Porn Performers Offer Online ‘Training’ In Response to AB 2389

LOS ANGELES—A pending new bill in the California legislature wouild require porn performers to receive “training” and obtain a certificate showing that they have been “trained” in order to work in the adult industry. Now, a new website created and run by performers says it will offer that training online—free. The site, Performer.Training, was created in response to the state bill AB 2389, which in its original form would have required adult industry performers to be licensed, and even fingerprinted in addition to passing a training course.  The fingerprinting and licensing requirements have since been dropped, in a new, amended version of the legislation. But the training requirement remains. The bill requires that performers be trained in “reporting workplace injuries, sexual harassment, and sex trafficking,” during a course that must last at least two hours, according to Reason.com.   The bill would also require performers to pay for the training course out of their own pockets, a problem that information on the site says it will solve, because the online course will be offered “100% free.” “After much back and forth with those working on the bill, we learned that their goal (or so they say) is to educate and inform those in our industry of their rights, and about health and safety issues,” the site says. “If in fact that is true and this bill is just about education, then we're happy to announce that a team of industry professionals has been working on this very issue since 2018.” The site says it was put together “over time” by “adult industry professionals, and will not “cost the taxpayers of the state of California more than a million dollars to put together.” The adult industry advocacy group Free Speech Coalition said it has been working with the bill’s co-sponsor, Assemblymember Cristina Garcia, to “remove stigmatizing language that positions adult performers as victims rather than creators,” and “shift the focus of the bill so that compliance remains the responsibility of employers, not workers.” FSC also said that it aimed to create industry-specific guidelines that may differ from other industries, “such as sexual harassment training that prohibits sex in the workplace.”