Bought with a Price: A Gay Christian's Memoir from Porn Sets to Love

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Before we began shooting porn scenes, we had no understanding of the extreme physical, emotional, or psychological trauma that awaited us," the letter continues. "Some of us weren't even old enough to drink alcohol, and, as brain science reveals, the decision-making part of our brains wasn't fully developed."

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Even in interviews, these performers maintain that they do porn because they love sex and can’t get enough of it. Because of this, much of society, understandably, believes every porn performer entered the industry in the pursuit of their ideal lifestyle. Garrett Jonsson: Yeah. Well, Aaron, these conversations mean so much to me and I’ve had a very enjoyable time talking with you.When performers sign on to work in the industry, many of them don’t fully know or understand what it will lead to—sexual abuse, physical abuse, coercion, injuries, disease, difficulty finding a different job after they leave the industry, among many other challenges. And his response to me was “Why, you know, guys think these, this is hot. Like everyone thinks this is hot. You’re hot. Like this is really cool.” And so it, it like normal to me, you know, okay, this is what it means to be gay. This is, this is how I get validation from other gay men. This is what it means to be a part of the LGBT community and everything. And, you know, I eventually talked the guy into deleting those pictures or at least that’s what I thought he showed me. He was deleting ’em. But then later someone told me he still had them. He still said that he deleted ’em. So I don’t really know what happened yeah. With all of that. But, um, and I, I didn’t know what to do. I, you know, because it was so normalized to me. I got to a point where I had to put my foot down and eventually said no to those scenes. I refused to normalize pedophilia any more than I already had. Aaron Crowley: And so there needs to be a distinguishing there, is it a higher sex drive or is it hypersexuality in response to trauma? Because hyper sexuality and response to trauma may look like from the outside a higher sex drive to someone. Garrett Jonsson: Well, as I think about your experience with not only drug facilitated sexual assault or rape, but also with the image-based abuse that you experienced with him, sharing your photos without your consent. It’s interesting cuz we don’t know this is just speculation, but some of the people who saw those images, it’s very likely that they, they thought you were consenting.

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Aaron Crowley: Right? Yeah. Um, let me try to give you the spark notes version. So I first heard the word gay from my cousins who were using it and talking about it in a very homophobic way. I was probably about eight. Um, and so whenever it was defined to me what gay meant I realized, “Oh, I might be that.”, like, that’s what first went in my head. And then I realized the tone of how it was being used. And I was like, oh, and it’s a bad thing. Aaron Crowley: Uh, I now have a, you know, a job outside of the porn industry that pays well enough and I’m able to take care of myself and my husband and, and feed ourselves, pay rent. Um, I’m, like I said, I’m, I’m married now. Um, uh, we’re about to celebrate our seventh anniversary in March. In mainstream media, porn has a glamorized reputation as a tool of empowerment, sexual liberation, and self-discovery. However, when you take a moment to look behind the curtain and hear the real experiences of porn performers, you get a very different picture—one of abuse, manipulation, drug addiction, and physical and mental trauma.Aaron Crowley: Kind of, you know, introduced us a little bit and kind of helped us know what to expect. Additionally, they claim they were "coerced in high pressure situations to do sex acts we've clearly said we will not do." They also feel as though they are "victims of violent sexual assaults," have sustained "physical injury, psychological trauma" and were put "at risk of sexually transmitted infections." Aaron Crowley: Um, and rent and all of that. Um, so it seemed like a nice, it seemed like a good option. Yeah. It seemed like. Yeah. So I took him up on that offer. And um, yeah. Led by Brittni De La Mora, who has often shared publicly about her conversion to Christianity and embrace of sexual purity, the former porn stars insisted that the industry's leaders must "stop recruiting impressionable teens into porn." I think one thing to learn from your personal account is that stigmas are unhealthy. Like if you look at a psychologist, one of the requirements for being a psychologist is to hold unconditional positive regard for the people you work with. And it seems like that same standard should be held by caregivers. You know, including parents, we should have unconditional positive regard for the kids we care for, because I just wonder, like what would’ve been different, if you did have a place to go and to open up and engage in genuineness, and acceptance and receive some empathy.

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Garrett Jonsson: Yeah. That’s, that’s really interesting. Like you were not a safe space. That’s really interesting. I it’s almost like you were, and I’m not blaming you when I say this, but I’m just making an observation. It’s almost like you were participating in victim blaming because you just didn’t understand. It’s not that you were truly like blaming yourself. It’s just that you didn’t understand the context of all these things. Garrett Jonsson: Right. And just to kind of elaborate on what you’re saying, it’s like imagine going on LinkedIn and this person’s like “Yeah, to work here…” and then pulls out their genitals and says, “This is part of it.” It boggles my mind that that is one of the job requirements in the porn industry to be tolerant of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape. Garrett Jonsson: Thanks for speaking to those things. It makes a lot of sense. We’ve talked about some heavy things and we’ve talked about your low of lows and all of the, some of the traumas that you’ve experienced. I shouldn’t say all of the traumas, but some of the traumas you’ve experienced and man, it can be a heavy thing to talk about this, this stuff. I think it’s also important to talk about, you know, the hopeful side, I’m just kind of wondering what does your life look like now? Garrett Jonsson: Being conscious of that, like the fact that you kind of helped that person get on set and then realizing what had just happened. That must have been a heavy realization. I’m just wondering if that was like, do you consider that one of your low of lows? And I take him, we, we, you know, prop him up on our shoulders and we take him to the set and we, you know, help lead him to the set. And we lay him on the bed and we leave him there. And as I’m again, leaving my co performer is like talking mean, he is like, you know, I can’t, I don’t wanna perform with him. Because he’s a mess. Like he’s always drunk or he’s always on drugs. Or he is something because, you know, he was crying the other day saying he doesn’t really wanna be in porn and all of this. And right then I stopped. And I, I like had an epiphany moment and I looked at my, my friend and I said, “Do any of us really want to be in this?”I was actually thinking about this actually just the other day. Um, cuz I feel like the medical bills that I had for it that like just the damage is done to my body and you know, what the STI and everything. Um, there were medical bills that I continued paying, you know, even after I left, I, I just feel okay. You know, with all of those, if we accumulate all those together, I feel like, you know, it cost more. Hmm. You know, to be in like, I feel like that’s. It definitely cost a bit more for me. Um, I mean, I, I can’t speak to everyone’s situation, but… These are popular perceptions when it comes to pornography, however, perception is not always reality. Aaron Crowley: Um, that, um, you know, that it’s violent and it’s aggressive, especially towards women.