Source: Letters to the Editor
By: Sabrina Deep
Opinion piece by Sabrina Deep
Imposing Condoms is not the Solution! If you don’t know what we are talking about, here, this is a quick recap: A few days ago an adult performer was reported to have tested HIV positive and the industry wisely started a self-imposed moratorium on shooting new material until a full investigation is conducted in order to find out who are all the performers involved in the case and, in case, quarantine them.
Here comes the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), a global organization providing cutting-edge medicine and advocacy to over 100,000 people in 22 countries, which raises concerns about the adult industry and calls for imposing the mandatory use of condoms in all the shootings. Although I’m not against the use of condoms at all and as an adult performer myself I aim to reach 100% of safety in my working environment, let me explain you why I believe that the AHF is moved by political reasons rather than by safety concerns.
Yes, the AHF battle against bareback sex in the adult industry looks to me just like a plain and straight attack against porn rather than a sincere attempt to protect the adult performers’ safety.
Let’s see why:
They want to impose (a word very much appreciated by politicians) the use of condoms because, they claim, it is the only and most effective method to prevent cases like the above one in the adult industry. Like the politicians love to do, they just tell you their side of the story, omitting a series of important facts.
When you impose something, you create room for the law breakers and, since here we are talking about health, the results of breaking the law can be much worse than those produced by the actual system. We will have unscrupulous people offering more money to desperate and silly performers to perform without a condom and at that point current tests will become an option as well in those law breaking situations.
According to several reputable studies, (i.e., R. A. Hatcher, Contraceptive Technology, 1998, p. 329), condoms break on average two percent of the time during intercourse or withdrawal and the percentage of a condom slipping during intercourse is even bigger. These percentages rise significantly with anal intercourse. They rise even more when a vaginal or anal intercourse follow a fellatio.
You might object that a mandatory test and a mandatory condom used together would lower the risk significantly and it is a good objection except for the fact that if you seriously impose the two things together, then you must also impose a ban, among others, to the following:
– Fingering (or only with condoms? With gloves?)
– cunnilingus (please don’t even think about a solution…)
– cumshots
– tit sucking
Making shooting porn practically impossible, except if we are all dressed in latex. And that’s exactly my point: do you want to protect the performers’ safety or do you want to shut the adult industry down?
Because if it’s the health of performers that you have in mind, there are other ways than imposing the use of condoms and they even don’t exclude a progressive increment in the self-induced use of condoms by adult performers.
The AHF itself knows the way so well that it even suggests it in his polemic and political statements of these days, but the problem is that with this solution the adult industry could continue to exist and then someone’s dream to shut it down would remain just a dream and therefore AHF prefer to scream against the lack of use of condoms.
So what is the most obvious, the most democratic, the most attentive to the interests of an industry which moves billions of dollars of Taxed revenue solution? Don’t laugh: It’s an HIV test!
Two rapid tests take 40 minutes and they are sufficient to determine if someone is positive as claimed by AHF here.
So, why the AHF does not propose an additional HIV test on the set, performed and checked by professional and trained paramedics, rather than aiming at imposing the use of condoms? Rapid tests exist, they are cheap, they are affective and reliable and special arrangements and deals could be set with the adult industry to adopt such a system.
A test on site, together with the existing test system would keep bogus tests and criminal performers away from the sets, it would lower the risk of contagion significantly and it would allow the adult industry to survive. Of course without excluding a sensible campaign towards a not imposed use of condoms which alone is simply a false solution to the problem.
The problem is there, it exists and nobody denies it. We work in this industry and we care for our safety equally and more than AHF does, but instrumental campaigns against our industry will not fix the problem, ever. And dear people at the AHF: these days campaign against our industry smells instrumental and political to me; your call to impose condoms is superficial and it is not backed by anything but a mere personal view. You clearly didn’t do your homework about our industry, you didn’t interview their workers, you didn’t analyze the stats, you didn’t try to understand the problem and yet you want to impose a solution to something you don’t know anything about.
I want to conclude with a couple of numbers: since 2004 about 120,000 adult movies have been shot in the porn valley, without counting the hundreds of thousands of Internet scenes shot; well, since 2004 there have been 4 overt HIV cases in the industry.
According to the Department of Health of the Government of United States, the state of New York has the bigger number of diagnosed-with-HIV cases: California is 2nd and Florida 3rd and they are followed very close by prude Texas (where if you shoot porn they shoot you) in 4th position; consider that California counts 50% more inhabitants than Texas and 60% more than New York.
Clearly the claim that the adult industry is responsible for AIDS outbreaks is false. I would warmly invite the people at the AHF to invest some money in sensibilizing prude parents and anti-porn campaigners to educate their kids about the risk of contracting AIDS when after a night out binge-drinking they screw the first stranger who propose to them at 3 in the morning.
Can you try for once to forget the immense amount of money that you get from influential lobbies and stop being political and rather sit down with us and have a pro-positive and constructive discussion, people at the AHF? Are you free enough to stick to your mission of Aiding and leave the mission of judging and destroying to politicians and lobbies?
Sabrina Deep
