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Lorelei Lee: Why I Lobbied Against Requiring Condoms in Porn

Lorelei Lee, 34, is a porn star and activist who lobbied against the so-called “Condom Porn Bill” in California. Here, she explains why mandating condoms in porn won’t work and what she plans to do with her MFA in writing.

I did my first shoot when I was 19 and at the time I had a boyfriend who had a friend who was working for a website. I didn’t really grow up with computers or the Internet, so it all seemed really obscure to me. I thought, Oh, nobody will ever see this. So that was definitely an incorrect estimate on my part. [Laughs.]

After that I didn’t do anything for a few years. My first pro porn shoot in 2002 was for what is now Kink.com. I answered an ad and it said something like, “BDSM with a sexy dominatrix.” I had no idea what BDSM was and I had never done anything like that before. Previous to this, I was working two jobs, at a coffee shop and at a day care. I would work at the day care from 7 a.m. until noon and then I would go to school until 4 and then work in the coffee shop until 10 p.m. I was just totally exhausted.

t took a long time for me to decide [porn] was my career. It kind of happened by accident. I was continuing to go to school and shoot, and it took me 10 years to get my undergrad degree in creative writing. I had dropped out a number of times. It was expensive. Even shooting porn, I was having a hard time paying my rent and paying my tuition. It was 2005 when I started performing on a very regular basis.

It’s very hard to tell people that [porn’s] your job, much less to say it’s your career. I still would have a really hard time talking to other people about it and I felt a lot of shame, some of it from my own questioning about what I was doing. Is this bad for the world, or, Is this bad for women?

My mother cried when she found out and that was really hard. My extended family found out because one year there was a piece on the AVN Awards on [one of the morning shows]. My aunt and uncles saw it, and they all called my mom and said, “Is she on drugs? Does she hate herself?” My family was extremely upset. It’s been 10 years and it’s been quite a journey for them. I’ve had a number of conversations with my mom and she’s been amazing. She has done a lot of work to understand why the work’s meaningful to me and I just really am so grateful for her.

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  • She "lobbied" and was ignored. They passed the bill. Your column "complains" and they go rolling along. A rapist is not going to stop because you say "this isn't right - please stop". So while you were complaining by singing to the choir - I wrote the Ryan White people. I get the AHF's tax returns. I got a list of their donors. I then wrote them explaining the work I did on HIV/AIDS in the 1980's that people remember and how Michael Weinstein was ignoring all of my calls and emails on their dime. They turned around and denied his grant application this year for 3.8 million. That's all these people understand - money. I need help. I'm accomplishing things - but I need help. I can write letters after my sick daughter goes to bed - but I need people who can follow up these letters with phone calls. Like now - we need people to call the FCC to get the A&E show "8 Minutes" off the air before Thursday - before they will air faces of prostitutes they promised would be blurred out. They didn't use actresses- because they wanted to arrest them after the show and then threaten them into silence. Just like a pimp. We need calls to open up a Congressional hearing - because they staged all of this to shut down Backpage - which is published by the Village Voice - a LGBT publication. These people, and the show, are anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT and Michael Weinstein is no different than the Jews they allowed to help at the gas chambers. I don't need money - I need help. They are coming after "us" EXACTLY in the step by step plan that Hitler did to come after the Jews, the poles, the disabled, and the sex industry. I've traced these people directly to Aryans - so they have the handbook. Stop whining while they keep raising millions, changing laws, and wiping us out. HELP me!

    • You write, "She 'lobbied' and was ignored. They passed the bill." Ummm, no Jody. The bill was defeated. The very first sentence links to that fact.

      • I always heard that Hitler was after pole, but I chose to believe he sought out vagina. Seems my nightmare of a Fairy Führer has been corroborated once again.

        MSNBC used to run shows about sex trafficked Asians and BackPage hookers on Sundays, after the football games were over. I thought it was kind of them to put some fapping material on to get all the drunken football fans to bed at a decent hour.

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