Johnny Anglais, The Pornstar Teacher

The annoyingly handsome bugger on the right is Benedict Garrett. Benedict’s favourite book is To Kill A Mockingbird. He speaks five languages (including Hebrew, don’t you know), he’s 6ft 2, has green eyes, owns a cocker spaniel and he’s the Head of Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education at a pretty respectable-ish High School here in the UK. Well he was, until he was suspended by the management of his school when it emerged that he stripped for money and appeared in porn in his spare time, presumably when he should have been busy preparing class schedules and marking half-hearted essays about… I dunno actually. To Kill A Mocking Bird, I guess.

He was busted by his students who “stumbled” upon his website, according to this article in the Daily Mail. Since the chances of them finding his personal website by random googling are about four hundred trillion to one, I imagine he used a computer at school to check his site and didn’t clear his browsing history, or something along those lines. Maybe he saved it to his favourites and one of his pupils found it. I don’t know, but I think he must have been a little careless somehow, so in that sense he was the architect of his own destruction.

But only in that sense. You see, Bendict Garrett has been so hard done by that I can barely put into words my anger at the injustice of his case. I’m tempted to go outside and spit at someone just out of sheer exasperation that he got suspended. I want to know if I’m alone in this; am I overreacting here? Is it fair that a teacher should be suspended because they moonlight in the adult industry?

Let me put it another way: one of Benedict’s responsibilities was Sex Education. But who better to teach sex education than someone who HAS SEX PROFESSIONALLY? He’s the dream candidate for the role, surely. Imagine this analogy; if your kids were being taught Religious Education, you wouldn’t be upset of their teacher taught Sunday School on the side, or was a part-time priest or something. Just because his moonlighting involves sex, it’s immediately considered seedy and perverse. But it’s not, and I think Benedict’s suspension is not the result of sexual impropriety or sexual deviance; it’s nothing more than the result of a reactionary conservative bias by his superiors.

Ok, maybe that’s a bit poetic. But I’ll tell you this, it takes a LOT of confidence to strip and perform in porn, and I specifically remember my own sex ed teacher being very nervous and very insecure, which left me nervous and insecure about sex. It’s only recently that I’ve really been able to shake that nervousness, and I would have loved a confident sex education teacher. (So to speak.)

The main criticism of Benedict (or more accurately, of Johnny Anglais) is that he performed without a condom, and this might be construed is a bit irresponsible for a sex education teacher. I can kind of get on board with that argument I guess, but not entirely. You see, porn actors and actresses are amongst the cleanest, most sexually hygienic people out there. They have to be; their income depends on it. An STD can be the end of their career sometimes; if they’re identified as the cause of another crew member’s STD then other people will refuse to work with them. Gossip like that travels fast in the adult industry. And besides, if that’s the only real criticism Benedict’s superiors can level at him, then it’s hardly enough to warrant a suspension. If Benedict loses his job simply because he didn’t wear a condom when he was having sex, it would be so terribly unjust.

Role Models

You might counter that Benedict was suspended because he’s supposed to be a role model, and should behave as such. But I take issue with this on several counts. The most important issue I have with that is this: what he does in his personal life is not anyone else’s business. Not yours, not his bosses’, not even mine (unless I’m watching one of his films, in which case it IS my business). Sure he should be a role model, but only while he’s being paid to be one. At any other time, in his own time, he should be left alone to do as he pleases. (I would apply the same principle to all everyone, especially celebrities and footballers: they have no responsibility to be role models except when they’re performing or playing. Any expectation that they should behave themselves in their personal lives is one that we’ve projected onto them and isn’t inherent with the occupation. The problem isn’t with them, it’s because we’re too interested in their personal lives.)

Secondly, what he did isn’t that bad. Just because he worked in porn doesn’t make him less of a good person, or a less capable teacher, or less able to hold a position of responsibility, or even, less capable to work with kids – which I suspect is the real problem that the Daily Mail has with him. The truth is, I’m sure, that you can be very highly sexually active and still work safely with children. He’s not a sexual predator or an offender of any kind, and I actually think that a highly sexually active and sexually healthy person like Benedict is safer around kids than a sexually inactive, sexually immature person like, say, a priest…

Anyway, what are your thoughts on Benedict? Should part-time pornstars be allowed to work as educators? Am I way off the mark to offer him my full support? Let’s hear your thoughts.