Pornographers are aroused and growling over a new Los Angeles law that will require adult film actors to wear condoms in sex acts well known to be high-risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
The filmmakers call the new law "government overreach." They argue that monthly HIV tests should be sufficient to prevent the virus from slipping into the mix of fluids splashing about the set and unwittingly infecting an actor while on the job.
The Los Angeles Times reported that companies are threatening to move out of the city, taking with them as many as 20,000 jobs for actors, makeup artists, camera crews, caterers, and the abundance of talent and services that makes L.A. a magnet for movie makers of all sorts.
The Los Angeles City Council passed the law, which takes effect March 5, after reports of actors becoming infected with HIV while pursuing their line of work. Former adult film actor Derrick Burts, who tested HIV-positive in 2010 and was told he was infected by a fellow performer, was quoted in the Times as saying, "It's a broken system that they have in place. What performer wouldn't want to feel more safe on a work set?" Burts backs mandatory condoms.
Filmmakers argue that requiring actors to use condoms will hurt their sales. "The viewers out there don't want to see movies with condoms," Steven A. Hirsch of Vivid Entertainment told the newspaper.
Since the early AIDS years, HIV-prevention educators have argued that porn can play an important role in modeling and eroticizing safer sex -- or, to the contrary, reinforcing the idea that only "bare" sex is real sex.
The Times quoted Michael Weinstein, president of Los-Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, as saying, "The fact that porn sends out a message that the only type of sex that's hot is unsafe ... we think that's detrimental." AHF has lobbied the city since 2010 to require condoms in the adult movies made there.
The L.A. public health department in 2010 estimated that condoms and other protection are used in fewer than 20 percent of hardcore heterosexual pornography. The department also reported that adult film workers are 10 times more likely to be infected with an STD than a non-adult-film worker.
"Unlike Hollywood films where there is sex or violence that is simulated," Weinstein said in an email, "in porn, real actors are being infected with real STDs, and the audience knows it. Therefore, they are thinking that the hottest guys do it raw and only geeks use condoms."
In the early years of AIDS, gay pornographers who wanted to sell movies understood the influence that their products can have in shaping not only the sexual fantasies but the actual behavior of gay men. The late Chuck Holmes, founder and president of industry giant Falcon Studios, told me in a 1995 interview, "No responsible gay erotica producers would ever make a decision [not to use condoms]. They'd be drummed out of the business because the models wouldn't talk to them, the distributors wouldn't touch it."
Times have changed. By the middle of the past decade, an increasing number of gay erotica producers were not only making "bareback" movies, but they felt no responsibility whatsoever to their actors -- or their audience.
In a 2005 meeting in San Francisco, sponsored by the city's Gay Men's Community Initiative, a group of 70 men discussed sex, including porn videos. They spoke frankly. "Twink barebacking is reprehensible, using kids, paying them to risk their lives," said Titan Media vice president Keith Webb of the growing number of porn movies depicting unprotected anal intercourse. Such films "fetishize internal ejaculation," he said.
Several of the men pointed to Treasure Island Media's 2004 title Dawson's 20-Load Weekend as an example of irresponsible gay filmmaking for its celebration of what most rational people would deem suicidal behavior. The company's website boasts of a worldwide demand for the movie, tantalizing buyers to pony up $49 with promises of forbidden scenes of a "fresh young man" who "goes from being a barebacking newcomer to a true Power Cumdump as he takes on man after man after man."
Treasure Island cameraman Nick Stevens defended the movie in the forum. "Our movies are for models to have sex the way they want," he said. "Why should we not film that?"
Apparently Treasure Island Media -- like the Los Angeles filmmakers squealing about the new condom law -- saw nothing wrong with depicting, in the most graphic terms, what could well be the actual HIV infection of a man whose alleged craving for "cum" was obviously stronger than his lust for life. Maybe that explains the dark, foreboding music in the Dawson trailer.
With HIV and other potentially deadly STDs continuing to spread at a shocking rate among American gay and bisexual men, maybe it's time to reclaim Chuck Holmes' conviction that safe sex is hot sex -- and that endangering other men's lives for the sake of a fantasy has no place in the life of a truly proud gay man or in his erotic entertainment.
Follow John-Manuel Andriote on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JMAndriote
Many gay men have been replaced by straight men in gay for pay porn because the industry feels that most gay men are "infected" from their personal sex lives (ask the poster boy Jeremy Bilding).
The truth is that many porn performers escort and no one is monitoring that work. Education is the key. Regulating behavior never works. It always backfires. Nothing's changed since the age of prohibition.
It sounds to me like this is the camel's nose putting government back into the bedroom, something we've been fighting against for decades. Some people just love controls so much they don't see the risks of what they propose.
We let government regulate private workplaces due to smoking (something I hate) and now we have towns passing regulations saying you can't smoke in your own backyard. You can't smoke at work, but you can't go outside either.
I guarantee you that if they get these condom regulations that eventually they will go after people making home videos and posting them online.
HIV while no immediate death sentence is not this easily managable disease that some people think that it is. First is the cost of treatment and drugs. I doubt that any of these "actors" have a health plan. Second, are the side effects of drugs. Everything from upset stomachs, facial wasting, fatigue, and for some a resistance to the drugs. Go ask any HIV positive person about how this disease interupts the quality of their lives.
If you want to bareback that's your choice... lol Me and my boyfriend are monogamous and we still practice safe sex....
african americans are 30 times more likely than whites to be infected with gonorrhea. http://www.cdc.gov/stdconference/2000/media/AfAmericans2000.htm
outlaw sodomy? prohibit inter-racial relationships?
"prevention" should not be an excuse for undoing hard-fought victories that allow consenting adults to have (sexual) relationships with whomever they’d like, however they’d like. this condom law is just one small step…
and if exposure to bb porn makes one more likely to have bb sex, then exposure to porn makes one more likely to have sex, correct? why not outlaw porn altogether? why not advocate for abstinence only sex-ed? after all, studies have found a condom efficacy rate of only 80%.
http://www.medinstitute.org/public/92.cfm
fear + ignorance ≠ prevention
On the other hand, I also think that these are grown people and if they want to have sex without a condom, as much as I deplore the idea, I'll defend to my death their right to make that decision for themselves.
Unless, of course, they are told they won't work if they don't bare-back. So, around and around the debate goes in my own head, let alone how it shall go around and around when other heads are involved, say, on this forum.
I don't like a new law being imposed on other people. Mostly, because I would think OSHA would already have jurisdiction.
I think Ben Franklin said something about if legislators pass laws which they make sure do not pertain to them, that is THE indication of a tyranny. Or something like that.
I also feel that it is too simple to use the threat of death as an argument against sex, or portraying sex, without condoms. The fact is, by and large, HIV is very manageable. It is worse to receive a Diabetes diagnosis (according to my own doctor). So: what are we doing to prevent dangerous portrayals of risky diets? It is not that HIV is no big deal, it very much is, but the threat of death, while still a possibility, a real reality, is not the main concern anymore, at least not today (in most of the US). And if we are going to get serious about having a discussion about HIV among men who have sex with men, then we have to acknowledge this fact, and start there. Shouting about death actually prevents an effective prevention taking place because it is an out dated view.
We need to calm down and get real about what's actually happening here.
The authors write, " [Serosorting] offers some protection against HIV, but a large proportion of persons with newly diagnosed HIV report UAI (unprotected anal intercourse) with partners they believe to be HIV uninfected as their highest risk sexual behavior. We also observed what may be a decline in the protective efficacy of serosorting over time. Whether trying to increase serosorting is a good idea depends on what behavior it replaces. To the extent that men adopted it as an alternative to more consistent condom use, it is undesirable. Insofar as it replaces nonconcordant UAI, it should be encouraged."
That HIV "is not the main concern" for the more visible--white, upper-middle-class, urban, more privately insured than not--segment of gay America doesn't mean it isn't still a tremendous concern (certainly needs to be) for the many more working-class gay people, such as those who may be drawn to the porn industry and don't necessarily have great insurance policies to cover an "occupational injury" like HIV infection.
When I read stories of 18 year old gay men shooting bareback pornography before they've had their first opportunity to vote, I often wonder how much the "It Gets Better" message rings true. Young adults who escape from a childhood of bullying and bigotry,only to get by playing Russian Roulette for little pay and no health insurance doesn't seem like the American Dream to me.
Occupational safety standards exist for other dangerous professions (e.g. mining), so governmental intrusion seems reasonable, and frankly--if society has a compelling reason to proscribe prostitution, the fact that it permits the production hard-core pornography at all might be a gift.
As others have mentioned, it's also worth noting that performers' participation is voluntary, and none undertake it without an awareness of the risks, just as they do in any number of other public exhibitions entailing peril to life and limb.
It's with that notation that Andriote's sensationalistic comparison to the Coliseum breaks down: the performers are not slaves, and the appeal to the audience is not centered upon death or mayhem, any more than it is with other performances involving similar risks.
In any event, it's my understanding that domestic producers of today's bareback videos are generally of the low-budget variety, and to whatever extent there's a premium on those willing to perform unsheathed, work with the more mainstream operations - which are largely disdainful of unprotected sex - is almost always more lucrative.
As far as "stimulating the demand" goes, if porn producers have hit upon a formula for doing so, it's one that has eluded major film producers as long as their industry has existed.
As for the comparison to football and boxing...certainly they are also dangerous, but they aren't modeling behavior most people are going to practice in their intimate lives. And the injuries sustained don't involve one person's transmitting a deadly virus to another without that person's awareness. Remember, the porn actors are relying on the filmmakers to guarantee (as if they can) a safe workplace, the reason for the regular HIV tests, etc.
A great deal of porn, gay and straight, constitutes risky behaviour. The performers know what the risks are. If they don't they are idiots. They'r choosing it.
It is a government overreach, no different than the government telling women they can't have abortions because of the 'risks', as so many of the antiabortion people put it. No different than the government saying "you can't be homosexual, look at all of the risks."
Yes, we all pay for it when someone gets HIV, just like we all pay for it when irresponsible heterosexuals have babies they can't afford and are not prepared to nurture and support.