An HIV "outbreak" in the straight porn industry has once again raised talk of mandatory testing for all performers in the state of California. But will the gay porn studios get on board or take their business elsewhere?
To some people, the idea of workplace safety evokes visions of hard hats and safety goggles. Others may hark back to Meryl Streep sporting a shag haircut as Karen Silkwood, a nuclear power plant worker who blew the whistle on poor and unenforced safety measures.
Like Silkwood, porn performers face dangerous exposure every time they go to work ... albeit a different kind.
The porn industry operates like an adult version of the CBS reality show Kid Nation; the one where a gaggle of children settle into a ghost town with no adult supervision and have to create their own system of governance. In porn nation, adults -- with at least one pseudonym each -- settle into the San Fernando Valley with essentially no government supervision and have to create their own system of on-set HIV prevention.
In June the press cried HIV “outbreak” in the adult entertainment industry when a porn actress known as Patient Zero tested positive for HIV. After a hasty initial investigation, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, led by Jonathan Fielding, released data to the Los Angeles Times indicating there had been 16 unpublicized cases of HIV among porn performers since 2004. Five days later, the health department backpedaled, upping the number of cases to 18, but recognizing they had no way to confirm how many of the 18 were actually porn performers.
Sharon Mitchell, founder of the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, told the Times all previously unpublicized cases involved either a nonperformer or an aspiring performer who left the industry after testing positive.
Patient Zero engaged in unprotected sex both on and off camera in the week between the “expiration” of her most recent test and the time her new results came back. Through the health care foundation’s extensive online database, which keeps track of test results, shoot dates, cast lists, scene pairings, and sexual acts performed, all of the performer’s on-set sex partners were able to be contacted and have tested negative as of August 1.
Still, the damage had been done, once again raising a question that resurfaces in the porn world every time a performer tests positive. Is enough being done to protect the performers?
The majority of straight studios (and a handful of gay ones) require monthly HIV/STD testing from Adult Industry Medical. Almost every straight studio frowns on condom use; it’s actually more of a scowl than a frown.
“I’ve had chlamydia and gonorrhea probably five or six times in the last five years,” says porn star Christian XXX, who previously performed as Maxx Diesel in gay porn. “It happens. You take a week off and you retest.”
Tony Malice of JM Productions, a straight porn production company, says the business isn't really set up for performers who refuse to work on camera without a condom: “If a girl only wants to work with a condom, she can seek out that work ... same for men. But it will be much less work."
While straight performers will be hard-pressed to find a company that will allow condoms, performers who test positive are all but banned from working in straight porn. Adult Industry Medical is touted, as Christian XXX puts it, as “the first line of defense ... if you test HIV-positive, guess what, you don’t get to be in porn. We weeded you out of our business, our circle.”
It's different in gay porn.
HIV-positive performers can and do perform in gay porn, because most gay porn studios don't require testing.
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