There’s nothing unexpected about the AIDs outbreak currently ending careers in the San Fernando valley. When the greed of the biggest porn producers pressed against a short-lived condoms-only policy, cowardice won, the condoms came off, and a countdown to today’s disaster began.
The traditional arguments for condom-free porn no longer fly. No-one under 40 has lived in a world where unprotected sex was normal. We don’t wilt at the thought of a condom, or hark back to a halcyon past of spontaneous rutting. The idea male talent can’t perform reliably wearing condoms seems laughable in the face of a gay porn industry which requires them and the idea that testing removes the need for barrier protection has been proven false so many times I dare anyone to defend its efficacy.
So porn’s businessmen follow their own logic, making what sells and listening to customers over critics. Until porn consumers choose to reject condom-free material, it will remain the bulk or their production. Even as their profits dwindle, Darwinian marketing rules.
When the illness comes the industry turns to AIM, Adult Industry Medical, the clinic responsible for providing performers with clean test results and for notifying the industry when an unlucky individual falls through the massive holes in their net. AIM’s policy favors the business interests of the producers, most obviously because they are funded almost entirely thanks to their largesse. They once publicized every infected performer and sought the maximum attention. Today they respect the privacy HIV+ sex workers at the potential expense of their partners. The system is broken in ways perfectly suited to supporting the ongoing production of condom-free porn in the face of overwhelming evidence it costs lives. Porn’s newest intake were born into a world where AIDs is a problem you live with, not a death sentance. To a teenage starlet all this commotion can seem a little overblown. AIM doesn’t share it records with Los Angeles public health community, like the companies who fund it, they are comfortable interpreting everything but praise as attack.
It will get worse.
Female performers have careers so short they leave before they stop to think. Those who earn the power to protect themselves choose not to lobby for standards when doing so labels them as “difficult”. The independence and wealth the web can provide now bypasses those who appear on MySpace on their 18th birthday and sign contracts the following week. Agents and directors are powerful again. The future changed and it looks like 1990 now.
Male performers, at much lower risk of infection condom or no, compensate for comparatively low scene fees with volume. As advancing age makes chasing wood a problem, condoms, are more a threat to their car payments than a cause for good.
The owners are watch their sales decline and worry about piracy to the exclusion of all other thought. If sex doesn’t sell like it used to, how to sell safety? Scared to act alone, the few who worry stay silent.
Customers spend less and surf more. They don’t know where the clips come from or how they’re made. Retirement and death are invisible online. Traci Lords is still 19 and Jenna’s still a star. The hipsters who were going to change everything didn’t. Reluctant to look beyond a performers name to the system they work in, they haven’t realized the wave of independent production houses launched in the mid noughties has been subsumed by the establishment. They buy tattoos, youth and packaging in place of change.
Bullshit. Our recipe for disaster. Serves everyone. Bon appetit.
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It’s about time they all woke up and realised that the fantasy of non-condom sex is personal, and cannot be contained by the medical checks they all purportedly go through.
Back in the day of non-condoms, diseases -with the exception of herpes- were, by and large, treatable.
When will porn directors enter the 21st century? For 25 years that HIV has been around, they’ve been reluctant. Then there are porn consumers who are “upset” about having their fantasy ‘ruined.’ But it’s quite all right for performers to be at risk?
I didn’t think the industry could be so stupid.
I LOVE porn. I LOVE “bareback” sex. However, there’s no such thing as “safe sex”. Deep kissing, finger fucking, and all the obvious acts “CAN” contain the HIV. Any body fluid, any excretion, any secretion. I don’t think the porn industry will all of a sudden dry up, there will ALWAYS be “hungry” people that will perform ‘without a net’. They are the risk takers.
good article, but it isn’t an AIDs outbreak (or an AIDS outbreak, if you want to capitalize it properly) – it’s an HIV outbreak. an individual can be HIV+ for decades before developing the clinical disease, AIDS.
I’m afraid I think this is totally reactionary. Gary was correct when he pointed out that there’s no such thing as ’safe sex’ – but ‘porn industry’ sex is PROVEN to be much, much safer than the sex regular, normal people have in their personal lives (in LA, over the course of 1 year, almost 900 ‘civilians’ developed HIV, while no porn performers – who had much more sex with many more people with no protection – caught the disease.)
Gay porn is condom only – and every year many performers still catch HIV. Condoms fail 15% of the time, exposing performers to more risk than testing alone.
Condoms also increase friction, instances of yeast infections and all sorts of other things, making the ‘risk’ from the 15% of failures much, much worse.
No, the answer doesn’t lie in condoms. Perhaps testing should be increased to every two weeks, rather than 30 days, but whatever happens, I don’t think it’ll make it much safer than it is now. Condoms DEFINITELY won’t.
The fact is, making porn is a risky business. But less risky than fucking about with people you meet in a bar or on Craigslist – so maybe we should worry about our own sexual health rather than that of people who are capable of taking care of their own health.
AJ – You’re technically correct. Thanks for the pedantry
Champagne and Benzedrine – I beg to differ. Gay porn has a huge bareback market (Google it). As for condoms failing 15% of the time, I don’t know where you’ve heard that but it’s rubbish. Condoms, used correctly, are almost completely effective, despite what the anti-sex-ed crowd tries to say.
If condoms weren’t effective they wouldn’t protect people in relationships with HIV+ partners and they do, brilliantly. Condoms aren’t perfect but they’re the best answer we have and extremely reliable in wise hands.
“As for condoms failing 15% of the time, I don’t know where you’ve heard that but it’s rubbish.”
Hi Sam,
Actually, in ‘real life’ use scenarios, the failure rate is 18%. Certified fact. Google it.
15% was director Ernest Greene’s estimate, based on his experience in the porn business.
Champagne and Benzadrine – please stop talking shit. You Google it and you post the link to your ‘certified fact’ or stop being so hyperbolic. If condoms failed 20% of the time don’t you think more of us – who’ve used them for decades – would know about it?
Sam Sugar – I do not believe that Champagne and Benzadrine is hyperbolic in the least. You are the one exaggerating the end of days. The disaster did not arrive and you are probably disappointed. Testing should be more frequent. The best female performers demand tests 3 days prior to shooting and will gladly pay for tests themselves for performing partners. On site testing for movie shoots will likely come soon and then we will finally have a humane way of dealing with all of this instead of the hysteria about how some latex sheath will save us all.
Does it matter what the numbers are Sam Sugar or Champagne and Benzadrine? The fact is that the fine line between reality and fantasy isn’t so fine. I think it’s why I prefer to write about it. Perhaps I feel safer. I enjoy porn, but I always end up with a bad taste in my mouth – so to speak – knowing that even if the actors choose to do this – bareback or not – there is an element of exploitation. and I am no shrinking violet or bible thumper. It just is.
People are dying. It’s amazing to me that “only a few” deaths is supposed to be okay when those deaths are entirely preventable. Porn isn’t racing cars or piloting rockets. The danger is almost completely avoidable. To die as the result of an STD acquired on a porn shoot is insanely cruel. Boxers used to fight without gloves for the added excitement it brought to bouts too.
Are people dying, Sam? Last I heard, the story of the last “outbreak” was retracted by the LA Times, and subsequent investigation has lead to the contention that there is no “there” there:
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/17/local/me-porn-hiv17
To the best of my knowledge, the only confirmed cases were of somebody who was already HIV+ from outside the industry and was detected by AIM’s testing before they infected others. The others were a number of HIV+ gay performers that the gay side of the industry has long acknowledged having.
Have you heard differently?
@Iamcuriousblue – I’m skeptical of the “research” and self-reporting of an industry whose medical investigations are carried out by the self-same organization paid to carry out medical screenings. Unprotected sex with multiple partners is not only high risk, it’s required of people who want to work in porn. In effect the industry’s like a building site on which wearing a helmet or safety helmet loses you your job. Horrible. Condom use in porn is not a choice, and that results in every shoot having the risk of exposing performers to disease. It’s unacceptable.