Conner Habib

Porn star Conner Habib on the negative beliefs people have against porn actors:

It can’t be factual. The reason you hate us, I mean. It’s fine, not all emotions have to be based on facts. We’re human beings, after all. I just wanted to make sure you knew it couldn’t be factual.

You might think the thing that upsets you about us is that we’re ruining society. And there are studies. You like to start sentences with the phrase, Studies show that…

But listen. The facts? You’re going to have a hard time with them.

Every in-depth study that looks at how porn affects people ends up either supporting porn or rendering it neutral. Now, I know, I know, you’re going to say, “But what about THIS one?” and point to a study I’ve never heard of. It’ll say that porn is somehow rearranging our neural pathways or that such-and-such part of the brain lights up when we watch porn. But those studies are routinely debunked. Did you know that most of those anti-porn neuroscience studies don’t have much evidence to back them up? Or that they have leap-of-faith conclusions? Don’t take my word for it. Just look it up. Not right now? You want to keep reading? Well, all right.

A porn star reflects on the death of fellow actor Arpad Miklos, and argues that we shouldn’t make assumptions about what effect the industry had on him:

“But others who knew him even less than me flooded twitter, wrote articles, posted to facebook about what had happened. The theories appeared as soon as the news did. It was immediate, like flies to a corpse. Theories arrived before grief, before honor and love and the experience of loss. When a gay porn star dies, instead of an outpouring of grief, what we are usually witness to is a buzzing.

“All of this is to say that not even death can trump many people’s confused and hostile attitudes towards porn and porn performers. That is how deeply injured we are as a society when it comes to sex, sexuality, and love.”