Tough To Discuss

[Guest lexie]

I don't get it- what's the issue? Porn is BIG business. It is ethical and legal. so what is the issue?: If this genre interests you, watch and enjoy it. If it doesn't, don't watch it. And if you are a nut concerned with removing rights from a group whose activities do not interfere with or affect you, head into the streets and protest.

[Guest Lillet Coll]

I think the problem is that there are people being forced into porn who don't really want to do it because there aren't many other options left. I've jokingly considered it, but I'm aware that it's also kinda likely considering I'm young, have few marketable skills, and might very well look good enough to do it. Getting a job in some places can be nearly impossible for a TG person if they're at the point where they have to start passing, yet their employers don't take kindly to them. We don't have any laws protecting us in that regard in a lot of the states.

On the other hand, I want to be a writer, and that might very well save me from having to do it if things get tough.

I can't say I'm a consumer of visual porn, and I prefer my erotica. It has the perk of letting me know no one is getting exploited, too.

[Guest Tara Ann]

i agree with ashleyRF most porn stars transgendered or not like what they do most porn stars are exsibitionist by nature preforming for the camera showing off their naked bodies in variouse sexual acts gives them sorta the same buzz as people that sky dive or bungie jump

This is true. I know of of one transgirl who started out as an amateur doing it for the attention and who moved into softcore when she saw a opportunity to exploit her fans. To this day the majority of girls in porn (transgendered and not) are amateurs messing about with their camera at home.

Of course exploitation happens, and my heart bleeds for those poor souls, but we as a society should looking after each other better so that no one ever sinks so low that they are forced to enter the sex industry. I think making the responsible part of the industry share the blame is unfair. I know that won't be a popular view but I stand by it.

[KathrynJulia]

When I lived in Germany, the sex trade was legal, regulated, and the woman in it were in it because they wanted to be. I had a nice long talk with agirl who worked in the sex trade of all places at the beach. I was curious and she didn't mind and we had a nice long day of doing different things, just having fun (no sex) and she talked about her life. And I spoke of mine.

I met and went on a date one more time before I lost track of her. She told me the average girl stays in the trade in Germany for 2 and a half years. Many a girl is a girl who wants college and the family hasn't the means to send her or she lived in an abusive family and ran off. With no skills other than her body to sell, she went into the sex trade. We visited a coffee shop and she introduced me to a very young woman in her mid twenties who was forced out of her home, worked the sex trade and after a couple years, opened the coffee shop. Some of the workers succumb to drugs, but some of them are very antidrug.

The sex trade is what it is. Aeryn, thank you for your refreshing honesty. I am neither shocked by what you do nor would I run away. As long as you are happy, I am happy. I had a High School classmate who did part time prostitution, no secret to everyone, but when she came home, she reverted to small town happy girl who was fun to be with. I loved telling my mother who I was dancing with the night before and the look on her face. Priceless.

Kathryn

[JJ]

Societal attitudes can be very damaging to the women in the sex trade, The men are often admired and seldom condemned but the women are looked down on as lower than second class citizens too often and they internalize that. I have no issue with the sex trade itself-it has been around for about as long as humanity after all and not always reviled either. It is the toll it too often takes on those involved. In countries where it is legal and regulated you don't have near the stigma or the danger you do here. People don't become as trapped by the repercussions of living outside society and the whole system of abuse and drug abuse that surrounds it.

I think the fact that so many transwomen are forced into the sex trade has harmed our image and feeds into the worst of the stereotypes about us. Not because they engage in sex work but because of the life that surrounds it in most cases. And the violence. It leaves a stigmata that the rest of us have to live down until the old stereotypes finally fade and people understand the real physical nature of our condition.

We'll never get rid of the sex trade but we can relatively easily make it safer and much less harmful to those who enter into it.

My opinion anyway

Johnny