NEW YORK—The New York Times finally weighed in today on Measure B, sexually transmitted diseases in the adult entertainment industry, and most pointedly, HIV/AIDS, in an article whose headline leaves little doubt as to its ultimate verdict in terms of the industry’s safety record: “Unlikely Model in H.I.V. Efforts: Sex Film Industry.”
The article was written by Donald G. McNeil Jr., who spent some on-set time getting a firsthand look at how the STD process works during a Los Angeles shoot featuring big-time stars James Deen and Stoya, and overseen by Vivid producer Shylar Cobi. McNeil opens the piece with a brief if graphic walk through the pre-shoot protocols conducted by the performers and Cobi as they get the necessary STD stuff out of the way so work can begin.
“First, [the performers] show each other their cellphones: Each has an e-mail from a laboratory saying he or she just tested negative for H.I.V., syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea,” writes McNeil. “Then they sit beside the film’s producer, Shylar Cobi, as he checks an industry database with their real names to confirm that those negative tests are less than 15 days old.”
He continues, “Then, out on the pool terrace of the day’s set—a music producer’s hilltop home with a view of the Hollywood sign—they yank down their pants and stand around joking as Mr. Cobi quickly inspects their mouths, hands and genitals for sores.”
Definitely not a mainstream movie shoot, but the Times writer quickly comes to the point of the article when he is forced to admit, “Bizarre as the ritual is, it seems to work.
“The industry’s medical consultants say that about 350,000 sex scenes have been shot without condoms since 2004, and H.I.V. has not been transmitted on a set once.”
The article quotes Dr. Allan Ronald, a Canadian AIDS specialist, as saying. “I don’t think there’s any question that it works. I’m a little uncomfortable, because it’s giving the wrong message—that you can have multiple sex partners without condoms—but I can’t say it doesn’t work.”
That is just a small, if significant part of this rather lengthy article that takes a close look at the industry’s most pressing issue at the moment—the efforts by “California health officials and an advocacy group, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, [to] it illegal to shoot without condoms.”
Featuring comments by Vivid founder Steven Hirsch in support of the industry’s uniquely successful “self-policing,” a quote by AHF president Michael Weinstein decrying the willingness of California state politicians to address the issue of condoms in porn “because it’s about sex,” as well as a comment by veteran director Chi Chi LaRue dismissing gay "bareback producers as 'industry pariahs,' the article ends with a quote from veteran star Nina Hartley, who explained exactly why she and other performers McNeil spoke with “opposed condoms for another reason: They chafe.”
The former nurse told him, “The average length of intercourse for most Americans is 10 minutes. [In her work] it’s 30 to 60 minutes of thrusting. It doesn’t matter how much lube you use, it’s uncomfortable, it’s a friction burn, and it opens up lesions in the genital mucosa. I could handle two to three condom scenes a month. But actors are paid by the scene, and I couldn’t do three in a week.”
