Porn Story Archive

⚡ ALL INFORMATION CLICK HERE 👈🏻👈🏻👈🏻

Porn Story Archive
The documentary After Porn Ends is more about work than sex.
The most heartbreaking scene in the documentary After Porn Ends , about the post-porn lives of 12 adult stars, may be when Asia Carrera talks about her membership in the high-IQ society Mensa. She explains that Mensa links to all its members' websites, but that they wouldn't link to hers because... well, because it was a porn site. Eventually, though, the society did feature her in an issue of its magazine devoted to Mensa celebrities—a big moment for her, she says.
Which, to me, just seems incredibly sad. This after all, is Asia Carrera, a woman who ran away from home at 17 and pulled herself together to become a successful businesswoman and a world-famous name and face. Yet, despite all of that, what she wants is validation from some random group of self-declared smart people. For someone like her to need the approval of someone like them is an apocalyptic admission of neediness that's depressing to think about.
The natural conclusion to leap to, of course, is that the neediness and the porn career are inextricably intertwined: that Carrera entered porn because she needed to be loved, and/or is so unsure of herself because she's ashamed of her porn career.
There's certainly a fair bit of evidence in After Porn Ends , available on iTunes now and on DVD later this month , to support such suspicions. A number of the former performers link their entry into the industry to child sexual abuse and/or to drug addiction. And nearly all of them talk about the bitter stigma of being in the adult industry. Houston lost her job selling real estate when a client recognized her. Randy West—who otherwise seems fairly happy with his career—talks bitterly about the fact that most charities won't allow adult stars to donate to them. Even more poignantly, he suggests that his career in the adult industry made it hard for him to form normal relationships, and thus may be responsible for the fact that he never married and has no children.
One expert talking head argues overdramatically that being an adult star cuts you off from all personal ties. Given the way many of the ex-stars talk about their families and spouses and kids, he's obviously making a gross generalization. But at the same time, it's clear that if you're a former adult performer a lot of people are going to judge you—and you can see how, living with that, having Mensa declare you worthy might pack a certain punch.
So it is possible to watch After Porn Ends and come away with the impression that being in porn is a traumatic psychic and social wound that will never heal. But I don't think that that's exactly a fair conclusion. Carrera herself says she has no regrets about doing porn, and talks emotionally about the outpouring of donations and support she received from fans after her husband was killed in a car accident just before the birth of their second child. Porn in this case didn't isolate her; quite the contrary. And even the Mensa thing—yes it strikes me as pitiful, but is it really any more ridiculous than me looking at my blog's statcounter? Everybody needs reassurance, not just porn stars.
Which is not to deny the particular awfulness or difficulties of porn. Asia Carrera talks about enjoying the chance to have sex with some good-looking guy and get paid for it, but Shelley Luben (now an anti-porn crusader) clearly experienced many of her scenes as rapes. Even Tiffany Millions, who is not especially negative about her time in the industry, describes the work in unintentionally disturbing terms. She says that during sex she would often feel like she was outside of herself looking down: a textbook description of dissociation from trauma.
Millions originally got into the porn industry because of her daughter; as a single mom, she had a choice between spending all her time working a minimum-wage gig—or being a porn star for a few hours a week, making more money, and spending most of her days with her kid. She chose the obvious option, treated it like a day job—no parties, no drugs, no alcohol—and quit when she inherited some money and didn't have to do it anymore. These days she has a great relationship with her husband and daughter (whose almost tearful "you're my hero mom" would make a stone verklempt) and works, quite happily, as a bounty hunter.
I say she works "quite happily," and she does in fact seem to like her job. But there are some downsides. The one anecdote she relates is about repossessing some old lady's car because her son was a deadbeat. She's philosophical about it, but obviously found it quite unpleasant, and who wouldn't?
Most jobs have some unpleasantness of course—and blue collar jobs have more unpleasantness than most. Millions's experience does make you wonder whether porn is truly, exceptionally horrible, or whether it's just a particularly visible examplar. Minimum-wage service jobs, or factory work, or police work, or military service—those things don't involve having sex onscreen, obviously, but they're all arguably degrading, depressing, and potentially dangerous or traumatizing. For that matter, I have friends who are teachers in the public school system, and they are often treated terribly by administrators, parents, kids—everybody basically. Many of them have issues with depression and something that sounds a lot like post-traumatic stress.
Several of the commentators note that most people don't get into porn unless things in their lives have already gone awry. Not all, but most of the porn workers (and especially the women) interviewed here were sexually abused, or had run out of money, or were addicts, or had no support network—they were people who had been pushed into a corner. The film might have done better in illuminating this corner if it had had the elementary courage to interview black or Latino performers, and to think about race as well as class. Even as it is, though, the film makes it clear that porn for many performers was a way out of a dilemma—or, for some, a way to compound it.
Either way, it wasn't porn that created the marginalization or the desperation. And I wonder if the focus on porn as porn distracts from the real issues at stake for many of the folks who make it their livelihood. Porn is sensational, more or less by definition, but it doesn't necessarily follow that it's distinctive or central. Really, based on this documentary, the problems porn workers encounter seem like problems lots of workers encounter: abusive working conditions, inadequate (or more often non-existent) pensions, and lack of options. The stories here—the financial disaster Houston faces when she is first fired and then diagnosed with cancer, for example—are ones that could confront any non-former-porn-star in the swelling ranks of the lower middle-class. The antipathy and contempt porn workers face is perhaps more intense. But it's not necessarily different in kind from the antipathy and contempt that workers in general face. If anything, it's remarkable how many of those interviewed look back on their time in porn with satisfaction, and seem to have liked their jobs. Would that more of us could say the same.


DDoS protection by Cloudflare

Ray ID: 728273c8ed3116cf

Please enable Cookies and reload the page.
This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly.

By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy
Please tell us why you hid this ad?
Please tell us why you hid this ad?
Please tell us why you hid this ad?
Please tell us why you hid this ad?
Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments , as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.
Spam Offensive Disagree Off-Topic
Among the criteria for featured comments: likes by users, replies by users, previous history of valuable commenting, and selection by moderators.
‘They are preparing for war’: An expert on civil wars discusses where political extremists are taking this country
Brett Kavanaugh is the latest target of protests at D.C. restaurants
Perspective Carolyn Hax chat: My husband constantly makes comments about my showers
Perspective Carolyn Hax: Caretaker struggles with a lack of reciprocal support from friends
Neil Gaiman’s Books Have Enchanted Millions. Finally, Hollywood Is on Board.
Unparalleled reporting. Expert insight. Clear analysis. Everything you’ve come to expect from the newsroom of The Post -- for your ears.
Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on.
Questions about why you are seeing this? Contact us
I watch a young mother climb into the swimming pool with her 3-year-old daughter. They wrap their arms securely around each other and playfully bob up and down. Not a hint of distrust crosses this child's face; she appears confident of her mother's love and protection.
After a few moments, the mother attempts to place the child into an inflatable toy ring. Protesting, the little girl begins to kick her feet and cling desperately to her mother's neck. The mother tries to assure her daughter that she will not be left adrift, but her efforts fail.
Acknowledging the fear, the mother tosses the ring onto the deck and gently kisses her daughter's cheek. A smile of success and relief appears on the child's face.
The memory surfaces of myself as a small child: My arms are wrapped around my father's neck while swimming in a lake. I see the same joy on my face as I just saw a moment ago on the child's, until my father reaches his hand under my swimsuit to fondle me. My look of joy suddenly turns to one of shame and fear.
Today, I am left with an image of horror and betrayal.
I acknowledge another equally painful memory, of my mother, who did not protect me from my father. I look at the little girl in the pool and wish that I could have felt the same bond of trust with my mother that she feels with hers. Tears form in my eyes, and I dive into the water so they will go unnoticed.
Vulnerability is difficult to expose to others, but now I can allow myself the relief of crying. For most of my life, the pain was buried under the defenses that I had developed to emotionally survive the incest. ::
My father, a former police officer, began to sexually abuse me at the age of 3 and continued until just prior to my 16th birthday. His assaults ranged from manual stimulation to oral, anal and vaginal penetration. As a child, I did not understand what my father was doing. It seemed that he was providing me with the love and affection that a child desperately needs from a parent. Only after he began to mention the word "secret" did I question if what we were doing was right.
My father never physically forced me to participate sexually with him until my mid-teens. His force was emotional. He was my father, and I trusted him.
Between the ages of 13 and 15, I informed four people of the incest: my mother, a physician, a schoolteacher and my best friend. None of them believed me. Yet my behavior at the time indicated that there was, in fact, something seriously wrong in my home environment.
I was desperately crying for help -- through bedwetting, truancy, poor academic performance, attention-seeking behavior, self-destructiveness, hypochondria, chronic depression, fatigue and eventually drug and alcohol abuse and promiscuity.
Physical indications of sexual abuse were also present, such as chronic upper respiratory, kidney and bladder infections, as well as gynecological problems and rectal bleeding. My entire physical and emotional being screamed for someone to recognize that something was deeply hurting me.
At 16, no longer willing or able to endure any further abuse, I ran away from home. A week later, my father found and brought me home, only to beat me and throw me physically out onto the sidewalk. My mother's immediate concern, I felt, was that the neighbors might see what was happening. I walked away knowing that I would never return home, even if it meant ending my own life.Putting aside my fear that again I would not be believed, I sought the help of a social worker at the county mental health center. Finally, someone knew that I was telling the truth. She looked at the bruises on my face and said that it was her responsibility to report child abuse to the Department of Social Services. She asked me if I would talk to a case worker. I said yes; she dialed the telephone.
As she talked to the case worker, my heart raced. I was terrified of what would happen next. Would my father go to jail? Would I be sent to a foster home?
That telephone call led to my father's indictment and a trial. Although I was relieved to be out of my parents' home, the thought of testifying against my father in court was horrifying. I was breaking the silence that he demanded I keep -- I was betraying him. I felt ashamed, as if I were to blame for the abuse and should have been able to stop him.
As I testified, I could see the hate in his eyes. My mother sat next to him; I had been abandoned. Her support of my father strengthened my belief that I was a very bad person.
At the end of the court proceedings, my father was convicted of criminal sexual conduct in the fourth degree. His sentence was a two-year probation, with an order for psychiatric treatment and a $750 fine.
My sentence was the emotional aftermath of the abuse.
Ten years have passed since the trial, and at age 26 I look back on the painful process of recovering. Healing the wounds of my childhood has required more than the passage of time.
In fact, most of this time was spent in a state of emotional denial. On an intellectual level, I knew that I had been a victim of incest, along with physical and emotional abuse. But on an emotional level, I felt numb. When talking about my experiences, it was as though I were speaking about someone totally separate from myself.
I lived from crisis to crisis, was unable to maintain a healthy intimate relationship and continued to abuse alcohol. I was financially irresponsible, chronically depressed, a compulsive overeater and lived in a fantasy world. Yet at times my behavior was the opposite: super-responsible, perfectionist, mature, overachieving and ambitious -- to the point of near exhaustion.
Behavior that I had developed as a child to protect myself from my father was also still present. I would sometimes awaken in the night, screaming for my father to leave me alone. Locking bathroom and bedroom doors, out of fear that someone would attempt to enter and violate me, was common.
The greatest effect of the abuse was the profound sense of guilt and shame that plagued me on a daily basis. I hated myself. No matter how hard I tried to feel good about myself, feelings of shame and worthlessness would surface. I continuously sought the approval of others. Surely someone would think that I was a good person if only I tried hard enough to please them. I would do almost anything for a friend or my employer to gain approval, even if that meant neglecting or overextending myself.
At times, my guilt would overwhelm me to the extent of becoming suicidal. I wanted to end the pain, not my life, but the two were deeply enmeshed. I desperately wanted someone to rescue me from my pain. Turning others into parental figures and expecting to be taken care of was a way of survival. I didn't have to face my losses if I could maintain the fantasy that someday I would have the kind of parents that I needed.
Eventually, I recognized my need to return to professional counseling. I had been in psychotherapy during the court proceedings, and again five years later.
This time, along with therapy, I sought the help of an incest survivors' support group. Being in the presence of others with similar experiences helped me feel that I was not alone in my quest for recovery. Hearing other victims talk about their sorrow, fear, rage and confusion allowed me to share my own feelings with them. We supported each other with acceptance and understanding, affirming that it was safe to grieve. Together, we acknowledged our need to learn ways of parenting ourselves. The skills that our parents should have taught us as children were absent. Essentially, we were growing up all over again.
In therapy, my social worker helped me become familiar with the little girl that I still carried with me -- the little girl who was hurt by her parents and needed me as the adult to love and accept her. First, we looked at how I treated the part of myself that was still a little girl. When she would cry for help, I would usually stifle her as much as my parents had. I learned that my self-abuse was directed at my little girl; I didn't want to acknowledge her existence. I was certain she was demanding, rebellious and a rotten little kid. After all, wasn't this the message that my parents had given me?
To help me get to know my little girl, I gave her a name that felt affectionate. "Punky" was a nickname that an aunt called me, so this was my choice. In therapy, I worked on teaching Punky to trust that I would not try to quiet her if she wanted to share her pain with me or my social worker. Learning to listen to her gave me tremendous insight into my own needs, feelings and behavior. Eventually, Punky learned that it was safe to trust -- not only me, but also others.
Trust is the foundation of a child's life; my father exploited that trust through incest. Without the ability to trust, it is impossible to develop loving relationships.Peeling back the layers of defenses to expose the core of my pain was frightening. Only by approaching and then retreating from my feelings could I allow myself to actively grieve. Trusting in my ability to stop when the pain became overwhelming was essential in allowing the grief to surface.
Losing control over my grief was a constant concern. I soon learned, however, that I had the inner strength to control my response to my own emotions, if only I would choose to exercise it.
For the first time, my tears began to flow. I wasn't sure if they would ever stop. My crying lasted, off and on, for several months. Over and over, I needed to recount memories of the abuse in order to accept and let them go. For all of my life, the memories controlled and haunted me. Now, I had control over them.
Underneath the pain was rage toward my parents for what they had done. I was afraid of this rage because, as a child, my parents' anger often resulted in violence. The rage that was too threatening to express toward my parents out of fear of violence and rejection became internalized and directed toward myself.
My suppressed anger was the source of my shame, guilt and self-destructive behavior. I would overreact to criticism, create conflicts with co-workers, complain constantly and would allow others to take advantage of me.
Through therapy, my anger became directed toward my parents, where it belonged. With the support of a friend, I called them on the telephone and screamed about how deeply they had hurt me. I also wrote letters to them in my angriest times. I mailed only one of the letters, but writing helped me to externalize my feelings and place them where they were manageable.
The relief I felt after slowly letting go of the pain and anger was great. Much energy had been consumed in keeping it submerged. Now, I could use this energy for taking better care of myself.
In most cases of abuse, there are two people who are abused -- the child who is now being abused and the parent who was abused as a child. I found no evidence of sexual abuse in either of my parents' backgrounds. But they appear to have been emotionally abused as children. My mother may
Hot Skinny Women
Bondage Facial
Redpaganmom