"Pornography reaches a mass audience and should be regarded as the most pervasive - and persuasive - form of se education in America
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The final relevant theory proposes the obvious: safer behavior in pornography could cause viewers consciously to think more about safe sex practice. In prime-time television and mainstream print sources, topics and images that are prominent and frequent become important to viewers. This is reflected in the male homosexual pornography industry, where producers have found that gay men prefer films with condom usage, because unprotected sex is so closely associated with death from AIDS. Pornography viewers may use the stories and images they see as reference points about what is important in sexual contact, comparing viewed images with what they consider appropriate and inappropriate sexual behavior.
Research has shown that young television viewers who observed condom use in a soap opera changed their expectations about using condoms. Television strongly influences sexually inexperienced youths who are looking for guidance on issues like contraception and STDs. Crucially, sexually inexperienced viewers report learning about “real-life” sexual behavior from pornography – in other words, they don’t just think of pornography as fantasy, but rather as reflecting situations and practices in the real world. Sexual images and storylines create a “cognitive script” that inexperienced viewers use in their own sexual practices.
The importance of pornography as one of our nation’s most significant sex educators cannot be underestimated. In the past, public health leaders assumed that prostitutes and injection drug users wouldn’t benefit from safer sex messages – it is now clear that this was wrong, and aggressive safer sex messages have been directed at both of these populations with success. However, only 20 percent of heterosexual pornography produced in the United States currently contains condoms. It is time for the field of public health to recognize and investigate the effect on viewers of safer sex practices in pornography. Public health professionals should work with politicians and industry leaders to find incentives to incorporate healthy messages, like the value of safer sex, into pornographic websites, print media, and movies. The adult entertainment industry has repeatedly asserted that it resists condom use primarily because viewers do not want to see condoms in pornography. However, if some popular companies can be convinced to make condom use standard practice in their productions, it may be possible to begin changing the very attitudes toward condoms that make viewers less willing to pay to watch safe sex.
In March of 2004, the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation (AIM), an organization founded to provide adult film performers in the San Fernando Valley with counseling and testing for sexually transmitted diseases, reported that an actor tested positive for HIV. Within a week, four additional adult entertainers tested positive. The national news media jumped on the story – resulting in dangerous overreaction by the Los Angeles Department of Public Health Services (LADPHS), missed opportunities for sex education, and feelings of mistrust and exploitation by members of LA’s HIV-positive community.
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