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NEW DELHI: “James Deen held me down and f****d me while I said no, stop, used my safeword. I just can’t nod and smile when people bring him up anymore.” This is a Twitter post of Stoya, a porn star who was raped by her ex-boyfriend and fellow porn actor James Deen. Since she has come out as the victim of what was seemingly a routine exploitation (safeword?), nine of her colleagues have recounted their own stories of violent rapes at the hands of the same guy and the latter has been snubbed by major production houses as a consequence.
But what is our relation with this incident from a niche world whose very mention is enough to make any ‘respectable’ fuddy-duddy scoff? Well, it would hardly be worthy of a mention had it been a usual case where one gets raped and then stands in line for years to get justice, pretty usual. But this didn’t happen.
One can easily draw a parallel between the reluctance of a sex worker who is raped in India in getting her report lodged with police and what we are discussing here. What is common in these two instances is the want of credibility in their accounts, or so it seems, when confronted by the authorities. Stoya didn’t go to the police because of her profession--though legal in her country—and chose to blow the whistle on Twitter. If one were to consider this closeting-out on Twitter of a rape survivor as a dry run, then one finds the odds are not so much in favor of the victim if she wants to go and actually report it with the officials. Stoya has been further subjected to victimization through trolling, abuse, accusations of spreading falsehood, and the ‘myth’ of the ‘unrapeability’ of the porn actors.
The phenomenon shouldn’t be news to us. The burden of proof always lies on the victim, and the incredulity when it comes to believing a sex-worker is endemic to all societies.
Stoya’s is not the only case which has happened to make it to mainstream newspapers lately. Christy Mack, another porn actress, was also horribly beaten and raped by her boyfriend Jonathan ‘War Machine’ Koppenhaver, a mixed martial art fighter two year back. The case is sub-judice, and it’s not a surprise that counsel for Koppenhaver has been resorting to contention that rough sex is common for porn stars and the assault was just a result of bad calculation during one such venture. Mack's injuries included “10 broken bones, a broken nose, missing and broken teeth, a fractured rib and a severely ruptured liver from a kick to her side”-- no one’s idea of “rough” sex certainly.
Christy Mack recovery photos after assault by ‘War Machine’
Even though we don’t have a home grown porn industry as big as the United States,we do have a massive presence of sex-workers who are just as vulnerable to violent beatings at the hands of customers, who in turn are equally invulnerable to the law. This creates a lopsided system of justice, where it remains denied to the victim of sexual abuse.
