Some girls may enter the porn industry with big dreams, but most of them leave with nightmares and flashbacks.
I've heard many people make the statement, "Well, porn stars must love having a lot of sex—otherwise, they
wouldn’t make these movies, right?" This fallacious statement is easily refuted in the words
of men and women who have escaped the life of performing in adult films, and
who still suffer from its effects. There is no glamour in porn.
In the words of one former porn actress, Elizabeth
Rollings, “You have to submit to others (producers, agents, etc.) no matter how
important you think you are, you’re not in control… Having men do disgusting
things to me and even if it hurt, I had to make it seem like I was enjoying
every minute of it. I hated it.” *
Many of these young girls are lured into the adult film
industry by promises of fame and fortune, which they quickly discover is not
what it’s all about. Some of them even find themselves doing shoots to which
they did not agree. “I definitely did some things I did not want to do… I was
one of those girls who was gagged and choked,”** former porn actress Veronica
Lain admits. Some performers are tricked into violent and forced sex acts on
and off camera and told they must do it since they’re “under contract.”
Once entrenched in the business, performers often find
themselves trapped by violence, drug addiction, and mental illness. Women
involved in pornography are at huge risk for sexually transmitted diseases (Pink
Cross reports that 66% of porn actresses are herpes positive; other prevalent
diseases include HPV, all-out cervical cancer, and staph infections), drug
abuse (everything from alcohol and Xanax to meth and heroin. Pink Cross
estimates 90% of the actors involved with porn use drugs), mental illness (many
performers suffer from depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder),
and suicide (Pink Cross cites a statistic of 208 porn performers dying through
drugs, diseases, suicide, and homicide since 2014).
Many porn actors and actresses transition from
pornography to prostitution, as it’s easier to make $1,000 to $1,500 in an hour
through an escort service rather than endure the grueling 8+ hour process of
film-making (more on this in a later blog).
If you want to hear a former porn actress, Shelley Lubben, discuss many of these statistics, check out this video of her testifying before the California State Assembly.
If you’re interested in finding out more about them,
check out their site at www.thepinkcross.org
*SOURCE: Rollings, Elizabeth. “Former Porn Star Elizabeth Rollings
Story.” Ex Porn Star Stories. The Pink Cross Foundation, Jun 2009.
Web. 9 Aug. 2013
**SOURCE: Lain, Veronica. “Former Porn Star Veronica Lain Story.”
Ex Porn Star Stories. The Pink Cross Foundation, Sep 2008. Web. 9 Aug. 2013.
I am going to check out the Pink Cross organization; I had not heard of them before; seems like a worthy cause to get involved in, if only to make a donation for them to continue their diligent work in this area. Pornography is ugly; all sides of it. I remember a former pastor years ago saying (and I'm not sure where he got his info from) that one out of every two men were involved in some part of it, viewing it online, etc. Such a deviation from how God intended sex to be.
ReplyDeletebetty
That stat sounds about right Betty. Unfortunately, our culture has normalized it so much. No one seems to think much about it...until something like this woman's testimony makes them stop and think about it.
DeleteI'm so glad you are doing these posts. This is just not stuff we tend to think about or hear much about. Very sobering and gives me a different perspective of the people involved.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there's any place on earth that's not flooded with porn now. Frank went to Iraq for 2 weeks a number of years back and said that so many of the Muslim men there were into porn. (Which I found interesting considering how they insist the women have to dress.)
Wow! That is interesting, Lisa. Iraq seems an unlikely place, but then when you think about...maybe not. Stephen has started mentoring men who want to escape their porn addictions, and it's unbelievably difficult for them to leave it. It's like crack for their brain, and they become addicted to the dopamine high.
DeleteI read this article last year: http://nogreaterjoy.org/articles/freedom-addictions/ It is really interesting - about how the brain is wired and how we get addicted to things - porn, drugs, internet - whatever. The author has a dvd on his series of talks about this which I recently bought but haven't watched yet. (The author is a real non-sense [lion!] Christian man from Tennessee and can be pretty blunt in how he says things. But he's usually right.)
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