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Porn sets asked to close in order to slow the spread of Covid-19. The request came from adult industry group Free Speech Coalition in the wake of California’s Governor Gavin Newsome ordering all non-essential businesses to close. The industry group recommends performers stop making content with anyone who is not part of their household, and shift to alternative content including “cam modeling, phone sex and other digital, remote work.” According to the group, porn sets don’t put employees at higher risk of contagion than anywhere else but porn is a non-essential business and should comply with the states orders.
While sets are closed, some porn performers are seeing their incomes rise during the pandemic. As people are encouraged or required to stay home porn becomes an attractive option to pass the time. Solo performers are at home themselves, giving them plenty of time to pump out the content. One performer, Mailtan Ward says “we can earn good money in a crisis like this, when a lot of people are hurting. I’m really grateful for that.”
Corona virus leads to surge in sex toy sales. Sex toy brand Womanizer are reporting a 50% sales increase over their forecasts in the first quarter of this year, and have partnered with Bellesa to give away thousands of free vibrators. U.K based Naked Grapefruit is doing the same in an attempt to encourage people to stay home. The surge in sales is no surprise, as according to New York Public Health “you are your safest sex partner.”
Sex workers are uniquely vulnerable to Covid-19, their jobs require intimate contact, leaving them with the option to stop working and not make money or put themselves at increased risk. Sex workers typically do not have a formal or informal safety net and most likely won’t have access to any government support for workers who are impacted by the virus.
Sex workers exist in every city around the globe, their stories of being impacted by the virus are being reported on from The Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Dallas, South Carolina and New York, as just a few examples. Despite no formal systems being in place to support these workers at this challenging time several groups are organizing emergency funds. Organizers from SWOP have created one such fund, saying “Despite our government and city asking us to practice social distancing, for a lot of people, that's not an option, because they have no other recourse.”
Every detail of the free porn your watch is meant to appeal to the tiny number of users who actually pay for it. It’s estimated that only 1 in every 10,000 viewers actually pay for porn, for this reason each detail from the set, the script, the sex acts and what wardrobe exists is designed to convert that needle in a haystack into a paying customer. According to performer Kimber Haven, the key to get people to pay for porn is “Give them something they have never seen and can’t get for free.” This may help to explain how niche fetishes, such as ‘fauxcest,’ grow to dominate the free porn pages, it starts as a niche that a small segment will pay for which leads to a whole bunch of content creators competing to convert that segment into paying customers. This phenomenon feeds on itself, as pornography has been demonstrated to shape the sexual desires of its viewers, translating to them trying it in real life, or wanting more of it online.
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