Pornography. The word conjures up all kinds of images, most of them sordid. Much is written and discussed about pornography – should it be legal? Is it damaging to women? Should there be more regulations around it? I wanted to take a look at how many of those articles and discussions are actually accurate, because it appears that people seem more than content to weigh in on the topic when their exposure to porn is limited at best.
This consideration is what led me to be sitting at my computer at four in the morning talking to an industry professional about his experiences working with, and appearing in, pornographic videos. Lance Hart (his performer name) is a prominent face within the porn industry, and has amassed nearly ten years of experience working in it, both with other male performers and with female performers.
“There is no denying that the market for pornography shows no signs of warning”
Lance is the mastermind behind Pervout.com – an umbrella site that gives individuals the chance to shoot their own pornographic fetish movies. Describing it as like “independent film vs. Hollywood”, Pervout.com caters to a wide range of niche fetishes, including but not limited to, foot fetish, ball-busting, female domination and karate. Lance provides the equipment, spaces and expertise to create “low budget, high quality porn”. He teaches other performers how to produce their own videos which he then sells on his website, enabling creators to reach a wider range of audiences and making fetish porn (something that has traditionally been repressed and relegated to the darkest corners of the Internet) accessible, safe and high quality.
In fact, just as we are speaking, Lance tells me that he has a female performer staying with him who is webcamming in his living room and he is in the process of helping her start her own business and gain financial independence. It’s not quite Dragon’s Den but there is no denying that the market for pornography shows no signs of waning, and clearly demand for niche fetish pornography is only increasing as people become more open and accepting of different aspects of their sexuality.
“I didn’t know anything about what it was actually like… but it’s smut so i assumed that it was going to be dirty”
Growing up with the Internet, Lance, just like any other young man, started consuming porn as a teenager with the introduction of the Internet. Lance recalled how “it was really exciting – you could search and see whatever you wanted” and this enabled him to “put names to things that I thought were sexy. Like I have fetishes and things that I think are hot but I never knew what to call them”. This ability to search and explore fetishes for the first time perhaps seems alien to us today in a world where we take the Internet and Google for granted, but it is important to appreciate the kind of impact in developing one’s sexuality that the Internet has had on people since its inception.
After first wanting to be a writer but getting a job as a software consultant because it paid more, Lance appeared in his first porn movie in 2009 where he was paid $1800 for a solo masturbation scene. Lance admits that “I didn’t really think about it that much at the time” because, after being made redundant from his software consultant job he needed the money. This scene led him to sign a two year contract with the company to do specifically gay porn scenes with other male performers. There is a slight tone of surprise in Lance’s voice as he tells me this, and he goes on to clarify that “at the time I would have said I identified as completely straight, but over time… I’ve opened my mind more, but I’d say I’m mostly straight, but like guys sometimes”.
Upon joining the industry, Lance confesses that his expectations were low. “I didn’t know anything about what it was actually like… but it’s smut so I assumed that it was going to be dirty. I was actually very scared.” Lance was very worried what it would be like on set, whether there were going to be drugs and alcohol etc. but it turned out that his reservations were misplaced. “I was surprised to find that it was, honestly, more professional than my software job… The porn set was more HR friendly. Everyone was respectful, everybody was sober. One guy that they flew in they sent home because it looked like he had drank too much the night before. I was impressed with that.”
Obviously, he also admits that everything is not rosy and wonderful in the industry. Lance says that “not every set is that way” and that there “is a lot of this and that in the industry it’s easy to get lost”. Exactly what he means by “this and that” he doesn’t elaborate on, but he does show an awareness of the more dangerous side of porn. I wanted to press him on this a little bit more because people often point to some horrible stories of women being objectified and treated abhorrently by directors and other male performers when discussing porn.
Having worked with many female performers, Lance understands that he can’t speak for them, but in his experience he admits to being very lucky at having been surrounded by “professional people who care about each other’s vulnerability”. He understands the “vulnerability that comes with having a female body” like the questions of: “Do I look sexy? Feminine? Do I still maintain my power as a woman? But people really respect that because we’re all vulnerable together… People are just nice!” It’s a far cry from the stereotypical images of porn performers and producers that some people have.
“There Is a lot of this and that in the industry … it’s easy to get lost”
There are, however, cases where dangerous situations happen. Lance recalls one story of a female performer he knows who was in the bathroom after a shoot when one of the male performers came in and “basically naked hugged her from behind. He didn’t hit her or anything but it was scary because she didn’t like that. She said no and he didn’t back away, so she said no very adamantly and then he did back away. Now that’s bad and we don’t approve of that but in six years of porn I’ve only heard one story like that, and that story has become HUGE news. It’s been all over the porn news and when you think about it, if that’s big news, then the norm is we treat each other with respect. Those are freak things. I think it’s shocking to people who don’t work in porn because they think ‘well you’re all… a bunch of godless sluts touching each other and of course it’s going to be terrible,’ but it’s really not.”
Obviously, Lance’s experiences can only go so far on this topic, and it is perfectly possible that many more serious incidents go unreported for fear of the repercussions. As he says himself, “I’m not a woman so can’t really speak for them” and therefore we might have gotten a different reaction if the question was posed to a female performer. It is clear from watching porn that women are often treated as sexual objects, and while they may be ok with it themselves, the image given to people who watch those scenes may be different. Ultimately, however, this is an instance on things for a person. Lance point to an example from a scene he did a few weeks ago with a girl who was very new to the industry where she was gangbanged by Lance and four other someone who doesn’t work in the industry talking without experience. Yes, while Lance can’t speak for all women, he speaks for the women he has worked with, but perhaps the experiences of performers differ from what we expect them to be.
It is really interesting hearing issues like this from first hand experience, that incidents like the one mentioned above are in actual fact extremely rare. Indeed, it seems for every incident like this one, there is another actually truly heartwarming story where working in porn can do amazing things for a person.Lance points to an example from a scene he did a few weeks ago with a girl who was very new to the industry where she was gangbanged by Lance and four other guys. The sex was supposed to be rough, so rough seit included “grabbing her, choking her, putting things in all her holes and stuff”. Now this sounds like the stuff of objectification horror right? Wrong.
According to Lance, “it was important to all of us that we knew that she was actually into it, that she wasn’t doing it just for the money, so we talked to her first and the director, of course, talked to her first. It was Kink [the fetish porn studio] and Kink are very good at hiring the people who want to do it, not the people who need to do it”. Rough sex was her particular fetish and doing it through pornography was the only safe way to have this kind of experience, because as Lance points out that “you can’t just go to a bar and be like ‘hey, here’s five guys, come home and choke- fuck me.’”
In addition to this, during the experience the female performer actually had a clitoral orgasm for the first time. “She’d been told by her ex that she was broken and she’d obviously had some bad experiences in the past… but [in the scene] she came in a new way and she cried. The director cut and checked in,” asking her if she was ok but, “she was crying, very clearly tears of joy and she said ‘I thought I was broken and now I know that I’m not. This is amazing.’ She cried, everybody cried, all five of us tough guys gang banging her gave her a big group hug. It was like a Disney movie… but THAT’S the norm. The bad experience are bad… but porn is leaps and bounds ahead of [other industries]”.
I bet you never thought you’d hear a rough gang bang porn scene being described as “a Disney movie” but that’s because our preconceptions about what porn is and what happens to those who take part in it are undoubtedly very skewed and inaccurate. Yes there may be instances where things are not quite so wholesome, but that is true of every industry. People tend not to think twice when they buy their clothes from Primark, Topshop or River Island, all of whom have been linked to using child and slave labour in factories that are substandard and physically dangerous. People seem to refuse to believe that the horror stories are representative of the entire fashion industry, and yet they do when it comes to pornography.
“she cried, everybody cried, all five of us tough guys gang-banging her gave her a big group hug. it was like a disney movie”
Much like with anything, it is often the consumption of the thing that can cause a problem, rather than the thing itself. Too much McDonalds can cause obesity, but a treat once in a while is fine. The same, Lance agrees, is true for porn. Often people cite negative impacts of watching too much porn as a reason for it to be considered dangerous, claiming it can reduce sexual interest, affect performance in bed and alter what we consider to be ‘normal’ sex. I put this question to Lance, and asked whether or not too much porn can be a bad thing. I got the answer I was expecting. Just like with anything, Lance said, excessive consumption can be a problem: “Of course there are people who have trouble with it, just like there are people with food addictions, but that’s not what it’s for. It’s meant to be entertainment and not to be abused like that.”
Lance actually insists that pornography does more good than harm, and describes how he gets several emails a week from individuals and couples who want to say thank you for the videos he makes because they help their relationships.
He specifies that it is the pegging videos (where females penetrate their male partners with strap-on dildos) that are often the subject of these e-mails, because guys have shown their wives these videos and were too scared to ask for it, but apparently “because they could show her a video and it didn’t look scary or sleazy, like it looked sexy and clean, that she was willing to do it and now I’m doing things that she always wanted and vice versa”.
Moving on from these broad sociological questions, I wanted to get Lance’s opinion on some of the new government laws that have come into effect that are focused on the porn industry. In California, for example, porn producers and performers are having a problem with a new law that says that every performer must wear a condom in scenes. “I wish the Government asked more questions before they make the rules” he said. “I think they should at least consult industry professionals.” He says, of that law, that “anybody not in the industry would say of course they should… but as it turns out… if they looked into our testing standards, it’s NOT safer to wear condoms, it’s safer to get tested, because of the abrasions that condoms can cause and the infections you can get if you’re fucking for four hours at a time. They’re also unnecessary because of the high standard of S.T.I. testing we do.” Again, we have a case of people outside the industry offering their opinions on a matter about which they know relatively little. This seems to be the common thread with discussions about pornography. Lots of people have opinions and lots of people don’t mind putting them out there, but those opinions are ill-informed.
As for the future of porn, Lance is optimistic that people will continue to experiment with their sexuality and try new things in their sex lives. “As the world evolves a little bit, people will be more open to what they want and there will be more honesty… like hey, I’m straight but I like things in my butt and that’s ok. Stuff like that doesn’t make you a bad person or a sinner.” Gone are the days when people rigidly define themselves by their sex lives. Straight guys are shagging other straight guys (with new apps catering specifically to guys looking for ‘bro-jobs’), girls are banging other girls and more and more people are rejecting the tradition of monogamy for other forms of relationship.
It was fascinating to talk to someone with such direct experience in the porn industry, and see that there are lots of common misconceptions about what life is like in front of the camera. For so long ‘porn’ has been a dirty word, but it’s something that the vast majority of us have consumed at one time or another. Slowly but surely we are shaking off this idea that sex is shameful and should be hidden, but it’s taking time. Pornography and sex need to be brought out of the shadows if we are going to really talk about them properly.
