Porn Health: Occupational and Community Approaches

Discussions of health and pornography are often alarmist and exceptionalist, presenting the consumption of porn as an insidious public health harm and its production as an unparalleled biohazard for those involved. Instead, this chapter addresses porn and its relation to occupational health and safety (OHS) as we would any other kind of work. It describes three scholarly approaches to the issue: epidemiological, legal, and labor studies. It then summarizes common approaches to performer health management on set within different health systems and types of production. Finally, three major debates in the area are discussed: whether or not porn creators are “employees,” subject to traditional OHS; tensions between individual agency and collective responsibility; and accusations of “irresponsibility” directed at some performer communities. This analysis of porn production protocol offers important provocations regarding power, autonomy, and responsibility in OHS systems at large, especially for gig and freelance workers.