Apparently doing porn makes a person undeserving of respect.

At least, that’s the message I took from the recent ruling by the California Commission on Professional Competence regarding former middle school science teacher Stacie Halas.

Halas was fired from her job after school officials discovered that she appeared in pornographic films during an eight-month period from 2005-2006. 

She recently lost her appeal to the Commission and will not be getting her job back because, according to the panel, “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.”

It’s the “respected colleague” part that really gets me. 

Last time I checked, all people are deserving of respect unless they’ve done something really awful.

To me, doing porn doesn’t qualify as really awful because it doesn’t hurt anyone, it’s not inherently damaging to society and whatever a person wants to do with their own body is their choice and their business.

Someone should remind the Commission that nearly everybody has sex.

I fail to understand how having sex on camera or for money makes someone any less deserving of respect than someone who does the exact same thing in private.

The Commission went on to say that her past was “incompatible with her responsibilities as a role model for students.”

To me a role model teacher is someone who is competent, qualified, caring and helpful in the classroom.

What Halas does or has done in her private life, provided it’s not anything that falls under the category of “really awful” as I’ve previously defined it, is nobody’s business but her own and has absolutely no bearing on her ability to be a good teacher.

My heart goes out to this woman.

She says that she only started doing porn because of financial problems when her boyfriend abandoned her.

She was also never teaching and doing porn at the same time, and used a fake porn name.

She claims to be deeply embarrassed by her past, although I don’t think she has any reason to be; we’ve all got to make a living somehow.

The logic behind the Commission’s ruling was apparently that, due to the continued availability of her pornographic films on the Internet, Halas would always be a distraction in the classroom.

To this I say that parents need to get over the fact that the Internet exists, kids know how to use it and porn is everywhere on it.

Halas’s only responsibility regarding the media her students consume is to make sure they aren’t watching porn in the classroom. After that, it’s up to the parents.

If the parents can’t stop their kids from finding and watching Halas’s videos, that is not her fault, and the argument that she would be a distraction in the classroom is flimsy at best.

If kids were taught that having sex, on camera or not, doesn’t make a person any better or worse than any other person, there would be no cause for distraction, because Halas’s students would still respect her authority in the classroom.

If male students were taught that a woman who is openly sexual can still be intelligent and deserving of respect, and that objectifying women is wrong, there wouldn’t be a problem.

After rumours of Halas’s past surfaced at the school, profanity was etched on her classroom window.

I think school officials should be less concerned with Halas’s distant past and more concerned with teaching their students that bullying in all its forms is wrong.

I wish schools were also more concerned with providing non-judgmental sexual education so that students wouldn’t get the false impression that sex is dirty or wrong, and that women who have it and enjoy it don’t deserve respect.

Really, that’s what this is all about.

Society has some truly messed up ideas about sex and gender, including the idea that women who are sexual can’t also be intelligent, professional and effective work colleagues.

The media coverage of this story has been abhorrent. 

Many media outlets have gratuitously included numerous photos, screen captures and even videos from Halas’s brief porn stint in their reports, and have widely publicized her porn pseudonym, thus making it impossible for her to separate herself from her past and move on, which is clearly what she wants to do.

She is a teacher by profession and her past does not define her, but the message the media, her former employers and the Commission are sending is that she doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously as a professional, only sensationalized as a porn star.

Every single woman should be offended by this, because when these people say that Stacie Halas, as a sexual woman who has made independent choices about what she wants to do with her own body, doesn’t deserve respect, they are really saying that of all sexual, independent women.

Katerina Tefft is a fourth-year honours politics student at the University of Winnipeg.

Published in Volume 67, Number 18 of The Uniter (January 30, 2013)