Outsourcing porn

Some days, “Alyce” and “Justin” get off work, eat dinner and shoot a porno in the comfort of their home, an hour north of Sacramento.

It started as a lark.

For three years, the romantically-linked photographers took intimate pictures together and uploaded them to Tumblr. Last year, they decided to make their first adult film, which they shot and edited themselves, and then uploaded to the internet. Two dozen erotic flicks later, the pair has earned a little more than two grand. But cash or fame isn’t their motivation.

Fun is.

“It can be a major confidence booster,” said Justin, who, like Alyce, uses a pseudonym to maintain privacy. “It’s a funny feeling, it’s almost like having a secret identity as a superhero in a way. You walk around during the day and nobody knows what you do.”

Those good times may end if a majority of California voters approve Proposition 60 in November.

Sponsored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the bill would strictly enforce an existing federal regulation that all adult performers wear condoms and file permits before filming sex scenes. AHF President Michael Weinstein claims the initiative is necessary to protect adult performers’ health, but many opponents have questioned his real motives. Meanwhile, at least 1,500 adult performers have protested that the proposition would drown them in slut-shaming civil lawsuits that expose their identities and bankrupt mom-and-pop erotica producers like Alyce and Justin.

“It could ruin my life,” Alyce said.

Only performers with a financial stake in their movies would be liable, and only after self-styled condom cops exhausted an official complaint process. But there are more do-it-yourself pornographers than ever, thanks to the YouTube-ization of the internet, say adult entertainment experts.

“Even if you thought that condoms were the best way to keep us safe, you’re basically reducing one risk and creating another because of the lawsuits,” said Chanel Preston, chairwoman of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee, which is opposed to the measure.

In other words, Prop. 60 may sound like a compassionate measure aimed at protecting a marginalized work force, but the very people who make up that work force say it’s a stealth attack on their livelihood and safety.

So who’s shooting straight?

Condoms have technically been required by law in adult films since 1992, but any cursory watcher of pornography knows rubbers are as elusive as believable dialogue.

Because workplace safety regulators are too busy tackling more perilous violations, the adult entertainment industry largely self-regulates. Performers get tested for STDs every 14 days and must have a documented bill of clean health to perform in a film. Many use pre-exposure prophylaxis that have a 92 percent effective rate in preventing HIV transmission, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, only a few ticks lower than proper condom usage.

“Performers care more about their own safety than anybody else,” Preston said. “If we’re not healthy, we’re not working. And we’re not making money. We put in a lot of measures to ensure that we are healthy and we are safe. But people just have this misconception that we’re children that need to be taken care of.”

Preston said condoms are available to any performer who requests them, though the industry standard is to go without them as shoots can run for hours, meaning the condoms get dry, creating unpleasant friction for performers and increasing the risk of breakage. Still, condoms can be lubricated and have the advantage of being visible, whereas a producer may not know if performers are taking their daily pills to prevent HIV.

Prop. 60 professes to eliminate that uncertainty, by opening up financial stakeholders to civil lawsuits from any California resident who wants to file one if the Occupational Safety and Health Administration first declines to take up their complaint.

To proponents, the deputization of average Californians as porno police is necessary, as OSHA has been unable to ensure that the adult film industry follows the regulations they’re technically under.

But Preston, who has been in the industry for seven years, said these suits could expose private information that might be used maliciously by stalkers, overzealous fans or disapproving religious groups. And if civil verdicts go against porn-makers, plaintiffs receive 25 percent of the awarded penalties, which could incentivize litigation and bankrupt independent operators like Alyce and Justin.

Like other performers, Alyce does solo cam shows (aided by Justin), where she’s in direct contact with customers. According to Eric Paul Leue, campaign manager of No on 60, this is the fastest growing side of the industry, allowing performers to work in their own homes on their own hours.

And unlike traditional films, produced primarily in the greater Los Angeles area, these performers can be located anywhere, says “Kimberlee Cline,” a local escort and activist who asked that SN&R use her professional pseudonym.

“[Prop. 60] is not a way to actually empower the workforce,” said Cline, who belongs to the Sacramento chapter of the Sex Workers Outreach Project. “This actually exposes performers, by forcing performers to post addresses where they shoot, which is often the same as their home addresses.”

While Cline doesn’t do cam shows herself, she has performed for Kink, a BDSM-centric porn company based in San Francisco. She worked exclusively as a performer, meaning she wouldn’t be in danger of any Prop. 60-type lawsuits. But since the initiative would require all “producers” to alert OSHA when they’re planning to film, including cam shows, this would create a database that performers fear would put them in danger.

AIM Medical Associates used to run a similar registry, until it got anonymously hacked in 2011 and sent to the site PornWikiLeaks.com, which uploaded the real names and health records of more than 15,000 performers, including Cline.

“It opens sex workers up to harassment and a particularly vicious kind of exposure,” she said. “It was a really scary time.”

Alyce said she fears the prospect of getting roped into a lawsuit that exposes her real name and costs her her “vanilla” day job.

Yes on 60 campaign manager Rick Taylor doesn’t have much sympathy for that position.

“Too bad!” he said. “Don’t break the law! Sorry. Don’t break the law. That’s all. This argument just blows me out. Like, ’Oh my God, my name might get exposed!’ Well if you don’t break the law, then don’t worry about it. You won’t be exposed. And by the way, most husbands and wives that [do] pornography, they don’t merchandize it. They put it on for free.”

SN&R was unable to verify that claim, but it does appear the internet has become a great equalizer in another way.

According to Preston, few performers make their living exclusively working for major companies. Instead, they carve out a niche on their own websites, making clips that they technically produce, which means they could be sued under the condoms initiative.

With these punitive measures in place, adult performers fear they could be pushed into less seemly situations, limiting the amount of contact they have with each other, which allows them to share industry insights on remaining safe.

In other words, an already marginalized industry gets pushed even further to the fringes.

“If Prop. 60 were to pass … I guarantee it will affect significantly more performers than just solely producers,” said APAC’s Preston, “by a landslide.”

Essentially, the internet allows anyone with access to a webcam to become their own DIY adult studio. Like the sordid side of a YouTube star. Like Alyce and Justin.

The couple shoots and edits their own films, taking out jumbled lines and moments when Alyce makes a “really, really odd face at the wrong time,” she said. Both of their families support their side hustle, they say. And the STD-free pair only perform with each other. (Their biggest health scare came during a 113-degree day when Justin says he nearly suffered a heatstroke midscene).

Some of their customers on pay-per-view clip sites have written them scripts and others have told them that their couple-next-door scenes give them more confidence in their own love-making sessions.

“I would say that we’re both the average-looking person that you’d be standing next to in the grocery store,” Justin said.

The bill is expected to cost the state more than $1 million in extra enforcement and several million in tax revenue, as adult film performers and producers have considered leaving the state.

Taylor welcomes that prospect.

“If you want to be a business in California, and you don’t want to obey the law, then please move,” he said. “I would encourage you to move. Take that threat and take it to some other state. The pornographers only care about one thing and that’s their pocket book.”

If the proposition passes, the adult entertainment industry could try to halt its implementation by suing the state. If that happens, Attorney General Kamala Harris or her successor would have to decide whether to contest the lawsuit, and that’s not guaranteed.

The next attorney general could decline to defend the initiative, like what happened in 2008, when state officials balked at contesting the lawsuit to overturn Prop. 8, the anti-gay-marriage initiative that was ultimately ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a case like that, Weinstein would be appointed special counsel to defend Prop. 60 at the taxpayers’ expense, an unprecedented addendum to the initiative. He could only be removed from this position by a majority vote from both houses of the state legislature.

“I have never heard of anything like this before—the leader of a nonprofit organization writing themselves into an essentially untouchable political position through the course of a voter proposition or law,” said Dr. Chauntelle Tibbals, sociologist and author of Exposure, a book about the adult film industry. “There is no precedent for it that I am aware of, and there is nothing ethical about anything AHF and/or Weinstein have done throughout the course of this process. Weinstein’s preoccupation with the adult entertainment industry borders on obsession and has long before Prop. 60. This has been going on for years now.”

When contacted Tuesday, an assistant for Weinstein said he was away at an international conference and unavailable for comment.

APAC isn’t alone in its opposition to the initiative. Prop. 60 is opposed by almost all major in-state newspapers; AIDS organizations in San Francisco and Los Angeles; California’s Democratic, Republican and Libertarian parties; and the Free Speech Coalition, among others.

The measure is mainly supported by only one performer, Phyllisha Anne. Recently, a phone call surfaced between Anne and AHF employee Adam Cohen. Cohen said AHF would happily provide above-the-table financial help to her organization, the International Adult Entertainment Union, which has since disintegrated after Anne pledged support without polling her members. The two other founders, Evan Stone and Alana Evans, oppose the initiative.

“Even performers that do want to use condoms are still against Prop. 60,” Preston contended.

TAHF is the sole financial backer of the “Yes” campaign. So far, it has spent more than $2 million, more than eight times the opposition.

When asked if the united front of opposition bothered his campaign, Taylor simply said, “No.”

For their part, Alyce and Justin see Prop. 60 as a Trojan horse, sold as protection but stowing a morality agenda that endangers small-timers like themselves, who don’t pose a public health risk and aren’t making enough money to weather lawsuits.

“It’s scary for us little guys,” Justin said. “We could have a government agency come crashing down on us for doing something that we love, and is fun, and gives a couple people an escape from their daily lives. If [Weinstein] really cared, he could have used that money to open free testing facilities.”