Tinfoil Hat Time: Kink, PASS Testing and A New Low For Mike South

From bogus claims about who pays for performer testing to the shaming of doctors who provide services to adult performers — when taking on Michael Weinstein’s foes, there is no claim too wild for AHF hatchet man and anti-porn crusading hypocrite Mike South

Report by Michael Whiteacre

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. ~ T.S. Eliot

Fresh on the heels of his false and discredited report, based merely on a database search, that Kink.com has three pending Cal-OSHA complaints, Georgia gossip blogger Mike South followed-up Tuesday with another whopper: a post attributed to “a former Kink.com Employee” which charged that “talent testing through Kink is actually paid for by a third party based in South Carolina.”

The party whom South’s post alleged was paying for performer testing (for reasons that defy all logic) was a testing service in Columbia, SC, run by a veteran gynecologist and obstetrician who has practiced medicine for nearly 30 years. South’s sole piece of evidence: the service’s name appeared on a test result processed by LabCorp.

Kink spokesperson Mike Stabile told us plainly, “the doctor is not paying for Kink talent testing, and I couldn’t even understand where [South] would assume that… It’s either is a misreading of a form, or a clerical issue.”

“You know, I wish people would just contact me and ask before running these stories,” Stabile added

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

South went on to report the names of non-performers who have entries in the PASS testing system. All the individuals he named are affiliated with Free Speech Coalition – the nonprofit organization that administers PASS — including FSC’s CEO Diane Duke, its communications director, Joanne Cachapero, Kink.com’s Peter Acworth (an FSC board member who designed the PASS database website), and the doctor who heads the South Carolina testing service…who happens to sit on the FSC/PASS Medical Advisory Board.

[The doctor] is listed as a performer on a porn star database… A). What’s a good doctor from the conservative state of South Carolina doing mixed up with a fetish porn company? and B). Ladies, wouldn’t you like to know if your gynecologist was listed on some porn performer database? I’m sure the State of South Carolina might even be interested in those answers as well… [The doctor] also appears to be married. I’d imagine his wife may have as many question as the rest of us about the good doctor’s business arrangements with Kink and the Free Speech Coalition. [emphasis added]

As someone who has present when PASS (then APHSS) was established, I have direct personal knowledge that early beta-testers of the website and database included FSC personnel, people in the adult business who had specific knowledge of AIM’s database, and medical personnel such as those affiliated with approved testing centers.

Christian Mann, the FSC board member who oversees PASS, confirms to TRPWL:

Duke being in the database was for system testing purposes only, not because she ever considered performing.

The names entered in the system for testing purposes, such as Diane or Peter who worked with programmers to create the database, have no bearing on the integrity of the database overall, nor should anyone infer that their presence in the database means they have any intention of performing in sex scenes. Anyone with common sense should understand this.

Stabile adds “there are clinic doctors (and other early administrators) set up in the PASS database from its early beta tests. He [the doctor] is not a performer.”

This, Mike South claims, is a screen cap of a PASS database search of the doctor’s name:

This is what a performer’s database record looks like (as posted by performer Rod Daily in August 2013). Notice the test dates, locations and other details…:

Interestingly, South had no compunction about revealing the identity, marital status, business name and location of a doctor — a private citizen — yet in a related post, in which he published the transcript of a complaint filed with Cal/OSHA against Kink.com in September 2013, South redacted the identifying information of a man whose identity is not secret: erstwhile performer Patrick Stone.

Stone is the man who, after receiving a false positive HIV test result, appeared at a September 18 AHF press conference with Cameron Bay & Rod Daily.

Much in the way South will run AHF press releases but not rebuttals or statements made in self defense by those who are pro-adult business (such as Christian Mann, here), decency and simple courtesy are only extended on his site to allies of AHF.

Tinfoil Hat Time

Mike Stabile left a comment on South’s post:

I don’t get it. Are you trying to shame/out someone for working with the porn industry? Obviously, he’s not a performer. Neither is Diane or Joanne.

South offered a typically slimy demurrer: “I didnt write it…is it news…hell yes it is….”

Actually, Mr. South, it’s not news. It’s information and wild speculation… not to mention shaming and bullying.

Some of Mike South’s readers were also left aghast:

Commenter “Pamela Pegwell” wrote:

“Ladies, wouldn’t you like to know if your gynecologist was listed on some porn performer database?”

No. I don’t care what my doctors do in their personal lives as long as they offer quality service.

Frankly I’m surprised that this question is being asked on a blog about the porn industry. Readers here are certainly more sensitive than the general populace about the issue of keeping their professional and personal lives separate.

Pegwell’s comment was then addressed by none other than Tim Tritch, the former laboratory account representative who, in 2010, was paid by AHF to snitch on AIM Healthcare (the performer testing clinic that AHF had set out to destroy, along with its testing protocols and performer database).

Tritch — who in the past has used online pseudonyms such as “Joe Know”, “The General” and “Sam” on porn sites such as LukeIsBack and DarrahFord.com to attack the porn business — used his latest (apt) moniker, “Jilted“, to comment:

MS. Pegwell, this isnt about someones personal life. This is about a doctors [sic] business relationship with the porn industry. There is a reason that people other than performers, like directors, studio owners, and now maybe even the doctors who provide services to members of the adult industry get tested throught [sic] the INDUSTRY system. That is because they need the test in order FUCK performers.

Now, this is a problematic statement for several reasons:

1) The claim by anti-porners, such as South’s friends at AIDS Healthcare Foundation, has long been that both performers and the population at large are endangered by porn performers because performers have sex with untested people when they’re not on set.

If this is so, then why would non-performers “need [a] test in order FUCK performers”?  The anti-porn crowd can’t have it both ways;

2) If the plan of any of these individuals was to use PASS testing status as a way to have sex with cult performers, it wouldn’t work unless there were actual test results on file and the individual was listed on the PASS database as “available.” Even South’s frequent commenter Lacey Blake noted, “Well, that’s stupid. He’s not even available to fuck…. wtf? If they’re going to include him in the PASS system, shouldn’t he at least be listed as clean?”; and

3) This bizarre theory — also discounts the idea that non-performer members of the adult community might see the value of getting tested and knowing their status.

Undeterred by logic, “Jilted” Tritch upped the ante to suggest harassment of the doctor in question:

Does anyone else find it the least bit disturbing that a gynecologist has an ID# in the porn performer PASS database? Someone needs to notify the local newspaper where this guy has his practice.

Commenter erik2690 was clearly put off:

It reads so weird. “Let that sink in for a minute” and bringing up that he works in a conservative state.

“Ladies, wouldn’t you like to know if your gynecologist was listed on some porn performer database?” Is this implying he’s performing? If he’s just testing, does it matter who he tests? Any evidence to suggest he performs?

Of course there isn’t any — but why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

All part of the plan

Mike South’s follow-up post included this passage:

there is no issue whatsoever in my mind with [the doctor] being on this [FSC/PASS Medical Advisory Board], what does raise a huge red flag is his inclusion in the performer testing database.  That seems to imply that he is, somewhere along the line, having sex with performers.  Performers have been conditioned to believe that if you are in the PASS database it is safe to have condomless sex with you.  I get Peter being in there as well as Diane, I can see where they would want to have sex with talent, I also get Joanne being in there but never having been tested. but I don’t get this obscure OB/GYN from Irmo, South Carolina, and nobody seems willing to answer as to what his connection to all of this is.

Mike South, the phony libertarian who tells people he’s pro-porn, is claiming that adult performers, whose minds are obviously made of mush, have been “conditioned” to believe things. In South’s mind, performers are incapable of reasoning, you know — they merely respond like a sexualized version Pavlov’s dogs when they see a listing in the PASS database.

And once again, where is the evidence that any of these people are using their PASS status to have sex with performers? Furthermore, how could they do so when there are no current tests listed for them in PASS?

South’s reference to FSC’s Medical Advisory Board is ironic for another reason: South had long charged that FSC/PASS had no doctors and that there was no advisory board. He loudly insisted that FSC publicly name the board’s doctors. Now that the doctors’ names are known, he is harassing, shaming and insulting them.

This of course is part in parcel of AHF’s long-standing strategy toward the adult business:

1) Stigmatize, insult and demonize everyone affiliated with adult production, advocacy or performer testing;

2) Disparage performer testing and protocols; and

3) Work to deny performers access to state of the art medical testing — or, as adult director and AIM Healthcare boardmember Ernest Greene has put it, destroy the working system so they can claim that no working system exists.

This latest sideshow by Mike South is all part of that same despicable plan.