porn,” said Joanna Angel, a prominent alt-porn director and actor who spoke about her past relationship with Deen to radio host Jason Ellis last week. “This represents a specific individual, and I do not want the public to blame porn for anything.”
Yet several industry-specific factors, from the lack of reporting options or the stigma that keeps women from talking to the authorities—or convinces them that speaking out would invite attacks on their community—work to keep many sexual-assault victims in porn silent. “In the absence of people’s legitimate issues being taken seriously and addressed,” Queen says, “people tweet and write blogs and go to the court of public opinion.”
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