Even the adult film industry needs to be reminded that safe sex is great sex. California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health rejected regulations Thursday that proposed requiring condoms, dental dams and other forms of protection on set, NPR reported. There was a 3-2 vote in favor of imposing new regulations, but a vote of four was required for the regulations to pass.
In addition to requiring on-set protection against sexually transmitted infections, the law would have also required producers to pay for medical visits and vaccines for HPV and hepatitis B.
Critics said these regulations would detract from the fantasy and artistic vision of adult films. Proponents said porn actors deserve health and safety protections just like everyone else.
Actors at Thursday’s hearing said the new regulations would essentially drive the adult film industry “underground” because the demand for unprotected sex in pornography is so high, NPR reported. Eric Leue, the Free Speech Coalition’s executive director, said future porn films could include “gloves, full body cover and goggles” if these regulations had passed.
A similar 2012 law was passed in Los Angeles County and resulted in a 90-percent drop in adult film permits from in 2013 compared to 2012, the Los Angeles Times reported. According to a 2012 study in the journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 28 percent of pornography workers tested positive for chlamydia or gonorrhea, NPR reported.
Adult film producers are currently required to protect actors against a number of infections, but the use of condoms is not specified. The industry standard is to test actors for STIs every two weeks.
Ethically speaking, the adult film industry should put the health and safety of its actors before profit. The porn industry should protect its workers.
If you disregard the unnecessary stigma associated with the adult film industry, it’s as simple as any other industry. Yes, certain jobs have certain risks associated with them, but preventative measures are in place to ensure that workers can work as safely as possible. Construction workers have to wear helmets, and adult film actors should have to wear condoms. Nobody should have to go to work and fear getting a disease.
Though adult film studios require their actors to be tested for STIs once every two weeks, testing does not serve the same purpose as prevention. Testing ensures that a person doesn’t have an STI, while using protection ensures that they won’t unknowingly spread it. This is especially important in in the pornographic film industry, in which testing positive for a chronic STI could destroy an adult film actor’s career. Studios aren’t even required to pay for actors’ STI treatments.
Just because there’s a promiscuous aura surrounding the porn industry doesn’t mean actors should be put at risk. Granted, protection isn’t sexy. It sounds ridiculous to think that putting on a condom could ever be hot, but if one group of people could make it work, it’s adult film actors. They have the power to make condoms cool. There must be a way to utilize protection while still maintaining the fantasy of a good porno.
If an adult film’s entire appeal centers on the idea of wild, unprotected sex, then fine. Either find a way to hide a condom, or make sure actors understand what they’re getting into. Or maybe, come to a nice compromise in which the choice of using protection is left completely up to the actors without outside pressure from the production company.
Maybe the adult film industry will see this as artistic censorship and just move elsewhere. But the regulations are in the best interests of the actors, and it’s worth a try.
The government intrusion argument is invalid. Pornography can’t be equated to an intimate moment off-limits for government regulation. Strangers having sex privately and strangers having sex with a directors and a crew are two totally different things. In the first case, the two (or more) consenting adults are responsible for any repercussions. In the second case, there’s a director and an entire production company behind every decision being made.
At the end of the day, adult film actors are just people. They’re not any less deserving of security just because of what they do for a living, and their job shouldn’t require them to sign their health and future away.
