BOSTON—Next Tuesday, May 12, adult stars Vicky Vette, Julia Ann and Gauge will join Penthouse Managing Director Kelly Holland on the panel of “Women in Porn: A Discriminating Audience,” the latest live event in the online discussion series presented by Mindbrowse.com.
“The Mindbrowse ‘Women in Porn’ series is dedicated to tackling issues faced by women working in all areas of the adult industry, piece by piece,” said sociologist Dr. Chauntelle Tibbals, who will moderate the show. “I’m very excited to explore the issue of discrimination. It’s a tiresome and difficult topic, but it’s also something that every woman working in adult entertainment seems to have had to contend with in some way or another.”
Starting at 3 p.m. EDT/12 p.m. PDT, the panel will discuss their own experiences with discrimination, what they believe the source to be, and what, if anything, can be done about it. The show will be live webcast and available to viewers free of charge on MindBrowse.com. The show will also be live-tweeted here. Viewers can tweet questions and comments of their own using the #SexTalkTuesday hashtag.
As the panelists will attest, despite porn’s global popularity, social acceptance remains very hard to come by for current and former performers, producers, and others who work in the adult industry.
The theme for the session was proposed by Vette, who approached Mindbrowse producers with the idea after attending a live “Women in Porn” panel in Los Angeles.
“Discrimination against the adult industry, especially its women, is a topic that has personally tormented me for years,” Vette said. “It affects every one of us and there is no solution in sight.”
In a recent article by retired performer Aurora Snow for TheDailyBeast.com, Gauge spoke of how her complaints of sexual harassment while working at a hospital fell on deaf ears because of her past in porn.
“The [hospital’s] head of complaints told me it would be a sticky situation, it would have to go before a board and they already knew I’d done porn,” Gauge said, adding she was told she would need to produce recorded evidence for her claim to be validated. Ultimately, she tendered her resignation instead of pursuing the complaint. “In their eyes I was already labeled a pervert because I was in the industry, not him.”
Angie Rowntree, owner of Sssh.com, the award-winning erotica site for women and couples and producer of Mindbrowse shows, said while discrimination affects people who work in all facets of adult entertainment, “performers get the worst of it due to their role being the most high-profile.”
“The saddest part is what performers are really being punished for are the hang-ups and issues of those around them, not anything they’ve done on camera,” Rowntree said. “So your co-worker or neighbor is, or used to be, in porn. Is it really too much to ask of people to just get over that fact and live and let live?”
For more information about the "Women in Porn" discussion series or to watch previous shows, please click here. For more information about Sssh.com or #SexTalkTuesday, please email Angie Rowntree.
