PARIS — A French Senate committee has issued a virulently anti-porn report comparing the adult industry with “hell” and recommending state regulation and censorship.
The report is titled “Porno, l’Enfer du Décor,” combining a pun on the French expression “l’envers du décor,” meaning “behind the scenes,” with the word for “hell” — “enfer,” as in “infernal.”
The report is the result of six months of hearings about the adult industry, conducted by Senators Annick Billon, chair of the committee for women’s rights (UDI, Vendée), Alexandra Borchio Fontimp (LR, Alpes-Maritimes), Laurence Cohen (Communiste, Val-de-Marne) and Laurence Rossignol (Socialiste, Oise).
As the newspaper Libération reported today, the new document was prompted and has been influenced by sensationalist media coverage of “sordid affairs” involving a few adult producers and shoots — some going back to 2009 — that were publicized in recent months.
Feminist Anti-Sex Work Groups Behind the Report
After a handful of accusations concerning gonzo producer Pascale OP and some independent shooters for Jacquie et Michel, a group of feminist associations aiming to abolish all sex work started a legal and media campaign that eventually resulted in today’s report.
The investigation into Jacquie et Michel originated in July 2020, following media coverage of a nonfiction book titled “Judy, Lola, Sofia and Me” by journalist Robin d’Angelo, who claimed to have “infiltrated” Jacquie et Michel sets and alleged on-set abuses.
Material collected by d’Angelo, alongside other testimony, was brought to the authorities by three sex work abolitionist groups: Movement of the Nest, Dare Feminism and The Indignant Women (Le Mouvement du nid, Osez le féminisme and les Effronté·es).
The groups denounced all pornography as “a pimping and criminal industry at a global scale,” labeling all adult content as “patriarchal propaganda feeding misogyny, racial hatred and rape culture.”
Celine Piques, a spokesperson for Dare Feminism, told Libération, “The hearings conducted by the Senate’s committee for women’s rights have demonstrated the systemic character of the violence at the core of this industry. We are not talking about a few ‘black sheep,’ but about a system.”
Piques said she wished the report would “make society finally change its view about the porn industry” and demanded the government make the fight against porn “a public and criminal policy priority.”
A New Crime That May Include Any Non-Critical Coverage of Porn
The Senate report recommends the creation of a new crime, “Encouraging a Criminal Act in Case of Sexual Violence in the Context of Pornography” (“d’incitation à une infraction pénale en cas de violences sexuelles commises dans un contexte de pornographie”).
According to Libération, the report calls for the new crime to be analogous to “encouraging terrorism or genocide,” potentially making it a criminal offense to even write or speak, without explicit condemnation, about porn that someone else or the state considers “sexual violence.”
One of the report’s writers, Sen. Annick Billon, claimed today in a press conference that “90% of pornographic scenes contain violence.”
Her fellow committee member, Sen. Laurence Cohen, asked that “websites and those who watch this content” also be made legally liable under the proposed new statute.
French Senators Upset About Imaginary 'Trash Porn' Category
The report also claims that the rise of tube sites like Pornhub and XVideos in the mid 2000s was responsible for “massification of the diffusion of porno and contributing to the escalation of content more and more ‘trash’ and violent.”
Finally, the report dismisses any changes that the adult industry has made over the last few years, in terms of consent policies and ethical charts, as being “largely marketing.”
Ethical porn, the senators asserted, is “but a drop in an ocean of violence.”
The report concludes with an urgent plea to the government to establish strict regulation, including “age verification,” though without offering specific guidance on how to navigate the well-known associated technical issues, or how to protect free speech and the right of adults to access information and content about sexual matters.