I went to the dentist the other day. Before she stuck her hand in my mouth to clean my teeth, my dental hygienist put on safety glasses and latex gloves. My dentist did the same thing before he probed my teeth. I’m guessing the incident rate of AIDS being passed from patients to dental hygienists or vice versa is pretty low. Yet health care workers who come into regular contact with saliva, blood, urine, feces and any other bodily fluids we can think of are required to wear latex and other protective equipment on the job.
I bring this up in light of a number of the comments I’ve read on your site and LIB – especially from porn defenders on LIB – over AIDS, sexually transmitted disease, condoms and porn in light of the latest scare. A couple of quick thoughts.
Are condoms a turnoff? As a consumer, hey, condoms in porn are a drag. Would I prefer not to see them? Sure. Are they a complete turnoff? Nah. I’d still like to look at beautiful naked women doing the nasty with a guy wearing a condom than to not look at beautiful naked women at all. But I think the argument that if you mandate condoms in porn, the industry will lose money only holds up if condoms are optional. If everyone is wearing condoms, it’s a level playing field. Yes, there will be kamikazees who choose to go underground. But are the Vivid, Digital Playground and Adam & Eve gals going to go underground when they can probably stay above ground with the majors? What you’ll get underground are second and third rate gals. I would rather watch Jenna Haze with a condom than a skank without.
Will the porn industry leave California and go some place else? Only if that some place else welcomes non-condom porn with open arms in order to attract the industry. Hey, I know the economy is tough, but please tell me the name of the governor who is going to campaign for re-election on the fact that he brought jobs to his state by allowing condom-less porn. Take Nevada, where prostitution is legal – and condoms are required. If porn companies flee California in numbers to another state, that state will simply do what California did. Heck, they’ll have a road map to do it.
The number of cases of AIDS is relatively small. I hear that. Is the argument then that it’s okay to have an unsafe work environment because the number of people who contract a potentially fatal illness is small? That’s like saying it’s okay to manufacture a car with a gas tank that can blow up following a rear end collision because it won’t happen very often and it won’t cost us that much to pay off the surviving family members. Oops. Ford already did that with the Pinto. Would a porn producer put his kid on a school bus that crossed an unmarked railroad crossing in a high rail traffic area to save the state the money on the sign because, hey, the train only hits the bus occasionally and most of the kids survive?
What’s the big deal with the clap, herpes and chlamydia anyway? You can cure it with anti-biotics. I don’t even know how to respond to that one.
Isn’t it a calculated risk? After all, stunt men do dangerous things all the time on Hollywood sets because people want to watch. This is true, but, as one of your commentators pointed out, if a stunt man is injured, someone pays. What’s more, stunt men take safety precautions before they do their stunts. The guy driving the car like a bat out of hell in the car chase scene is wearing a seat belt and other protective gear. He doesn’t drive unprotected because, hey, I’m a professional and how often do stunt men crash their cars. And, by the way, if a producer did not take proper precautions or insisted that a stunt man perform without a seat belt – or left it optional but only hired stunt men who would work without a safety belt – there would be hell to pay if there was an injury. Likewise, any hospital that insisted its lab techs work without latex gloves, or even left it optional, would pay dearly if one of the techs contracted a disease from handling bodily fluids. By the way, the stuntman analogy (it would be like refusing to issue movie permits because one stuntman got hurt) doesn’t hold up. When a stuntman gets hurt, he’s performed a specific stunt that was custom designed for that scene. Meanwhile, people get AIDS by doing the same thing over and over again. When a product or process fails repeatedly when its used as intended, government or business pulls that product from the market or makes the manufacturer do something different to make it safe. If stuntmen were repeatedly hurt when they wore a particular type of harness, you can be damn sure someone would halt the use of that harness until they figured out whether it was safe or not.
It’s the gays? I think I read the following on your site: “Gay sex constitutes a greater risk of HIV than any other behavior in our society. Period.”
I’ve read similar comments on other sites. Here’s my question: What constitutes gay sex? I’m a straight guy, so, my experience is limited, but I think gay men engage in the same sexual acts as heterosexual couples with one exception: There is no vagina. How is a porn actress giving six men blow jobs different from a gay man giving six men blow jobs? Are the sex acts in “Breed My Ass 23” riskier than Savanna Samson’s Anal Gang Bang (“Savanna exhorts them all to ‘fuck her in the ass until she can’t walk home.’ One six-man anal gang bang later, her face covered in cum ….” You get the idea)? The heightened risk from gay sex is that there is a greater prevalence of AIDS in the gay population than in the straight population. In other words, it’s Russian Roulette, but where a straight sex is like playing with one bullet in the chamber, unprotected gay sex is like playing with two or three bullets in the chamber. But, what’s really dangerous is unprotected gay sex. And given the prevalence of anal sex, DPs, cream pies, swallowing, squirting and the occasional double vaginal or double anal, you cannot argue that gay porn is all about the risky sex but not straight porn. Question, would it be legal to refuse to hire a gay male star with a clean test simply because he is gay? Especially when female porn stars escort on the side – a high risk act – and some use intravenous drugs.
I think I’ve read that workplace safety isn’t an issue because porn stars are all work-for-hire and not employees. I don’t know how they do things in Hollywood, but in my part of the country, where I’m a landlord, I have to have workers comp insurance for contract employees – carpenters, electricians, plumbers – who do occasional work for me unless they can show me that they have their own workers comp insurance.
Look. I understand that porn attracts outlaws with a libertarian streak. In that sense, the idea that it’s a calculated risk that people accept makes sense. And, people’s livelihoods are at risk in tough economy. I get that too. But, people’s health is also at risk and at the end of the day, it’s a workplace.
You’re right Mike. If porn doesn’t clean up its act, eventually, the authorities will clean it up for porn.
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[New Post] BT Brings Some Common Sense To The HIV Arg – via #twitoaster http://www.mikesouth.com/reader-mail/bt-…
[New Post] BT Brings Some Common Sense To The HIV Arg – via #twitoaster http://www.mikesouth.com/reader-mail/bt-…
personally i would rather watch a softcore film than a condom porn, havent watched a vivid flick in years either probably for the same reason.
porn is about fantasy, just about the opposite of going to the dentist.
and its a about freedom of speech, the freedom to express oneself in an artistic way.
if the California government want to take this right away i am sure there are many other worldwide places these films can be produced.