Question of the Month – Nina Hartley

I’m completely against mandatory condoms in porn. The push is coming from some very anti-porn, not to mention anti-performer, people. They’re couching their push as “concern” for the health of the performers but are NOT LISTENING to the performer’s actual feelings on this topic. If a performer wants to use them, fine, but it can’t be mandatory. The state is broke. Who is going to pay for “condom inspectors” to go to sets each day? I thought so.

In heterosexual porn we have a very effective, voluntary, industry-wide testing standard that has reduced the incidence of HIV in performers to a rate of .017 percent (five cases in the past ten years), thanks to AIM Healthcare (aim-med.org). By contrast, in all of Los Angeles County there are an estimated 2,500 NEW cases of HIV transmission each year.Multiply that by ten years and we have an estimated 25,000 new HIV patients with which to contend, in LA County alone.

Why are they coming after us? Politics, pure and simple. Why is County Health wasting any time, money or effort on our business? Politics, pure and simple. Doesn’t County Health have a bigger problem on its hands than our industry? They couch it in terms of the safety of the general community. Horse feathers. There is little or no interaction between members of the adult performer community and the general population. We don’t mix well and rarely date each other. Again, politics, pure and simple.

It’s not porn’s job to be the PC Sex Teacher. It’s porn’s job to be entertaining. It’s up to the individual to protect his or her own health, and to make proper choices toward that end. It’s not the industry’s fault that what passes for sex “education” in this country is so piss-poor, and it’s a crying shame that people are reduced to looking at entertainment for educational purposes, unless the movie is specifically educational. Watching porn to find out about safer sex is sort of like watching a James Bond movie to find out how spies do their jobs.

Plus, condoms used in porn settings don’t protect as they do in civilian life, as we have intercourse for up to 90 minutes (as opposed to the average length in civilian life of 5 minutes). This results in friction abrasions of the receptive partner. Yes, we use lube, but it’s not enough for “industrial” uses, or for a performer doing multiple scenes per week. External ejaculation, a much-decried mainstay of the porn “esthetic,” has been a life-saver, literally, for 25 years

On the gay side of the business, they have condoms and no testing. In the past ten years over 150 male performers have died of HIV. We have no way of knowing how many may have been infected on the set, but the way seems clear: testing and no condoms beats out condoms and no testing.

This law would be a disaster for the health of the performers. We have an excellent system in place, one that is studied all over the world. Why would they come after us instead of copying our success? Politics, pure and simple.
-Nina Hartley

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