A safer sex campaign for the next generation
New cases of sexually transmissible infections (STIs) are on the rise. In the last three years, cases of gonorrhoea have increased threefold, chlamydia is almost at epidemic levels among young people, and HIV infection rates are at the same levels as in the early nineties. Heading up the Safe Sex is Sexy social awareness campaign, porn performer and escort Madison Missina believes the steep rise in new STIs indicates people aren’t getting tested and treated and/or that they are engaging in riskier sexual behaviours.
‘We have amazing treatments for HIV positive people now that mean in a lot of cases you can be HIV positive and your chances of transmitting the virus to someone else are quite low, yet we haven’t seen this many new cases of HIV since the tail end of the Grim Reaper campaign.’ According to Missina, it is time for someone to step in, because the rates of infection should be so much lower. ‘We have a new generation of people and need to build awareness again just to keep everybody safe.’
The Safe Sex is Sexy campaign is aimed at young people aged 15-30 to try to raise awareness about practicing safer sex. ‘What we’ve seen over the last couple of years is that young people are only using condoms for new partners and casual encounters, and then only 40-60 percent of the time, which is really low,’ said Missina. ‘We hope the Safe Sex Is Sexy campaign will facilitate people to have conversations about what safe sex and sexuality mean.’
The campaign includes 9000 safe sex signs and three videos, two that will be featured on YouTube, and the third – an adults-only ad – that will be played at nightclub parties. ‘We want to send the message that using condoms and having safe sex is okay and everyone should be doing it,’ said Missina. The campaign is also using social media to put people in touch with government and organisation websites where they can get answers to questions about sexual health. ‘We can refer people on to appropriate doctors or anonymous emails where they can get advice if they’re too scared to speak up and ask for help.’
Support for — and against — the campaign
Missina said that most of the support for the not-for-profit campaign has come from the sex industry. Some big porn producers have helped create the ads and posters, and porn performers like Summer Knight have donated time to modelling and making promotional materials with support also coming from at least one brothel. Hero condoms provided free condoms to hand out at promotional parties, while the Australian Institute of Sexual Health Medicine have provided support by making sure the campaign’s research is grounded, comprehensive and accurate.
Not all of the industry is behind the campaign, however. In the first weekend after announcing the campaign, there were mocking campaigns on social media, with opponents tweeting and using satirical hashtags. ‘The feedback I was getting was that if I wasn’t promoting absolute best practice safe sex then I should not be allowed to speak out about safe sex,’ Missina said. ‘In the sex industry there has been a rift historically between girls who practice best practice safe sex services – which means using condoms and dams for oral sex as well as condoms for sex – and the girls who just use condoms for sex and offer natural oral,’ Missina said. ‘I always knew speaking out about safe sex was going to reawaken that internal debate in the sex industry, however the backlash has been even bigger than I expected.’
Outside of shoot lock-down periods for her work in porn, Missina offers natural oral, which she described as consistent with how most people practice sex in their recreational lives. ‘I have not met one single person who has put their hand up and said they use condoms for oral in their personal lives,’ Missina said. ‘Using condoms for oral is an ideal, and it would be great if we could get society to it, but I really think we’re years off that.’ Given the risks of not using condoms for intercourse are much greater than for oral, Missina believes this is where the campaign needs to focus first. ‘Let’s pick our fights,’ she said.
Raising awareness about the risks of unprotected sex
One of the taglines for the campaign is ‘Your Life, Your Choice’. Rather than promoting barrier protection for all activities, the campaign aims to raise awareness about the risks that individuals potentially expose themselves to when they choose not to use condoms or dental dams. ‘It’s all about providing information to young people and starting that conversation so they can be aware of the implications of their decisions and begin making choices that they are comfortable with,’ Missina said.
Missina expressed concern for educators who don’t distinguish between the risks of unprotected oral and unprotected intercourse. She said that by not making the distinction, young people who have already engaged in oral sex without barrier protection might assume there is no point using condoms for intercourse. ‘Most importantly we want young people to use condoms for sex, and we particularly want young gay men to use condoms for anal because it’s among young gay men that we’re seeing the lowest rates of condom compliance and the highest rates of HIV infection. They’re just not getting the message.’
Why aren’t young people using condoms?
Missina said the latest research shows one of the main reasons young people aren’t practicing safer sex is that they struggle to negotiate condom use. Rather than a lack of awareness of the risks, young people lack the interpersonal and assertiveness skills to talk to their partners about them. Young people report feeling too scared to ask for a condom, or worrying about hurting their partner’s feelings if they ask for a condom. Missina said those shouldn’t be excuses for not using a condom. ‘It should be, “We thought about the risks and discussed our sexual history and decided not to.”’
Through the campaign, Missina hopes to impart the message that carrying condoms and talking about safer sex with a partner is a positive and empowering thing to do, particularly for young women. ‘I’m standing up and saying, I’m a porn star, I practice safe sex, I’m happy to carry condoms with me… Carrying condoms with me when I go out means I’m hopeful that I may be getting laid and that’s an awesome thing.’
“…but they don’t use condoms in porn”
The porn industry has been widely criticised for its reluctance to mandate and model safer sex practices. ‘In the eighties we did see condoms being used in porn a fair bit, then in the nineties and the naughties up to now, we’ve seen it drop off,’ Missina said. To get around that, porn performers undergo strict testing regimes with lock-down periods to protect themselves and their co-stars. ‘Generally porn stars are very strict about safe sex practices because it’s our income,’ Missina said, but as Missina experienced first-hand, this doesn’t always work.
Rather than seeing her association with the porn industry as an obstacle to promoting safer sex, Missina believes she is in a good position to speak out and raise awareness about the risks. ‘With so many young people following me on social media questioning why I’m not using condoms in porn, I potentially have the opportunity to use my influence in a positive way and try and get them to start really practicing sexual health,’ she said.
Missina also sees this campaign as a way to tackle some of the backlash against porn and the fears that porn is affecting young people’s sexuality. ‘If the porn industry can help in any way to start having the conversations and teaching young people about the context of porn, what we do to keep ourselves safe, how we negotiate boundaries and consent in our scenes, then that can go some way to help protect against any negative impact that may be happening.’
So why not practice safer sex in porn?
‘There’s common thought in the industry that seeing films with condoms make it look like there’s no intimacy, that it’s less visually stimulating, and that the scenes won’t sell,’ Missina said. ‘I think this is a bit of a farce, because in some of my most popular scenes we have used condoms, and no one has noticed.’
According to Missina there are legitimate reasons for not using condoms in porn, however. ‘Porn sex is different from real sex. When we have sex in porn, we need to include the audience in what we are doing, so we do normal positions at weird angles because the camera has to fit in between us. That means choosing positions that are less physically stimulating so there is less natural lubrication. In addition, we have sex for longer, so condoms can lead to on-set injuries if we end up with friction burn in our vaginas.’
Despite these challenges, in her upcoming film ‘Blonde’ (due to launch in time for the Sydney Sexpo later this year), Missina made the decision to use condoms and not to hide their use through editing and cuts to the footage. This includes showing the condom changes that need to occur when a male performer switches partners. ‘A lot of young people don’t realise that if you’re having a threesome with two girls, you need to change the condom between each girl; you can’t just use the same condom on all the girls, so in our threesome scene you see us changing condoms and reapplying lube when the male star switches between the girls. It’s all out there.’
Missina believes young people aren’t having the conversations they need to have, and this is a big part of the problem. Missina hopes that by modelling condom use, speaking out about the testing and lock-down regimes that used in the porn industry and the negotiations that occur on-set, she can raise awareness and get young people talking about safer sex. ‘There is a great deal of sexual communication in porn and young people could really benefit from knowing that. If they’re idolising porn stars, it would help their sexuality to know that we were all so open and having such in-depth conversations about sex. Then perhaps they can start doing that in their young relationships…Even if we can get young people talking about condoms and testing that will be a big win.’
