Does the porn industry really "trap" performers?

Everyone has got an opinion on porn. In early November, Jenna Jameson (one of the most famous and highest earning adult actresses ever) announced that she was going to return to porn. The reasons cited was that she was flat broke, had kids to support and going back into the adult industry was the quickest (?) and easiest (?) way for her to make bread money.

The majority of the press reports in relation to this news don't exactly paint a pretty picture (like this one). It plays up to the unfortunate stereotype so many people hold about porn stars: that they've all had "troubled pasts", are addicted to drugs and blah, blah, blah. A perfect example of this prejudice way of thinking is in this recent article by Morality In Media, which does it's best to paint a stifling, no-way-out picture of the adult industry and that it does more harm than good to women and their careers post-porn.

To summarise, it's basically saying that porn harms. Work in the adult industry at any point in your life and you'll be pretty well fucked in the future should you want to try your hand at anything else.

Thankfully, not everyone thinks like that and excellent site www.PVVonline.com offers an alternative view on the argument:

"This – “Halsey was able to get her real estate license and worked as a broker for 3 years until she was recognized and fired.” – is supposed to convince me that porn harms? No. All this does is convince me the we, as a culture and as a society, are a bunch of judgemental hypocritical assholes.

The harms of porn are not “well documented.” In fact, they’re not *documented* at all. To date, not even one study exists that connects porn consumption and/or production to causing “harms.” Whatsmore, even works that attempt to draw correlations between (read: possible connections with), say, porn consumption and socially undesirable behaviors (e.g. “sexist” attitudes) can be picked apart methodologically. In others words, the studies are done poorly and/or incorrectly."
Reprinted from Porn Valley Vantage/PVVOnline, copyright © Chauntelle Anne Tibbals, PhD (www.PVVOnline.com)

I particularly like the 'judgemental hypocritical assholes' sentiment in that quote (read the full article here). This is possibly because even in my limited time of writing about sex work, I have encountered people that dismiss porn as a profession. Apparently, I have been informed by people with "normal" jobs, because they work in the sex industry that's all they know how to do. The same incorrect ideologies are often associated with strippers, escorts and glamour models too, so I would extend this misrepresentation to beyond porn.

So, those porn stars, strippers and escorts I've met that are also trained teachers, nurses, authors, entrepreneurs, professional dancers and business men and women are making all of these other skills up? Because apparently if your first/current choice of career is working in the sex industry, it must mean that you're *unable* to ever do any other type of profession? That's just bull.

The problem arises, as touched on by Tibbals, is that once you've worked in the adult industry, once you've had sex associated with your name - whether that's doing it on film, privately with clients, or even writing about it - you're tarred with a brush by society.

Why is it so hard to move from the adult industry into another profession should someone choose to? Why can it not be like any other career move? If someone has made the active decision to say, "I don't want to work in adult anymore. Actually I think I'd rather go and work in banking/nursing/be a travel agent," why can they not escape professional prejudices in the same way someone would if they decided they didn't want to be a teacher anymore, but would actually like to go train to be a vet?

Even if their career history does come to light, why should that matter? Why should that mean they're not able to do their new job of choice anymore, even though they've been doing a fine and dandy job previously, just because before that time they decided to make their living by starring in porn? I don't get it. I honestly do not see the sense in that.

This stigma of, if you do sex it must mean you're lacking else where, just doesn't fly with me. Like I said, my experience isn't extensive, but as my freelance career continues so does the number of adult industry professionals I speak to and come into contact with. All of the "extra skills" I listed above are examples of what these professionals have told me they have under their belt as well as doing adult film.

So no, they're not just tits, pussy, dick and ass. It's not the porn industry that traps people in, or forces them to return; it's the wider professions and industries that keep these individuals out because of societal prejudices.