What we need to talk about porn when talking about Sunny Leone
Most of the critique of the Bhupendra Chaubey interview with Sunny Leone has centred on his grating, and very unsubtle, need to call Sunny out on her porn past. Writing for this website, for instance, Vivek Surendran said: "Chaubey, to everyone's surprise, joined the brigade of those people I hinted at earlier, the ones who repeatedly like to dig up dirt from someone's past and try to make them feel bad about it, but fail miserably."
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I am not sure I fully understand. What exactly is the critique? Do we look upon Sunny Leone as someone who did something wrong in her past and, ergo, are we chiding Chaubey for raking up the muck? Because that would make him a bully, for sure, but it does not address the elephant in the room, an elephant that Chaubey tried riding to much deserved failure on the interview.
Or do we look upon porn as a choice that Sunny had the freedom to make, but a choice that we can look at in totality? As we rush to ride the outrage bus, can we at least acknowledge the fact that porn, leaving aside the tired old arguments about its moral baggage, is not the best place for a young person? Can we acknowledge that as an industry, porn preys on the young and often destroys lives?
It helps no one, and certainly not defenders of Sunny, to push these issues under the carpet. This week, gay YouTuber Calum McSwiggan spoke up about his gay porn past, and how he feels he made a mistake. He explained in the video that he was 21 at the time, short on money, and decided porn was an easy option. He regrets making that choice today and decided to discuss the matter with his subscribers so that they know the truth about his past.
Indeed, pornography as a profession has its problems. An industry that is built on sating the viewer’s sexual appetite relies on performers putting up a show that is as far from natural sex as is possible. There is focus on the body and porn stars have been known to take steroids in order that their bodies match the fantasies they are weaving on the screen.
Worse, porn takes a psychological toll on the performer. Performing an act that is so intimate and perhaps even sacred for most of us for the delectation of others cannot be easy on the soul. This is reflected in the high incidence of drug abuse, criminality and even suicides among porn performers.
These are systemic issues with porn. As an industry, it has changed manifold with the advent of the Internet because now anyone can be a porn star. A surprisingly high number of young people with mental health issues continue to be drifted towards the industry. As McSwiggan asserts in the video above, if porn is your thing, and if you feel you can handle it, sure. But are you mature enough to make that choice?
Acknowledging this is not a moral lecture, and it is certainly not the condescending voyeurism of a Chaubey. Maybe Sunny regrets her porn past; maybe she does not. That is for her and her alone to know. But even if she feels that she made a mistake and wants to talk about it, does she have the space to discuss the matter? On the one hand are the likes of Chaubey who insist that she break down under the weight of their moral policing. On the other are those like Surendran, well-meaning but ultimately unable to glean the issue’s complexity.
It is possible to regret something without its becoming a social statement on values. A porn performer may regret her past because she feels unattached to it, or because she feels it was a time she would rather not revisit, or because she feels she got a raw deal. None of these are explicitly moral reasons but in the charged debate around Leone, we risk losing perspective and forcing on her our own emotions and narratives.
Perhaps Leone looks upon her Bollywood work as a step up from her porn past. Perhaps she thinks one is no different from the other. I don’t know. But she alone is the master of her narrative. Let us not put her on a pedestal nor dump her into the gallows.