Women helping women escape the porn industry

Holly Randall (hollyrandall@suze.net) emails:

Hey Luke,

I’ve got a story for you… Cytherea, who as you know is pregnant, was about to be evicted from her apartment at 8 months pregnant. My mom heard about this, and in surefire "Super Suze" mode, decided she had to do something about it. In order to send Cytherea back to her mother’s house in Salt Lake City, she’s shelled out $1780 for a Uhaul truck and gas, plus movers. She’s so far spent 2 days of her time organizing Cytherea’s trip as well as getting her stuff packed and her numerous dogs adopted. (On that note, if anyone is interested in minature pinscher/dachshund puppies, they are about a week old and will be up for adoption at Agoura Animal Shelter once they are old enough.) So far, Suze has been promised over $1,000 in contributions from Ginger Lynn, Ron Jeremy, Michael Ninn, Larry Flynt, Teresa Flynt, Patrick Collins and Paul Fishbein. For those who are wondering, yes Suze did drug test Cytherea, and Cytherea did come up clean.

I realize that this story will probably meet with some ridicule and jokes at Cytherea’s expense, but it does raise the interesting question as to why this industry doesn’t "take care of it’s own". In 2005, Cytherea was celebrated at the AVN awards as "Best New Starlet", her performance in scenes coveted by all, but her drug problem took her out, and fast– I think we all know this. A year ago, I might have ridiculed her myself, but since my personal struggle with addiction, I’m less inclined to be so judgemental. Are we such a shame-based industry that our self-esteem is so low that we can hardly help ourselves, much less others? I’m not pretending to have answers to this, but it is a good subject for my next Xbiz article.

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Cytherea - The Homeless Ho
By LUKE IS BACK | Comments (2)

Holly Randall writes on XPT:

OK I’m going to say one more thing about this subject and then I’d really like to be done with it. As usual, I was too impetuous in my email, and I should’ve left my opinions out of it. When I wrote it, I was weary about including the words that have earned me this criticism, but my parents wanted it out ASAP so that we could garner some support for Cytherea before the whole thing lost it’s momentum. It all came from a conversation I’d had with a friend earlier, about some of the negative reaction I’d already gotten to my mother’s attempts on Cytherea’s behalf– and admittedly, some of it came from me, at the beginning. I think I had bought too much into "tend to your side of the street" aphorism (this is all AA crap– some of you know what I’m talking about) and I initially felt that my mom was enabling Cytherea, rather than helping her. My mom has a tendency to want to "save" people, and I admit sometimes it gets on my nerves. But then I realized that she played a huge part in "saving" me, and if it hadn’t been for her efforts and support, I would not be sober today.

So my friend and I talked about the general low self-esteem this industry harbors, and the way it treats it’s female performers. I realize this is landmine territory I’m stepping into here, because obviously not everyone in porn treats the girls badly, and just because a girl does a scene in which she’s "sexually degraded" doesn’t mean the girl is weak and allows people to walk all over her in real life. I myself am pretty kinky, and though I consider myself a fairly tough chick, I love to be sexually degraded in intimate situations. But try and debase me outside of the bedroom, and I’ll kick your ass. I’m digressing, but I just want to be clear that I’m not issuing a blanket statement here and dismissing all the girls as weak-minded individuals, nor am I suggesting that all pornographers are mysoginists. Those of you who know me know that I don’t like to generalize, and that I truly like a lot of people in the porn biz.

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