Jun
15
Condoms-Only Protest Slated for Hustler Hollywood
June 15, 2009 | 6 Comments
A protest aimed at gathering media attention to a call for condoms-only porn production in California is planned for tonight at the Hustler Hollywood retail outlet in West Hollywood. The protest is being organized by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, whose president, Michael Weinstein, has stated he intends to find a California legislator to sponsor a bill requiring the use of condoms in all adult production. Mr. Weinstein told XBIZ that he has “no problems” taking on the adult biz status quo. The protest was organized in the wake of a female adult performer having recently tested positive for HIV. “The infection was confirmed by the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation,” XBIZ reports. “A timeline indicates the unnamed actress tested negative on April 29 but that a positive test result was confirmed on June 4. She performed on June 5 for reasons that [AIM said] were still under investigation. A second test came back positive on June 6. The actor who performed with the infected woman on June 5 has so far tested negative for the virus, although HIV infections can be undetectable for a week or more. A second male partner also tested negative.” [XBIZ]
See also:
* “Condomless Porn Production Under Scrutiny in California”
* “Health Officials Uncover Unreported HIV-Poz Porn Actors“
Comments
6 Comments so far
What’s the goal? To save the performers? To influence viewers? If it’s to protect the cast of adult films, it’s noble but if an adult performer is leery of catching HIV, they’d choose condom only productions already. If the goal is to influence behavior of the consumer, good luck. Porn is a fantasy and if advocates want to play the morality card, porn movies would show nothing but 1 man & 1 woman engaging in missionary sex inside the sanctity of a marriage. The answer is NOT government legislation, it’s private EDUCATION.
My understanding is that a great majority of straight adult is condom-free, so I’d imagine the target is porn producers, more than anyone else.
Jeff, that’s a little like what a former coworker once told me. He thought that if people wanted health care benefits, they should just find a job that offers benefits.
It’s not always that easy. People don’t always have the choice.
It’s clear that self-regulation isn’t working.
Prevention is a LOT cheaper than cure.
If it’s a ‘safety issue’, then when is the government going to require me to use a condom with my sexual partners? Or does someone think AIDS/STD transmission only happens on porn sets??? I’m all for governments promoting awareness/educating people on STDs and how to avoid them. I’m less wild with the use of government power to try and coerce people (even ‘porn stars’
) to do so.
But philosophical objections aside, the reality is this law would not have the effect of making producers stop filming bareback porn, it would simply drive them into making it elsewhere… I have a hard time imagining state lawmakers uniting to drive the porn industry into moving to Florida or NYC or Europe, etc… but I do understand this is the California legislature we’re talking about so I suppose anything is possible!
Actually, it’s clear that self regulation is, in fact, working. A couple of quick facts: we don’t know how this female model acquired HIV, but it is looking more and more likely it was not on the porn set. There’s the issue of testing positive on June 4 (and working on June 5?), ostensibly not since May, coinciding with her previous AIM test reporting negative. We need more information before making a snap judgement regarding the matter, including why she was not quarantined on June 4, and more information on her sexual partners between tests. While privacy is of everyone’s utmost concerns, this matter now involves more than her and two reported partners.
Nevertheless, since 2004, there have been no reported cases of on-set seroconversion. How much more clear does it need to be, self regulation is working… and well. Let’s turn the question around: if the government was mandating the use of condoms on porn sets, would there be fewer (than one) such cases? Or, are the proponents of mandatde condom use taking this as an opportunity much the way Leon Pannetta says Dick Cheney would use another terrorist attack… i.e., the condom-fanatics would rather be right, but run the porn industry out of California, than accept the adult nature of the industry and allow adults to make adult decisions?
I heard from a friend in the industry who saw my post last week on the matter, and who pointed out that other than jesus_mary’s attempt to draw me into an straw-man argument (and to be direct, I’ll take the Titan Media approach and say that what I do in my personal life is inconsequential to this matter), there were no responses to my contention that the “unreported” cases of seroconversion remain so for suspicious reasons. He thinks I hit the nail on the head… that these cases were on safe-sex sets and such a revelation would destroy the mandated condom use argument. And, he suggested, that my supposition shut down the thread, because no one wants to talk about the reality of the decisions made regarding condom use, reliability, and all of the mitigating factors surrounding on-set safe sex.
I’m not trying to deflect responsibility for these statements as I wouldn’t be putting them in writing here if I didn’t see the possibility that these contentions may be true, but I also think the underlying rationale is that there is a great deal of condom fatigue, not to mention that I still believe we should wait for more information before jumping to any conclusions. Let’s hope that unlike the “unreported” cases, if this turns out to be a false-positive report, it will not be swept under the rug as well.