Porn Worker Conditions: “Who failed Lara Roxx?” (explicit language)

Brian Flemming is a filmmaker in California. He observes that regulatory safeguards are numerous for mainstream films, and virtually non-existent for porn performers…

Gee, who would have thought that having two strange men jam their un-condomed penises into a woman’s rectum at the same time might give her a whopping case of HIV?

I mean, if you were trying to contract HIV, isn’t this just about the best way to do it? Not just anal sex with one strange man. But two. And at the same time, so as to maximize the tearing of tissue and get that virus transferred…

And now the young woman, Lara Roxx (aka Laura Roxx, Lana Roxx and Lara Coxx), who began her career in porn three months ago, has HIV…

She got it from fellow performer Darren James. The porn industry has its own scheme of HIV testing and reporting, but it is far from perfect. HIV tests lag behind the bug itself by as many as 60 days. A porn performer can have a lot of high-risk sex in 60 days–with people who also have a whole lot of sex…

There is nobody (with legal authority, at least) even to say to the industry, “You idiots. Start using condoms at the very least…”

[To film a special effects scene where someone gets shot,] I had to hire a pyrotechnician licensed by the state. I also had to hire a county fire marshal, who monitored the pyrotechnician and had the authority to stop any behavior deemed unsafe. If you add in the city cops I was legally required to retain for crowd control, the actors and crew on my set had three levels of protection provided by government agencies.

Lara Roxx had zero protection by government agencies. There was no cop on that set. No fire marshal. No doctor. Nobody had a license. And nobody broke the law by paying a teenager to accept the uncovered penises of two men into her anus.

Roxx showed poor judgment, yes. She isn’t blameless. But there are plenty of neophyte stunt performers in L.A. who would also be delighted to show some poor judgment and get themselves hurt or killed on a Hollywood movie set–but the government regulates those sets…

The 18-year-olds flooding into the porn industry have just about nobody. The porn companies label them “independent contractors,” so the performers don’t even have the workplace safety protections that fry cooks at Burger King do…

It’s important for porn to be legal. The government has no business outlawing sex or sexual fantasy. But this principle is not so sacred that we need to allow an industry to exploit and endanger its workers. There’s no fundamental right to express HIV.


Read the complete post
from 2004.

Related posts:


Condom Use Below 20% in American Porn Movies

Los Angeles Times: “In California’s Unregulated Porn Film Industry, an Alarming Number of Performers Are Infected With HIV and Other Sexually Transmitted Diseases. And Nobody Seems to Care.”

12 thoughts on “Porn Worker Conditions: “Who failed Lara Roxx?” (explicit language)

  1. That’s too bad. It’s unfortunate that condom use in porno movies is so uncommon. It’s also unfortuante that it has such dire consequences for people like Lara. The lack of regulation in the porn industry is unconscionable.

    Of course, the rate of condom use in porno movies will be unaffected by the results of the Northampton porn battle. Lara Roxx will still have HIV regardless of whether Capital Video opens a store at 135 King. The rate at which porn performers will be infected with HIV will not be affected by the recent zoning ordinance.

    If you’re really this concerned about this sort of thing, wouldn’t it be better to spend your 15 or 20 grand trying to reform the porn industry, rather than trying to keep Capital Video from opening a 6,000 square foot store in a small town like this one? Why don’t you lobby for porn industry reforms that would at least help to protect the next Lara Coxx, since you bring it up? You often accuse your opponents of a lack of concern for the Lara Coxxes of the world, but if you’re so concerned, there are a lot of things you could be doing that would have a much greater impact than what you’re actually doing.

  2. I’m glad you support health regulations for the porn industry. That would be a major victory for porn performers. By raising awareness about the problem, we hope to prepare the ground for industry self-regulation or, failing that, legislative action in this area.

    There was no way we were going to ignore Capital Video’s plans to put a giant porno store down our street, but we are approaching the porn issue from many perspectives. The conditions of porn workers could be given local relevance, for example, if store owners refused to stock and people refused to buy or rent porn movies where condoms are not used and the performers were therefore put at risk of disease.

    Capital Video and its affiliates are not only major sellers of porn, but also major producers of porn movies. Perhaps you might support a boycott of Capital Video’s Northampton store (and all their stores) until they stop making or selling movies that expose performers to disease?

    Through Google, we are advertising our website to the world through hundreds of keywords. Sometimes we serve over 1,000 page views in a day. It’s not a bad start, but we look forward to attending a conference in March to get more ideas for activism. If you have suggestions now, please share them with us.

  3. I think “awareness raising” is overrated. I don’t say that it’s useless, but I get really sick of people patting themselves on the back over having “raised awareness” of some problem when they haven’t done anything at all to actually *solve* the problem.

    My suggestion, as I tried to express in my prior comment, is that you stop lobbying for a small-town zoning law that keeps “big” porn stores away from churches and schools (but not small ones or anything–small ones can still be anywhere), and start lobbying for national porn-reform legislation. I think that the actual impact of your efforts in terms of the results you care about will be immeasurably greater if you focus on industry reform rather than keeping a store out of your backyard.

    Don’t misunderstand: it’s fine with me if you want to focus on keeping a porn store out of your back yard. But you keep bringing up the need for industrywide reform. If you see this need so clearly, and feel so strongly that these reforms must be implemented, I can’t see why you’re not doing more to bring them about.

  4. It’s hard to say what’s the best use of our time. We are proceeding by instinct. Some of our techniques haven’t been tried before on this issue–their ultimate effectiveness is not yet known.

    We are putting up a roadmap for towns all over America to regulate sexually oriented businesses, gathering the relevant court cases, model zoning, and secondary effects studies for convenient reference.

    Similarly, we are collecting and publicizing detailed research about the porn industry to rebut the myths, misinformation and well-meaning but wrong arguments coming from porn merchants and their defenders.

    As we review this information, we are developing ideas for activist campaigns. We’ll discuss them with people who have been working on this issue a lot longer than we have, and decide how to go forward. Have patience.

  5. Let’s support Capital Video. Adult Bars and Video Stores increase tourism,and lower crime rates. Censorship is Anti-Liberty. We need some Nude Bars and Massage Spas to go with the Store.

  6. Adult enterprises lowering crime and increasing tourism would certainly be news to the people of Los Angeles:

    http://nopornnorthampton.org/2006/10/18/even-hollywood-moved-to-crack-down-on-its-adult-businesses.aspx

    http://nopornnorthampton.org/2006/10/31/why-hollywood-reached-for-zoning-crime-business-failure-tourists-fleeing.aspx

    More generally, most evidence suggests adult enterprises are associated with rising crime.

    We don’t advocate censorship. We do advocate awareness. What’s anti-liberty is the bondage and nonconsensual sex in the material sold by Capital Video and other porn shops.

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