Should porn actors wear mandatory personal protective equipment?

[Siocnarf]

We need to talk about contradictions... I mean contraception.

There is a proposed law in California that would force actors to wear personal protective equipment (that's actually how they call it in the law) during vaginal and anal intercourse.
http://www.laweekly.com/informer/2014/04/03/porns-mandatory-condom-bill-passes-key-hurdle

This is another example of the double standards and phony excuses always used to restrict anything from swinger's club to brothels. It's even more funny when you consider that the same country promotes abstinence-only sex ''education'' to ''teach'' kids that condoms are useless at protecting against STD.

Actors have twice-monthly medical testing and have a much lower rate of disease compared to the population. There is a lot more civilians having unprotected sex than actors. Those people never get tested and are not subject to any restrictions. It would be like saying that you only have to wear a seat belt if you are a professional driver, while regular people who drive like morons are not required to. (Note that mandatory condom for hobbying is a completely different matter, because the client cannot be rigorously tested and controlled)

I think using condoms for porn could be encouraged as it is for any form of non-monogamous sex, but making it mandatory for porn is questionable.

What do you think? And for that matter do condoms in porn turn you off? Personally, I actually like to see them. Because I always have sex with condom myself, it makes the fantasy more realistic to me. Seeing a woman eat an unprotected banana is erotic, but seeing a sexy sex ed teacher put a condom on a banana is even more exciting.

 

[oobe]

I think there are two aspects to this. First, as you note, there are more morons in the civilian population having unprotected sex and not being tested. But seeing condoms in porn may actually help promote their use among porn-watchers, and consequently reduce the rates of infection.
Second, from the point of view of the industry workers, taking collective measures to improve safety just makes sense. To reuse your reasoning, there's no law forcing you to use safety equipment when you do renovations, but construction workers must use PPE, even if it may in some cases slow down work, and consequetly reduce the profits for the boss. One accident is one too many, so it just makes sense that porn performers protect themselves as much as possible, just as it happens in every other industry.
Personaly I don't care, I only watch eastern-european porn!

 

[Siocnarf]

It's true about construction; but I think it's different. If you don't wear PPE while working on your house you can only blame yourself if you get hurt. But if you are careless and somebody else gets hurt because of that, you can be sued. The same is not true for STD. Being irresponsible always increase the risk for others as well as you. And you won't get in legal trouble for infecting the girl you meet at a bar unless you already know you have an STD.

Seeing more condoms in porn could raise awareness a little, but porn is not a documentary. Should the Dukes of Hazzard be required to stress more the importance of safe driving? Sex Education and family is where people should learn about condoms. What bothers me is not the fact that they (allegedly) want to impose safer sex practice in porn, but that they don't teach kid proper safe sex. There is no evidence that points to a health problem in porn, but there are thousands of teen pregnancies and infections every year that are not being addressed.

To paraphrase someone I read: ''while they are screaming fire in a house where there may or may not be a small fire, there are millions of kids left alone to play with matches.''

 

[blkone]

@Sidney Laflamme

Yup. Sex is great, we'd all love to have sex without any barriers (STD's and Pregnancies) but the reality is that our medicine has not advanced to that point yet. I also agree with Oobe's comment on porn/fiction, humans tend to mimic fiction ... seeing a lot of "personal protective equipment" influences the viewers to use their own.

 

[Siocnarf]

Hi Sidney. From what I heard, these statistic are skewed, because the actors in those test already suspected they had an infection. So, the infection rate is not representative. Higher than prostitutes? They don't have a clue how many prostitutes there are and there's no way to tell what the actual infection rate is among prostitutes. But we do know how many teens there are and their rate of STD and unwanted pregnancy is stratospheric compared to porn actors. Government are always using misleading or bogus data to support their position (the Swedish government is a fine example). Policiy should be based on peer-reviewer scientific research, not on bogus ''studies'' and fear.

Porn is a job, but it's an expression form just like any other type of film. It should be treated as any potentially dangerous scene in any movie set. They should be encouraged to wear condoms as much as possible, but if people want to make a scene without a condom they should be able to do it provided they take other safety measures. If you ride a motorcycle you have to wear a helmet, but if an actor has to play a scene without a helmet, they can do it. When actors have to do something dangerous they have other safety measures, in the case of porn mandatory regular testing. Now, I am not an expert and I don't know if those testing are really sufficient, but I bet the government doesn't know either and doesn't care. They want to make that law because they have ''concerns'', just the same as our government wants you to stop working because people have ''concerns'' about your safety. That's the problem with the population: they think ''it would be a good idea if people behaved more like that'' and when the government says ''people should be forced to do that'' they don't see the difference.

Johnhenrygalt, I don't think there is much of a large porn industry in Kansas compared to California. They are more likely to arrest people for obscenity because they sell porn DVD than to pass laws about how porn is made. Still, the common factor of all these governments is that they are scared of sex and try to restrict it as much as possible. Education is a matter of state, but health is also a federal matter and abstinence-only sex education has been promoted by the federal government.

 

[Merlot]

Hello all,

We need to talk about contradictions... I mean contraception.

There is a proposed law in California that would force actors to wear personal protective equipment (that's actually how they call it in the law) during vaginal and anal intercourse.

100% SAFE SEX CONTRACEPTION

...same country promotes abstinence-only sex ''education'' to ''teach'' kids that condoms are useless at protecting against STD.

This is not true as written. Some political and religious conservatives want only this, more moderate and liberal persuasions want a more real-world education.

There is a lot more civilians having unprotected sex than actors. Those people never get tested and are not subject to any restrictions.

No one outside the porn industry gets tested????? :noidea:

Well, again the statement is misleading. There are 330 million people in the U.S. and obviously much less than 1% are porn-stars so you're right on raw numbers. But it's still questionable on percentages of each group. Do we really think porn-stars are all perfectly careful. The choice of that life alone speaks to an open view of sexual behavior. Yes, porn-stars get tested frequently, but how many have tested positive, been booted out of the industry for violations, or are dead because of their lifestyle beyond the strictly controlled environment?

http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2013/09/fifth-porn-star-tests-hiv-positive-names-revealed/

HIV Scare: A Fifth Porn Star Tests Positive, Names Revealed At Industry Crisis Talks

Posted on Sep 18, 2013 @ 16:00PM | By Amber Ryland - News Editor

The HIV scare in the porn industry continues to grow, with a fifth performer now testing positive for the deadly virus — and the name of the fifth infected actor was revealed on Wednesday during industry crisis talks, RadarOnline.com is reporting.

According to the porn blog MikeSouth.com, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation held a teleconference in which Cameron Bay and Rod Daily, who openly revealed they had contracted HIV, were on the call with the fifth infected porn star, Patrick Stone, along with previously HIV-positive porn actors Derrick Burts and Darren James.

Stone has worked in the porn industry for more than three years and believes his test results may be false-positive.

“It’s looking like a false-positive, but we’re still not 100 percent sure about that,” he said.

I totally agree there is a lot of bad information being put out for purposes that are not centered on good quality health facts...ie...politically and religiously motivated ignorance or deliberate avoidance. But this wholesale branding of unsafe civilians versus safe porn-stars is highly debatable. I think this latter view is more like a feel good excuse than reality. The average person does not bang hundreds or thousands of people in an industry where there is a mentality of open sexual freedom...all three words of which may be open to varying individual interpretation/meaning, some of which is going to be more risky than industry standards require as proven by the voilations and casualties.

There have been long been STD issues in porn, some highly publicized, most not.

I'm sure such a highly profitable industry does whatever it can to avoid publicizing violations where it can.

Good luck,

Merlot

 

[Siocnarf]

Hi Merlot, now that you point it out it's true some of my statement have not been written in a perfectly accurate way.

My problem is that I just don't know what is the real position of actors on this. Some actors testified in favor and the industry itself is against, but I don't know what's the genuine opinion of the people who matter. If we had a majority of actors being in conflict with producers and asking the gov to make laws to better protect them, then I would be all for it.

I believe that when safety rules are important, they should apply to everyone. Ideally they could make it mandatory for everyone to use a condom for non-monogamous sex.That would be impossible to enforce to any extent, but also most people would feel that the government is trespassing on their private lie.

 

[master_bates]

I find rubbers during scenes a turn-off

 

[Halloween Mike]

Condoms in porn... no thanks, that would be like playing xbox with no achievements these days... What i mean is back then we played games without them and it was all fine. Today playing a game without them would be weird and lack something. I feel the same for condom in porn... sometimes i watch 90s scenes of classic girls like Jenna Jameson, Asia Carrera and others and the rubber annoys me a lot. Its a standard now to NOT have them. They just need to be tested and take all others way of protection...

But in any case, it seem today's porn is sadly oversatured with the same actors all the time, i am sick tired of seeing Keiran Lee in every porn... maybe bringing back the rubber would help have a bigger pannel of male actors? I don't know... Maybe its just the volume of scenes brazzers and co does that limit the way they can use male actors... I know he got a big dick and probably stay hard for long and blablabla but im tired of seeing him fuck every hot girls in porn, i would rather take more average joes but that would vary.

Maybe it has to do with "circonsition" (sorry i don't know the english world for it) it seem those are rare in porn, and its been a while in hospital they don't do that anymore(never understood why they did... im glad i got my penis skin personally) so maybe they can't get too much new guys that don't have the skin... I dunno... just saying ... lol

 

[Siocnarf]

As technology improves, maybe soon they will have almost invisible condoms + CGI to erase it in post production.

I'm also tired of seeing always the same few guys. People say porn treats woman like objects, but usually it's more the man who is just an accessory or furniture.

 

[Halloween Mike]

yeah well i do hope stuff don't start to be faked tough... i don't want to see a CGI facial cumshot