NL- When I recently interviewed Kayden we talked about this issue and she told me about her upcoming Xbiz column. I don’t often take sides on issues, but I have to say I totally agree with her on this one.
Condom or No Condom: That is the Question
op/ed by Kayden Kross of Digital Playground from her new column The Dish on Xbiz.com
Oh, condom, you pesky bitch.
That is what I want on my porn tombstone, as in, the final press release that goes out announcing my retirement from this industry, if and when it happens.
I did my first movie under contract with Vivid, and being new, and prone to placing myself in increasingly uncomfortable situations, I opted for a condom. Poor Manuel. I don’t know what I was trying to prove my first year in porn (perhaps that I was the most virginal sex worker this side of Mary Magdalene?), but I had an arsenal of stupid resolve when I came in. I was against more than one dick in a scene, and against facials, and against degradation and things that I was told were degrading. I’ve since decided that the most degrading thing of all is being told by strangers that they have a better sense of when I’m being degraded than I do. I’ve also decided that degradation is simply lovely when you’re asking for it, especially when you’re begging for it on your knees with your make up streaming down your face and you can taste your own sweat and you’ve lost all sense of your surroundings save the larger than life cock that is immediately in front of you, baiting you with the kind of intensity that can only come from extremes.
And god it looks silly when it’s wrapped in a condom.
Don’t worry. I’m aware that this in not the politically correct response. I’m all for safe sex though. That’s why I have it in porn, with people I know and trust, and tests that I can have verified 24 hours a day. So far, this method has worked for me. I’ve been testing regularly for four years without a problem. Of course this can’t be proven, but I would bet that if I’d been with the same number of sex partners that were picked up instead from bars across the country, I would not be able to say the same. I would also bet that if some stranger with white gloves and a nametag came at me with a list of the ways I’m legally allowed to have sex with other consenting adults, I would kick him in the face.
The thing is, like every other rational consenting adult on the planet, I’m aware of the risk and rewards of the sex I have, and each time I choose to have sex it is the result of an individually weighed decision. And each time I choose to have sex, I’m having sex with my vagina, not the state’s vagina. If I feel the need to use a condom, I will take the necessary steps to do so. And I do, when I don’t have access to testing records on involved parties. That never stops me from bitching about them as I dig them out of a forgotten drawer though.
If sex with condoms were exactly as good as sex without condoms, every rational person would use them, provided they were easily available and not trying to procreate. Obviously that’s not the case. Condoms hurt. They cause unnecessary friction and they don’t stay perfectly in place. They smell like a hospital. They break and bunch up and frankly I think they completely erase the organic awesome spontaneity of sex, even if the sex is scripted. As porn performers, we have continuous sex for longer than average by a factor of three to four times. Something official that I recently read and don’t care to look up again said that sex in the wild lasts on average no more than fifteen minutes. Sex on a porn set lasts on average 45-60 minutes in my experience, but I’ve gone continuously as long as two hours. I’ve heard longer from other performers. I’ve never heard of a scene shot in fifteen minutes. So if condoms are uncomfortable for people who use them as they’re meant to be used, for average sex, then imagine how much more uncomfortable they become over the course of a professionally shot scene.
And there’s more. We’re talking about porn sized dicks. Now our sex is longer and larger than the average American household, with more acrobatics. Who really does the pile driver at home? Be honest. How many guys in the privacy of their own homes really have the cardiovascular fitness to jackhammer continuously the way porn guys do on set? All of these things add up to a lot of fucking friction, and now the state wants to top it off with a condom.
We had a mandatory safety meeting recently. I would have preferred dental work over the required attendance but I understand that asses need to be covered and I really like my job. Among the things that we can no longer do before scenes, so as not to contaminate, is floss, brush our teeth with a hard bristled brush, and wax. I pointed out that one of the major things we are trying to prevent (the transmission of hepatitis) can be just as easily picked up by eating a contaminated strawberry. I’d also like to take this second opportunity to point out that I’ve never even heard of hepatitis being a major concern. I’d also like to point out that the next time Leonardo DiCaprio kisses Kate Winslet at the helm of a ship, Cal Osha better be regulating that clear and present danger.
I saw an ad in an airport that said HIV was transmitted one every eleven minutes, or maybe every nine minutes, but again I don’t want to go back and look it up. Porn is shot every day, and very, very rarely, a performer contracts it in his or her personal life and then tests positive and turns the industry upside down while everyone scrambles to assess the damages. Those damages generally turn out to be in the form of bad press. The virus does not spontaneously generate inside of our industry. HIV is a serious concern, but saying that we do not have it under control because the risk is not eradicated completely is ludicrous. The risk will never be eradicated completely so long as the virus is in the population.
With that said, I don’t see why Cal Osha is interested in the health of us sex workers when there are other, larger, more vocal industries to control. I don’t think Cal Osha really cares about my vagina. I do think the state of California would love to fine someone seventy thousand dollars for an infraction. I do think that if a performer wants to work with condoms, that is the performer’s choice, and there are companies who will shoot it. And finally, anything that forces itself into my vagina is by definition raping me, and Cal Osha, darling, no means no.
That comment in the last paragraph says it all…
“I do think the state of California would love to fine someone seventy thousand dollars for an infraction”.
The state doesn’t give a rats ass about the safety of a porn star. Their concern is to try and look for ways to raise new revenue for a cash strapped state. So creating and enforcing new rules, fees, regulations and whatnot is so they can get a piece of the porn pie. Lets be honest. If states really cared about the performers they would just outlaw porn as being unsafe. It leads to all kinds of social diseases and possibly HIV.
Just like they allow the sale of cigarettes and alcohol when its a known fact cigarettes are the major cause of many cancers and alcohol is the cause of many other bad things too numerous to mention. If I was selling aspirin (or any other medicine) that had an ingredient that was a known carcinogen they would shut me down in a heartbeat.
But tobacco and alcohol bring in huge revenues for a state’s economy and fining porn companies would also bring in more money. They probably aren’t happy with collecting the license fees, permits, or whatever a production company has to pay to film a porn movie.
I LOVED that article, but then again, every thing @Kayden_Kross writes is fantastic. Her intelligence is underrated too often
GOOD !! kAYDEN we want you at the next Mandtory Meeting telling all that!! It just doesn’t work and we’ll just shoot over in the city limits of San Fernando or outside the LA city limits! Good night!
That last sentence was priceless.
Two things:
1. Kayden Kross is still on probation last time I checked for her part in a mortgage scam. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayden_Kross
http://www.xbiz.com/news/110039
2. Preventing the spread of disease is more important than the sating of someones hedonistic desires.
Excellent Op/Ed. It comes down to being a matter of consenting adults. We adults have not consented to allow the state to interfere with our business. As Kayden pointed out, condoms are problematic in more ways than one. There are ramifications to doing porn, whether one wears a condom or not, and just as a condom won’t liberate minds which harbor hostility towards porn performers, it won’t guarantee safety from stds, staph infections, irritations and the like, anyway. The industry can never be risk or ramification-free. It comes down to personal choice to take that risk like any stunt-person. No risks = no rewards. Also, the average mouth is dirtier than the average anus, believe it or not, and a much, much higher percentage of people have the virus for oral herpes than genital herpes. But that’s why God/nature gave us an immune system. Our bodies offer us health if we take care of ourselves while the Big Pharm offers us poisons which are guaranteed to make us ill in the name of “helping” us. Don’t trust these biased authorities… they are utterly corrupt!!!
Bravo!, Kayden.
THAT, was simply exceptional!
Well said Praxv. I love how this idiot, with no advanced degree in medicine or knowledge about the spread of infectious diseases, is applauded as a visionary. I guess in this business all you have to do is string two semi-coherent sentences together to be considered “intelligent.” I know the bar isn’t that high with “porn stars,” but c’mon.
Again, as Praxv alluded to, this is the same person who used her “intelligence” to try and swindle a disabled veteran with a mortgage scam. She then claimed “ignorance” on the matter. Forgive me if I don’t take Kayden Kross’s word on matters that are better left to the grownups.
Meh, OK article. This chick is not a REAL pornstar. Tell me porn sex is safe when you perform in over 100 scenes with companies other than Vivid or Adam & Eve (gonzo).
I mean, she hits the nail on the head–condom sex is not sexy–but the level of STDs needs to go down.
@ jeremy:
The average mouth IS NOT dirtier than the average anus!
Smoke more weed, Jeremy. Seriously, smoke more weed.
@ origen
“The most disease ridden place on the planet is the mouth of an American woman”. -Eric Cartman
All kidding aside I agree with you. However, it is I who needs to smoke more weed….
Wrong Origen. The average mouth is bacteriologically FAR dirtier than the average anus, unless its one that is in the process of defecating. How many times do you shit and wipe per day? How many times do you eat per day? How many times do you brush? Which orifice has lots of warm moisture (a hot bed for bacteria) and a long, bacteria fomenting toungue? The dirtiest thing you can do is deep tounge kissing unless your partner just brushed their tounge and teeth AND forgot to wipe their ass. There’s a reason people mouthwash in addition to brushing teeth and toungue. It all brings new meaning to the phrase “talking shit”!
Additionally, it is claimed that 4 out of 5 people have the virus for oral herpes while 1 out of 4 has the virus for genital herpes.
A porn star stating that she hates condoms is a great marketing ploy, just like it is stating how much you loooove DPs or gangbangs, how you are a sex crazed nympho who always cum during your scenes, or what-not. Fans love to read it. They want to believe it.
No one likes to hear a porn girl say “yes, I was raped by my uncle as a kid, I have serious abandonment, self esteem and attention issues, and I have had numerous infections and STDs since I started doing porn. I fear for my health every time I go on the set, but I need the money and it’s a quick buck.”
It just isn’t sexy – an instant wood killer. Yet it’s true for most of the girls.
Porn is fantasy and that’s why the smart girls tell you what they think the fans want to hear. The “happy hooker” fantasy. Very few of these girls see porn as something other than a paycheck. No one fucks in front of the camera for “fun”.
I’m sure Kayden is a smart girl, but her smartness lies in trying to defend unsafe sex in order to drum up goodwill for herself as a performer.
Naturally, if she was TRULY all that smart she wouldn’t be doing porn in the first place, knowing what effect it will have on the rest of her life.
These chicks are highly dysfunctional and that’s the reason they got into porn in the first place.
Oh, and I should add “delusional”.
Jeremy, if your mouth has E. Coli, I feel bad for you…
@Vince – I might be tempted go along with your argument that it’s in the interest of people in the industry to promote themselves and their product, and thus write this column off as merely an example of that, except Kayden actually laid out the case against condoms — or at least HER rationale. You can believe her or not, but she didn’t just coo, “Oooh yeah, I love it bareback, baby!”, she made a case.
Do you know Kayden personally? Have you even met her? I have, and I can tell you that your assessment is off base.
And your use of the word “dysfunctional is out of line. Not many people in the world are fully “well” and functional, by most definitions. As for being “delusional” that could be said of ANYONE driven to pursue a career in front of a camera, on a stage, or in front of a microphone somewhere. A degree of self-delusion is NECESSARY to even undertake many projects and careers in entertainment and the arts. But only when it involves sex do people suddenly start calling those people mentally ill.
Lets be real, Mike. The spirit of what Vince is saying is true. Most porn performers have or have contracted serious STDs. That has to change…
I think that should change, too. Absolutely.
What does hat have to do with being “delusional,” not smart, or “dysfunctional?” Those are insulting, demeaning generalizations that someone who has any feelings for performers should and would NOT utilize. That is the hurtful stereotype that performers have to face. That is what follows them the rest of their lives, not their decision to perform in a legal industry.
I agree that erotic performers deserve respect. Hell, I think porn is a friendlier place to perform than mainstream (but the fuck do I know, right?).
However, its not a generalization to say that MANY porn performers are mentally incongruous. There used to be poster on LIB named Harvey Dent. He knew many porn performers and he also had a friend that worked a suicide hotline in the valley. His friend said that porn performers used to call in all the time threatening to kill themselves.
Drug use is high in the Industry. That also has to change.
Can performers not be highly professional, highly intelligent, charismatic figures? Of course they can. I’m just saying there should be an Industry framework that promotes such attributes–not one that says: “yeah, if you want to be a prolific porn performer ya gotta catch a STD cause I’m not shooting you getting fucked by a rubbered dick”.
…And while I’m at it, can somebody give Lexi Love some work?
Lexi is a wonderful, kind person and she’s beautiful. She deserves more work. But she lives in New York most of the time.
She’s living and going to school in Cali last I heard…
I’ll have to text her and ask. I haven’t seen her in a while.
I owe her a job anyway, because she was kind enough to adjust her schedule for me one time last year. She’s a really good person.
text her today, pls….
@Michael, I have worked in the industry since 1998 – I love these girls like sisters but there is no denying that they are birds with broken wings. Yes; ALL of them, but some more than others. Not trying to be insulting at all. That is just the way it is.
I have seen more emotional breakdowns on set than I care to remember. Never forget Bridgette Kerkove and her infamous chopsticks; seemed to love it in interviews, but the reality was that she cried like a baby on set during every shoot. And the audience had no idea she hated it.
Some of the “smartest” girls (according to the press and themselves) this industry has ever seen are such major fuck ups it is scary. Take Asia Carrera as a brilliant example of someone who was this articulate MENSA member, yet a raging drinker, user and gambling addict throughout her entire career and is a dysfunctional, alcoholic mess today. Yet, still to this day people (mostly outside the industry) talk about how brilliant she is. Riiiighght.
That said, there are many porn girls that are kind, sweet and all around wonderful people, but to call them mentally stable is stretching it.
Vince said: “These chicks are highly dysfunctional and that’s the reason they got into porn in the first place”.
Nearly everyone must be dysfunctional at this point considering how mainstream porn has become. Porn has its awards recognizing a chosen few but you can see countless numbers of hotties you’ve never heard of on various pay and free sites. They seem pretty normal to me. The shit that goes on in this biz is at times not too normal, which is one of the reasons most don’t do this for too long. Perhaps their functionality, not dysfunctionality, is what makes ’em cum and go. People are starting to realize there’s nothing wrong with sex and/or sex on camera. The idea of wanting to be a “star” through porn, however, is another issue. That’s different than expressing the taboo fantasy of having sex on camera to eternalize the moment while knowing that others are seeing and affected by it and indirectly participant in it, as well. Sex can be sacred. Sex by the numbers, not necessarily so.
Jeremy, porn is not, and will probably never be, mainstream. I don’t care how desperately everyone inside the business wants it to appear that way. If you are a porn star, you are still persona non grata in Hollywood unless you think playing a hooker/pornstar/stripper for the novelty factor and cheap thrills counts as being cross-over.
If you compare a porn set (even a high end production), it is a joke compared to your basic Hollywood equivalent where they run a tight ship filled with people who truly know their craft.
Yes, there are countless hotties in porn, no one is arguing that. But how many of them are happy, healthy individuals? No many. They are young, make a lot of money, do a lot of drugs and spend whatever they make on handbags, shoes and their suitcase pimps. Some attempt going to back to school after porn thinking they can start blending in again, yet they will never, ever hear the end of it.
I can’t think of one single porn girl that is a “success story” by your basic civilian standards. Whenever I come up with a popular big name, I immediately think about all the ways she eventually screwed up – mostly by drugs and hooking up with the wrong guy.
Of course porn is not mainstream, but it has become more mainstream and virtually, at times and in certain spheres, mainstream. That it, as you say, “will probably never be mainstream”, suggests agreement with my point that porn has been getting more mainstream. The day it becomes mainstream completely (which I think will never happen) is the day all “porn stars” as we now know them will be out of a job.
Society in general is “dysfunctional”. Religion is certainly dysfunctional, as is government and “entertainment”. “Normalcy”, as R.D. Laing has pointed out, is just an agreed upon form of insanity.
Many of your points are still valid. Performers have to deal with the hypocritical hostility of people and their institutions who also like sex and have also enjoyed porn, who also fantasize about having sex with various people other than who they may be in a committed relationship with, etc. Not all performers constantly do drugs and blow all their money, however. Some are actually respectful to their own bodies, souls and minds, save their money, and believe it or not, although this is hard for some to believe, they actually realize they’re not going to be young, in constant demand and willing and able to do this shit forever!
I think porn stars should take themselves seriously as “stars” of horror movies. I find the depiction of mindless mass slaughter as entertainment to be far more disturbing and damaging than the actual performance of sex acts on camera. But horror movie stars don’t face the same ostracization within certain social spheres. But go figure, since we are a nation which bullies and bombs the rest of the world.
True dat, Jeremy.
Sorry, Origen and Vince, but you miss the point of Kayden’s excellent essay.
It is NOT that all porn performers are as intelligent and outspoken as her, or that there isn’t genuine issues with STI’s and drugs within the industry.
It IS that performers should still have the CHOICE to speak for themselves and to decide for themselves just how best to protect themselves, while maintaining their right to make a living doing what they do.
Having OHSA or AHF up their vaginas is not that different from having Pink Cross or Morality in Media telling them how to do their business. Benelovence and good intentions don’t justify bad policy.
Brava, Kayden, for saying what had to be said.
Anthony
Anthony, yes, sorry I got side tracked.
But when she Kayden says: “I’m all for safe sex though. That’s why I have it in porn, with people I know and trust, and tests that I can have verified 24 hours a day. So far, this method has worked for me. I’ve been testing regularly for four years without a problem”
With people she knows and trust??? that’s nice, but these people she knows and trust are having sex every day with people she doesn’t know and trust, not to mention turning tricks. And even though people get tested for HIV in porn, there is no mandatory testing for contagious things like bacterial infections, HPV warts, Hepatitis, or even herpes – because there wouldn’t be any talent left to work if they did.
So although she is entitled to her opinion, and her body is her own, she can’t possibly be serious when she states that “it has worked for her”. I don’t believe that she has never gotten any diseases from unprotected sex on set, where the girls pop Flagyl in the make-up chair like it’s candy. It’s just so unlikely that she has never contracted something, I simply don’t believe her.
It’s the occupational hazard in porn – after all, every business has something.
Just as occasional or inadvertent benevolence does not outweigh bad policy or malicious intent. Hitler’s Germany built the autobahn and kept the trains running on time, too.
Hitler also gave us the Volkswagon Lovebug, introduced the youth hostel, maternity leave and aid to single mothers, environmentalism, solar power and ironically practiced humane treatment of animals. The nazis were also the first to ban animal vivisection… obviously they thought much better of animals than Jews.
Mike, seriously. Comparing Cal-Osha to the Thrid Reich? That’s ridiculous and insulting.
Producers wouldn’t even have govt up their asses if the majority took care of their talent. The majority brought this on everyone…
But if the Industry gets organized and presents a meaningful plan for drastically reducing the rate of STD transmission, I almost guarantee you Cal-Osha would back off. Trust me, nobody wants to get involved in governing porn. Imagine what the hearings would sound like discussing the workplace safety violations of “Prying Open my Third Eye 3″…
Origen, I was using absurdity to illustrate the absurd (and to make a corollary argument): that just as benevolence and good intentions don’t justify bad policy, the occasional socially-positive benefit does not excuse malice or necessarily outweigh other bad policies or bad acts. I was not actually referring specifically to OSHA, and I do not see them as analagous to a totalitarian regime. Regulators are born to regulate. They love to do it, they need to do it (to justify their existense). That trait is not representative of any malice, it’s just the nature of the beast.
And yes, the industry most certainly should propose, and take action to reduce the level of STD transmission. Step one is an independent, professional, authoritative analysis of the raw data to help determine what the actual rates are. It is my understanding that is under way now, and may have already been completed.
We already know what the actual rates are for serious STDs. Cases of disease need to reported to the county if I’m not mistaken.
What do you mean by “independent, professional, authoritative analysis”? I hope you haven’t seen “Thank you for Smoking”….
No, origen, we know the number of reported positive test results, not the number of cases.
Performers will often get tested several times for the same incident of infection — eager to get back to work, they’ll come in and test before they’ve completed their course of anti-biotics. There can be two, three, four tests per incident.
By “independent, professional, authoritative analysis” I mean just that. One performed by an independent, respected person/entity, not a San Fernando Valley porn lab.
And yes, I LOVE “Thank You For Smoking.” “It’s an easy fix — one line of dialogue. ‘Thank G-d we created the .. whatever…'”
Here’s an interesting article from a self-described
“middle-aged Black political Leftist radical/sex-positive progressive”.
“… one small problem”, the author writes, “the pandemic never happened. Like it didn’t happen last year… One month after the Great 2010 HIV Porn Scare began, it ended… with a whimper”.
This immediately reminded me of my write up about “The Year of The Tiger (and Steve Driver)” on LIB, where I wrote the year usually “begins with a bang and ends with a wimper.”
http://www.redgarterclub.com/SDChronBlog2dot5/2010/11/21/another-day-another-hiv-porn-scare-overhyped-and-shelley-lubben-goes-whack-again-but-gets-exposed-for-the-fraud-she-is/
Ahhhh, Jeremy….as the author of that post and the self-identified “middle-aged Black yadda yadda”, I represent your remark. But, thanks for the credit.
Anthony
You’re welcome, Anthony. You make a good point about Weinstein’s AHF: There never was any AIDS epidemic but as you say, “Of course, the fact that their dreams of exploiting the “outbreak” for political purposes had been dashed by actual facts weren’t going to stop the “push condoms” and “smash AIM” agenda…