I’m going to talk about sex and stuff in a minute, but first, some exposition: I frequently save links to articles that give me an idea for a blog post, but then never get around to writing the post. I also start posts, save them as drafts, then never finish them. I have over a hundred saved WordPress drafts, and countless links saved in my iCloud reading list, Evernote, Instapaper, and elsewhere. Maybe I’ll get to some of those ideas eventually, but sometimes I go through my blog post drafts and delete the ones that are hopelessly outdated. This is an attempt to consolidate ideas accumulated over months into a single post.

I. The Long-Winded Introduction

Teachers, at this point in American history, are not allowed to have pasts. Nor are they allowed to have much in the way of lives outside of teaching. This applies to other professions as well, but teachers seem to bear the brunt of our society’s perfectionism.

I’m going to talk a bit about sex, as well as portrayals of sex in entertainment, so stop reading if you’re easily offended. I’ll warn you if a link goes somewhere NSFW (not safe for work.) The gist of what I’m saying is that we as a society have profoundly conflicted views of sexuality, especially female sexuality. People who routinely interact with children are often expected to be effectively asexual, even if no one ever quite puts it in those terms. People who have expressed their sexuality in overt ways, from basic modeling to outright porn, while breaking no laws, often lose their jobs as teachers and in other fields. Sometimes, we can justify it as “protecting the kids,” while other times, t really makes no sense at all.

Even when it is supposedly about protecting children, what is it really teaching kids? (Disclosure: I do not have kids, but I used to be a teenage boy.) The most common justification offered for dismissing a teacher because of modeling, porn, etc. is that it creates a “disruption” or “distraction” in the school environment. I assume that this refers to the idea that students will not be able to learn as effectively because they might have seen their teacher in a state of undress or more, perhaps online.

That is, at least initially, a compelling argument. What is it actually teaching kids, though? This is not about teachers who actually have sex with their students, or who call their students “jailbait” on Twitter. Those are pretty obviously illegal and/or inappropriate. I can also see an argument against letting teachers moonlight as bikini models or whatever, but what about something a teacher did years ago? I don’t necessarily know the best answer for how to deal with it, but firing a teacher for modeling bikinis or more in the past might have more negative long-term consequences:

1. It reinforces that sex = dirty and shameful in general.
2. It places the libido of teenage boys, and whatever impulses of teenage girls may come into play (I know less about that topic, but I remember the teenage libido quite well from my own teenage days), at the forefront of school policy. This may help short-term order and discipline, but…
3. It teaches teenagers (boys especially) that they have power over others’ (women’s especially) sexuality. If a teacher loses her job because she might distract horny teens, what else will those teens think is within their power to control?
4. If you really want people to get out of doing porn, give them another option. Don’t just fire them, because you know what? They end up without anywhere else to go in life.

I’ll discuss a few specific cases below, and they bring up another critical point: many people criticize porn, and even seek its prohibition, because of its alleged exploitation of women. It is absolutely without doubt that some porn performers are not there entirely of their own free will, but that is not true of all of them. Figuring out which is which is difficult even on a normal day.

A common defense raised by teachers is that they did not do porn entirely willingly, either due to economic circumstances or actual duress; or that they did it, hated it, and regret it with every fiber of their being. In situations where direct duress leads a person to porn, that is essentially a criminal act, and it makes as much sense to punish that person as it does to jail a victim of human trafficking. In situations where people do porn because they need the money, that opens up an economic discussion about how we pay teachers, and women’s income inequality in general, that no one seems to want to have. In situations where a woman does porn of her own free will and is unapologetic, people don’t quite seem to know how to handle that. I’ll just note that former porn star Sasha Grey read to a group of schoolchildren, and nothing bad seems to have happened yet.

II. Teachers Should Not Wear Bikinis While Teaching, Even on the Weekends

A teacher in Boca Raton, Florida (these stories seem to come out of Florida quite often) lost her job recently when photos of her second job, as a bikini model, surfaced and came to her principal’s attention. She does all of her modeling under a pseudonym, but I guess that was still deemed inappropriate for a school setting. I can see an argument for some outside-of-school conduct conflicting with a teacher’s role. I can even see a colorable claim of justification in firing her due to the likelihood of “distraction,” but just barely. The now-ex-teacher made a point of distinguishing what she does from pornography. At any rate, the media attention might be helping her modeling career.

III. When It Comes to Actual Porn, We Draw Some Interesting Lines

A few months ago, Melissa King resigned as Miss Teen Delaware due to allegations that she had appeared in a porn video. She appeared on stage in swimwear, and her main job as Miss Teen Delaware (don’t try to tell me it’s a scholarship program) is to look hot, but porn crosses some major line for some reason.

In an odd reversal of that principle, Miss USA 1991 Kelly McCarty, after appearing on a soap opera, a Disney Channel show, and softcore, jumped into porn at the age of 39 (NSFW official site and unofficial site). While unapologetic about the career move, she reported “creepy” treatment from others:

“I enjoy acting, and I really like sex, so this was the perfect opportunity to combine two of my passions,” McCarty told Tarts. “It was a pretty easy transition, I think mainstream television is definitely starting to merge with the adult world anyway – it’s all about sex and nudity, and I’ve been pretending to have love scenes on ‘Passions’ for years anyway.”

While the on-screen adjustment wasn’t too much of a sweat for McCarty, she was shocked at how the men in her personal life have suddenly changed their tune.

This gave her an opening for a good defense of people who might actually want to do porn:

“These are guys that I’ve known for a long time that are a suddenly putting it out there, they think because I have sex on television I must want to do it with them, too. Its really creepy and disturbing, being an adult film star does not automatically put you into the slut category,” McCarty said. “Maybe you’d expect that from people you don’t know, but this is coming from guys I considered friends. Weird.”

(Emphasis added.) Most people don’t seem to have gotten the memo.

IV. Teachers with Porn Pasts – That’s When Sh!t Gets Real

“Distraction” seems to be the go-to explanation when a teacher loses her job due to extracurricular bikini-wearing or nudity. Typically, it is the students who are “distracted.” The problem really seems to come when a teacher loses her (and it almost always seems to be her) job because of something she did during a time when she was not teaching. A California teacher lost her job last year when administrators learned she had appeared in pornographic movies in the past. A commission upheld her termination in January:

Judge Julie Cabos-Owen said such a past matters in an age when technology makes porn easy to access and hard to bury.

“Although her pornography career has concluded, the ongoing availability of her pornographic materials on the Internet will continue to impede her from being an effective teacher and respected colleague,” Cabos-Owen said in the 46-page decision issued Friday by the Commission on Professional Competence.

Students and teachers both reportedly found pornographic videos of the teacher, Stacie Halas, on the internet, and reported the matter to school officials. This is sort of one of those scenarios where the people reporting the alleged wrongdoing have some ‘splainin’ to do themselves, but that is not addressed in media reports on the matter. The revelation of her porn past of course led to harassment by mouth-breathers, which in turn meant she had to go.

After rumors of her performance surfaced, profanity was etched on Halas’ classroom window, a teacher testified.

[Halas lawyer Richard] Schwab has said Halas did not star in pornographic movies while teaching in any district. He said she took parts only during an eight-month period from 2005 to 2006 because of financial problems after her boyfriend abandoned her.

District superintendent Jeff Chancer applauded the commission’s ruling.

Halas’ decision to “engage in pornography was incompatible with her responsibilities as a role model for students,” Chancer said in a statement.

Basically, we don’t pay teachers enough, but take an active role in controlling how they eke out a living. The decision, posted at The Smoking Gun (and linked below as a PDF file), notes that Halas’ fiancé left her in 2005 with substantial debt, including student loans and credit cards, forcing her to move in with her cash-strapped parents. She evidently got into the adult entertainment biz in the fall of 2005 out of financial necessity, based both on her needs and her schedule as a graduate student.

The decision lists eighteen titles in which she allegedly appeared, marking one of those rare occasions when a legal document uses the phrase “Semen Sippers” (the link is to IMDB, so chill.) It also demonstrates how it might be kind of fun to summarize porn plots for a legal document:

In one of the videos, Respondent portrays a woman who has sexual intercourse with a pizza delivery man, in lieu of monetary payment for the pizza delivery, and engages in oral copulation while the man’s penis is inserted through a hole in the pizza.

In re Halas, OAH No. 2012051091, decision at 5 (Comm. on Prof. Competence, Oxnard Sch. Dist., Jan. 11, 2013) (PDF). That does not sound fun for the guy.

In another video, she apparently discusses her career as a teacher and, when asked if she worries about losing her job, responds with “[It’s] questionable,” although she claimed the dialogue was “scripted.” Id. at 5-6. The commission treated with skepticism her assertions that representatives of the adult entertainment industry approached her unsolicited, id. at 4, and that her subsequent appearance in multiple videos was the result of coercion, id. at 7. In fact, it called her descriptions of alleged coercion “a self-serving attempt to shift at least part of the blame,” id., bringing a question to my mind: we hear constantly that porn exploits women, but I guess that’s not true when it comes time to assess the career prospects of the allegedly exploited. The commission may be right to be skeptical of her account of events, because she has every incentive to downplay her involvement in porn. Let me be clear: I have no idea if she did porn willingly, or as a result of some form of duress, but it is beyond doubt that she would have received the same, if not worse, treatment if she admitted to seeking out employment in porn. It is a no-win situation for her.

While Halas and her lawyer insisted that she did not appear in any videos while employed as a teacher, administrators seemed to hem and haw on the issue:

In speaking with the News 24 in March, [Oxnard School District Superintendent Jeff] Chancer said that there was no way of knowing when the porn was made, and whether or not Stacie Halas’ alleged appearances in the videos happened before or after she began to work for Richard B. Haydock Intermediate School.

“There’s no way to date [the videos],” he said. “They could have been made two weeks or five years ago.”

Oxnard administrators do not seem to be familiar with 18 U.S.C. § 2257, which requires producers to keep various records about their shoots, including the date(s) of production. Although the commission’s view of the circumstances of her employment would seem to make the timing of her performances irrelevant, it gives me an opportunity to Google 2257 records. Whee!

The decision includes URLs of several videos, id. at 18, 22-23, only one of which seems to still be online (no, I’m not linking to it.) The video notes that it is sponsored by a website, lordsofporn.com, with a link to said website. That site has a 2257 compliance notice, meaning that anyone wanting to know the dates of production could conceivably contact the person identified as the Custodian of Records, or they could get the producers in legal trouble.

She reportedly performed under the name Tiffany Six (NSFW links here and here). The one with the pizza guy was not difficult to find (do I even need to tell you the link is NSFW?), although it’s on one of those “tube” sites that are reportedly killing the porn business. The site where the video originated (NSFW) has a link to 2257 info, although interestingly, the link was dead when I tried it. Uh oh.

At any rate, it really doesn’t seem to matter when she did the videos, because they will be available to horny teenagers online for all eternity, and it is better to fire the person who claims she did them under duress than to educate teens about sex and economic realities. (Disclosure again: I don’t have kids.)

Halas is hardly the only one, by the way. Another teacher, who performed briefly as Rikki Anderson, lost her teaching job in Kentucky after her past emerged, and then resigned another teaching job in Missouri.

V. What’s a Fired Teacher to Do?

Sometimes they end up going from bikini modeling to porn, as in the case of another Florida teacher. She lost her job after she took a side job that involved wearing a bikini on a fishing boat (sorta NSFW), and with no other job prospects during a recession, turned to porn (definitely NSFW). She was reportedly not happy with the decision, but had no other options.

Then there’s the guy in Florida who lost his teaching job when administrators discovered his gay porn past. He reportedly got his job back. While the facts of each case are unique, and we don’t know the specifics here, it’s tempting to conclude that this is an odd case of sexism trumping homophobia. Who really knows, though.

VI. So Does Anyone Get Away with This Sort of Thing?

Of course! An accidental or unconsented release of a private sex tape can help your career, if you’re Paris Hilton, or launch a previously-nonexistent career, if you’re Kim Kardashian.

If that sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is. Nowadays, you can potentially make quite a bit of money and increase your infamy, if not actual fame, with a professionally made sex tape made to look like it was leaked. In Farrah Abraham’s case, she apparently made close to $1 million for a terrible video. Indeed we live in a strange world.

Photo credits: Copyright held by “Naughty America” (OTRS submission by Dallas Lowe, La Touraine Inc.) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons; Michael Dorausch from Venice, USA (2012 AVN Expo Las VegasUploaded by tm) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.