“It all makes for a secretive, isolating career…”

…without recourse to human resources, unions, or health insurance.

Just what you wanted, another article about why gay porn stars are committing suicide, or at least dying too soon. (Because all the people who work at Wal-Mart or McDonalds who have no access to unions or health insurance and who also kill themselves aren’t as exciting as gay porn stars, I guess.)

It’s called “The Porn Problem,” it’s in Out (surprise), and it’s looking for answers:

…[C]ould some of the fatal brew that brought these sex gods to their deaths be rooted in the industry itself?

*groan*

It’s looking for answers as to why Arpad Miklos and others keep killing themselves, but maybe gay porn stars are killing themselves because of too many articles about why gay porn stars are killing themselves?

One key factor is economics: Porn alone does not pay the bills. These days, an actor lucky enough to have an exclusive contract with a studio won’t make more than about $24,000 yearly. Many do videos mainly to advertise their escorting, where they can charge $250 an hour or $1,200 for overnight sessions.

Maybe gay porn stars are killing themselves because of articles that help to perpetuate the notion that the gay porn industry is the dark and seedy basement of (whatever’s left of) gay culture that should be avoided at all costs? Maybe gay porn stars are killing themselves because of articles that call them unlucky, broke whores who have to sleep with strangers just to make ends meet (so to speak)? God, if I was a gay porn star reading about how awful my life was supposed to be, I’d kill myself, too.

It all makes for a secretive, isolating career, without recourse to human resources, unions, or health insurance. “There isn’t a strong or organized community of sex workers,” particularly among men, says Dr. Christian Grov, an associate professor at Brooklyn College. […] “You can enter the industry through Rentboy.com or Craigslist, so you’re not connected to others. And you can be emotionally exhausted from the work but can’t talk to family and friends about it to decompress. Then you resort to coping tools like drugs and alcohol.”

Coincidentally, the CDC just last week released new data showing that everyone is killing themselves more these days because things are pretty horrible everywhere, but why let national statistics that implicate everyone get in the way of an article that is entirely dependent upon shaming a specific set of people in a specific line of work? Even more coincidentally, this article appears in Out, which is (sort of?) a magazine owned by Paul Colichman, who is even more ashamed of gay porn than all of the dead gay porn stars were, according to Out, before they killed themselves.

Maybe this article appearing in Colichman’s Out isn’t a coincidence. Remember, Colichman is the Here Media CEO who bought up Unzipped, Men, and Freshmen magazines in 2007, and then quickly started dismantling them one by one (along with their affiliated websites) in 2009, all the while trying to hide all evidence of the magazines’ existence by stuffing away their production and their staffers (myself included; I worked for all three magazines from 2008 until their demise in 2010) in the almost secretive, isolated back corner of a Wilshire Blvd. office building, with Colichman’s entire Out/Advocate staff and their Adam Lambert covers gracing the same building’s front offices and lobby. To Colichman’s credit, he appeared at one point towards the end to want Unzipped to stay in production, so long as instead of having gay porn stars on the cover, we could use straight women and drag queens.

Of course, print was already dying anyway, so with or without Colichman’s porn shame, the magazines wouldn’t have lasted much longer. The point, clearly, is that nowhere will you find more shame about gay porn than from gay men, gay media and so-called gay-friendly institutions. Even some of the people who are supposedly gay porn fans who comment on this very blog seem to be ashamed of gay porn (or at least themselves for leaving a comment on a gay porn blog). More from the Out article:

With porn, there’s another factor: Your work lives on forever and can torpedo future career moves. In 2007, [Roman] Ragazzi, an Israeli whose real name was Dror Barak, quit his job at the Israeli consulate after the New York Post outed him as an escort and porn star. In 2011, teachers in Miami and Boston were fired after their porn pasts were revealed. That stigma can make porn stars feel there’s nowhere else for them to go, even as they age in an industry where everyone has a shelf life.

That stigma…

Instead of just observing the stigma and wallowing in a pile of shit with the dead gay porn stars, why can’t Out and other gay media condemn the stigma and reject the idea that sex workers, whores, prostitutes, and gay porn stars are doomed? Maybe it’s because gay media is too busy, too intellectually weak, or too ashamed of their own sexuality to embrace and support gay men in any context other than sports hero, Boy Scout leader, or someone who can finally get married in Delaware.

Out never once wrote about Erik Rhodes until after he died last summer, and when they did, they wrote that Rhodes and other gay porn stars were “destroyed” figures with no skills “beyond that of persuasion, perseverance (all those hours at the gym!), and charming personalities.” Out never once wrote about Roman Ragazzi either, until after he died. And Out didn’t come to Conner Habib’s defense (neither did The Advocate) when his gay porn work got him booted from a college speaking event in March—an event hosted by an LGBT group on a seemingly gay-friendly and liberal campus—but they did interview him for this article, and he’s quoted as asking to be thought of as more than just a “dirty whore.” OK, Conner, how about a secretive, isolated, dirty whore?

 

12 thoughts on ““It all makes for a secretive, isolating career…””

  1. Zach, I think thou doth protest too much. The article made some good points, and we would be foolish NOT to consider the psychologically damaging aspects of the industry. Also, as a former counselor, I assure you that no one commits suicide because of articles!

    However, you make good points: people do not commit suicide only because of economic hardships or lack of insurance either. AND.. you wisely point out that suicide rates in the industry compare to those outside the industry.

    However, as I said, it behooves us to continually examine the state of the industry. I believe it is dangerous and grossly unfair to individuals in the industry to dig in our heels, determined to insist upon a rosy picture: that just isn’t the truth. There are enormous problems, and it is an enormously complicated lifestyle, too much for some individuals. We need to consider both the good AND the bad. And in order to improve the bad we have to be willing to admit to the problems.

  2. In this day and age, with all the technological resources available, if you are interested in a career in porn, but don’t have the wherewithal to do a little research on it’s impact, maybe you deserve the strife it causes.

    Or, maybe that’s the kind of strife you’d been seeking all along…?

  3. I really agree with you Zach that the stigma associated with being a porn performer MUST be removed from our society. There is NO reason that a past that includes work in porn should preclude work in any other area at all.

    A sex-worker Union is a fabulous idea as well. This group could work on important issues such as healthcare and salaries.

    1. Why is Zach bitter? I too would be as frustrated as he is for someone writing an article about an industry they barely know about.

      I’m honestly tired of so many people blaming the industry and bundling all of these deaths together as if it’s the exact same MO for each case, and it’s not.

      I will say though the industry does need to do a better job of taking care of their models, especially if they’re gonna tie them down as exclusives. But at the same time models have to take responsibility for themselves as well, health-wise and financially.

    2. I agree where’s the bitterness? Did you read the same thing I did? People who work in the sex industry need advocacy. Those of us who are consumers must recognize this

  4. porn needs a Norma Rae. someone high-profile with clout who can organize a performers’ union, like the Screen Actors Guild or a players’ union. it would force professionalism and responsibility from the studios as well as the models. either that or keep debating about the culture around porn (futile).

  5. There were some very sad issues that happened to Arpad in the few months leading to his suicide. To take this another direction, what I found not truthful about the article was JC Adams assertion that Arpad could have still been shooting porn. He had not worked much in the last few years before he died, and guys who had a name like he did in the early to mid 2000’s by 2010 were pushed aside for guys that were younger, worked cheaper, and more disposable(think guys that would turn up weekly on just about every website for a few months then disappear). He didn’t get work because many companies decided he was no longer a bankable star. Slowly those companies have started to go into decline, but the cheap talent, and frame of mind that these guys are disposable hasn’t.

    I read some of the comments on the article and Jasun Mark’s comment about most porn performers he knows aren’t escorts is complete and utter bullshit. Since he spent a great deal of time at Jake Cruise, this can easily be disproven by looking at the catalog of models listed. A conservative estimate would be around 80% of them have/had escorted. It’s been said publicly in the straight industry that 95% of the female talent is pimped out. Next Door favorite Brittany Amber got her start at the Bunny Ranch.

    Yeah there is a lot of broad generalizations and there always will be about porn, but industry people being less than honest about what really does go on, doesn’t exactly help their effort to swipe down those stereotypes.

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