Pornstars are psychologically as healthy as other women?

[caseymoz]

23. But the standards for the study group

were that the women make at least one X-rated movie. That seems to set a really low standard for "success" if you can describe it like that. But that says nothing about how they found the women and got them to volunteer.

Objections to porn based on the porn stars being traumatized have always presumed that the ones at the top of their careers were damaged. At least this study counters that much. Unlike athletes, stonemasons, and all the other professions listed, generally people see porn performance as unskilled labor that any brain-damaged addict can do. I wouldn't go that far, but some people who've never had sex on camera before can become hits a month after they get into the business. Try that as a stonemason and a nurse. I'm not saying the work isn't hard. It just isn't skilled. Though, sexual skills might take you further for longer.

It's harder to wipe out in porn than it is in the other professions you name. You don't have a nine-to-five job, for one thing. Which is why sex work is attractive for people with drug problems.

I don't think sex workers have an addiction problem. I think addicts have a sex-work problem. I think the people who should never get into that business are the ones who are in because they're too crippled with a drug habit to do anything else, and sex work is the only thing that pays enough for the fix. Those are the people who are most likely to be in despite any moral or sexual aesthetic objections. They are the ones who commit the most risks, and the ones most likely to end traumatized and hating the general clientele.

Okay, though. It's not a bad objection you have. I'd just call this study preliminary You would have to test your hypothesis statistically before you could say it's anything but conjecture. You could check further into the study to find out if it were controlled for "dropouts."

However, that's not why I reported this. Personally, I'm just happy somebody, anybody, actually asked these women about themselves before reporting to the public, rather than relying on the stereotypes and prejudices that have dominated the discussion of porn. I think that's a step forward. I don't actually care what other studies find, as long as they actually study the porn stars and not the stereotypes, and are fair and don't tamper with the data.