Y’know, I used to wonder why Angelique Pettyjohn, pneumatic, chrome-plated Trekkie wet dream, continued in porn long past the point where she could’ve offered her services as receptionist to the highest bidder at a Star Trek convention, and we can imagine how high those bids would go considering how many Trekkies became CEOs in the 80s and 90s, and I realized that some people just like to fuck on camera. God knows that she could not have been so delusional that she thought people liked her ACTING.
They may not be the same, chemically, but they produce the same high and have the same intensity of withdrawal for someone who is a heavy user. I’m guessing that’s what Dr. Drew meant when he said that.
It’s too bad he couldn’t control himself and felt he had to spread his exaggerations into this thread. :rolleyes:
Right, there are some studies that suggest that marijuana use can lead to increased estrogen levels in men. It’s not the THC, which doesn’t seem to have any effect, but instead the phytoestrogens that can be found in marijuana. It can also reduce sperm count. However, people build up tolerance to marijuana, which might counteract these effects.
Well, isn’t that nice and simple? Every single woman in porn is doing it to get back at a man, because as it turns out, a woman is not an individual with her own free will, but simply a force created to react in specific ways to the men in her world. Thanks–it all makes sense now!
Do you make it a habit to go around parroting every unsupported sexual fact you hear as if it were gospel? Why do you take such an obvious bit of hyperbole as fact without asking for support–and then, even worse, demand that we take it second-hand without questioning, and with probably even less support?
FTR, I actually rather like you, so there goes your Liberal-esque “Nail me up on the cross! These people aren’t ready for my truth!” crap.
Actually, our first response is to discount the source because it doesn’t provide anywhere near sufficient evidence for its extraordinary claim.
I don’t consider that to be a source at all. If Dr Drew is making that categorical statement based on his own private practice dealing with a tiny, self-selected group of individuals, then he’s a fool. If he is basing that on some research, then I’d like to know what that research is.
Translation:
La la la la la, I can’t hear you!
You must be referring to someone else because I never said any of that.
Actually, I took it as mildly hyperbolic but essentially accurate information as a credible source and I haven’t demanded that anyone else accept it. I don’;t give a rat’s ass if anyone else wants to believe it it.
Except the claim is not extraordinary. What’s extraordinary is the fantasy that women grow up and decide to do double anal penetration scenes on camera just because they’ve “always been really sexual” and they couldn’t possibly have any abuse in their past. Guys who believe that bullshit probably also believe it when a hooker tells them they have a big cock.
This cite doesn’t directly address the question, but it seems relevant: it looks at links between childhood sexual abuse and involvement in sex work among youth in Vancouver, Canada. The abstract is not entirely clear as to whether they’re seeing the prevalence of sex abuse among all “drug-using street-involved youth” or those DUSIY involved in sex work. If the latter, we get a stat of 32.4% of these sex workers who have been sexually abused. A terrible number, to be sure, but extremely far from 100%.
This study, of childhood sexual abuse among sex workers who’ve ended up at a methadone clinic, has a similar ambiguity in its abstract, but interestingly arrives at an almost identical number: 32.6% of the sample reported childhood sexual abuse.
I would also suspect that the incidence of sex abuse among DUSIY sex workers and among heroin-using prostitutes would be significantly higher than that incidence among “mainstream” porn actors. Ten minutes of googling hasn’t turned up much in the way of stats on the latter group.
Daniel
FYI, when I listened to Loveline, the typical routine would be a young woman calling to complain about some sort of sexual compulsion that was causing trouble, or someone working in the sex industry having other problems (maybe drug addiction or a series of bad relationships), and Dr. Drew would ask if they had suffered some sort of abuse as a child. I’d categorize the typical answers and their frequency as:
- “Yes, I was abused at age 8 (or whatever).” maybe 5%
- Denial followed by a few minutes of questioning, only to have abuse be later admitted: maybe 70%
- “Yes, I was abused, but that has nothing to do with it because I miraculously got over it with no help from anyone.” Maybe 20%.
- Denial that seemed genuine. Much less than 5%. Maybe like 1%.
Now, my view is that the folks calling in the show were always the people who had problems aside from their work: there weren’t happy strippers calling in to simply talk about how their job is satisfying to them. (actually, I recall more than a few calls in which sex workers would call in to say Dr Drew was wrong, but after a few minutes of questioning, they pretty much all fit in that "yeah I was abused but that has nothing to do with why I’m a stripper. These calls pretty much always backfired.) The folks calling in were generally those who had really out-of-control lives in many facets, and of the sex workers who called in, it was pretty clear after listening to them for like one minute that the chaos in their lives led them to that line of work. That these women suffered some sort of horrible childhood, very often involving some type of sexual abuse, was a glaringly obvious pattern.
So what I’m saying is that Dr. Drew was dealing with people who had a lot of problems in their lives, and his ability to spot abuse in these individuals was uncanny. But the other point is that if you ask the porn stars at a party these questions, even if they have severe problems in other facets of their lives, and especially if they had actually been abuse survivors, they’re going to deny it.
LHoD: I just took a quick look at the study in Vancouver, and it also says this:
That’s pretty much exactly what Drew says: the correlation of neglect and abuse to sex work is extremely high. Note that how I’m characterizing Dr. Drew’s views may be slightly different than how Dio does: it is clear to me that Drew wasn’t talking only about sexual abuse, but also abandonment, violence, and so forth.
Also, can someone smarter than me parse this line: “Univariate and logistic regression analyses demonstrated that not only was sexual abuse independently associated with sex work, but emotional abuse was as well.” Does independently associated mean that there is or is not a correlation? I’m not aware of the term. It seems to be saying that abuse is correlated with sex work, but I want to make sure. Because that’s pretty much exactly what we’re talking about here.
Now, to the point: are sex workers overwhelmingly abuse survivors? I have no idea. But that abuse survivors are drawn to sex work seems undeniable, and considering how many abuse survivors there are, my gut tells me that the number of women who choose sex work in the manner that someone would choose to be a plumber or an accountant is probably much, much, much less than those who are driven to do it because of some very unfortunate circumstances or events.
Oh, and I know is plural of anecdote isn’t data, but Jenna Jameson wrote a whole book about being abused not only through childhood but also into adulthood.
The most famous porn star in history was abused as a child? And she doesn’t really see a connection? Shocking. Absolutely shocking. Nobody could have predicted it, as it must have been just a complete coincidence.
That’s true, and I wasn’t trying to hide that. I was limiting the discussion to the original assertion, that “women who work in porn were practically all sexually abused as children.” I think that claim is pretty clearly spurious. If you include self-reported emotional neglect, it seems a lot more plausible–although I’d want to know what the baseline is for self-reported emotional neglect among the general population. If Jenna has sex on camera as a way to get the attention she never felt she got as a kid, that’s a little bit less alarming than if Jenna is constantly reliving on-camera the time her uncle raped her.
Daniel
Her quote raises another question, one I’m certainly not qualified to answer. What if going into porn is part of the healing process for some of these folks? What if it’s a way of reclaiming their bodies, showing that they can do what they want to do with themselves instead of having their bodies be under the control of anyone else?
Daniel
Well, then, porn would be a good thing. I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the industry itself.
Clearly, you have no idea what I meant by “demand”.
Now you’re moving the goalposts. I didn’t say that it was extraordinary that some women in porn were abused, nor did I say that it isn’t possible for women who do double anal penetration scenes on camera because they’ve always been really sexual were abused. I said the claim that all or virtually all (hard to tell; you’ve been doing a lot of fudging as to just how “virtual” that is) women in hardcore porn were abused in their past is extraordinary.
Not to mention that that’s an illegal and much more dangerous activity (assuming that by “youth” you mean people under the age of consent; AIUI, prostitution is legal in Canada as long as there’s no pimp, but I’m sure it still has something of a street ethos to it in major urban centers). I’m assuming that “sex workers” is a euphemism for “prostitutes” here, and has nothing to do with the porn industry.
That’s not what Ms. Jameson said. She said she can’t really say for sure, and that she’s OK with that. That’s not a denial by any means, any more than it is a raving endorsement of the theory.
ETA: A lot of people snark celebrities in the entertainment industry for being outspoken. Here’s one who’s actually willing to say “I don’t know” and is quite comfortable with that. Is that a bad thing? Does it show ignorance or denial on her part?
I think it shows a lack of introspection and illuminates that she’d rather adopt extreme behavior (not only her porn career, but also her history of drug addiction, abusive relationships, and as the cherry on top of this trainwreck sundae, the series of rather disgusting plastic surgeries in recent years) rather than dealing with a serious issue from her childhood. If, say, a drug addict (let’s say a functional one for the sake of argument) said he didn’t know (or care) whether his childhood beatings led him to drug use, but he really enjoys getting high, I’d say it illustrates the same pattern of behavior: abuse scrambles the brain and often leads people to extreme behavior as a coping mechanism.
So anything short of being a philosopher is enough for you to condemn a porn star as completely oblivious? Maybe she just doesn’t consider herself qualified to answer for the entire industry–which is essentially what that question was asking her to do–or doesn’t like the pressure, and has decided not to be The Pornstar who gets up on her soapbox and issues a declaration for the entire industry.
Well, the key word is functional, of course. Since we’re assuming he’s functional, what’s the problem? Apparently it’s helping him cope.
First of all, my views on Jenna’s statements relate to Jenna alone. But let me ask you an honest question: when Jenna says that she’s happy and sleeps easy at night (like she said in the CNN interview), do you believe her?
Because I just glimpse at what I saw on the news about her – childhood abuse, abuse by boyfriends, rapes, drug addictions, her recent unspeakable appearance, and even her career in porn, and while I acknowledge her financial success, I completely fail to see that any of that is a recipe for a decent life. That’s not a value judgment, but that stuff is just the definition of chaos, hurting other people, self-destruction, maybe depression or other behavioral problems, and just plain misery. Hell, I pity her. And just for the sake of the welfare of another human being, I think that she would have probably done a hell of a lot better getting professional help to deal with all the crap she’s dealt with. I think the continuing drama is evidence that she sought more chaos to try to find happiness, rather than working with a professional to deal with the traumatic events of her life and get her shit back on track. I just fail to see how anyone could possibly think that’s she’s being honest when she says she’s happy – I think she’s pitiful, despite her incredible beauty in years past.
Yeah, and when he continues his drug use after he gets married and has kids, there’s no chance at all that having a drug addict as a dad will affect the kids in any way. And addiction never gets worse, either. Yep, it’s better not to seek professional help to address the underlying problem. Just keep coping with self-medication of narcotics and everything will be okay. You’ve convinced me, that fictional guy doesn’t have any problems at all.
Sure, why not? It’s not my place to determine whether or not she is; I don’t know her at all. I’m not even sure I’ve seen her perform. Anyway, it sounds like a pretty momentous statement for her, considering the things she’s gone through, which is why I think it’s odd that you’re willing to dismiss it offhand as not being introspective enough.
Unspeakable? Exaggerating much? Sure, there’s some fakeness there that’s a bit of a turnoff for me, but I think a lot of guys would find that hot.
That’s not what I said, Captain America, but you can cry and gnash your teeth over every crack-smoking loser in the nation if you like. All you’re gonna do is get yourself down.
Try this. Give it a couple years and the inevitable destination is this. (Warning: the second link will give you nightmares.)
If anyone thinks Jenna looks hot in that photo, please raise your hand.
I appreciate your concern for my well-being, but my comment is directed at your short-sighted dismissal of drug dependency as a valid coping strategy, rather than wringing my hands at the angst of addicts.