Porn Stars and the Naked Truth

Women in the industry are healthy rather than exploited, claims new study

Female porn stars are psychologically as healthy or healthier than other women, according to a new study, which challenges widely held views about women in the adult entertainment business.

Adult entertainers were found to have higher self-esteem, a better quality of life and body image, and to be more positive, with greater levels of spirituality. They also had higher levels of sexual satisfaction and, perhaps unsurprisingly, many more partners than other women.

The American researchers, who report their findings in the Journal of Sex Research, said they found no evidence to support the "damaged goods hypothesis" that actresses involved in the porn industry come from desperate backgrounds and are less psychologically healthy compared with typical women.

"Some descriptions of actresses in pornography have included attributes such as drug addiction, homelessness, poverty, desperation and being victims of sexual abuse," they said. "Some have made extreme assertions, such as claiming that all women in pornography were sexually abused as children. Stereotypes of those involved in adult entertainment have been used to support or condemn the industry and to justify political views on pornography, although the actual characteristics of actresses are unknown because no study on this group of women has been conducted."

The psychologists compared data taken from 177 adult entertainment actresses with a sample of women matched for age, marital status and other factors. The actresses, all of whom had been paid to work on at least one X-rated movie, ranged in age from 18 to 50, with an average career in the industry of 3.5 years. More than one-third were either married or in a serious relationship, and 44 per cent were single.

One of the main claims by commentators on the industry has been that actresses have frequently experienced sexual abuse in childhood, but the results show no statistically significant difference between the two groups of women.

The study also shows that the actresses sleep better and have more energy. Almost 70 per cent gave enjoyment of sex full marks, compared with 33 per cent of the other women; and they had first had sex at a lower age: 15 rather than 17. On the negative side, industry workers had a history of more drug and alcohol use, and problems possibly linked to sensation-seeking personalities. The study was undertaken by researchers at Shippensburg University, Texas Woman's University and the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation.

Cynthia Graham, senior lecturer in health psychology at Southampton University, said: "This study really challenges views about women who engage in sex work and the porn industry. Although the study had limitations, it is one of very few that has included matched controls."

The feminist commentator Dawn Foster criticised the study: "It is dangerous to generalise about a huge industry: women who are successful and in control of their careers in one pocket don't speak for women in the less scrutinised parts. The study's main objective seems to be to prove that not all women in porn are exploited: no one has argued that. But glossing over the exploitative aspects helps no one."

Source: The Indendent

Porn-actor teacher moved to new school

A German teacher has been suspended and moved to a different school after students discovered he had starred as a “luscious lad” in two porn films easily accessible on the internet. 

The man, who the Fuldaer Zeitung said had been teaching at the Richard-Müller school in Fulda, Hesse, only admitted his involvement after the school director told him he could be clearly identified in the films, one of which was called “Luscious Lad” after the teacher’s character. 

Although the teacher had not broken any laws, as a public servant, he has a duty to behave in an upstanding fashion in his free time as well as while at work. 

A disciplinary investigation will be held into his activities, which is likely to result in a fine and an official note of disapproval. 

He will be transferred to a different school in another town, the paper said, and will start working there from Monday.

“This is an unpleasant situation not only for the other teachers, students and parents, but also for him,” said Michael von Rüden, head of the local education authority.

Source: The Local/DPA/hc

UN report: China lagging in sex ed

Awareness among China’s 161 million 15-24-year-olds is poor, while sex education and services are said to be inadequate. 

China has a lot of work to do if it wants to provide adequate sexual health services for its 161 million 15- to 24-year-olds. A recent report funded by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), found shockingly low levels of awareness about sexual health among its young people. Experts in the field have confirmed that the policies for providing these services either aren’t in place or are not being enacted.

The UNFPA-funded report says that “at present there is no policy relating specifically to the sexual and reproductive health of youth in China”.

And although it is mandatory for sex education to be taught in Chinese schools, some people working in sexual health say provision is woefully inadequate. “Chinese schools are supposed to teach sex education but they don’t allocate enough time – they prefer to focus on academic subjects – they might give it only one hour, one session,” says Wang Chen from the charity Prevention Through Education (PTE).

Lily Liu Liqing, country director for Marie Stopes International in China, agrees: “Officially it is available in middle schools [catering for 13-15 year-olds] but if you look closely the content is very limited, and it is centred around physical development. The sexes are usually taught separately. They will tell the boys about wet dreams and the girls about periods but they won’t talk to them about contraception. They won’t talk to them about the wider issues, they don’t cover relationships, STIs [sexually transmitted infections], LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] etc. It’s just the mechanics. They do explain what HIV is but only in a very limited way.”

Awareness of sexual health matters is very poor. Only 4.4% of the Chinese youth surveyed for the UNFPA report were able to answer all three of the following questions correctly: Can a woman get pregnant the first time she has sex? Masturbation causes serious damage to health – true or false? Abortion affects a woman’s future pregnancies – true or false?

Despite mandatory emphasis on HIV in school sex education, the same survey also found ignorance about basic facts relating to HIV transmission. While 95% of youth had heard of HIV, when they were asked five questions such as: “Can a healthy-looking person have HIV?” or “Does using a condom reduce the risk of getting HIV?” only 14.4% of the young people polled answered them all correctly.

Another frequent complaint was about the lack of data collection. Few reliable national statistics are collected, charities say.

The national rates of teenage pregnancies, abortions, or STI infections are all unknown, which makes it difficult for agencies working with young people to ask for more assistance.

“Generally speaking we don’t have reliable statistics,” says Liu .

“This is the first thing we are really keen for the government to do,” says Wang . “Young people are more interested in sex now than they were in the past. Abortions are very common. Many things seem to be on the increase but the data just isn’t available.”

While advice and sex education is largely unavailable, abortions are easy to come by. Young people can walk into almost any clinic and get an abortion. China’s Population Communication Centre reported that more than13m abortions were carried out in China last year. Of these 65% are said to have been performed on unmarried women aged between 20 and 29. Fifty percent of the women had used no form of birth control, and 50% had undergone an abortion at least once in the past. In China, women are classified as married or unmarried and there is little provision for young women who are sexually active before marriage. Government programmes target married women, who are often put on long-term contraception.

“In every clinic you can see young people queuing up for abortions. Some of them are even in their school uniforms,” says Wang. “We desperately need better statistics so that we can get an idea of the scale of this problem and work out how to tackle it.”

There is little or no confidential advice available in most regions. If young people want advice, they will talk to their friends or seek information online. Their reliance on “unregulated and informal sources” is cited as the reason for their “low awareness” of sexual health in the UNFPA report.

PTE runs an online counselling service that allows young people to logon and go into a chat room with experienced counsellors to discuss their problems.

In China Marie Stopes focuses all of its efforts on young people, it also has a website that offers advice and runs extensive peer-to-peer education programmes.

Source: The Guardian

Why I am teaching my children about porn

The media last week was full of comment and reports that the National Association of Head Teachers had called for children to be taught about porn as part of the sex education lessons (see, for example, this report on the BBC News website). Inevitably this was misinterpreted in some quarters as something of tremendous danger to young children, as if the intention was to corrupt them and warp their understanding of the world by placing them in front of uninterrupted scenes from hard core porn movies for hours on end, and leaving it to them to work out what was right and what wasn’t.

I preferred to interpret it differently, namely as a call to pre-empt the almost inevitable, ie that children will see porn at some stage in their teenage lives, and we as their parents and teachers should prepare them to reject its harmful elements, and to put it into a values-laden context. A significant proportion of children will view porn, sometimes by accident and sometimes because through curiosity they have sought it out; they are often not prepared, however, for the fact that it can prove distressing and damaging, and they are certainly not prepared – given the vast weight of sexualised material they see around them every day – to be able to distinguish that women in porn are overwhelmingly presented in an objectified manner.

So – forewarned is forearmed. I have already started to explain to my pre-teen eldest child that there are bad things on the internet, and that despite the filters we put in place to stop this stuff getting through, he may encounter inappropriate images. I am trying to give him strategies – not to be afraid to tell, to navigate away from sites, to recognise that this is not real, and that the way in which women are portrayed is harmful to both men and to women, because everyone should be equal in the world. I am starting to explain that this is not always about love, which is what all great relationships should be built on.

There is of course a danger in telling children about porn – ie that they will go and actively seek it out. But no parent or school can ever protect children forever from the fact that bad things happen, and that women are presented in degrading ways in the internet. At least by preparing our children to know that it exists, to know that it is unreal, and to know that it can be extremely harmful to women, we stand a chance of being able to communicate to children that this is not what sex is all about, and we have the opportunity to share some of our values around sex, love, and how men and women should be treated equally in all aspects of life.

Source: Dr. Helen Wright