I’m All for Your Right to Make Porn, But….

- Coleen Singer, Sssh.com Porn For Women and Couples

A long while ago, back when I was still working for a porn studio, I got into an argument over lunch with a coworker, about a porn-related story which had just hit the news. The subject of our dispute was the story of a female cop who had recently lost her job, because she got caught performing in a porn video while wearing her police department-issued uniform.

I italicized that last part, because for me it was the deal-killer when it came to any potential sympathy I might feel for the woman in question. 

While I would definitely object to a police department firing someone because they used to be a porn star, and I would take umbrage if they were to fire an officer who was doing porn on the side with approval of some kind (explicit or tacit), there’s just no way I’m going to complain about a police department firing someone who wore her uniform on camera while performing porn, especially when she did it without first seeking the department’s permission.

“Are you kidding?” my outraged colleague exclaimed when I’d explained my position. “Do you really think the police department would have given her permission, had she asked for it?”

“Of course not,” I said. “And that’s exactly my point: She knew she’d get shit-canned if she was caught, and she chose to do it anyway. Now she’s facing the consequences she knew were going to come, so why should I feel sorry for her, or think her employer is in the wrong?”

What followed was an extended, winding speech on my coworker’s part, about the First Amendment, the long and sorry history of women’s oppression in the workplace, police brutality, racism and – eventually – my total lack of fashion sense, manners and empathy.

The upshot of my retort was this: “Find me one place in the First Amendment where it says we all get to violate the personal conduct requirements in our employment contracts as we see fit, how we see fit, without any consequences, and I’ll happily concede the point.”

To make a long story short, she couldn’t find such verbiage in the First Amendment (because it isn’t there), but she also never again invited me to lunch (because I’m a smug, argumentative bitch).

I was reminded about this old argument today when I read about Julia Pink, a German woman who was fired from her job at a Protestant social welfare organization after it came to the organization’s attention she was an aspiring porn producer/actress, as well.

“It had always been a dream of mine to shoot a real porn film,” Pink said, according to Bild.

In this case, I actually have a lot more sympathy for Pink than I did for the fired cop back in the day, largely because Pink had been working for this organization for over 17 years, while her foray into amateur porn-making started just a couple years back, in 2013.

“I worked there for so long and now they throw me out just like that,” Pink said. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

True to her word, Pink didn’t take her firing lying down (yes, yes I know – insert joke here about porn actresses earning their livings lying down….); she filed a grievance in a Munich court, where she appeared this week to argue her case.

Unfortunately for Pink, the court found the protestant social welfare organization had a right to enforce its values, and upheld their dismissal without notice of Pink as a proper outcome.

When asked about Pink’s dismissal, the head of the group (who was not identified in Bild’s reporting) said “we also promote sexual values at our organization.”

“For us, partaking in sexual activities in exchange for money is not compatible with [caring for] severely disabled people,” the organization’s leader said. “These people have access to the internet and so could get hold of the pictures, and then come to the conclusion that this behavior is normal.”

While I firmly disagree working in porn is somehow incompatible with working on behalf of disabled people, I do tend to agree with the court: Organizations like this one have a right to their own standards and practices. For me, and anyone else who doesn’t see things their way, there’s a very simple solution: Don’t work for them.

While I do feel bad for Julia Pink, and I don’t question for one second her commitment to her non-porn job, or see any problem with her working in porn at the same time, there’s little doubt in my mind she had a sense of how the religious group for which she worked would feel about her performing in porn. Even if she hadn’t been told directly not to do so, did she really expect an organization which self-identifies as “protestant” to be A-OK with one of their employees doubling as an online porn star?

The bottom line is this: “Free speech” refers to the freedom to express yourself, not freedom from any consequences you might incur from your expression. This is true whether you go around the office proselytizing in an attempt to bring your coworkers to Jesus, or ‘secretly’ perform in porn distributed on the Internet, hoping against hope that your boss never catches wind of the fact. 

Either way, you say your piece and you take your chances. Whether you (or my former coworker) likes it or not, one of those chances is that you might wind up being “the Jesus freak who used to work here” – or “that one German porn star who got fired from her social welfare job.”

As another person of German extraction once wrote…. So it goes.

Coleen Singer is a writer, photographer, film editor and all-around geeky gal at Sssh.com, where she often waxes eloquent about sex, porn, sex toys, censorship, the literary and pandering evils of Fifty Shades of Grey and other topics not likely to be found on the Pulitzer Prize shortlist. She is also the editor and curator of EroticScribes.com. When she is not doing all of the above, Singer is an amateur stock-car racer and enjoys modifying vintage 1970s cars for the racetrack. Oh, she also likes good sex and quality porn!