Porn Again

As I was driving the other day I caught a programme on the radio about HIV. It made me think about the practice of safe sex and pornography. Punters want to see skin to skin contact, unsheathed penises, and cum - plenty of it. 'Bare-backing' (sex sans johnnies, in whatever way) is the norm.

Unprotected sex is not without risk. But the sex acts in pornography all serve to increase that risk: anal sex, sex with multiple partners, rough sex (including rough oral sex), ass-to-mouth, anal-vaginal, bukkake (on the up)... Anything that may cause tearing increases the risk for HIV and hepatitis. Because of the aggressiveness of so much porn, and the prolonged penetration, including with objects or fists, the chances of tearing are much increased. Old injuries, from the last fucking, may re-open again as she is used again - oh so painful! (been there) and unsafe.

Supposed 'health checks' imposed in some quarters of the industry (largely to appease the public conscience) are beyond laughable. Women in porn are routinely prescribed painkillers to 'help' them work, and many more use drink and drugs to numb the pain. The result of this is that even when the woman is physically damaged in the making of porn, she is less likely to feel the full extent of it at the time and therefore less likely to stop and so prevent further damage. Which also assumes that she is in a position to stop what is happening to her - which is often not the case. Even when a woman isn't overtly pimped, there are many other means of trapping her into sexual acts she does not wish to engage in. Drink and drugs affect inhibitions and consciousness, leaving the woman more open than ever to abuse. She can be told that the contract she's signed requires her to do certain things, or be pressured by her agent to perform more extreme sex acts for the camera (it makes him more money). It's hard to imagine a woman in a gang bang scene, surrounded by men, and likely with a penis thrust down her throat, being in a position to say 'stop it, you're hurting me'. Indeed the fear and pain visible on the faces of porn 'actresses' in many dvds clearly attests that this is not the case. She may be desperate for money and so vulnerable to being pressed into doing more unpleasant stuff for more cash. Or she may be so mentally scarred she can see no other option for herself, no way out.

Porn uses the most vulnerable women and it heaps upon them damage after damage, mental and physical. Retching on cocks, covered in the cum of man after man inside and out, bruised, swollen and bleeding between her legs, throat raw, jaw aching, and feeling like her insides are going to fall out, the glamourous pornstar, the 'actress'. Her anus, her vagina, her mouth, her breasts and her body are offered up for the camera, to be used and abused without compunction. And we name this thing that is done to her for the gratification of men she has never met empowering, liberating, harmless fun! The statistics regarding drink, drugs, suicide and histories of abuse tell a somewhat different story - not that you'd know it: the industry, with the collusion of a society which does not wish to know, manages to keep those figures out of the debate. Instead we fall back to babbling without meaning about 'choice' and 'glamour'.

And so porn normalises the practice of unsafe sex, in every meaning of the word. The john can enjoy looking at the photo, watching the movie, a million miles removed from the smell of cum, of filth, without the pain and the fear and the danger. He laughs when she gets cum in her eyes - guess it won't be him queued up with an eye infection tomorrow. He gets a thrill watching ass-to-mouth: safely at the other end of the lens he doesn't have to worry about STDs; he imagines the humiliation, it turns him on, but he doesn't know what it really feels like.

While she limps home to scrub and scrub and scrub herself clean in the shower, to check if she's bleeding, to assess the damage, to get wasted and try to forget, he folds the magazine away, ejects the dvd and mentally flips channel, content in the knowledge that his behaviour is 'normal', that it's socially acceptable - no harm done.

There is nothing safe for the women in porn, or for those who are pushed by their partners to emulate the painful and unsafe practices porn promotes. Porn treats women as disposable -literally, it fucks them over, and then moves onto 'fresh pussy'. Porn is also everywhere - it is now mainstream. How can we be so blind as to miss the glaring contradiction between promoting safe sex practices and glorifying porn? The two are totally incompatible.

The words 'safe' and 'pornography' don't even belong in the same sentence. Porn damages - body, mind and spirit. Fact. I'm still working on unknotting the damage it's done me.