Shopping Advice 
Belladonna on Safer Sex and the Industry
We are huge fans of Belladonna here at Babeland. If you haven’t seen Fashionistas, Fucking Girls, Girl Train, or Pirates II, you must. You can visit Belladonna at her website and follow her on Twitter to learn about her new projects.
Belladonna recently shared some of her thoughts on safer sex in the porn industry (inspired by the recent HIV positive diagnosis in the industry) with the Babeland blog and we’re posting them here so everyone can read them. So, without further delay, here is Bella in her first Babeland blog post!
First of all, I’d like to say that I am thankful that the adult industry has become exceptionally safer since I first started performing back in 1999. Back then, testing for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea was not required, which I found to be ridiculous since those were the most common STDs. However, I do believe that if the 30 day window were shortened to at MOST, 7 days, we could BETTER prevent the spread of Chlamydia and Gonorrhea, not to mention HIV.
Since I started testing people that I have sex with 3 days prior to our engagement, it has been over 5 years since I’ve contracted Chlamydia or Gonorrhea. I knowingly caught over a handful of performers with STDs by using this rule. As a female in this industry, I can say it feels DAMN good to not have to spend every week at the doctor’s office clearing up an STD and being out of work. I feel like I’m more excited about having sex and performing, knowing that I’m going to be STD free. I also think it would be smart for new performers in the business to be required to get a full panel test, prior to performing, not only for themselves to see where they stand, but for our industry as well. I think a lot of performers get into the business and already have the herpes virus and don’t know about it and then try to blame it on the industry.
Performers in this business need to be safer when having sexual relations OUTSIDE of the industry. They need to be more responsible with safe sex because they DO know more than the average person when it comes to STDs and safe sex. If this were happening, the spread of STDs inside the business would be a fraction of what it is now. As for condoms, personally, I can only be as safe as I can be without diminishing the value of what I’m trying to accomplish. Condoms just don’t feel good to suck on, or to take in the ass, hard and fast. If I were required to use condoms, my performance would most likely suffer, and in the end I would suffer. I’m not trying to debate with anyone here, I’m just saying, if my co-workers were more responsible, we could all make some great porn and be STD free at the same time.
To be perfectly honest, I understand my job is a high risk job, but there are many high risk jobs out there like, construction workers on skyscrapers, oil riggers, stuntmen… but when these people get hurt on the job, do you see the world turning it into something its not? No, it’s just because people are not comfortable with themselves sexually and have to point fingers at us to make themselves feel better about it.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:37 am
It’s shocking to read something so honest! Thank you for being brave enough to lay it all out there.
June 18th, 2009 at 11:02 am
i agree with the post.. and u belladonna have a holly ass
June 18th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Great article Bella, and I’m even prouder to be one of your Biggest Fans.
Smooth
June 18th, 2009 at 11:34 am
This is great. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Belladonna.
June 18th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Testing is good, but testing is not prevention.
Tony Comstock and Audacia Ray both chimed into this debate earlier in the week, with a really responsible, healthy attitude about how to protect the safety of sex industry workers.
Tony Comstock’s blog here: http://www.comstockfilms.com/blog/tony/2009/06/15/accentuate-the-positive-eliminate-the-negative-reprise/
Audacia Ray’s here:
http://www.wakingvixen.com/blog/2009/06/17/my-criticisms-hiv-porn-and-reponsibility/
June 18th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Bella is brilliant and precise as usual, and a role model for those in the industry and those who are fans. Not to mention she could kick dr fill’s ass!
June 18th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Well said, Bella. If other producers who were similarly running their own shows also mandated more frequent testing, there’d be fewer STD-related doctors’ visits.
And condoms aren’t meant for taking (or being taken) “hard up the ass)”: that’s a recipe for tears.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Belladonna is a living porn legend – she’s AMAZING and incredibly smart to boot. One pornstar who’s definitely just as sexy for her brains as her body.
I really admire her honesty about not using condoms – I think it would spoil the fantasy of porn. That being said, I don’t want anybody to get sick just so I have the pleasure of buffin’ my muffin’ to bareback porno.
But the 7-day testing solution sounds really smart and Belladonna clearly takes care of her own body as well as the people she works with. HUGE admiration for her.
Still, safe sex doesn’t need to not be sexy. After Dustin Lance Black got attacked for barebacking with his boyfriend, I wrote a post about products that make sexy safe.
http://champagneandbenzedrine.blogspot.com/2009/06/promiscuity-and-protection.html
This was a GREAT article. Thanks for sharing.
June 18th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
as a sexologist and as a porn producer, i have the utmost respect for you Belladonna. however, i would respect all of us and our industry more if we didn’t gamble with the health and wellbeing of our biggest assets; our performers.
the barebacking debate continues to rage in the gay side of the industry. and proponents of this dangerous practice point to the straight side of the industry as proof that unprotected sex is safe. nothing could be farther from the truth.
how i wish our entire industry could get behind the notion of a safer workplace. but until that day, wouldn’t it be grand if our talent took the lead in protecting their own health and the health of their coworkers. you know you could shut down the entire industry of ya’ll decided to take a stand on this.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Kate Black writes:
“Tony Comstock and Audacia Ray both chimed into this debate earlier in the week, with a really responsible, healthy attitude about how to protect the safety of sex industry workers.”
I loved the above Belladonna post and also appreciate what Audacia Ray had to say on the topic, but found Tony Comstock’s posts to be frankly paternalistic and condescending.
I’ll also plug Ernest Green’s post on the subject, which defends the view that condoms in porn should not be mandatory:
http://bppa.blogspot.com/2009/06/latest-hiv-in-porn-panic-rumor-control.html
The issue of performer choice in the matter is not something I would dismiss lightly, particularly since performers like Nina Hartley who are pretty STD-aware and are way past the point in their career where they could be said to be in any sense coerced into giving an unprotected performance, nonetheless often perform without condoms by choice.
June 19th, 2009 at 7:18 am
Wow. Someone who is familiar with issues of sexuality is using common sense to talk about it? Sadly, you don’t see this enough.
June 21st, 2009 at 4:12 pm
[...] Belladonna, a famous porn actress, suggests that the porn industry start testing every week instead of every month. Belladonna encourages her fellow porn stars to be better about using condoms in their private sex lives. She also stresses that the public is unfairly scrutinizing the porn industry and states that she accepts that she is in a high risk line of work in her interview with Babeland. [...]
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:37 am
[...] Belladonna at the Babeland Blog: Since I started testing people that I have sex with 3 days prior to our engagement, it has been over 5 years since I’ve contracted Chlamydia or Gonorrhea. I knowingly caught over a handful of performers with STDs by using this rule. As a female in this industry, I can say it feels DAMN good to not have to spend every week at the doctor’s office clearing up an STD and being out of work. I feel like I’m more excited about having sex and performing, knowing that I’m going to be STD free… [...]
September 1st, 2009 at 7:00 pm
[...] tweetmeme_style = ‘normal’;tweetmeme_source = ‘thenudemonk’; Excellent article detailing work that Belladonna does in regard to STDs. Category: Announcements You can follow [...]