Starting at 3pm EST/12pm 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 sho w will be live broadcast and available to viewers free of charge on MindBrowse.com. The show will also be live-tweeted at @ssshforwomen. Viewers can tweet questions and comments of their own using the #SexTalkTuesday hastag.
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.
In a recent published article, 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 visit www.MindBrowse.com. For more information about Sssh.com or #SexTalkTuesday please email Angie Rowntree at editor@sssh.com.
