While the latest HIV scare in the porn industry seems to be over, the debate about condoms in porn rages on. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation continues to take a hard line, arguing that mandatory condoms are needed to protect workers’ safety. Still, there are many people in the industry who argue that condoms carry their own health risks for porn actors. We’ve been running a poll for over two months, asking what you think. The results are in. We admit that 47 votes isn’t a very big pool of respondents. But unless you’re a sample size queen (science joke, sorry), you might find the numbers interesting.
Nearly a third of voters support mandatory condom usage, while slightly more than that don’t want to see condoms in their porn at all. The remaining votes (a little over 25%) support voluntary condom usage. Verdict: our readers are just as divided as the industry itself. (Either that, or we suck at conducting polls.)
This debate will likely continue as long as there is an AIDS crisis, and as long as our sex negative society pushes porn to the fringes as a legitimate career choice. In the meantime, we think indie porn star/director Madison Young had the most thoughtful comment on the great condom debate.
There needs to be an element of choice, and the choice shouldn’t be that if you want work you don’t use condoms and if you want to use condoms then you don’t work.
We couldn’t agree more.
