With grim reports of soaring unemployment, fears of second waves, and looming economic recession circling during the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s easy to get downhearted. Especially with porn shoots on hold and no government funds being made available for “prurient” businesses at this time, things look pretty grim for pornographers these days. But Lynn Comella, an associate professor of gender and sexuality studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the author of Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure, believes the porn industry will weather this storm. In an article for The Washington Post last week, she explained why.
“In many respects, the adult community is better situated than other industries to undertake such an effort,” she wrote. “For over a half-century, it has worked together to fight for its First Amendment rights and advocate for the health and safety of performers in the face of concerted government campaigns to censor and undermine it.” Comella believes that porn will survive this pandemic, she wrote, because “the adult community has long relied on taking care of itself and has built an infrastructure to do so.
Tracing the evolution of the porn industry in America from the sixties until today, Comella also noted the evolution of the trade organization that became the Free Speech Coalition (FSC). She started with 1969’s Adult Film Association of America, which convened in response to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1967 Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. “Concerned about ongoing harassment from law enforcement,” she reported, “one of the group’s first actions was to hire three leading First Amendment attorneys who put together a legal kit for members.”
Over the decades, with every new threat to the continued existence of a porn industry in America—from the Nixon administration to the Miller Test to continuing shifts in technology to online piracy to industry decentralization—pornographers have stuck together against their opposition. During that time, Comella continued, “The Adult Film Association of America underwent several name changes, becoming the Adult Film and Video Association of America in 1986, before changing its name again to the Adult Video Association. In 1991 the organization merged with the Free Speech Legal Defense Fund to become the Free Speech Coalition.”
With the past few decades’ massive changes in the adult entertainment industry, defending pornographers’ rights has been the FSC’s goal—whether it’s going up against anti-porn zealots, government interference, or a highly infectious virus. After every onslaught the past half century has thrown at it, and now in the face of an unprecedented threat to the porn industry, wrote Comella, “The Free Speech Coalition is doing what it can to keep performers safe and provide some economic relief to those most in need during this uncertain time.”
The porn-savvy academic wrote that, “Unlike other industries…no federal bailout money is earmarked for pornography. Instead, the adult community, led by the industry’s main trade association, the Free Speech Coalition, is coming together to take care of its own.” With nearly $150,000 in funds for industry worker relief already under its belt, the FSC’s fund-raising drive has proven that pornographers stick together, even after all these years.
Comella concluded, “The Free Speech Coalition will probably continue to adapt, providing the resources and support these small businesses need to fend off industry critics and weather this uncertain time as safely as possible.”
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