A French pornography site investigated for organised pimping and rape
Trigger warning: rape, pedocriminality.
By Fabienne El-khoury @fabienne_ek
As feminists worldwide are campaigning against pornhub, in France we have our own “trafficking hub”, a site called “Jacquie et Michel”.
Like PornHub and all other so-called “pornography” sites, Jacquie et Michel business model is based on exploiting girls and women, who are filmed being assaulted, abused, and raped. It is an industry synonymous with human trafficking, which monetises pedocriminality and rape, and normalises and incites violence against girls and women.
In February 2020, just before the coronavirus crisis, an online media published a video with testimonies of two women explaining how they were lied to, trafficked and raped for the shooting of videos for Jacquie et Michel. There was also a recording of one of the site co-founders admitting acts of organised pimping.
“We went down into a cellar. There were 3 guys. I said I didn't want to. (...) The doors were closed. Each in turn... They forced things on me that I didn't want. It was just horrible.” One of the testimonies featured in the video
Following this video, our organisation Osez Le Féminisme ! (french for “Dare to be Feminist”), as well as two other French feminist associations, filed a complaint to the public prosecutor in Paris against Jacquie et Michel for aggravated pimping and rape.
More than 6 months after these events, we just received the news that the public prosecutor finally opened an investigation based on our complaint.
This is such great news for us, and for victims of sexual violence and feminists everywhere!
Hopefully the investigation will lead to court sentences for all implicated pimps and rapists. We also hope that this case will provoke a reckoning against the porno-criminal industry in the public opinion, just like #MeToo did for non-filmed sexual violence.
For pornography is simply just that: misogynist sexual violence.
No sexual penetration enacted for money, and filmed for hours on end, is desired. Only in the minds of misogynist women-hating, rape-culture soaked brains these acts are considered as sex.
Even when no lies, threats nor physical violence are involved in forcing the filmed acts, women in porn videos seldom choose the place, the act, the partner(s),…. They are under tremendous pressure to “go along with it”, not to stop, to dissociate from their bodies, to suffer in silence (or not in silence, it seems men take pleasure from seeing us suffer).
For Osez Le Féminisme ! this lawsuit is part of our campaigning for the abolition of pornography. We were previously involved in long campaigns for the adoption and upholding of the Nordic model in France, a law that decriminalised prostituted persons and penalised punters in 2016. This law also reinforced the fight against pimping which resulted in an increase in sentences for pimps on France in recent years.
Prostitution and pornography are two sides of the same patriarchal coin, the only difference being that pornography is filmed. Both are based on the exploitation of girls and women, both are concomitant with human trafficking, both profit from systemic racism, both normalise the erasure of women's desires and sexual agency, and falsely present violence as sex.
Porn and prostitution are two weapons in the patriarchal war against girls and women.
Therefore, we will continue to fight against, pimping, prostitution, and pornography. We will continue to fight against the patriarchal system in all its facets, for the liberation of all girls and women from male violence.