[Note from Anthony: For our final venture into smacking down Shelley Lubben, I bring you another Kayden Kross classic...this one posted as part of her then regular blog column for porn agent Mike South's site. It debunks some stats that Lubben attempts to mine that sound positively (Melissa) Farley-ish in its stretching of reality.]

Goddammit Shelley Lubben!!

I’m not normally one to repeatedly focus my attention on any one person for very long, but jesus christ this one just won’t quit. I was sitting at a table outside the cafeteria at LA erotica and I noticed a stack of flyers placed in the middle of the table. “Porn Industry Facts”. I looked around. They were in the middle of every single table. “Hmm…”, I thought to myself, “this should provide for some comic relief.” I was not to be disappointed.

Let me veer off for a moment into the small bit of horse rescue work I’ve done. When I got my mare from a reputable horse rescue four years ago I dealt with a group of people who genuinely believed in their work and made it a point to have the most honest dealings they possibly could with all volunteers, sponsors, donors, and adoptive families. My mare was nine months pregnant and nearly 200 lbs. underweight. Her feet and teeth needed a lot of work. She was past due on worming and shots. No one knew how much training she’d had, but they did know that she couldn’t stand tied. She was from a racetrack in the bay area and was 12 years old. There was a whole slew of things that could go wrong with the foal she was carrying because she had been malnourished for her entire pregnancy. And she had a tipped vulva. Every single one of these things was disclosed to me in great detail, as well as an educated guess of the dollar amount she could potentially cost me. In another case, I had a thoroughbred gelding off of another race track who would never be sound. He had suspensory issues and bone spurs. He had been raced for five years. When I found a home for him the new owners were told all of this, even though he appeared sound at the time. Why is this relevant? Because I needed an example of how an ethical charity program should be run. Horse rescues won’t lie and tell a potential adoptive owner that the horse is safe when he isn’t or healthy when he’s not. They feel that the only way to deal with anyone needing the services of their charity or willing to offer services to the charity is with eyes wide open. Pornstar rescues apparently do not abide by the same principles.

….and here are the facts the Pink Cross foundation is desperately trying to make everyone aware of:

PORN INDUSTRY FACTS

-9 performers died from HIV, suicide and drugs overdoses in 2007

-66% of porn performers have Herpes, 12-28% have other STDs

-26 porn performers have committed suicide since 1990

-45 porn performers have died from drug overdoses since 1990

-out of about 90 HIV positive porn performers, about 25 are living

-between 2003 to 2005, 976 performers were reported with 1,153 positive STD test results

PORN IS NOT GLAMOROUS. GET THE FACTS. GET HELP.

Oh god. Where to start….

Lets get the stupid one out of the way first. I can’t speak for others but I did not get into this industry for the glamour. It would take a serious lack of brain function to associate getting splooge on the face with glamour. Getting splooge on the face is fun, it’s profitible… it’s often a good blooper…. it is not glamourous. Same goes for splooge on the butt, titties, stomach and splooge sucked from someone else’s mouth (special nod to cumswapping). On the flip side, splooge on the face is not the cause of mental woes and drug addiction either. Its just really not the big deal Ms. Lubben is making it into. And don’t tell me girls think the awards shows are glamourous. All they talk about at the awards shows are splooge on the face while they distribute trophies for the girls who took the most splooge to the face. There. I’ve exhausted it.

Ok now here is my real problem with this flyer: It is not a fact sheet. It’s propoganda. Fact sheets are unbiased. Propoganda is worded to sound as good or as bad as it possibly can. Facts appeal to reason. Propoganda appeals to emotion. What if all of these numbers were converted to a percentage? I had a hard time when I was trying to figure out what numbers to use when converting this over. I don’t honestly know how many performers enter the industry every year and I don’t know where to find that information. I don’t know how many performers are in the industry right now. I couldn’t even ballpark it. Conveniently though, Charles Calderon knows. He says 5,000 new performers enter the industry every year. And I’m going to use that figure for this case, because it is a felony to lie to the committee and he said it to them. So it must be true (;

Ok, so nine performers died from HIV, suicide, and drug overdoses in 2007. Nine divided by 5000= .0018. Move the decimal over two spaces we’ve got 0.18%. Less than one fifth of one percent of the performers in our industry died from drugs, aids, and suicide combined in 2007.

Next point: “66% of porn performers have Herpes, 12-28% have other STDs”–  I know as I’m typing this that it’s not making our industry look very good, but we don’t test for Herpes. It’s not required so we don’t get it done monthly at the local AIM clinic. Where is she getting this number? I’m not saying there isn’t a porn database out there tracking our every herpetic move, but by god I’ve never heard of it and I doubt if a performer found out he or she was positive for herpes through a private doctor that information would be available to the public. Where is this information listed? I want to know who not to work with. Anyhoo, Lubben testified to the committee that 90% of us had STDs. This fact sheet states otherwise. If 66% of us have herpes, then 34% of us do not. If she were stupid (she is), she could get her calculation by subtracting the 12-28% of “other STDs” from the healthy and vibrant 34%, giving her a guestimate that 90% of us have STDs (what are “other STDs” anyway, if she’s counting bladder infections she’s really reaching). But, there is bound to be overlap. Some of the herpes victims will be among the unfortunate 12-28% of vague ”other STD” victims. So 90% of us do not have STDs. I knew it all along. But wait! jump down to the last bullet point: Between 2003 to 2005 (does that just sound grammatically off? I’m copying it as it’s written), 976 performers were reported with 1,153 positive STD test results. Okay… 2003, 2004, 2005. 3 years multiplied by Calderon’s 5,000… 15,000 people (yes I know…. I don’t honestly believe that we can go with the nice even number of 15,000. I just needed a figure for the argument). 976 divided by 15,000= 0.065. So 6.5% of us tested postive for STDs between 2003 and 2005, some of us had more than one. What the Fuck? That is a direct contradiction to bullet point number two, and bullet number two was proof that her 90% testimony was a lie. Oh the webs we weave.

Bullet point number three: “26 porn performers have committed suicide since 1990″. Assuming that this is true, that would mean that in 18 years we’ve lost 26 performers to suicide. We have 1.4 suicides per year on average. 1.4 divided by 5,000= .00028. 0.028% is the industry suicide rate. Or, to make it very clear (5,000 x 18 years= 90,000), 26 out of 90,000 people have committed suicide. I hate to be callous, but it doesn’t seem so high when given a reference point.

“45 performers have died from drug overdoses since 1990″- You’ve seen the math above I won’t go through it again. 45 people out of 90,000.

“Out of about 90 HIV positive porn performers, about 25 are living”- First, I’m very uneasy with “about 25 are living”. There should be a concrete number here. How do you ballpark how many people are alive with a number this low? All that tells me is that someone didn’t do all the research. It is not hard to verify whether 25 people are alive or not. It doesn’t matter though. I’m just surprised that it seems somehow relevant to mention that some people have died from a fatal disease. Numbers game! About 90 minus about 25 equals about 65. I’m assuming these numbers are from 1990 onwards (everything else is), so about 0.07% of porn performers are living with HIV and about 0.02% have died from it. Looks like we’ve got our aids under control!

A few last words before I sum it up. The first point talked about STDs, suicide, and drugs. Then the next point talked about STDs. Then the next point talked about suicide. Then the next point talked about drugs. Then the next point talked about STDs. Then the next point talked about STDs. I realize that by filling the paper it looks like there are copious amounts of problems in our industry, but that first bullet point pretty much did it. She’s wasting trees.

Goddammit Shelley! I could respect a foundation that was just there for the victims who truly needed it, but quit trying to scare us into thinking we’re victims. I like getting splooge on me and I hope I someday win a splooge-related award (Goddammit Bree Olson! Stop winning everything! Congratulations by the way), and I’m at peace with the odds I’ve calculated here. I think I’ll make it out of this industry alive.

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I believe that I will use a regular post to the SmackChron or BPPA to address these….ummm…stats later on.