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| January 24th, 2000 |
Russian Roulette with All the Chambers Full: An Open Letter to
The Adult Industry
Heather Corinna and Hanne Blank |
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With a recent flurry of adult film actors testing positive for
HIV who have performed and filmed unsafe sex both before and after
their positive test results, we're seeing that the purportedly
kinder, gentler, more caring and health-conscious adult industry
is just so much window-dressing.
In the wake of AIDS and the public awareness of the need for safer
sex, much of the industry has promoted itself as being concerned
with these issues... a move which was shrewdly calculated to help
balance the adult industry's reputation as a relentlessly exploitive
"fuck 'em, slap 'em, send 'em home" machine. The way it's played
out in reality has proven to be much different. It's pretty clear
that the Emperor -- aside from the new sign around his neck that
says "Enlightened Leader" -- wears no clothes. And what's more,
he's not even wearing a condom.
Ever driven by the almighty dollar, and quick to point fingers
at everyone else in a circle-jerk of blame that runs from one
actor, director or producer to the other, leading names in the
porn industry are still scurrying around trying to pin the rap
on absolutely ANYONE else... when in fact, it lies with the industry
as a whole. Some industry insiders have even dared to point the
finger at AIM, the volunteer, not-for-profit STD/HIV testing center
for adult entertainers. But the truth of the matter is that the
blame for STD and HIV transmission within the adult industry lies
where it always does: with any and every individual who fails
to insist on safer sex practices whenever people are engaging
in sexual contact.
In several articles, some members of the industry are quoted as
comparing condom use to censorship. In the LA Weekly this week,
responding to porn actor Tony Montana's recent HIV-positive status,
Michael Kovacs of Leisure Time Entertainment says that "condoms
in porn are a stark dose of reality in a business that thrives
on selling fantasies." "The fact is that most people don’t even
use condoms in their personal lives," he says, "'If you ask a
lot of performers, they don’t want to wear them either. And the
Europeans don’t want to hear it at all. So the goal has to be
to stay as safe as you can under the business conditions you have
to exist in."
Lest he be the next to have fingers pointed in his direction,
he is merely echoing the same sentiment most producers have. This
stance is as ignorant as it is true. As a provider of sexual fantasy
fodder, it is safe for producers to assume that condom use in
daily life may well be less prevalent because the fantasy material
many consume does not include condom use. But the truth of the
matter is that when you create the fantasies, you are in an unique
position to change people's fantasies, too. A bully pulpit is
useful for more than just perpetuating the status quo, particularly
when the status quo ends up killing people needlessly.
We propose that the adult film industry do something that we in
sex-positive erotica have been doing for quite some time: simply
insist that safer sex practices be used in any scene or images
made to reflect a period after 1980, and that in instances of
scenes which reflect earlier periods, they get wise to their own
ability as filmmakers and use the skills the film industry as
a whole has developed to carefully conceal condoms and other safer-sex
implements in use. We are in agreement with the wonderful Sharon
Mitchell of AIM, who stated (again in the LA Weekly), "The condoms
we have available today are so thin and transparent that a guy
wearing one looks like he just has a well-lubed penis, so no,
I don’t buy their arguments at all."
It strikes us as fundamentally unethical that people who are willing
to play Russian Roulette, actors who will perform without condoms
and dams, are able to get more work at higher rates. Why pay combat
pay when the "combat" is not only unnecessary but easily avoidable?
If profits are so damned critical, isn't it cheaper to spend the
$50 on condoms and lube than to shell out an extra several thousand
dollars to actors willing to participate in high-risk sex for
the camera?
It's both inexcusable and completely illogical to say that one
simply "cannot meet the bottom line" without putting not only
the health and lives of it's actors at risk. Putting money ahead
of human welfare and people's lives -- both the actors onscreen
and the people watching it who may take the unsafe sex they see
in porn as precedent for how to lead their own sex lives -- is
revoltingly and revealingly unethical and exploitive.
When a DuPont or a Monsanto endangers the lives and health of
both workers and the general public, we protest, we boycott, we
file lawsuits, we raise a ruckus until the problem is appropriately
addressed. When the porn industry does the same thing, we write
it off. It's all just a bunch of stupid sluts and perverts anyway,
not real people with lives and families and people who love them,
right? Besides, who really cares as long as the money's coming
in?
It is not surprising that an industry that insists on swallowing
rather than spitting expects the public not to balk at this exquisitely
bitter pill. But some of us simply will not tolerate it. It seems
that the Pavlovian reaction to the clink of ready change on the
part of the adult film industry as a whole is to refuse to take
the proper -- and responsible -- course of action, which would
be to prohibit unsafe sexual practices for the safety of its actors
and audiences. Therefore, that responsibility lies with the rest
of us.
We refuse to buy the argument that you can't make a living in
the sex industry if you follow safer sex practices. We refuse
to buy the argument that a slip of latex ruins a sexual fantasy
or encounter. HIV/AIDS is much more certain to ruin your sex life,
and permanently. And even were it not for HIV/AIDS, not all that
many people find lesions, warts and cold sores to be erotic. If
your sexual imagination is so limited that you can't think past
a condom, glove, or dental dam and stay aroused, you need to be
making some more significant demands of yourself, not demanding
that other people sacrifice their health for your pleasure...
or your pocketbook.
Basically, what we're asking is for the adult industry to either
get responsible or own up to the fact that they're not. Pick a
side. If you're going to play the "health-conscious, kinder, gentler
adult film industry" card, put your money where your mouth is
and invest in latex, lube, and some good common sense about using
them in the product you make. If you want to stick with the greed-and-apathy
status quo, go right ahead. All we're asking for is that adult
film industry participants make an honest choice. Choose to affirm
life and sex and the delight of being sexual in a healthy body,
or admit that you deny and destroy it and do so willingly and
culpably for whomever bids the highest. But you can't have it
both ways.
Heather Corinna
Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Scarlet Letters: A Journal of Femmerotica, Scarleteen
Hanne Blank
Associate Editor, Scarlet Letters: A Journal of Femmerotica
Author, Big Big Love: A Sourcebook on Sex for People of Size and Those
Who Love Them (Greenery Press) |
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