The porn industry supports safe sex—but not by choice.
Originally appeared at HyperVocal.
Having solved all of Los Angeles’ other problems, the L.A. City Council on Tuesday approved a city ordinance that will require porn actors to wear condoms during film shoots.
The 9-to-1 vote marks a crushing blow for porn studios and a major win for groups like the L.A.-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which has been lobbying for mandatory protection for years. “It’s a great day for the performers and safer sex in our society,” said Michael Weinstein, the group’s president, after the city council passed the ordinance in a near-unanimous vote.
The ordinance may have a positive effect on trying to stamp out HIV/AIDS in society, but many critics wonder whether this is an egregious example of government overreach. It’s not about performer health and safety,” Diane Duke of the lobbying group Free Speech Coalition told the Los Angeles Times, “it’s about government regulating what happens between consenting adults.”
Currently, the adult film industry employs a system of self-imposed testing standards — actors are required to be tested every 30 days for sexually transmitted diseases like HIV, and producers say that process is working well. “They say there has not been a confirmed case of HIV related directly to the porn industry since 2004,” according to the Associated Press.
Production in the adult film industry was temporarily shut down in August 2011 after one male performer tested positive for HIV, but that turned out to be a false alarm after a retest.
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Ultimately this will be a question of what the market wants. Porn producers say people shy away from buying films with condoms in them, so it’s possible the L.A. City Council just signed a death warrant for what’s left of an industry fighting to survive against amateur porn sites and piracy. Did L.A. just drive the multibillion-dollar porn industry out of its San Fernando Valley?
It’s unclear whether this will be the death blow for professional porn studios. Some people enjoy reality-based adult films, and condoms are likely to be a part of their real lives. But many, if not most, adult film viewers look at pornography as fantasy, a place where their innermost sexual desires play out without consequences like pregnancy and disease. The human libido is partially, or even mostly, biologically ingrained, which means that viewing “natural” sex may cause more arousal.
If this mandate causes that arousal to diminish (boner and ladyboner killers!), will people out there in fantasy land stop buying products from people who make a living off this and continue the trend towards watching free amateur material and pirated older stuff on tube sites?
And here’s the real question: What will this do to the time-honored money shot?
Then again, sexualized teenagers and many adults take their cues from what they see in porn films — does all of that not matter when it comes to preventing disease and saving lives?
Originally appeared at HyperVocal.
Slade Sohmer is co-founder and editor-in-chief of HyperVocal. Tweet him @hypervocal.
—Photo Alaskan Dude/Flickr
The government has a right to regulate this because porn is a business, however this is massive over regulation and OVER REACH! What next? Mandatory ergonomic keyboards? How about high end office chairs for the spine?
It is clear that the LA council considers “safety” to be a blank check.
“I disagree. The government isn’t telling “people” how to have sex, it’s telling a BUSINESS the rules it must follow for worker safety. Private individuals and their nonbusiness sexual practices are (and should be) unaffected by this ruling.” I’m completely with you in this response, Copyleft. I’ve been on porn sets and there’s nothing ‘intimate’ or ‘making love’ about it. Brian–I appreciate your views on liberating sex and treating porn actors as people, but at the end of the day, it’s business, it’s money, it’s packaged and sold to consumers. You get a call for a gig, you decide if… Read more »
I’d agree with you on that, Copyleft and Aya, except for the fact that many of the staunchest supporters of this condom mandate specifically state that one reason for supporting it is to “mentor’ the public that “safer sex” can be “sexy”…as if only showing visuals of happy people engaging in condomized sex will automatically increase condom usage. It’s similar to the belief of some of the more radical advocates for public transportation who call for tearing down freeways and replacing them with surface boulevards, in the hope that the increased congestion induces automobile drivers to switch over to alternative… Read more »
If it’s being promoted as a sex-education public service, then yes, I agree that’s an invalid goal. But that’s no reason to overturn the rule–it remains a workplace safety issue, and for that reason alone it should be maintained.
And here’s the real question: What will this do to the time-honored money shot? It won’t affect it, mostly. While I won’t say that condoms are used in the majority of porn I’ve see, it’s not all that unusual. It’s not like when I see one I think, “WTF? Is that guy wearing a…condom?!” When they do, the money shot is usually preserved by the guy pulling out and removing the condom for the shot. With editing, you often don’t see the condom even being removed, but even that isn’t unheard of. The money shot will be safe, so if… Read more »
Porn industry too mean to photoshop condoms out of picture?????
That’s a lot of photoshoping! P^)
Maybe someone could develop and filter and make a fortune – sort of anti-dom!
I’m sure it would still play havoc with skin tone, and you never know which other body parts would be affected! P^)
You have more chance of catching something in the general population than you do in the porn industry according to some data.
I think porn actors wearing condoms could make wearing condoms the norm, if anal and facials are anything to go by.
Sorry, but this legislation is a red herring that does nothing to solve the basic crisis of sex education and harm prevention. The idea that if we only show images of happy, healthy faces of people having joyful safe sex, then condoms will sprout overnight like kudzu on a prairie and all our STI issues will disappear, is about as idiotic as the idea that if we tore down every single freeway in the United States, then people would gravitate automatically towards public transportation. If free and low cost condom issuance hasn’t done much to promote condom usage, then how… Read more »
Porn industry is a part of entertainment industry and not education. The burden of the failure of our education system in informing the students about birds and bees cannot be placed on the shoulder of porn industry. Any legal measure that kills the “entertainment value” of its products will eventually wipe out the industry. Alternate methods of occupational safety must be explored.
As they say “The Show Must Go On.”
There are some really good cases be made on the “for” side of the debate, but I am still not sure. The thing that keeps standing out for me is that this is government telling people how they can and can’t have sex. And yes, governments have been doing that for a long time, but I don’t think that they have any business doing so. Consensual Sex is the most intimate, private, and powerful thing in many of our lives. It is also sacred and beautiful. I don’t think how we have sex is any of anyone else’s business. Not… Read more »
I disagree. The government isn’t telling “people” how to have sex, it’s telling a BUSINESS the rules it must follow for worker safety. Private individuals and their nonbusiness sexual practices are (and should be) unaffected by this ruling.
Well – if you look at the free market economic ideals that supposedly govern industry – if the market demanded Condomless Porn the industries would have relocated to venues where bare back was no issue – and production would run on! It’s interesting that even when porn does come from counties and venues within countries where there is no legal obligation or requirement to use Condoms, they still get used and the product comes with front banners supporting HIV prevention. It may be a civil rights issue in some places – and in that case there is a very strong… Read more »
OSHA exists for a reason–because industries left to regulate themselves generally do a piss-poor job of it.
Should porn actors have to wear condoms? Well, should construction workers have to wear hard hats?
The question is should construction workers be required to wear armor? Safety first, right??