The site does take a mealy-mouthed “some women like it, but…” attitude toward kink. That’s why it annoys me. The section on anal, for example, says “Guys, try to imagine something being shoved up your butt and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.”

I understand what you’re talking about: you’re trying to make people scared of anal sex. Well, I’m here to say that, as a guy, I like anal sex (as a bottom) so much I can only buy my sex toys from, maybe, three outlets. They’re the only ones who make toys big enough. Which was exactly my point: MakeLoveNotPorn, for all its good intentions, treats anything out of the ordinary with The Precautionary Principle. It asks people trying any kink to consider the downsides first, rather that mitigating them after you’ve found the desire. I find that attitude frustrating.

Lastly, I think there is a straight community, which is basically mainstream society. Of course, this doesn’t have any community ethos or sense of responsibility attached to it like subcultures do, which I think is what you’re saying. However, where there really is no community, in the sense of a group of people to identify with, is for bisexuals (or any other sexual orientations than gay or straight). This has led me to conclude that sexual orientation is primarily about membership in a community, not gender preference in your partners. This insight comes from personal experience, as opposed to my comments about HIV and the opinions of the porn viewing public on condom usage, which are mostly speculation.

The HIV-in-porn story has a lot of moving parts, and there is history and politics – and an ugly ton of behind the scenes mess. Back in the mid-1990s there was an HIV outbreak in porn, and one of the people that was at risk set up a testing system and the entire industry adopted it. It was mandatory to show up to porn shoots with these standardized tests, and it did the community a lot more good than anyone knows – in addition to keeping the rates of infection below the “civilian” population. A few years back, along came an anti-porn HIV outreach organization that has made it their mission to target the adult industry – they openly work with christian anti-porn orgs that want to make porn illegal. (I’ve written about them in the SF Chronicle, a nasty bunch of people.) They pretty much succeeded in getting the testing clinic closed (though there is another clinic now in its place). They’ve been doing everything they can to make it appear is if straight porn is an HIV and disease factory. It is not. This anti-porn org gets a lot of favor from mainstream media outlets that report on the situation, likely because it’s still popular to be porn-phobic in outlets like the LATimes – even though they get lots of mileage out of headlines with “porn” in them.

Now, that’s why I thought it was pertinent to find some analysis of HIV rates in porn that was unbiased – from no side that stood to gain from tipping the argument one way or another.

As to your other points, I think we’re in agreement with a few minor corrections.

There is risk, to everyone – naturally. It is much less to performers than anyone thinks – especially because of the testing procedures. It is risky to viewers because it shows unprotected sex out of context. But that has always been the issue with porn, as it shows sex out of context, period – and I’ll argue that many viewers would like to have that context put back in. But as an in-the-field sex educator that does direct client counseling (to teens as well) I can tell you that no one is watching porn and thinking that they won’t catch anything if they have sex without condoms. People are having unprotected sex, but their risk choices have nothing to do with porn (it is usually abstinence education, fear of discovery, or same-sex shame). There might be modeling of unsafe sex acts and positions from porn, but pretty much most porn viewers at this point know that porn sex isn’t real sex. People like me have spent the past 10 years raising awareness, and it’s working.

“It is my understanding that no major straight porn studio will allow performers to wear condoms.”

Not so. Many major studios have a policy that allow performers to wear condoms if it is their desire to do so. However, most of the mainstream commercial porn studios (not the ones I link to in the sidebar) believe that condoms spoil the fantasy for viewers and ruin sales – so they may discourage condoms, but I don’t have that on any quotable authority.

“This is the case with gay porn, where I believe the responsibility towards their viewing community regarding the reality of HIV/AIDS is taken more seriously and barebacking has been relegated to a fetish mostly seen on the web.”

Yes, and I’ll add that gay porn sells just fine with condoms in the mix. But, gay porn has a completely different approach to performer safety and community responsibility (and in this instance I’m including viewers as the community – the gay community*). There is no testing standard in gay porn, but condoms are ubiquitous because as HIV/AIDS devastated the gay porn community decades ago, they decided the safest way to proceed was to do sexual behavior that operated on the notion that everyone might be infected. So, condoms for all penetration and external come shots became the rule. Only in the past 10 years have bareback fetish videos started to surface more and more, and they are seriously considered taboo. Like, one year I went to the Folsom Street Fair and there was a bareback video booth and no one – NO ONE – would go near it.

* I’m observing that there is no straight community.

Let me know if you want links for further reading. I’ve followed this closely for over a decade :)

And Zaftiguana you touched on another thing I wanted to point out about the Forbes article being dated. Gallop’s views on porn and sexuality changed considerably after MakeLoveNotPorn came out – they became more inclusive and realistic instead of reactionary. But Forbes seems to like the less realistic reactionary frame – not incorporating that the world of women and porn (and male sexuality in relation to porn) is very different. Nor was Cindy the first to do this; look for Susie Bright circa 1995.

@Elf, whether or not someone approves of Cindy or her site, the site makes a point of saying that some women love anal sex, enjoy having men cum on their faces or spit on their pussies, get off on abusive dirty talk, etc. That’s not my idea of vanilla.