In April we published a piece that looked at the prevalence of condomless sex in the gay community—partially spurred on by so-called "bareback" porn. Now, due to a single case of HIV discovered in an actress on June 6, there is widespread fear in the porn community and some are calling for more stringent testing and condom-only porn shoots.
According to an article by AVN, some in the porn industry think the strict use of condoms will never happen again. "Condom-only for the industry would be devastating," observed Jeff Steward of JM Productions. "We went through this years ago when several companies said they were going to go condom-only, but they couldn't maintain it. They discovered that it wasn't profitable to have condoms in their movies. People watch porn for the fantasy. They live with condom use in reality every day, and that's the problem."
Many think that strict legislation in California would send the industry fleeing from the San Fernando Valley. Plus, as writer/director/producer Ernest Greene, a 20-plus year veteran of the adult industry and former Board Chair of the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, pointed out:
"With ordinary civilian sex, the kind that regular people have, there's no question that barrier methods have a beneficial effect when it comes to preventing HIV transmission. That would not necessarily be true with the kind of sex that is done in the making of pornography, which requires much longer periods of contact during which there are wavering states of erection, there are a variety of positions used, the result of which is that condom failures have a much higher percentage in professional sexual situations where you're talking about an hour or hour and a half of sex in different positions. And the result — and any of the female performers who have been condom-only will confirm if they speak honestly about this matter — is that the constant friction of having condoms changed and having condoms coming off and using condoms, the constant friction of doing so has often resulted in end-on-end minor infections and abrasions to their internal parts that would actually make them more vulnerable to disease transmission in situations in which, for whatever reason, a condom failed to operate or was not used, and that there are actual medical issues of safety involved in trying to mandate this thing."
