The recent HIV positive text result of porn actor in LA has caused a flurry of media reports internationally.
We have been lobbying for some time to have good and safe sex in porn films. Now the world’s attention has moved to highlight why some porn actors and actresses have to perform unsafe sex to get paid – and how the “30 day rule” (since your last test) does not make their workplace safe. (See coverage below)
It is heartening to hear that Wicked Pictures and Vivid has suspended filming – and Wicked is a “condoms mandatory” production house. But we wonder why all films are not condom mandatory.
Since just before the last HIV infections in the LAporn industry (2004) The Pleasure Project has worked on film sets to promote condom use in many glorious and sexy ways (http://thepleasureproject.org/content/File/Global%20Mapping%20of%20Pleasure_2nd%20Ed_Nov09.pdf) – but we wish it would happen as a matter of course.
Like wearing hard hats on building sites.
Except that unlike building sites porn films are made to be watched by a wider audience. With more and more of the world learning about sex from internet porn (and between 5 to 12 % of all websites being pornographic, depending on who and how it’s defined) and many people having little other explicit sex education opportunities. It is time that porn films and websites should have better incentives to be safe : audience pressures, tax breaks or legal sanctions against those that are not.
Isn’t time as actors and actresses and viewers of porn – we insist on Good: Safe: Sex ?
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/10/13/2010-10-13_porn_star_tests_positive_for_hiv_wicked_pictures_and_vivid_entertainment_studios.html?r=news/national
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/10/wicked-pictures-suspends-production-as-precaution-following-new-hiv-case-in-porn-performer-.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/13/us-porn-actor-hiv-positive