Our Bodies Our Choice: Adult Performers Speak Out at Cal/OSHA Hearing in San Diego (PHOTOS)

Clad in shirts proclaiming ‘Our Bodies, Our Choice’, adult performers traveled to San Diego, Calif. Thursday morning to make their voices heard at the Cal/OSHA Occupational Safety & Health Standards Board meeting being held at the County Administration Center on Pacific Highway.

In all, over 100 adult industry members and supporters came out to attend the Standards Board meeting.

The object of the meeting is to review proposed set regulations, including mandated condoms. If enacted, porn would be all but unproducible in California, as the requirements of the proposed regs are jaw-droppingly draconian:

• “Sexual activity” requiring “condoms or other protective barriers” is defined as as vaginal, anal, and oral sex;
• “Post Exposure” medical follow-up, at employer expense, in the event a performer has “eye, mouth, other mucous membrane, non-intact skin, or parenteral contact” with “potentiallyinfectious materials” such as “pre-ejaculate, ejaculate, semen, vaginal secretions, fecal matter and rectal secretions, … and any other bodily fluid when visibly contaminated with blood or all bodily fluids in situations where it is difficult or impossible to differentiate between bodily fluids.”
• an array of mandatory vaccinations;
• garments or sheets touched by ejaculate or other fluids to be treated as hazardous waste;
• “Personal Protective Equipment” required for performances such as squirting scenes, which prevent bodily fluids “from passing through to or reaching the employee’s eyes, mouth, or other mucous membranes” (think goggles and face shields).
• performer and employer training, and mandatory safety meetings prior to a scene;
• producers (“employers”) pay for performer testing;
• a plethora of burdensome medical record-keeping requirements (such as the maintaining of medical records for “at least the duration of employment plus 30 years”) that are likely to raise privacy concerns among performers.

Due to the forced vaccination requirements, 26-year olds might become the new MILFs (as explained here).

Cal/OSHA’s proposed regulations are intended to supercede those currently in effect, embodied in California Code of Regulations Title 8 Sec. 5193. Those regs were written for medical clinics and mortuaries back in the 1990s, and mandate “barrier protections” for healthcare workers exposed to blood or infectious materials.

Under Sec. 5193, anything you wouldn’t want to happen to you in the course of your duties in a clinic (such as having someone ejaculate or squirt on you, or penetrate you), became a forbidden “exposure event” in the context of adult film sets — even though such “exposure” was the job itself.

As TRPWL reported on Feb. 3,

Egged on by AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), Cal/OSHA has undertaken to create a brand new code section, Sec. 5193.1, and the latest draft, dated 12-1-2014, makes it crystal clear that what you or I call “porn”, Cal/OSHA calls impermissible “exposure”, requiring detailed documentation and record-keeping, medical follow-up, etc…

“These are regulations designed for medical settings, and are unworkable on an adult film set—or even a Hollywood film set,” said Diane Duke, CEO of the Free Speech Coalition. “We’ve come to San Diego with ways to amend the regulations, with input from both performers and public health officials, in ways that protect adult film performers without stigmatizing and shutting down an entire industry.”

Performers are tested every fourteen days for a slate of STIs, including HIV. Performers have long argued that they should have the option of requesting a condom, but that it shouldn’t be mandatory. Many complain that on long shoots, condoms can be painful for both partners. Other performers fear that mandatory condom regulations will lead producers to abandon the testing system altogether, or encourage other productions to go underground, without testing or condoms.

Among those voicing opposition to the regulations unless amended are the American Civil Liberties Union, the County of Los Angeles Commission on HIV, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Equality California, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee (APAC), which represents adult performers.

The Cal/OSHA regulations are the result of a five-year campaign by Michael Weinstein, of the controversial AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Weinstein has called adult performers a threat to public health, and is currently funding a ballot measure that would pay him personally to review all adult films produced in the state of California for condoms, as a taxpayer-funded “porn czar.”

Weinstein’s campaign has drawn ire of local and national health officials, who have accused him of fomenting a crisis where none exists. The County of Los Angeles Commission on HIV recently voted to oppose the new regulations unless amended, and, at a commission meeting earlier this month, Mario Perez, director of HIV and STD programs for Los Angeles County, was vocal in his opposition to the proposed regulations:

“As we think about the HIV and STD epidemics in our county, there continues to be … a disproportionate amount of energy and attention on an area that is not contributing to new HIV infections,” Perez testified to the Commission. “The epidemiology just isn’t there for folks to continue to harp on this issue.”

The industry’s amended regulations, additional testimony, data analysis and statements from public health officials can be found at OurBodiesOurChoice.com

Members of the AHF Freakshow in attendance included the organization’s “public health consultant” Adam Cohen (more on him here).

One of the few AHF stooges not present was Patrick Stone aka David Cope — although, come to thnk of it, since Stone/Cope has previously alleged he attended events where he was never seen, perhaps he possesses the power of invisibility?

As the hearing opened, FSC’s Diane Duke presented a series of slides explaining the PASS testing system, and how it protects adult performer privacy while preventing infected performers from spreading STis within the performer pool.

Duke also noted that, in formulating the revised regs, the agency had consulted no current performers, directors, producers or company owners! Instead, for its entire input from the adult business it relied entirely on ex-porn performer and complete fruit loop Anita Cannibal — who stumbled around the previous (June 2011) Cal/OSHA meeting in downtown Los Angeles in the manner of a homeless drunkard. (Incidentally, Cannibal was recommended to her position by Bill Margold, in one of his many less-than-brilliant moments.)

Performer Layla Price testified regarding the risks Cal/OSHA’s approach to adult production poses to performer privacy, revealing that she was the adult performer referred to in TRPWL‘s January 2015 coverage of Evil Angel’s triumph at its Cal/OSHA trial.

During its trial, Evil Angel made a motion that the female performer who had been called to testify be permitted to do so under her performer name, rather than reveal her legal name, in open court on public record.

Cal/OSHA attorney Kathryn Woods opposed the Evil Angel motion on the grounds that it was unnecessary, potentially confusing, and because adult performers choose to work in this industry, these protections of their privacy are unwarranted.

Evil Angel’s counsel, Karen Tynan was enraged at Cal/OSHA’s opposition to the motion, and eventually prevailed — the performer’s legal name was stricken from the record.

More on Cameron Bay aka Cameron Adams here.

Burts is also a convicted burglar and embezzler; he just got off probation two months ago, on March 15, 2015. More on trickster Derrick Burts here.

 

                

Attorney Karen Tynan, who represented AIM Healthcare Foundation as well as 2009’s ‘Patient Zero, “whose targeting by CalOSHA and AIDS Healthcare Foundation,” AVN’s Mark Kernes noted, “led to the state of California being ordered by the Superior Court to pay more than $350,000 in attorney fees—a figure which clealry got the Board’s attention.

Tynan also addressed the illegality of Cal/OSHA’s proposed regs:

        

 

Also testifying Thursday was Jack Carrel, who, AVN‘s Mark Kernes notes is “a former employee of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, who’s currently suing AHF under the federal whistleblowers act for misuse of federal funds. He also opposed the Board’s version of Sec. 5193.1 and supported FSC’s proposed revision.”

The board will take action on the proposal no later than March 2016.