Wednesday 11 November 2015

Bear Grylls, pornography and Chyna's Hall Of Fame ring


(I was on a certain amount of medication when I wrote this last night but I think there's the ghost of a point here.)

It seems that Bear Grylls has announced his first gay porn role...
Now, personally, I don't believe we should think less of him for this. He's a knowledgeable and talented man, informative and articulate. There are people in this world alive because of his (non-sex industry work). However, there's this terrible and totalising stigma attached to “oh, this person did porn once” or “they posed nude once” or “they're a former sex worker” and it is utterly mad.

Think about it: there are basically two options here concerning sex work. Either the person did it by their own free choice, in which case you and I have no right to judge that. Their body, their choice, that's a really central tenet of how modern society works (or should be). Option two is that the person was in some way exploited, in which case attaching stigma to it is morally revolting victim blaming.

So I guess what I'm really saying is PUT CHYNA IN THE WWE HALL OF FAME, YOU COWARDLY BASTARDS!
Yeah, she's done some porn. You know what she also did? First (of only two) women to take part in the Royal Rumble; first and only woman to win the Intercontinental Championship; first female bodyguard character in the WWE (WWF as it was then); she was a bodybuilder in the Women's Division during an era when fake tits and blonde hair were basically the uniform, making her just as much a breath of fresh air as Daniel Bryan or Mick Foley; she was part of one of the Attitude Era's best stables in D-Generation X.

And she's not in the Hall Of Fame because she had sex on camera?

Now, I like Mean Gene Okerlund as much as the next man but if an announcer gets into the Hall Of Fame then one of the most transformative figures in women's wrestling deserves her place? 

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