Undercover: Vaginismus in the porn industry
CW: This story contains descriptions of painful penetration.
We’ve touched before on the importance of representation in the media of different sexual experiences and the importance of showing and sharing stories of sexual pain. But what happens when sex is your main source of income?
Below, we hear from an anonymous sex worker and adult film entertainer who has vaginismus.
The doorbell rings. A nice-looking lady opens the door and welcomes in a handsome plumber. She shows him to the sink, and before he has even opened up his toolbox they have begun passionately kissing, ending up in bed. The camera zooms in on her body, entwined with his, as they roll around into an endless set of positions. Despite the complete lack of foreplay, the camera zooms into her face, showing pleasure and satisfaction. This is what you are meant to see, this is the finished product.
It's 11AM and I'm standing in the hotel room next door. A few seconds ago, the actress who was locked in a passionate embrace with the plumber asked the director to stop filming. This is the fifth break this morning. She’s in pain, and telling the director she can’t continue, the monitor next to me shows tears welling up in her eyes.
The bottle of lube one of the assistants gave to her during an earlier break is almost empty. The director decides to wrap up for the day and finishes up with a few close ups. The viewer won’t see any of this.
The actress isn't a personal friend of mine, but I hand her a fresh cup of coffee when she comes off stage and we start chatting. It doesn’t take long before I come to understand that she too has vaginismus - a pelvic floor muscle spasm that causes vaginal penetration to become extremely painful.
I share with her that I ended up with secondary vaginismus after a nasty infection and a boyfriend who insisted on having sex with me, even when I wasn’t ready or recovered. An estimated 17% of women will suffer from this condition, and while this may seem strange, this includes porn stars, sex workers and adult entertainers.
The actress I’m chatting with also has secondary vaginismus, and tells me she had a painful experience with the actor playing the plumber who had been rather rough with her in the past. She thinks this experience was enough for her muscles to ‘lockdown’ during her scenes with him. We talk about witnessing other actresses gasping or shouting out in pain during scenes where they were clearly in pain from penetration. A detail quickly and quietly edited out in post-production.
Every woman in the porn industry usually has a list of things she won't do - those who have vaginismus usually don't want to insert objects into their body or have sex with 'big' guys.
Despite therapy, I’ve struggled with vaginismus my entire life. Over the years my job has forced me to hide my condition as much as possible, and I've developed techniques to make it seem like I'm actually enjoying sex, while on the inside I'm counting down the minutes.
I've always preferred to work with actors I knew, trusted, and were aware of my condition, since this seemed to make the pain less intense, it was still present, but manageable.
In the beginning of my career things weren’t as smooth, and speaking with this actress reminded me of how many of my first films were made, with lots of breaks and sound editing. Strangely, I also found that working with other actresses in same sex scenes was more challenging as they were not always as accommodating as male counterparts.
These days I no longer act in porn, but I do always think of the women struggling with painful penetration, only to have it carefully edited out in post-production, and served up to an oblivious audience.
