Hell, I’m the type of person who would probably pursue a career in the porn industry if male porn stars weren’t so generally underpaid & (presumably) under-appreciated. I have no problems whatsoever with the idea of fucking on camera, though I understand why a lot of people have reservations about that sort of thing.
The bottom line is that there’s a single question that any potential pornographic actor is going to have to answer before making any decisions: “Are you OK with screwing on camera?” The obvious answers are “yes” or “no,” but I imagine that there’s a whole breadth of responses that cover the gray area surrounding that entire industry. I mean, as an example, I used to know a guy who was offered the chance to appear in a porn movie; he personally had no qualms about the idea of doing it, yet he turned the offer down because he didn’t think that his parents would’ve approved. I have to believe that other folks will face similar quandaries if & when they’re approached to do porn.
I will say that more women than men are PROBABLY drawn to the sex industry due to childhood traumas & psychological issues & all that ish, but I don’t feel comfortable saying that that applies to most or even many of the actresses in porn. I think that most of the people (female AND male) involved in porn are doing it because they legitimately enjoy it & are having a good time at their jobs, and not because they’re all arbitrarily screwed up in the head in some way.
I don’t see any reason why there would be more mentally unhealthy people in porn. That isn’t to say that they think the way the average person does, but that I don’t see any sign that they actually cross the line into mental illness. Any proclivity for mental illness by being closer to the edges is offset by the rejection of the most mentally ill that fortunately is less common in actual society.
But you also asked about social worth. I think porn stars aren’t really worth that much, but this is because they are selected by external beauty, which, despite being popular, does not have nearly as much worth as internal beauty. The latter is almost completely irrelevant. But note that this is the same in any profession that deals with aesthetics.
I used to thing porn was bad for society, but now I’ve moved up to neutral. Sure, it’s bad for some people, but it’s also good for some people, and thus it washes out.
When I started the thread I was thinking of a fellow whose name is, I think, Jake Malone; he is behind a porn series called Facial Abuse. I saw one of his flicks the other day and by the way he and his comrades were humiliating their female [del]costar[/del] victim, I came to the belief that in a just and good world someone should break at least one rib of each of the men.
Of course, most male porn stars aren’t as nakedly misogynistic and evil as Malone, or so I hoped.
If it makes you feel better, some of those videos the women give as good as they take (it’s a unique experience to see one of these “female abuse” porn films where the woman is on the receiving end of everything, but is showering the man involved with an unrelenting torrent of verbal abuse and questions regarding his masculinity).
Plus, there’s the stuff that is about degrading the men instead. Wide variety of porn out in the world. OrsoI’veheard.
I like the Ron Jeremy quote from Orgazmo: “Porn degrades… people.”