In Wet Food 5, winner of this year's Adult Video News Award for "Best Oral Release," women with the gag reflexes of pythons submit to a circle of "five menacing erections." What makes these hard-ons so fierce is the fact that they're condomless, and that after enough expert manipulation, they deposit "multi-load creamings" onto bare faces.
This is the kind of scene that alarms Michael Weinstein, the president of L.A.-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Weinstein is also the controversial Svengali behind an AHF-funded campaign to tighten regulations on California's porn industry.
Weinstein's efforts are gaining traction. Last week, a proposed voter initiative that would make condoms mandatory in California porn gathered more than 414,000 signatures and qualified for next year's ballot. And last month, after vigorous lobbying by Weinstein and AHF, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration submitted a revised draft of workplace regulations for adult films shot in the state.
Among the proposed new requirements for porn performers: protective eyewear.
"This isn't regulation, this is a complete shutdown of adult production," said Diane Duke, CEO of porn trade group Free Speech Coalition. "Asking adult performers to wear goggles is up there with asking ballerinas to wear boots."
To be fair, goggles aren't mentioned explicitly in OSHA's regulations. But clauses calling for "barrier protection for the eyes, skin, mouth, and mucous membranes" and prohibiting "ejaculation onto the employee's eyes, non-intact skin, mouth or other mucous membranes" send a clear message: No more facials. That could effectively end California's adult film industry.
"Facials are 90 percent of straight porn," says Chanel Preston, president of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee. "These regulations make it really difficult, if not impossible, to do our job."
Weinstein and AHF are unsympathetic. They compare the industry's outcry over goggles to "ridiculous and implausible...plots in which the pizza delivery man or tow truck operator have sex with beautiful women customers."
The regulations, up for an OSHA vote next year, don't stop at eyewear. Mike Stabile of FSC points out that under Weinstein's proposal, "vaginal secretions, pre-ejaculate, and rimming" are also endangered.
And forget about bareback sex.
"AHF told us that producers could use fake semen," Stabile says. "Or that we could remove condoms in post-production, which would cost about $100,000 per film."
Indeed, Weinstein's bill concedes that condoms and other "personal protective equipment," (including goggles, presumably) don't need to be visible in the final film, although there will be a "rebuttable presumption that any adult film without visible condoms" is violating state law.
In another twist, if a film violates the condom mandate, California residents can pursue a civil action against the film's producers. "There's a profit motive to enforce this bill," Stabile says, fearing a predatory cottage industry that scans porn for violations to exploit.
"If this bill and these regulations pass, people will go underground to shoot, which moves the industry backward after we've been trying for years to make it safer and more legitimate," Preston says.
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