Carol Queen: Time for the Porn Film Industry to Stop Being a Poster Child of Heterosexual HIV Transmission
Carol Queen is no anti-porn crusader. She's the author of Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture. That doesn't stop her from advocating for condom use in porn films in this 2004 article for the San Francisco Chronicle:
As good a job as porn has tried to do in preventing its No. 1 occupational hazard, it falls short for a reason that should be instructive to everyone. Its antipathy to condoms puts performers at risk, pure and simple.Read the full article.
Extremely risky acts are safer when condoms are correctly used. To porn fans for whom the sight of a condom is pleasure-squelching, I say: Get used to it. The (heterosexual) adult industry has for 20 years shirked an opportunity to help normalize condom use. This doesn't just put its own talent at risk. It puts viewers and their partners at risk as well.
On the gay side of the industry, this is well-understood... The heterosexual side of the industry should step up to the plate and show fans how safer sex works...
If there is a lining to this dark cloud [an outbreak of HIV among porn performers], it might be manifested as a body blow to that denial, which is as common outside the porn industry as inside. Sexual contact between people can transmit HIV if one of them has it. Neither monogamy nor heterosexuality is a protection. The virus likes mucous membranes. Unprotected penetrative sex puts one at risk.
Why do we still have to say this, 20 years later? It is as basic to HIV education as anything, yet denial and resistance (not to mention inadequate sex education) impede our understanding. Perhaps in the next 20 years the porn film industry will stop being a poster child of heterosexual transmission and become part of the solution.
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