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The Sex Industry, Love & Sex. Lights. Camera. Exploitation?

Posted in: UK Sex News | Sep 25, 2008 - 2:26:50 PM

Film pornography is booming, and champions of sexual liberation are, on the whole, pleased – apart from a nagging doubt about the human costs.

Johann Hari asked some leading performers how they felt about their work.

We are living in the Age of Porn. In every home, tens of thousands of anonymous strangers are a second away from being splayed before you, staring out of the screen into your eyes. This has never happened to human beings before; it confuses our evolutionary wiring.

Of course, the Romans had pornographic murals, and Kingsley Amis swapped smudged dirty pictures with Philip Larkin – but the volcanic-spurting scale of porn today is unprecedented. Hardcore porn is now mainstream – and leaking into every e-mail inbox on earth.

Like all liberals, I am torn on porn. I believe in sexual freedom, and detest the Puritanical view of consensual sex as shameful. So this Dionysian bonfire of taboos – this eruption of sexual self-expression – seems at first glance to be something to celebrate, a glorious rutting end to the old hang-ups. And yet, and yet... Are the "performers" being exploited? Seventy per cent of prostitutes have been sexually abused; as they lie on their cheap beds waiting for our double-click, are porn stars chasing the ghost of a childhood rape? We know the film that sucked porn into the mainstream – Deep Throat – is actually the record of a rape: its star, Linda Lovelace, revealed that she was forced to "perform" on camera by her psychotic pimp husband. Doesn't the thought of the nations of the world masturbating over abused or raped women suddenly make the language of liberation look like a squalid trick?

I decided that the only way to resolve this debate in my own brain was to journey into the world of porn-performers. I was told by one editor who used to work with porn stars that there is a "strict code of Omerta in porn... They will all tell you they love it and nothing bad ever happens. Porn stars don't air their dirty laundry in public – well, except on camera."

Phil – a well-known 25-year-old gay porn star – suggested meeting one afternoon in the Café Nero on Old Compton Street in London's West End. He was sitting at a steel table sipping coffee, a long, lean tree of a man with a surprisingly soft voice. I asked – a little awkwardly – how he got involved in the industry. "I've always had a streak that likes being watched. I started porn when I was 18," he said, leaning forward. "I sent some photographs in and they had me in for a photo shoot. Then they asked if I wanted to do a scene, and it was a couple of hundred quid, so I said yes. And I've had some of the best sex of my life on porn sets."

"That little bit of cash becomes addictive," he said, looking down into his coffee. "You're making £250 a scene. The industry sells a lie to teenagers – boys and girls. They say you'll get more and more money, people will like you more, it'll prove you are sexy and people want you. But it doesn't happen – you don't become a big-earning star, not in Britain." He seems to have an abstract, almost Zen distance from it, as if he is talking about somebody else.

"When you're 18, you don't really think about the consequences of what you're doing," he said. "After I had been doing porn for a few years, I was really lost at sea. I used a lot of drugs – coke, K, ecstasy. I started having unprotected sex in my personal life. I thought – I'm going to end up dead. That's what scared the shit out of me. At this health clinic they suggested I see a psychiatrist. It's the best thing I ever did. Because..." his sentences stopped now; he spoke more haltingly. "It's difficult to... I was sexually abused by a neighbour."

And his real story emerged: the truth behind the groaning. Between the ages of six and 12, a neighbour periodically raped him. His mother was being so violently abused by his father she didn't see it happening. "I thought I had done something wrong," he said, the calm barely breaking. Do you think that exploitation led you to porn? It was the first time he paused. "Maybe. Maybe you think you can control it when you're being filmed. You can't. It's just a different kind of prostitution." And then: "I don't know." Do you think this has happened to a lot of porn stars? "I don't know."

Why was he giving up? "I only ever do films wearing condoms. But I was told by a producer if I didn't do bareback [sex without condoms] I'd lose my career because the industry is moving to bareback. One of my friends turned up to do a film for a low-production company and they didn't even check his HIV certificate. He was having unprotected sex without anyone knowing what his status was. I can't get work because I insist on safe sex. But if I was 18 now? Yes, I would have done it too." He looked away. "I'm hanging up my hat now. I'm not doing it any more. You know, I'm very political and I would have liked to have been a politician. Obviously I can't do that now."

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