As an industry we tend to protect our own AFTER they are in but precious few look at that new and cute little girl looking to do her first porn and ask themselves am I about to harm this person by taking advantage of someone in a desperate situation.

Until porners can take some responsibility on the front end, the back end is always going to appear all bad to the rest of the world that doesnt understand the biz.

I also think that porn, like any other job, isn’t for everyone. Some girls (and guys) come into the industry and love it, they do well from it, and either ride it out to the finish or take the money and run. Others however come in and just don’t enjoy it. They started for the wrong reasons (often connected to extreme poverty, drug use, suitcase pimps, or a history of abuse) and will never be truly happy with what they are doing. Porn isn’t slavery, it’s their life choices that are enslaving them. Porn just happens to be perhaps the only publicly visible part of their internal strife, and as such, looks like what is holding them back. Reality is that they are often troubled people who need to find peace with themselves, not with porn.

The result? They “convert” to a religion that is suppose to make them feel better, give them a purpose, whatever – and everything to do with their past life was bad. The most public part again was the porn (not the drugs, the abusive relationships, or whatever evils were driving them). So porn is the evil thing, because they don’t have to face the rest of their evils in such a public way.

I love the comments on Wikipedia about Penny Flame. “She became sexually active at age 12. Although she practiced safe sex, she has explained that her sexual activity was a way for her to achieve emotional validation that she could not achieve with healthy relationships with others” and “She stayed in that industry because, as she explained, it allowed her to work only three days a week, and because it fueled the sexual addiction that underlined her disconnect from love. Having smoked marijuana daily since the age of 12 or 13, she eventually moved on to cocaine, which became intertwined with her sexual addictions.[9]”

That pretty much sums up many of the people who have wandered through the porn business. She is lucky only because she has found resolution to her problems by fixing herself, not by being blinded by religious zealots.

I do believe there are women in porn who are fooling themselves. These would be the women who have to be drunk or high to participate. Don’t talk to me about how much you love sex. Your actions speak louder than your words.

But I also believe there are some women who are there because they genuinely WANT to be there and because they enjoy sex. Shelly needs to get over herself, and stop speaking as if she’s this expert on all things female/porn related.