Truth about Porn

Killer Wench wrote: »

Again, another core difference - for me - is for whom the sacrifice is being made.

Yes, but is this not really what the big difference is? A moral one? That all this talk of exploitation, abuse and health just boils down to our own abstract perceptions of right and wrong, and really has very little to do with the porn actors themselves?

Nozzferrahttoo & The Corinthian,

I just want to be clear here - as I feel you're lumping me into the same category as those who despise all porn out of ideology - that I'm not referring to your mainstream run-of-the-mill porn (which I acknowledge IS filmed under better conditions and pay), I'm talking about the extreme 'gonzo' variety, which I believe isn't so healthy for young boys to grow up watching while they're just hitting puberty and yes, I do believe that many of the women who subject themselves to it aren't their by “choice”, or rather, as much choice as one exercises in becoming/remaining a prostitute. Other circumstances come into play, and these aren't usually the same circumstances that effect people who work at McDonalds.

The fact that there are SOME people in an industry that do not want to be in that industry is irrelevant when talking about the industry as a whole.

But I'm not writing off the industry as a whole, I'm just discussing one particular aspect of it, which seems to be the popular trend nowadays. The sad fact is that we'll never actually get enough sufficient data from all the girls who work in this area or those who attempted a career and were badly exploited or abused.

Many are probably too ashamed to go public and just want to forget the whole experience and move on with their lives. I mean, you can't look at the statistics for rape and think those are seriously accurate; lots of people never come forward! I just feel certain elements of the porn industry work the exact same way. Sure, lots of girls will go on record and state they love it, and I do believe them, but you can't argue that it's all well and good, since those poster girls have not been on every movie set and don't possess the first-hand experience or knowledge of what other girls have been put through.

That's all I wanted to point out in this thread.

There ARE other options for girls, both inside and outside the industry. Penetrative sex is not the only type they can do. There are some well paying websites out there who want nothing of the sort, and they are not even that hard to find. Without much effort at all I could find you a soft core website that pays well and is up there in the top 10000 most visited sites in the world… hence their ability to pay well.

I think you're forgetting that with the rise of amateur porn (You Porn, et al.) trying to get paid a decent sum to do porn just isn't what it used to be. The trend is towards more extreme forms and no condoms because, as one director put it, “condoms just kills the fantasy”. Did you think maybe there's massive competition for the 'better' variety of work? Your first inclination will be to say, “Well, they can leave” and you're correct, intellectually, but I would argue it's not always that straightforward. People do have issues, they make bad decisions, abuse drugs, etc. Not everyone yells at the drug addict to just quit. Sometimes they need 'help', other people have to intervene. But if we all went around thinking that drug addicts were happy doing what they did or were no worse than the kid at McDonalds what kind of society would we live in?

I'll concede that lots of other industries exploit people in very vulnerable positions who are down on their luck, or want to become rich and famous and desired, but you can't just conveniently bat away the moral bankruptcy of certain porn directors, heavy-handed male actors, and agents, simply because other industries employ people for cheap wages and long hours. Apples and oranges, no?

All the evidence we do have to go on is the testimony from a number of women who got out of the industry:

I didn’t want to feel the pain of penetration from an over average sized man, being told to freeze in a position until the cameraman was happy with his shots was very painful. I had peoples body fluids forced on my face or anywhere else the producer pleased and I had to accept it or else no pay. Sometimes you would get to a gig and the producer would change what the scene was supposed to be to something more intense and again if you didn’t like it, too bad, you did it or no pay. - Elizabeth Rollings

Guys punching you in the face. You have semen from many guys all over your face, in your eyes. You get ripped. Your insides can come out of you. It's never ending. - Jersey Jaxin

I did over 100 XXX hardcore movies where I was slapped, hit, choked and forced to do sex scenes I never agreed to. As I did more and more scenes I abused prescription pills which were given to me anytime I wanted by several doctors in the San Fernando Valley. I was given Vicodin, Xanax, Norcos, Prozac and Zoloft. - Michelle Avanti

I had bodily fluids all over my face that had to stay on my face for ten minutes. The abuse and degradation was rough. I sweated and was in deep pain. On top of the horrifying experience, my whole body ached, and I was irritable the whole day. The director didn't really care how I felt; he only wanted to finish the video. - Genevieve

They told me if had my AIDS test that I'd be safe. I arrived on the set with my test and did a hardcore scene with two men. Within that week I was very sick with a fever of 104 and blisters all over my mouth, throat and private area. I looked like a monster. The doctor told me I had the non-curable disease Genital Herpes. I wanted to die. - Roxy

I hung out with a lot of people in the adult industry, everybody from contract girls to gonzo actresses. Everybody has the same problems. Everybody is on drugs. It's an empty lifestyle trying to fill up a void. - Becca Brat

The truth is I let my lifestyle get the best of me. I hate life. I'm a mess. A disaster. I've attempted suicide many times. No one cares about a dead porn star or a stripper. - Neesa

My first scene was one of the worst experiences of my life. It was very scary. It was a very rough scene. My agent didn't let me know ahead of time... I did it and I was crying and they didn't stop. It was really violent. He was hitting me. It hurt. It scared me more than anything. They wouldn't stop. They just kept rolling. Drugs are huge. They're using Viagra. It's unnatural. The girls will be on Xanax and Vicodin. - Sierra Sinn

We should think about these issues right now, to change stuff around to make this a safer f**kin’ business. It isn’t a safe business, and I thought it was, and I would have not have done that scene with no condom with Darren James if it crossed my mind that those tests weren’t good and that I couldn’t trust him or the people he’s been with. I thought porn people were the cleanest people in the world, is what I thought.” - Lara Roxx, diagnosed with HIV in April, 2004 along with four other porn stars.

I found out 2 days later that I had caught gonorrhoea in my first scene! As quick as that the glamour of being a porn star was gone. In the five years I was shooting I caught Gonorrhoea and Chlamydia many times. Sometimes both at the same time about every 3-5 months. - Nadia Styles

As for myself, I ended up paying the price from working in the porn industry. In 2006, not even 9 months in, I caught a moderate form of dysplasia of the cervix (which is a form of HPV, a sexually transmitted disease) and later that day, I also found out I was pregnant. I had only 1 choice which was to abort the baby during my first month. It was extremely painful emotionally and physically. When it was all over, I cried my eyes out.- Tamra Toryn

My first movie I was treated very rough by 3 guys. They pounded on me, gagged me with their penises, and tossed me around like I was a ball! I was sore, hurting and could barely walk. My insides burned and hurt so badly. I could barely pee and to try to have a bowel movement was out of the question. I was hurting so bad from the physical abuse from these 3 male porn stars. - Alexa Milano

People in the porn industry are numb to real life and are like zombies walking around. The abuse that goes on in this industry is completely ridiculous. The way these young ladies are treated is totally sick and brainwashing. I left due to the trauma I experienced even though I was there only a short time. - Jessie Jewels

The problem is, is that after reading these testimonies, their videos are still out there and to the average onlooker, they have no idea of the reality of what conditions some of those movies were filmed under. They reason the girls must have enjoyed it, when the above testimony says otherwise.

And we'll never really know either when it comes to many of the gonzo videos out there. The next time someone watches a movie where a girl is vomiting up snot and bodily fluids because of the gag reflex and being thrown around like a stuffed sex toy by 5 guys, we'll never know whether she was really 'OK' with that or whether she was just going through the motions.

I'm not advocating that such gonzo porn be banned because I live in the real world. It's not something that's going to go away but don't try and argue that it's harmless on young boys growing up, or we should disregard any criticism because all industries exploit people. To that same degree?

Anyways, I've spent way too much time on this post. I'll concede that I'm not going to convince either of you from your intellectually superior positions because the time and effort that it takes to have these kind of online skirmishes with quoting and pasting answers just wouldn't be worth it (it's not for me because I have plenty of other things I could be doing with that time). Is there anything productive about arguing with strangers on the internet for days on end? Not for me.

Nevertheless, well met.

Waking-Dreams wrote: »

I'm talking about the extreme 'gonzo' variety, which I believe isn't so healthy for young boys to grow up watching while they're just hitting puberty and yes

OT, to begin with. Additionally, I actually think this is a very arguable point as sexism and misogyny has actually decreased in the West over the last few decades - so I would question the impact, if any, such pornography has.

I do believe that many of the women who subject themselves to it aren't their by “choice”, or rather, as much choice as one exercises in becoming/remaining a prostitute. Other circumstances come into play, and these aren't usually the same circumstances that effect people who work at McDonalds.

Assumption. Opinion. Supposition. Others do believe that evolution is a crock and the World is 6,000 years old, but that does not make it so.

In fairness, I do think that gonzo and other extreme forms of porn (e.g. bestiality, which is legal in a number of European countries, such as Hungary and Denmark) are both distasteful and, AFAIK, not anywhere as well regulated as other areas of that industry. I say AFAIK because I'm not in that industry and all I can judge from is anecdotal evidence that may or may not be accurate.

If so then it is the conditions that should be looked at, as well as the social effects of such pornography - however the latter is separate debate as this one really is centering upon the conditions of those working in the pornographic industry.

The sad fact is that we'll never actually get enough sufficient data from all the girls who work in this area or those who attempted a career and were badly exploited or abused.

There's actually no reason why an objective survey of the industry cannot be made in countries where it is legal. The main obstacles at present is that the findings on an objective one will be attacked by one side or the other based on moral or commercial motivations - that is if you can find someone to run an objective survey in the first place.

Many are probably too ashamed to go public and just want to forget the whole experience and move on with their lives.

This is the thing that I don't think some people seem to understand - being 'ashamed' of having participated in such an industry is not the 'fault' of that industry, but of the society that creates such standards.

Only a few decades ago, a woman would have been 'ashamed' of having lost her virginity before marriage, for example. There was nothing wrong with her having done so (from our moral perspective) and was only damned because of the sexual morality of her time.

This is not to say that in a few decades working in hard core pornography will be akin to being a lawyer (for a start, it'll probably be more ethical), but it could become largely acceptable - after all, not that long ago for many, pre-marital sex, homosexuality, 'living in sin' or having children out of wedlock were unthinkable aberrations of societal norms.

I mean, you can't look at the statistics for rape and think those are seriously accurate; lots of people never come forward!

Ergo we can just wildly speculate?

The problem with most public surveys nowadays, unfortunately, is that they are commissioned by pressure groups or ideologically motivated academics/politicians seeking data to validate a pre-existing assumption.

You did read the article that kicked off this thread, for example?

I just feel certain elements of the porn industry work the exact same way.

I just can't get past the fact that most of your arguments are prefaced with terms such as "I believe" or "I just feel".

All the evidence we do have to go on is the testimony from a number of women who got out of the industry

I do not want to dismiss such evidence, but such testimony has been challenged in the past as being false and for the sole purpose of socially exonerating the former performer from 'moral wrongdoing' because they were 'victims'. The original case was Linda Boreman (A.K.A. Linda Lovelace) who went on to become an anti-pornography campaigner, making numerous and ultimately unsubstantiated, allegations that - in fact the practice of turning on the industry once you left it became known as the Linda Syndrome.

In other cases, it is not even the performer who is responsible for the testimony, but the media in that they will actively manipulate interviews to achieve a specific 'angle' - a good example of this would be with Michelle Sinclair (A.K.A. Belladonna) who was part of an ABC Television documentary and subsequently felt that she was completely misrepresented by them.

This is not to say that there are not real abuses - Paul F. Little (A.K.A. Max Hardcore) appears to be a truly unpleasant piece of work, who is even shunned by most of the industry (including other 'gonzo' pornographers), and numerous former and current pornographic actresses have spoken out against him.

Personally, I think that if there are abuses, there is exploitation, then treat it in the same way as any other industry: Regulate it.

Anyways, I've spent way too much time on this post. I'll concede that I'm not going to convince either of you from your intellectually superior positions because the time and effort that it takes to have these kind of online skirmishes with quoting and pasting answers just wouldn't be worth it (it's not for me because I have plenty of other things I could be doing with that time). Is there anything productive about arguing with strangers on the internet for days on end? Not for me.

LOL. You're right, those grapes probably tasted bad anyway

Waking-Dreams wrote: »

I phrased it that way because I don't have any hard evidence to back my opinions up with. If I had of stated my opinions as fact you'd have pulled me up on that so please, enough with the pedantry.

The reason I raise this is that I'm also aware that you are aware that this is purely opinion (as opposed to some who genuinely cannot differentiate opinion from fact and seem to treat an opinion as some sort of hypothetical cat in a box). Faced with that knowledge, I'd probably test these opinions and/or return to first principles with what I can say is fact, and work from there.

I'm not really attacking you, per say, just wondering why you've not done the same thing as I would.

A lot of posters on this website speak from opinion, do you point that out every time too? I get it. I just thought it was worth the discussion.

Only the really annoying one's who seem to think that being entitled to an opinion means that they are entitled to having that opinion respected, no matter how dumb it is.

Indeed. And if there was a study done on the porn industry, depending on who was conducting it and what their motivations were, could we ever take such a thing seriously?

Fair point. I do think that you do get objective data out there, but you literally have to commission it as market research - the only axe to grind business has is making a profit, after all.

And I would be in full agreement for regulation though I fear we may never see such a thing.

I don't know and, in all honesty, I don't really care all that much. I think it comes down to social mores and how they will change. The more socially acceptable something becomes, the more it seems to be brought in line with the rest of society.

Notwithstanding that it's probably fair to assume everyone posting in this thread agrees that illegal pornography, (i.e. snuff films, child porn etc.), is dsigusting, and rightly illegal and damaging to society as a whole;

Can someone explain to me why there's even the remotest suggestion that women who willingly get into the porn industry are victims?

Because unless you're suggesting that women as a demographic are incapcble of making their own decisions and dealing the consequences...then what the hell are you suggesting?

(open question btw not singling anyone one just boiling it down to the essentials)

Also I should throw in another caveat; that certain kinds of "consent" are ONLY AVAILABLE in the western world, which is a seperate and much bigger issue.

Killer Wench wrote: »

Your questions go to the core of the feminist movement. On one side, you have those who believe that women who use their bodies are allowing themselves to become commodities valued by the sum of body parts. On the other side, you have those who believe that women have the ultimate right to choose whatever they wish with their bodies even if it may be against the moral standard shared by society.

Granted, but what confuses me is how people miss the hypocrisy inherent in asking these kinds of questions "on behalf" of women, whilst ignoring the fact that the issue is never raised where men are concerned, which reflects the double standard embedded in most gender issues, and which probably does more harm than good to feminism.

Wow, interesting topic. I haven't read it all, though, just the last page...

I have put this question to myself too: how a woman can actually want to have this job? Having no 0 point to start the analyse from, I mean no data, not any pieace of information for what I seaked, I made a hypothesis: I assumed they could have been molested, as children. So I deliberatly chosen a psychological approach to the problem. Why? Because I thought it can give me a more in-depth perspective onto things; even get me to the core of the problem.
So I've searched on the Internet and I've descovered a testimonial artical where women said that they were molested. There is even a blog of a woman that claims to be a prostitute and she said she became like that because of a rape. She blames the rape for her choose in life. After this, I read a book about Economics where was given the example of a woman who had a career in programming, but, after some changes in her life, she chose to become a professional hooker.
Of course I don'y know if:
-the testimony was true,
-the case of the raped prostitute was true,
-and the case of the switching-career woman was true.
But they can be true, based on probability, so weather or not their specific cases were actually true, there is a person out there in the world that can encompass their experiences. This is based on common-sense, based on probability .
So from the little data a gathered, I can only say that relying on psychology and seeing the prostitute career choice as a rule can only cover some cases of the spectrum. We can have empathy and understanding for people that were abused and later in life have chosen something bad for themselves; but I think everyone is fully responsable for their own acts, otherwise all criminals should be released, because, poor them, they had a bad childhood. By that, I don't try to diminish the impact of trauma, but, after all, we all can chose what we like.

I really don't like hardcore porn (even if I like a little bit of "nastiness") but to ascertain there's a woman-hating agenda behind it and that the women are coerced into working in the industry, is ludicrous imo. I saw a hardcore porn actress being interviewed and describing how she's beaten, strangled, urinated on, etc and people asked her if she had been sexually abused. She said she was never abused, just into really messed up stuff. And that's the thing: some people are really into "messed up" stuff, it's their ultimate fantasy - men and woman.

That's not to say I think the porn industry is completely free of misogyny and degradation - I certainly don't (and even if the actresses aren't being debased, the characters are depicted as being debased) but it's a huge industry and there is bound to be various dimensions to it.

vicecreamsundae wrote: »

just that watching lots of porn CAN affect people's ideas of what is normal sexual behaviour.

So can being an idiot, and no offense but your friends sound like idiots.

Yes, when I did my research I thought that a woman who choses to have a porn industry career it's not something very common. And yes I thought that if it wasn't that common, than I have to put it on a bad life experience. I say this because from what I've seen in life, women who became hookers (I will generally refear to sex industry, weather it includes hookers or porn actresses) came from poor, extremly poor families or were molested. So I thought it must be a reason.
Later I changed my perspective, I also agree that anyone can choose whatever. There are women who like sex and just want to do it in this friendly enviornment for sex . As simple as that.

As for the ethics, what do you mean by that: "and it certainly does not inform our moral position either way."?

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Thaedydal wrote: »

http://theyshootstars.com/

An inside snap shoot of porn valley in the usa.

Interesting read, I think the final line sums things up nicely,

"Ultimately, pornography is a slave to supply and demand. If Porn Valley is America’s dream factory, it bears keeping in mind that its dreams are all yours."

Well I just find it a bit peculiar if you choose to work in porn, from a woman point of view. Maybe it's the education women get or the society gets about how women should behave... That's why I assumed there are some hidden reasons. But now I guess I was wrong. Indeed, you'll find raped women in all industry; being raped, as a woman and working in the porn industry thus becomes irrelevant. But I guess if rape has to do with sex and porn industry has to do with sex also, then there is a bit of a link, though. Do you find the correlation acceptable, now, nozferatu'?

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