Zeitgeist: The intersection(ality) of Moe The Monster and Leigh Raven

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963

“Even a scapegoat must have someone to hate.”

~ Elvis Costello, “Miss Macbeth”

At the intersection of desperation and avarice —

The recent carnival sideshows that are the Leigh Raven and Moe The Monster charges of on-set abuse demonstrate that acts in self-interest disguised as attempts to effect “bottom-up” change only result in marginalizing the accusers and their respective ilk.

However, there is another dynamic at play: these cases reflect a cultural phenomenon whereby not only do non-victims assert victim status, but less-favored victims seek a kind of outrage parity.

Quoth the Raven

Caucasian adult performer Leigh Raven sent tremors through Porn Valley in March of this year, when, in a video created and posted to YouTube by her wife, Nikki Hearts, she leveled charges of abuse, deceit and consent violations on the set a rough sex / race play hetero sex scene opposite African American male talent Rico Strong.

Once the nanny cam video of the entire shoot was released here on MikeSouth.com, Raven’s cause, and her support, which had already begun to falter, quickly collapsed. Just then, hack writer Tracy Clark-Flory (also white) attempted to deflect attention from the direct contradiction of Raven’s claims by indisputable video evidence (as Florence King once noted of this uniquely WASP phenomenon, “we happy few don’t destroy evidence, we just tut-tut it into oblivion”) by shifting focus to a so-called “anti-transgender” joke told on set.

Bear in mind, Leigh Raven is cis-female.

Raven and Flory’s’s attempt to claim outrage on behalf of trans-persons failed spectacularly to motivate the world of adult to support her en masse.

Instead they were subjected to the humiliating spectacle of catchphrase-spewing trans-man Buck Angel forever blighting his reputation by claiming that those who opposed Raven based on what they saw with their own eyes in the behind-the-scenes video were simply #toxic #male (i.e., cismale) #RapeApologists.

Co-signing Angel’s short-sighted (and mercifully short-lived) campaign was deranged and vicious LGBT advocate Jaxton Wheeler.

Raven’s social justice-based claims centered on a white woman who claimed (in part) that she was outraged and upset by the hostile environment which included harsh ‘racist’ dialogue being spoken to by an African American.

In Hearts’ YouTube video, Raven regurgitated the marxian “intersectionality” line of reasoning, claiming she is against uttering racist dialogue to people of color, while asserting that she was ok with being called names by a black man. She was, in essence, “punching up“, in class warfare parlance, and refusing to “punch down” at a living avatar for a more marginalized and oppressed group.

But after explaining that she was okay with being hit with some racist insults, and despite admitting that she didn’t even ‘get’ some of the references, which she had to have explained to her, she and Hearts still found reason to complain of the allegedly racist tone of the scene and the shoot.

You want to talk about so-called “white privilege”? Leigh Raven was the whitest person working on that production, which (in theory at least) should make her ‘white outrage’ intersectionally not cool.

Alas, it’s not that simple.

We’re in an era where white people are pretending to be “people of colour”, “cis” people are pretending to be trans, and middle-class women are pretending to be oppressed by men. The words privilege and oppression have switched meaning. Nobody wants to be “privileged” any more.

~ Jerry Barnett, Twitter, 21 May 2018

Believe women, believe people of color

Raven’s dwindling gang of supporters have taken refuge in the contention that, despite the overwhelming, compelling evidence that she was neither assaulted nor harassed, there must be something to her claims because women simply wouldn’t lie about being raped.

However, anyone with internet access can readily find a lengthy list of false sexual assault allegations. This one was reported in March:

Thomas Mowbray didn’t even know Eboni Sanders. They both lived [in Pittsburgh] in the same…building… In early February 2016, they ran into each other in the laundry room. Mr. Mowbray claims Ms. Sanders [a woman of color] came on to him and that he declined… Twelve days after that, Pittsburgh police charged Mr. Mowbray with indecent assault after Ms. Sanders claimed that he had groped her…

The charges marked the beginning of a nightmarish two years in the criminal justice system for Mr. Mowbray…and his girlfriend, Patrese Thompson [also a woman of color]… Over that time, Pittsburgh police filed six criminal cases against Mr. Mowbray and two against Ms. Thompson — all based on shocking allegations made by Ms. Sanders of gun-toting assailants, assaults, threatening letters and phone calls, stalking, contract killings and knife-wielding attacks… Mowbray spent more than six months in jail. But on Feb. 22, the last of the cases was withdrawn by…prosecutors. Police had finally [accepted] what the couple had long insisted — that Ms. Sanders was lying. Now she is the one facing criminal charges. “For two years of our lives, this woman has been using the criminal justice system to terrorize us,” Ms. Thompson said.

The cops didn’t bother to investigate Sanders’ claims. Instead, they believed the victim.

A police official, Cmdr. Cristyn Zett, acknowledged that cases like these are difficult because Ms. Sanders presented herself as a victim of domestic violence.

“You’re trying not to revictimize the victim,” she said. “Our officers will always err on the side of caution with what a person is telling them and file a report and then send it over to detectives for further investigation.”

As Scott Greenfield notes at his SimpleJustice blog, “the trauma-informed approach to policing that has become so popular with advocates of ‘believe the victim,’ pushes the cops to ‘err’ rather than investigate.”

A Monster tale

On May 17 we reported that African American male porn talent Moe the Monster Johnson claimed in court papers that he was “duped” into performing in a hardcore race play video that depicts his white co-star calling him the N-word “without his consent.”

Johnson said that, despite having shot “over 50 scenes for this company” he was taken by surprise by the racist dialogue the director expected; that he “felt violated and betrayed”, “emotionally distressed”, ambushed, and “insulted” at the July 12, 2017 shoot.

Red flags immediately went up for a number of reasons.

First, the scene was actually shot June 8, 2017, and despite allegedly being emotionally distressed, ambushed, insulted and betrayed by it, he returned to shoot another scene for the same company and the same director in July.

Second, he tweeted about his “awesome day” on set at least twice shortly after the shoot.

Third, for someone who claims to be offended by racist terms and depictions, he himself has certainly engaged in plenty of both over the years.  An example.

Fourth, Moe asked for work from DogFart again in January of this year —  seven months after he was allegedly ‘racially harassed’. 

Fifth, Johnson has been widely considered “washed up” in porn for some time for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to performance issues.

And sixth, no one else who was on the set seems to recall any trickery or betrayal ever happening at the shoot. It all comes down to Johnson’s word that he was bamboozled, betrayed and “harassed”.

Specifically, Moe’s complaint alleges that director Billy Watson “conspired” with producer DFI to “dupe” him into performing sex acts with adult star Ryan Conner, knowing that she would use the N-word during the scene’s finale. “[Watson] and DFI defrauded [Johnson] for the purpose of creating and selling racist content to its racist customers,” according to the complaint.

[H]e shot over 50 scenes for DogFart. When they were paying his bills, was it racist content? Was is “racist content” when [Moe] repeatedly talked about a “fat white asses” or said “crazy ass white people”?

Furthermore, it’s a bit of a leap to say that a portrayal of racism equals racism, or only appeals to racists. We can call this the “Mississippi Burning” rule.

The argument is akin to one raised by Leigh Raven and her Svengali-like wife Nikki Hearts, who have gone out of their way to blur the difference between the portrayal of abuse and actual abuse; of race play and racism; of consensual rough sex and criminal interpersonal violence. They have referred to a film set where a scene that portrays abuse was filmed as an “abusive film set.”

An example of this insidious line of argument: if one has only viewed the producer’s rough sex scenes, one “would know” they are abusive in fact and not just portraying rough sex.

The assertion that porn content reliably captures and represents the reality of a given situation is both false and diabolical. Rico Strong cites the example of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Django Unchained: should viewers of Quentin Tarantino’s film truly believe that Mr. DiCaprio is actually a sadistic racist because portrayed one so convincingly?

Because, according to the spurious SJW line of reasoning, In fact, it has been argued, the better you do it, the more likely you are a racist/misogynist/transphobe/toxic male/oppressor.

Moe the Monster’s claims were seriously undercut Sunday by the devastating statements and revelations of African American male performer Nat Turnher, who appeared in the scene in question with Johnson and Conner.

Hobbled as the civil action might be at this point, one will admit that Moe’s attorney, Dan Gilleon, was wise to file the complaint as an employment law case for at least two reasons: first, the California Supreme Court’s recent Dynamex decision, of which veteran industry attorney Karen Tynan warned in AVN, “If you are paying workers as independent contractors, there is a new evaluation for you. Many workers previously classified as independent contractors must now be classified as employees. “

And second, in employment law cases you get attorney’s fees, which can pile up in a big way.

“The use of the N-word in the workplace is extraordinarily harmful to African American workers. It’s a violent, abusive word that embodies the pure evil of racism. It has no place in our society,” McKnight’s lawyer Dan Gilleon told The [New York Daily] News. “Moe is going high by filing a lawsuit instead of acting in kind to this egregious act of racism.”

Again, this is where Moe The Monster’s claims go the way of Leigh Raven and Nikki Hearts‘ insidious (and failed) arguments. This isn’t the casual use of a racial epithet “in the workplace”, despite how Johnson’s shyster attorney tries to spin it. Play acting, in this case race play, is not for everyone. But in a free society it is and MUST BE acceptable for consenting adults to agree to speak any dialogue as long as the parties consent. Here, race play was the job — a job Moe had no problem with until months after his work in porn dried up. 

Furthermore, words are not violence. Whilst words can have different connotative meanings in different contexts, such alternative usages are not without limit. The terms “words” and “violence”, each have objective denotative definitions that are not subject to debate. Such standard definitions constitute the “rules” of language. I’d like to ask Mr. Gilleon if he’d like to play a game of cards with me where the rules are subjective or “living”.

Intersections, part one: Better Call Dan

Johnson’s attorney, Daniel Gilleon, also represents adult performer Nikki Benz in her high-profile (thanks to TMZ) sexual assault civil action against Brazzers, director Tony T. and male performer Ramon Novar concerning a rough sex scene from 2016.

Gillian’s work background, essentially a “Better Call Saul“-like personal injury practice in San Diego, Calif. (a 2 1/2 hour drive from Porn Valley) is comprised of a mish-mash of cases, including one covered in the colorful news report, “Teenager Sues Old Man Who Seduced Her“. Think of him as the poor man’s Michael Avenatti.

It appears Gilleon first got his nose under the adult industry tent with his representation of the Cheetah’s strip club in 2017. Cheetahs accused the San Diego Police Department of unfairly revoking its adult-entertainment license, but Gilleon lost that effort and Cheetah’s dropped the case.

His representation of dancers at Cheetah’s has been more successful.

As for his representation of Nikki Benz, in January 2017 director Tony T. and performer Ramon Nomar filed suit against her for defamation stemming from allegations Benz made via social media.

That May, Benz, through Gilleon, filed an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss the suit, and in July Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Delilah Lyons denied Benz’s motions, meaning the case against her will proceed.

And then the other day, this happened:

That’s false rape accuser Leigh Raven retweeting the spurious claims of washed up male talent Moe the Monster.

Put another way, it’s the “less-marginalized” co-signing and (in the context of her continued quest for support concerning her own claims) co-opting the outrage of the “more-marginalized”.

In the Leigh Raven case, African American performer Rico Strong had been hired to utter derogatory statements to a white woman in a performance setting, and now, via Twitter, a white woman co-signs offense at the statements and alleged actions of whites toward an African American in a performance setting.

Intersections, part two: The Politics of Oppression

“Intersectionality”, it has been said “calls for the recognition of multiple forms of oppression and exploitation and the need for solidarity.”

However, identity politics always ends up fighting over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, the color and class of the angels, and the “privilege” of the pin-maker.

Case in point, as referenced in the Socialist Review:

“What about our experience?” “What about class?” “How does that affect how women are oppressed?” Bell Hooks asked these questions in her book, Ain’t I a Woman? Her critique of white feminism would later be termed “intersectionality” – that the sexism experienced by a black woman is not the same as that experienced by a white woman, similarly with that of class.

. . . Black feminists had a point, but it also represented a shift from political definitions to identity, from defining yourself as “Marxist feminist” or “radical feminist” to “black feminist”.

A year ago, commentator Helen Pluckrose wrote,

Those of us committed to social justice are accustomed to being told that intersectional feminism with its focus on critical race theory, queer theory and anti-ableism is the key. Only intersectionality, we are assertively informed, really listens to the experiences and needs of women of color, LGBTs, disabled people and other marginalized groups.

The concept of intersectionality was introduced into academic theory and social justice activism in the late 1980s by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia Law School and founder of critical race theory. It gradually became the dominant social justice framework. Crenshaw opposed the mainstream liberalism of the time for its aim to look past categories of race, gender and sexuality, thereby levelling the playing field and enabling all people to succeed by their own abilities. She felt this neglected identity and identity politics which she argued to be personally and politically empowering.

The problem is, Intersectionality pre-supposes that “marginalized” individuals all have the same ideology. Put another way, it demands that individuals, by quirk of their birth, must subscribe too a particular (left wing) ideology, or else be heretics and traitors to their group/class.

As Pluckrose noted,

In reality, women of color, the LGBT and disabled people are to be found along the whole range of the political spectrum and subscribe to a vast array of ideas, whilst intersectionality is decidedly left-wing and based on a very specific ideology. . . .

An individual’s identity must be tied to their group categories and must be expressed in an intersectional way. People of color who transgress the boundaries of what someone of their race or ethnicity is supposed to think receive the most vitriol (as heretics always do). Black people considered not to espouse properly Black views which include far-leftism, unconditional support of Black Lives Matter and even specific sports teams are likely to be called “Uncle Toms” or even subjected to racial slurs including “coon” or “house nigger.”

The British liberal blogger, Tom Owolade, takes strong exception to this language,

“Because inherent in those terms is a sinister implication: ‘if you disagree with how I think a brown person should think, you’re still a nigger’ — a slave subordinate to the interests of white people. ‘If you disagree with me, you can’t be thinking for yourself’ is the message.”  

A further problem with intersection-centric jargon is illustrated in the tragic case of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

Clinton tweeted a mind map–style visualization of matters she alleges relate, directly and tangentially, to the Flint, Michigan water crisis.

As noted in The Guardian,

Nodes named “accountable leadership”, “good public schools in every ZIP code”, “investments in communities of color” and “jobs programs for unemployed youth” are connected by an apparently arbitrary network of lines.

The blog Naked Capitalism described the image as a “hairball”. It bears no real resemblance to Crenshaw’s idea of intersectionality, nor any of its vernacular activist interpretations.

What Clinton’s intersectional hairball does illustrate is the downside of having your activist jargon undergo such extreme semantic dilution: any idiot can pick it up and have a go.

Last year, Pink News wrote critically about the work of African American comedian, actor and social commentator Dave Chappelle.

Chappelle proceeded to argue that trans issues are only relevant to white people. . .

“The only reason all of us are talking about transgenders is because white men want to do it,” he told the crowd.

“If it was just blacks and Mexicans like, ‘Hey, y’all, we feel like girls inside,’ they’d be like, ‘Shut up, nigga, no one asked how you felt.’”

The writer also quoted Chappelle from the previous November, in a set at the New York club, The Cutting Room,

“They should not be having that conversation [about LGBT issues] in front of black people,” he said.

“You go ahead and feel something about your rights. But if you’re putting sexism and homophobia and transphobia in front of racism, you should be ashamed of yourself.”

Pink News concluded that, through his stand-up material, African American comedian Dave Chappelle “demonstrated that he has no understanding of intersectionality [by] lashing out at LGBT activists”.

The rigid left wing political orthodoxy that underlies modern LGBT activism made it impossible for the writer at Pink News to even consider the possibility that a rational person — and more importantly, a rational person of color — lile Chappelle might simply reject the intersectionality construct altogether.

Last month, Tamela J. Gordon penned a piece for Quartz about the hollow rhetoric and misguided ethics of intersectional feminism. It was after reading Angela Davis’s Women, Race, & Class that Gordon states she had “a change of heart” about intersectional feminism:

While white women were exercising their freedom, black women were fighting to stay alive on the plantation field. When black Americans pleaded with white feminists to support their efforts to gain the right for black men to vote, Susan B Anthony spoke against it. She, along with Elizabeth Stanton and a slew of other white feminists demanded that women be granted the right to vote before Blacks, despite the mass lynchings, race riots, and the KKK, which destroyed black communities simply because they had the voting power to do so. White feminists chose self-interest over the lives of black people. This fundamental decision was the beginning of what is now known as white feminism.

Ironically Crenshaw’s original work, was, in the words of Eleanor Robertson, “a clever juridical recapitulation of foundational ideas in black feminism. She took a basic observation – black women are subjected to racism by a predominantly white feminist movement, and sexism by male-dominated anti-racist organisations – and asked why this dynamic repeats itself in places such as anti-discrimination law and domestic violence services.”

The fact that Dave Chapelle should have to even employ the terminology he does to connect with an audience, to engage in satire by reluctantly (it would appear) engaging in “oppression olympics” posturing, reflects a poverty of language in modern activism.

It also illustrates the tribalistic, combative nature of identity politics — the very politics that were ushered in to mainstream Western culture by the political jockeying of first-wave feminism, and later codified by anti-white male (and anti-heterosexual sex) feminists steeped in cultural marxism.

Last summer, sex worker advocate and author Maggie McNeill took issue with a quotation by KQED’s Rae Alexandra:

Intersectional feminism has been working very hard the last few years to alter how sex workers are viewed by those who don’t work in the industry.  It has been remarkably effective in humanizing one of the most historically judged and marginalized groups in the world…

“Fuck you, Rae Alexandra,” Maggie wrote. “It isn’t “feminism”, which has changed the public perception of sex workers; it’s the hard work of sex workers ourselves, and we don’t appreciate fucking amateurs like you trying to steal credit for our achievements as you’ve been doing for the past century and a half.”

https://youtu.be/_tlIGAg1aiU

Train kept a-rolling

“If we could learn to look instead of gawking,
We’d see the horror in the heart of farce,
If only we could act instead of talking,
We wouldn’t always end up on our arse.
This was the thing that nearly had us mastered;
Don’t yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!
Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again.”

~  Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo U

Tamela Gordon wrote of her time as a proponent of intersectionality: “If intersectionality was a train, I was the conductor.”

Locomotive analogies are apt. Ultimately, for people like Leigh Raven and Moe the Monster, women, blacks, the disabled, and people of alternative sexualities are more akin to boxcar freight than ticket-holding passengers. As Leigh Raven and Moe the Monster Johnson illustrate, today’s ongoing social justice efforts only come down to a turf war over who’s the livestock and who’s the pig iron.