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John Stagliano Talks About his Obscenity Indictments
Comments (27) | Posted: June 30, 2008
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Barry-
John Stagliano's reputation during the "Buttman" days or how he contracted the HIV virus really has nothing to do with his obscenity prosecution. We are focusing on an issue that could be aimed at anyone in the adult entertainment industry.
judi- Behind Kink Assistant
I agree with that totally, but I was just looking to find out if rumor was fact or fiction. What amazes me the most about America today (and I am a born American), is that we are stepping back... We are losing our freedoms and becoming more and more like the communism we tried to stop throughout the world.
Every day that passes we are losing more and more of our liberties and freedom. As a cigar smoker I see this. There are many cities in California now that have outlawed public smoking.
It is dark times we are living in, and I hope John sticks it to them..
Once again BigBrother rears its head telling us what is allowed for consumption in our own homes. At all levels government weaves its tangled web of legalese and to what end? It is my belief that we all become victims of such oppression that undermines freedom of choice.
My greatest fear is that until the day that our basic civil liberties are returned to us,that we will continue see more and more legal harassment of the adult industry.
Chin up and fight the good fight,Peter!
Barry--with all due respect, the parallel you attempt to draw between the freedom to watch porn in peace and the public release of proven dangerous carcinogens (not to mention the disgusting littering that almost invariably accompanies public smoking) is just not credible. It's also gratuitous and way off topic. In my opinion Mr. Stagliano should be free to peddle his smut to adults for private viewing and CA should be free to regulate public pollution and balance the rights of nonsmokers against those of smokers.
Firstly, John is highly respected in the industry. The quality of his content is second to none (e.g. fashionistas, which won countless awards), as is his reputation with the models and other producers. My only hope is that kink.com will get to work with him in joint ventures.
I do find the recent prosecutions troubling, but I am not pessimistic about the future. The fact is that adult entertainment on the web has become more acceptable with each passing year, not less. Banks will now process types of content they would not touch in the past, precisely because such material is now deemed acceptable; as a result of being acceptable, a successful obscenity prosecution against such material is less likely.
It's not directly related, but I was wondering what Peter's feelings are concerning the recent criminalization of possessing "extreme porn" in his home country.
I love this porn but, children can watch this porn of kink.com on the web, this site for free. How do you get away with this? You view sexual violence
even if the models are in agreement and respected it still depicts violent acts mainly against women. People may like this fetish but it should not be promoted. In war torn countries rape is used as a weapon. Your site promotes sexual violence even if it is all consensual . A child will not know.
That is a good point. Maybe you all should censor the material in the free areas of your sites. That would include your free hosted content. The affiliates wouldnt like that much would they? Money or children. Which is it Kink?
As far as obscenity and Stagliano, its all bullshit. As fas as fashionistas, it was a bore for anyone who is really into bondage. Awards? Who cares! It was water down, image driven crap!
Peter,
I hear your point, but the thing is that children can see all sorts of violence, sex and mature material online, on tv, even just walking down the street. should it be up to every producer of potentially offensive content to censor themselves? or should it be the responsibility of parents to protect their own children from images they find inappropriate?
Since there are many parental controls and monitoring systems in place both online and on tv (net nanny, password protected channels), there is no reason why parents can't make it just as difficult for their child to access our content as it would be for them to sneak into an R-rated movie.
Kink.com subscribes to several adult website rating systems so that any parent who uses such monitor and control services can instantaneously block our content with the press of a button. we willingly volunteer to be indexed on these lists so that parents have a way to decide for themselves what kind of images they want their children to be exposed to. this gives parents a lot more control than they have when it comes to overtly sexualized advertising and the inevitable violence of the nightly News.
and while you might think that our content promotes 'sexual violence' that could be damaging to a small child who comes across it by accident, what do you think videogames such as 'Grand Theft Auto' do to them? This is a game that rewards the player for doing drugs, stealing, raping and beating up women, and murdering innocent people. do you think that this teaches children a good lesson? and yet this is on the toy store shelf and marketed directly to young adults. parents buy it for their kids not even realizing what it is. at least our content is flagged as being extremely inappropriate for anyone under 18 and provides an easy way for you to prevent your child from seeing it. i hardly feel like the bad guy here.
you seem to say that everything we see should be taken at face value. if it looks like violence, it is. if it looks like it's nonconsensual, it might as well be. i guess i'd just rather teach my child to look beyond the surface of things and figure out for themselves what something is all about, rather than accept whatever society tells them without questioning it. while i certainly believe it's appropriate to shield a child from certain things until they reach an appropriate age, i donât think any amount of accidentally-viewed sex or violence could ever scar them worse than teaching them to be shallow-minded conformists would.
and Swarmy, reducing this complicated issue into a simple choice between 'money' or 'children' seems kind of ridiculous. money does not inform everything Kink.com does and nor do the needs of children. and more importantly, the 2 are not mutually exclusive. we can simultaneously care about the success of our business AND the wellbeing of children. just because we make porn doesnât mean we donât value the fragile innocence of youth.
i can't understand why people are so reactionary about porn while theyâll allow their kids to watch unspeakable acts of violence every day. they'll happily send them off to war to kill and maim but wouldn't dare teach them to appreciate the pleasures of the human body.
i mean no personal disrespect by the way--i just felt like ranting. i'd much rather people were over-concerned than under-concerned about children's welfare.
phew! i'm done preaching now. :)
ilana
Hi OnTheWall,
Thanks for the question. I think that the new law which makes possession of 'extreme' pornography illegal in the UK is a great shame and rather short sighted. For instance, it means that an ex-husband can inform the police because his ex-wife has pictures of them playing as a couple. I also think that the law is difficult to enforce and that it will have absolutely no effect in preventing people from engaging in unsafe S/M play (as I understand it, the law came into effect as a result of a breath-play scene gone wrong). In fact, I think that the best way to prevent such scenes is to provide information about how to play safely, not drive expressions of those forms of play underground.
Cheers
Peter
It would have been interesting to know what the mentioned indictment is all about...
Well, i know this is probably only my "stupid" 2cents but i think kids »do not belong« in the internet ... period !
A parent can impossibly watch his kid(s) 24/7 . And it would be totally contraproductive to make the internet "childsave" . It´s bad enough that the mainstream film industry bends over so far to the guys giving those ratings in order for a movie getting a PG rating instead of giving the movie what it deserves to show the story as truly as possible !!
To me it sounds like a bad joke that it seems impossible to ship adult stuff to "any" adress in the unitet staates of america. As i learned it´s not even "allowed" to shot in every state. I gotta stop now or i´ll make a mess
Andrew
Some parents are irresponsible . Even if its make believe it still sends a message that violence against women and a few men is OK
Even some adults are influenced and may now think that using violence on others is ok ,the victim tenjoys being tortured and sexually abused.
Do whatever pleases you but don' exhibit it on a free preview as this site.
instead show love and respect not sexual abuse. Im not against nudity and sex as long it is done with love. The other stuff should remain behind closed doors.This may sound extreme but stuff shown here may cause a violent crime now or in the future. Because there is so much violent content such as video games etc is not an excuse to give a free preview of what is available on this site.
Wow, what a great open discussion of these issues here! I really enjoyed reading what each person here said. As a feminist, I initially was of the same opinion as peter who posted on 7/10/08 that "the stuff shown here may cause a violent crime," and was against BDSM movies and photos being made available....until I got into the lifestyle myself and learned about the "safe, sane, and consentual" practice of the fetish communities, which the Kink.com content does a lot to communicate to viewers. There are thousands of porn blogs out there that show explicit images and video without communicating this protocol, and there is no way to shut them all down.
One thing to consider...if you study oppression dynamics, violence is usually handed down from a parent to a child, a spouse to another, etc. and in most cases the person committing violent crimes was him or herself a victim of violence in the past. The exploration of power exchange fantasies, especially within BDSM lifestyle communities, is actually one way to heal, to break the cycle of violence, containing "violence" to the safety of a scene where all parties consent. I don't know of any stories of someone from the "lifestyle" who has committed a violent crime.
I was a victim of violence as a young girl in the South where access to porn and the BDSM lifestyle was just not part of the culture. In my experience it was a cycle of victims of actual violence, not fantasized BDSM power play, that "caused" the violence.
Since we can't stop all the sites that have free images available to minors, I am grateful that ones like Kink.com exist where the culture of "safe, sane, and consentual" is clearly communicated along with them.
thanks stacie for sharing your personal experiences and pointing out what i think is crucial to realize if you're of the mindset that BDSM porn 'causes' violent crime and acts of nonconsensual aggression.
i beg of you, peter, to find me an example of what you claim to be so commonplace. what stacie said is true. and people like her have usually actually done some research so that they can be informed when they make such bold statements.
i'm not saying that there has never before in history been an instance where someone acted out a fantasy he or she saw in BDSM play or porn against someone's will. but that goes for just about anything. children hit their parents on the head with a hammer after watching it in cartoons. people try to drive their cars like racecar drivers after watching nascar. all i'm saying is that everything you see has the potential to be mimicked irresponsibly, possibly with dire consequences. but does watching BDSM content result in more violent crimes than watching the sopranos? absolutely not. there will always be a few idiots who don't have the brains to separate fantasy from reality, but in no way, shape or form, does BDSM encourage more violent crime than having abusive parents surely does. does that mean that we shouldn't show movies about abusive parents on the internet or on tv?
i understand that we may just feel differently on the matter, but examples and statistics speak far louder than unsubstantiated claims.
here's one interesting study but there are far more out there if you just look:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/kinky-you-cant-beat-it/2007/04/16/1176696736407.html
ilana
Prosecuting Stagliano comes off like a sop to the hard Christian right, but it's also real. It's hard to have sympathy for someone like Max Hardcore who traffics in pedo rape and abuse fantasies. But sympathy here isn't the issue.
I guess my question for discussion starts with an anecdote. I was excited to see kink.com. It grew out of the ethical norms of the bdsm community and built consent into their movies. It also was the first porn I saw that went "hard" with the action. Then, while I was a subscriber to sex and submission, the Abu Ghraib scandal broke.
What have we become? Why is it that the same administration that openly advocates and practices torture, including sexual humiliation of prisoners of war, also wants to ban porn?
And on some deeper level, why has sexual violence become a fairly mainstream "choice"?
This isn't about being judgmental. Let's just dig a little deeper than those ugly Republicans. It's not like we're not all in the mix.
I can not let the comments on the supposed reputation of John, by Barry, stand unopposed. "Hated in the industry"? WTF are you talking about?! There is NO ONE more respected in this industry! Where does this bullshit rant of yours come from? And you remember girls saying nothing but bad things about him? If I was looking you right in the eyes, right now, I would tell you you are a fucking liar, because you are! You don't "remember" any girls saying "nothing but bad things" about John because he has a sterling reputation for class and fairness that goes back twenty years. I don't know what would motivate a person to sling lies about John in public but you are clearly a spineless lying snake! I can't believe not one person commented on this slime-balls lies!!
Oh Jake, I know you and you know me. It's kind of interesting to be able to respond to you here.
John isn't hated in the industry, but c'mon man. We have all heard girls say bad things about just about everyone in the industry and your name actually comes up more than Johns :) Love ya!
As far as Max Hardcore goes, give me a break! He is as innocent or guilty as anyone else when it comes to obscenity.
As for posting Xrated content in free areas and trying to cover your ass by saying that you are enrolled in child protection services on the internet is typical Kink.com behavior. The internet, like it or not, is a public venue and not an adult venue.
Ilana, when you have kids maybe youll see the issue differently when you realize that there is no way to keep your kids from seeing this content. And you can sit your 10 year old down and try to explain BDSM to him or her, let alone sex! Wow. You obviously do not have kids. Your answer is almost offensive in its ignorance and passing the buck nature. Just admit it! You place X-rated BDSM content in public where you know children will see it. Please stop trying to be a pillar of the community when you do such things! Then again, it is entertaining :)
smarmy,
spare me your idle lecture. if my 10 year old came across some BDSM porn on the internet i'd be delighted to sit down with him or her and have a conversation about it. they may not completely understand it at that age, but they'd begin to, and more importantly they'd get a broader sense of all the different kinds of people and practices that exist in the world. whether it's good, bad, or in between, they'd be learning the skills to figure out the difference for themselves.
all i'm saying is that i'd rather see human beings taking responsibility for themselves (and their kids) instead of expecting the government and private business to do it for them. not only is it lazy but it's idiotic to think that government and private enterprise is looking out for anything but their own best interests. the government barely provides an adequate education for our kids, and even the corporations that genuinely seem to care about protecting our children, i can assure you, care much more about their bottom line. so instead of bitching and moaning that someone else isn't raising your kids right, why don't you buck up and begin raising them yourself. because otherwise, you're suggesting we live in a world of censorship and morality-based public policy that i don't think ANY of us want to live in.
and no one's claiming that kink.com is a 'pillar of the community'. but we certainly aren't a blight on our fair society either. we're a porn company. our main priority is to make porn in a socially responsible, yet profitable way. we care very sincerely about our community but we are not pretending to be anything we're not, and we certainly ain't nobody's mama.
doubleplussincerely,
ilana
OK, i feel better about all this having checked the stats on this. Yet still troubled seeing some one being abused by some pretending dominant person telling the abused that he/she should be grateful for the degrading experience, it will make you a better, stronger person after you are broken. Thinking of the "Story of O". I like to see this guy being put in his place for doing this . Hey, my revenge fantasy.
peter,
I and many dominant femmes would love to see your fantasy on film... "the Story of O, Switched Back!" would be very hot!
On film it may seem more appealing to be the top/dominant, but in my experience, and I "switch" into both roles, it is way more fun to be dominated. This gets really confusing to watch if you have never before experienced it. Once again, I say that Kink.com is doing more to educate those who fantasize about power exchange than most adult/porn companies (and lots of people are very curious about BDSM play). The truth is that for most everyone I know who enjoys being dominated, the orgasms and ecstasy are often greater than just about anything that one could experience sexually, so gratitude is completely appropriate....especially if one knows of how much energy it takes to effectively dominate. It's a high, and it's lots of work to top. For me it's not so much to make me a stronger person, its more like an amusement park ride. Just plain fun.
And if you believe the Times, it's natural: "1948 Alfred Kinsey claimed that 50 per cent of respondents claimed to get erotic pleasure from being bitten" and many non-human animals exhibit the behavior, from http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/article4311845.ece
Over at GameLink.com where I work there are more titles featuring female dominant movies than male dominant ones, but I think the latter category sells more. The bottom line on all of this is that if there is a demand by consumers, it will be available. So let's keep it in the spirit of fun and provide education around it. The best we can do is educate around it, and participate in the netnanny type programs. The more you try to stop people from accessing it the more they want it. That is human nature. Let's hope everyone learns the difference between real violence and sensual domination. They are worlds apart.
NO Ilana, I think we all do want to live in a society that protects our children to a certain degree. It is censorship that nudey-adult magazines have to be put into a black sleeve while being sold in public places which don't have restricted access by age. Like convenience stores and supermarkets. That is probably a good law even though it is censorship. Let's see how many people want to put nude magazines in convenience stores where kids can take a glance whenever they get a slurpee. I guess you would balme the parents!
I think we all should be happy that we have the freedom to view adult content in protected areas. And I think censoring this material to private and adult restricted areas is completely fine with me. It is meant for adults, and adults would have total access and freedom to view it.
Maybe we should sell beer and cigarettes to kids and make it the parents job to keep them from buying them. There are many activities that are legally censored or kept away from children by the law and the government. I think porn should be one of them! Should you be able to post your BDSM pictures on the walls of the armory and parents should just make sure to avoid passing by your building with kids? No, its idiotic isnt it?
What happened to the fragility and innocence of youth that you so gallantly mentioned?
The question remains. How much money would you all lose if you censored the photos and video preview in your updates sections? It must be a lot, because this would be a fairly easy thing to do. It seems you all just dont think it would make any difference in protecting kids. Maybe it wouldnt, afterall, there are many places they could still see such things as you pointed out while passing the buck. No one cares about anyway, right? You're proudly joining American corporations in their quest for the mighty dollar. Kudos to you!
Check yourself
The training of O. Disturbs me, seeing one human being tied up ,degraded for the viewers pleasure. Sorry , but I would take action, to stop this abuse in real life and I mean physical action.
peter....quit waving your e-penis around, already. Your personal views are not any more important than everyone else's. You do know the difference between 'subjective' and 'objective', right?
And your last comment shows a staggeringly childish lack of insight. you would suck at being a dom. You have no empathy whatsoever. so you don't get why someone would enjoy being a sub? Okay, fine. Not an issue. But don't base your arguments or actions on ignorance, which is exactly what you are doing.
"I don't get it, so you can't do it."
(I was going to reply to Smarmy as well, but I know a troll when I see one.)
In reponse to Peter: All of Kink's sites and I dare say all of porn is based on degrading someone for the viewers pleasure. So maybe you just sholdnt partake in the fun :)
Im such a troll for making completely valid points about an important issue. At least I didnt try to pass blame or responsibility. That wouldnt be a troll though, that would be a coward.
And you are so much more mature than Mr Penis waver. You called me a troll? LOL! Well, you're a poopface! LOL
I wonder why no one at Kink, including Ilana, has responded to my valid points. There is no good response against such things. Im sure they just dont want to address me because that would give me credibility or something? Its OK Kink, you certainly arent the only adult company that should address these issues and havent or wont. But you do seem about the only company I know who brags so much about ethics. UN-ethical and honest is more respectable that two faced :)
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Isn't John hated in the porn industry, i remember models having nothing but bad things to about him during his buttman days... I was also under the impression from his having to do videos in Brazil he wound up with AIDS...
Bad rumours?