As his Twitter feed clearly demonstrates, porn superstar James Deen has a long, sordid history of making light of rape.
While dark humor alone isn’t enough for an uproar, a public accusation of rape by his former girlfriend and frequent co-star Stoya is no laughing matter, and has some industry insiders calling this the end of James Deen’s reign as porn’s “boy next door” performer.
On Saturday, Stoya tweeted the following:
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Making matters worse for Deen, another well-known ex-girlfriend (and industry veteran), Joanna Angel, stood with Stoya:
Though Angel declined to comment, years ago she allegedly warned adult actress Sydney Leathers to steer clear of Deen. “She told me when I first got into the business that I should avoid him—that he has boundary issues, basically that he tries to break women,” Leathers told The Daily Beast. “I took it to mean that he is dangerous.”
Deen, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Daily Beast, took to Twitter to call the rape and sexual assault allegations levied against him “false and defamatory,” writing, “I respect women and I know and respect limits both professionally and privately.”
Adult actress Ashley Fires begs to differ. In revealing her own troubling experience to The Daily Beast, Fires cited Deen as the only performer she absolutely refuses to work with.
“The reason I put him on my ‘no list’ was because he almost raped me,” said Fires. “The only time I’d ever seen this guy, he walked into the green room at Kink [studios], picks up another performer like a caveman, grabs her by the hair, and takes her off somewhere… and I can only imagine.”
“Later on that night, I was getting out of the shower of the communal bathroom at Kink, I reach for my towel to dry off, and he comes up from behind me and pushes himself and his erection into my butt,” she continued. “He pushes me against the sink and starts grabbing on me and I was like, ‘No, no, no James, no,’ and he released me from his grasp, and says, ‘You know, later if you want to fuck around I’m in room whatever-it-was. I was like, ‘Fuck you.’ I didn’t even know this guy, he was so out of line and entitled with my body.”
According to Fires, nearly a year or so later Deen confronted her about the incident and ordered her to “stop telling people about it.” Fires claims she has to defend her choice not to work with him constantly—to agents, producers, directors and other performers—and she refused to stop telling the story “because it really happened.”
“[Deen] says, ‘OK, can you just say something else? Say that I remind you of your brother’ is what he says—his advice to me—to tell people why I won’t work with him instead of the truth,” Fires recalled.
Fires’s allegation comes on the heels of another from Tori Lux, a former porn star who, in an essay distributed to The Daily Beast, claimed that in June 2011, Deen brutally beat and sexually assaulted her on a major porn set.
Like many male performers of his generation, Deen has been a regular contributor to the rape fantasy genre. He films approximately one bondage, S&M, or mock rape scene for every three regular ones.
“I’ve been into rough sex pretty much my whole sexual life and so I’m not, like, bad at it,” he told the Observer.
“I don’t know how to say it without being a hideous prick, but I’m pretty good at having rough sex,” he added. “It got to the point where a lot of girls who aren’t into that type of sex were afraid to work with me because they thought I was going to slap them in the face or something. But I only do that if the girl is into it. There’s no reason to choke somebody if they don’t like getting choked. Then you’re basically being an asshole.”
James Deen gets paid to have rough sex. And by his own admission he’s good at it, maybe even enjoys it. It’s incentivized and celebrated. His aw-shucks boyish looks coupled with his domineering style have made him one of the most popular male stars of his time. He doesn’t look like your average porn star, and was touted by GQ as the “well-hung boy next door.” Despite his lack of bulging biceps, Deen’s tapped into a certain female fantasy, generating an uncommonly large following of women few before him have. He’d even won some feminists over—odd considering his fondness for rape jokes.
Rape in an industry where sex—and even violent sex—is treated as just another day at the office can become a bit muddled for some.
From my experience, I’ve learned that certain professionals in porn have varying definitions of what rape is—yet the standard definition should still apply. On-set behaviors and attitudes that would be shocking to most and sometimes even criminal are normalized, and after years of performing, it can be hard to separate the work from reality.As a former adult actress who has worked with Deen on many occasions, I must admit that I’ve never witnessed this side of him. During one of the most aggressive sex scenes I’d ever filmed, he was one of many performers doling out a sexual beating, and yet he paused to whisper “You don’t belong here” to me. He was right. I didn’t belong there. Safe words escaped me but the word “no” didn’t; I said it a lot, but no one listened because it was all part of the scene. I felt tortured. It hardly felt like sex. Though I consented and my desire to be a professional prevailed, the emotional trauma persisted. I didn’t blame Deen for the role he played; he was one of many hired performers that day just doing his job.
I can recall a particular horrifying example of normalized behavior that would not be acceptable off-set.
Two performers, a male and a female I won’t name, were working together. The woman had obviously taken something before the scene and passed out halfway through filming. The director did not want to lose his investment, so the male performer came up with a solution: Prop her up doggy style with her face in the pillows, and no one would know. They tried a few other positions but none worked as well as the first, and they completed the scene that way. She was left to sleep naked on the couch with her signed check beside her.
Over time, men in porn may start to see the women they work with as mere sexual objects. When the camera is rolling they go into porn mode, treating their co-star like a poseable sex doll. The goal is to create a buzzworthy scene, push boundaries, explore limits, and pique the interest of paying consumers. Rarely is pleasure the objective. When your job regularly consists of roughing a woman up, ignoring her pleas, and choking her out, do you start to bring some of that behavior home with you? On the other hand, it takes a certain type of guy to maintain an erection while performing such brutish acts.
Lines between porn work and home life can become blurry, especially when you’re dating a fellow performer. I know. What’s approved of and/or normalized at work isn’t necessarily OK to do at home, too—a fact I’ve had to remind former boyfriends of far too many times. It’s part of the reason I stopped dating fellow performers altogether. What I convincingly “enjoyed” for work is not what I wanted at home.
That’s been a source of confusion for more than one male performer.
Jonathan Koppenhaver, or War Machine as he was known in porn, will soon face trial for sexual assault and attempted murder—though he claims he doesn’t understand how he could have raped his porn star ex. His attorney’s defense is that Christy Mack, the woman he’d savagely beaten to within an inch of her life, couldn’t claim she was raped because she’d shown a “desire, the preference, to acceptability towards a particular form of sex activities that were outside of the norm.”
Despite this troubling mindset, as well as Deen’s claim that he knows the “limits” in his personal and professional life in the face of mounting allegations, it is important to remember that no means no—even when a porn star says it.
Too few come forward in times like these. Now, they will no longer be silenced.
