Above: James Deen is featured in this month’s Interview Magazine.
- A new study has put to bed the perception that female porn stars have low self-esteem, have been sexually abused as children and are less psychologically healthy compared with other women. The study, which was published in the Journal of Sex Research, said it found no evidence to support the “damaged goods hypothesis” that actresses involved in the porn industry come from abusive backgrounds. Rather, the researchers found the women have higher self-esteem, a better quality of life and body image, and are more positive, with greater levels of spirituality.
Porn stars more positive, spiritually healthier than other women: Study (Toronto Sun)
- Author of SM 101: A Realistic Introduction Jay Wiseman is going to be an expert witness in a BDSM ‘sex slave’ case. For a year, prosecutors and defense lawyers have jousted over the qualifications of expert witnesses who would testify as to whether Edward Bagley’s conduct with the young woman conformed to the practices of the bondage, discipline and sadomasochism, or BDSM, lifestyle. Prosecutors have alleged that in 2002, Bagley persuaded a 16-year-old girl to live with him and later coerced her into becoming his sex slave. Bagley purportedly tortured her, with the help of other defendants, until she was hospitalized in February 2009.
Missouri sex slave case may hinge on expert view of subculture (KansasCity.com)
- Florida’s Department of Health sent out a survey asking for intimate details of the sex lives of 4,100 young women, offering $10 gift cards in return. People are pissed and worried about their privacy. Hundreds of women in South Florida were among the survey recipients, their names pulled from the white pages by a private company, state officials said. They were asked to voluntarily tell the state how many men they’d had sex with in the past year, whether a man had ever poked holes in a condom to get them pregnant, and how they felt emotionally when they last had unprotected sex.
Sex survey: Florida’s Department of Health seeks details of young women’s sex lives (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
- On December 5th, Jiz Lee will be participating in CLEVER, a think tank event produced by filmmaker and California College of the Arts professor Cheryl Dunye, and held at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. The think tank question at hand is: “Bootleg: Can Porn be Copyrighted?” Joining me in the discussion will be artist Annie Sprinkle, entertainment attorney Alex Austin, and producer Shine Louise Houston.
CLEVER: Bootleg, at Intersection for the Arts (Jiz Lee)
- A study released on Friday challenges the myth, showing that four fifths of French women have watched a porn movie before – one in two of them without their partners. Fully 82 percent of women questioned said they had watched an X-rated film at least once before, compared to 99 percent of men, according to the study of 579 women carried out by the IFOP polling institute in September.
French women tuning in to porn, study says (AFP/Google)
- Casey Legler is a woman working as a male model. She looks wonderfully comfortable shrugging into tailored suits and chomping on cigars. But assigning words to the experience isn’t as easy. In an interview in her New York City studio, Legler steers around phrases like “gender identity” and “gender expression” in favor of having a conversation about freedom.
Male Models: The Female of the Species (TIME.com, via Jiz Lee)
I’m always interested in who authors and administrates a study. This one was authored in part by Sharon Mitchell, a former porn performer and founder of the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation (AIM) in Los Angeles – the center of adult film production in the US. It was also administered via AIM. As a result, it comes off as self-congratulatory rah, rah.
While I’m sure there are some happy healthy women working in porn, it’s in the adult film industry’s best financial interest to have porn consumers buy the fantasy from the ground up.
That’s really a core problem with any survey that isn’t a proper longitudional study with independant observers. Even when I’m answering basic surveys sometimes I get annoyed and skip questions or answer quickly without proper consideration.
A lot of people think the porn survey is flawed. It relies only on “self-reporting” which means that you can’t be sure the people in the survey were being particularly honest, and also that the porn performers most likely to have stories of abuse or drug use are the least likely to take part.