I survived the porn industry. We must protect kids from what I experienced

I’ve seen a disturbing claim argued in debates about restricting children’s access to pornography: LGBTQ+ youth should have access to porn.

This argument is used to hinder any efforts to protect children from pornography.
The reality is that pornography is harmful to the LGBTQ+ community because it portrays LGBTQ+ sex as aggressive, violent, and degrading.

As a gay man who performed in the pornography industry, I know first-hand that the acts shown in porn fostered shame and homophobia within me. Porn taught me it is normal for me to be raped because I’m gay.

When I was nine, pornography became my sex education. Like many gay youths, I watched gay porn because I was curious about my sexual orientation.

The images I saw were dominated by sex acts in which a man was being punished, humiliated, and/or dominated by another man—or men—through acts of rape, economic coercion, harassment, and other forms of extreme abuse.

These sex acts became normal to my young mind, and it’s difficult to see what is wrong with something we think is normal. The homophobia that gay porn bred within me shaped my understanding of what it meant to be gay.

In college, a group of men raped me. They took pictures and shared them online without my knowledge or consent. Since I had spent years being taught by pornography that this was normal for gay men, I accepted it as normal.

Like many rape victims, I subconsciously thought: “If it’s going to happen to me anyway, I’ll be in control of it next time.”

I became hypersexual, seeking situations like the rape with the hope that I would regain some sense of control. Instead, I was raped several more times, deepening the trauma that lay hidden under the normalcy that porn had nurtured within me for sexual violence.

When a porn talent scout proposed that I do porn, sexual violence had become so normal that once again I thought: “If it’s going to happen to me anyway, I might as well get paid for it.”

Years of porn exposure had already groomed me to say “yes.”

On set, producers directed me into violent and humiliating sex acts. At the time, I was financially desperate. Producers often use economic coercion to overpower a vulnerable person by getting them to submit sexually.

This coercion is often an on-camera trope within gay porn where a producer offers money to a desperate man who otherwise would say “no.”

I performed scenes that crossed my boundaries in a way that left the viewers assured that I was enjoying it. I explained on camera that it was “fun” and “empowering.” Then I would go home and attempt suicide.

Today, porn is even more effective at normalizing acts that are harmful to the LGBT+ community because porn represents itself as a healthy way for youths to explore sex.

Ironically, porn is so normalized that it is the only commercialized corporate industry that rakes in massive profits while getting away with using homophobic and transphobic slurs within its content and painting LGBTQ+ sex as shameful.

This portrays violent and degrading sex acts as normal to the LGBTQ+ community. This normalization allows the porn industry to portray any effort to protect kids from porn exposure as being anti-LGBTQ+.

A bipartisan bill, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), would require digital platforms to protect children from harmful material through a duty of care system. If enacted as law, it would protect children from pornography.

Naturally, the porn industry has portrayed KOSA as dangerous for LGBTQ+ people, implying that LGBTQ+ kids need porn to learn about their sexuality.

However, LGBTQ+ youth do not need porn because it does not teach healthy sexuality. Sadly, LGBTQ+ youth are more likely to be the victims of sexual violence, and porn only normalizes it.

Since we are often ostracized and marginalized, LGBTQ+ people go online to seek a safe community.

But since there are currently no guardrails on the internet, we are exposed to harmful content and are more likely to experience sexual extortion, cyberbullying, online harassment, stalking, and being outed against our will—all of which we would be protected from under KOSA.

After the accusations that KOSA is anti-LGBTQ+, the bill was rewritten with several clarifications that it is not meant to be used against the LGBTQ+ community.

It should help prevent children, including LGBTQ+ children, from experiencing what I experienced. I don’t want pornography teaching LGBTQ+ youth that being gay or trans means you like sexual violence. We deserve better.

As a husband and father, I want my son and all children to be protected on the internet regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

I want all youth, especially LGBTQ+ youth, to know that they are capable and deserving of a sexuality that nourishes love.

That’s what I hope we all want to teach the next generation.

Aaron Crowley is the author of the book Bought with a Price: A Gay Christian’s Memoir from Porn Sets to Love. He has shared his testimony in the U.S. Congress and is an advocate for KOSA.

All views expressed are the author’s own.

Specialists from the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) sexual assault hotline are available 24/7 via phone (1 (800) 656-4673) and online chat. Additional support from the group is also accessible via the mobile app.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “988” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org

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