Underneath the Porn Industry

By Christy I admit, I dehumanize porn stars when I watch it. However, I found an interesting post on imgur.com, with screenshots of tweets from retired porn stars that tell others their experience with being in the porn industry. And from that, I realized that these women were people and the pornography I see was only an illusion of what really went on. Those tweets went on about the porn industry being engulfed in drugs, rape or abuse. It is important to make this realm of entertainment safer because pornography is something a large population of people don’t want to lose. There have been protests in the UK about the censorship of pornography. Some types of pornography have both actors under a drug whether it be viagra or a sedative. Substance abuse is extremely common among porn stars due to their use of it on set. According to The Fix magazine, drugs are usually used to get actors through long hours of acting. Verilymag.com says that 88 percent of top rated porn scenes are overly aggressive and 94 percent of the time, and that aggression is directed toward women. There have even been accounts of women not receiving pay because they had refused scenes. According to one ex-pornographer’s account, women were still forced to do scenes even if they had already refused, coerced into taking sedatives, making it harder for them to resist. Beatings of whomever is submissive in the scene is also regular occurrence which the sub later posts Twitter pictures of their bruises. According to conventanteyes.com, the porn industry’s little usage of condoms which makes STDs, AIDs, and HIV easily spread and on the rise in the business. They also say that the vigorous, long acts of intercourse also lead to health problems such as vaginal tears, erectile dysfunction or other penile abnormalities. While researching statistics on the topic, I felt very uncomfortable reading the data. And now, I can’t find myself watching pornography anymore without feeling guilty knowing their underlying business.