On the second page of this NSFW discussion, there’s this comment:
“Luke is Back has turned into such a piece of *** site. They are always stirring up fake drama like some sort of two bit Gawker.
It is very disrespectful to the legacy of Luke Ford.”
In the 21st century enlightened mindset, it is all good. Everything relating to sex is good, except for heterosexual male desire, and pornography will be endorsed by both men and women. Be sex positive. Be inclusive. Be open-minded about sex workers. You know why the media calls them porn stars no matter how lowly their career? If not porn stars, the only other applicable term is filmed hooker. Jon Millward decided to look at the Internet Adult Film Database and glean what information he could about the average performer. Stereotypes were challenged, and he puts a great spin on a seedy industry…
Porn stars of both genders have also been progressively retiring earlier: in the ‘70s, men stayed in porn for an average of twelve years, and women for nine. Now men on average quit after four years, and women after three.
His opinion on type of sex shown,
Sometimes when I hear people railing against porn, declaring it as the downfall of society, a poison infecting masculine minds and demeaning female ones, I wonder what kind of porn they’re talking about. To me, porn seems a lot like sport.
Then there is his attack on Luke Ford’s statement that most women perform in one movie and then are out of the industry because it is too degrading.
Do the majority (over 50%) of women who try porn leave it after doing one film because it’s so completely soul-destroying? Using my data set I knew I could find out. The actual number of single film quitters is between 10% and 30%. It’s difficult to settle on an exact figure, because it differs depending on how you sample the women, but one thing’s for sure: most women don’t quit after one film—in fact, the majority (at least 53%) do three or more. So, to update the quote with the facts, do most women do three films and then quit because the experience is so humiliating and painful? Perhaps. Or maybe they just don’t like it and stop.
He then claims that discussing the whys is beyond the scope of his essay, yet he was pontificating on every item he has described in the essay.
Where to begin? First, check your brain on porn before saying it is perfectly fine. The deluge of free HD streaming porn has definitely warped the sex lives of Americans if you bother to ask anyone, especially high school and college students. Second, watch the average boy-girl scene from 1984 and boy-girl scene in 2014. Tell me which is more barbaric. Third, watch “After Porn Ends” to see former big name performers recount their lives in and after pornography. It’s a horror show, more so for the women as the men seemed to adjust better (go figure). That documentary might explain some things about holding out on doing interracial besides it still being a bit taboo. This link might explain about pay and waiting on odder items like anal and interracial.
Millward could have checked his data for progression of performers and told readers first time for X or Y. In “After Porn Ends”, Mary Carey looks at the camera and explains how she can still get paid and string out her career at age milestones. She said at 27 she could do her first X, at 30 her first Y, and eventually she ended it with at 35 do my first black guy. Some female performers will do anything right off the bat, others hold out. Part of it is building a fanbase and then making bigger bucks for the “1st X” scene. Part of it is a woman will only do what she has to do to keep the calls coming. Start out in “tease” scenes. After a while calls stop, then do “girl-girl”. After a while calls drop, then do “boy-girl” and so on and so forth with only her internal standards staircase as the obstacle. That is why the average age for more taboo (first anal, DP or interracial) is higher. Breaking down those type of scenes by women’s race would probably be too uncomfortable of a revelation because the way pay is and who gets selected for what.
Now the real odd part where Millward’s numbers do not add up. He states the average male quits after four years and female after three years. He then goes pedantic boss on Luke Ford’s statement and instead of viewing Ford’s statement of quit after one as a metaphor for the come and go quickly girls, he discusses the number that quit after one film. He says it is between 10% and 30%. He then goes on to say 53% of women performer in three or more films. That means 47% do two or fewer, and without knowing how many do three, it could be half of them quit after three (median = 3 films). How many women do you think film three in one weekend or week and then never do it again? I have to ask, when the average female quits after 3 years, but the average female (47%) makes 2 or fewer films, how are they stretching 2 films over 3 years? Did he use mean or median for average career length? It does not add up if the median women shoots 3 films stretched over 3 years. I request clarification because that sounds like bullshit to mask the chew them up and spit them out nature of the industry.
Pornography is going to be made whether one likes it or not. This kind of rah-rah “here’s the average performer and look, it’s all good” crap is what irks me. My focus is on the difference between the market in 1984 vs. 2014 as well as the cultural attitude towards it. If 1984 porn was what was streamed free and never-ending into your computer, the conversation would be different. If there was an online red-light district, the conversation would be different. There is no way to put the genie back into a bottle because the technology to shoot in high quality and share for all for free on the Internet is in your 3×6 Iphone. It’s the desires of the consumer and standards of the producer that really are the drivers as well as the media’s desire to forever expand sexual horizons.
