Pro-wrestling is worse than porn

The post title is a little tongue-in-cheek (a bad move if you're wrestling, I don't have enough data from which to say whether it's a bad move in porn or not).

The point of it is that there's an anti-porn campaigner (Shelley Lubben) who keeps a record of all the deaths by drug overdose or suicide, of performers or ex-performers in the San Fernando Valley porn industry, and uses the apparently relatively high rate of these deaths as an argument to ban porn.

Via Yahoo's recommended stories this morning when I logged in:

Over 25 percent of the performers from Wrestlemania VII have died.

The piece reports that:

The Wrestling Observer newsletter discovered that 14 of the 51 performers at the event have died in the past 20 years, with many of the deaths attributed to drug use.

The list of wrestlers who have died since 1991 include some of the biggest stars in the sport like Savage, Andre the Giant, Miss Elizabeth and The British Bulldog. Causes of death include suicides, murder and heart attacks, some the result of years of anabolic steroid use.

Should we ban pro-wrestling, on this basis? Clearly, it takes a heavy physical and psychological toll on performers, just as is claimed to be the case for porn. Arguably, the toll is even greater (the percentage reported here outstrips easily the reports on Lubben's site).

Obviously, it is tragic that men and women have died young after performing in an entertainment industry like this, just as it is tragic that men and women have died after performing in the adult entertainment industry. However, people make their choices for their own reasons. The best we can do is to give them the tools to make choices freely and with foreknowledge. The health problems especially that seem to be related to pro-wrestling (heart conditions particularly) are things that one would hope in general would form part of people's education before they decide to follow a career in pro-wrestling. Just as I think that the realities of how porn is made ought to be part of sex education classes in school, so that teens who may be thinking that when they are 18 or 19 or 20 that they may want to perform in porn (or may end up thinking that way once they reach majority), are forewarned and able to make a more fully informed choice about their life's path.

People have the right to make their own mistakes; I do believe that society (as any good friend would) should support them if they fall flat on their faces (that's why I believe in the NHS, for example, providing health care even to people who make very poor choices such as smoking heavily). Mistakes have consequences, some severe some less so. But once you have given a person the information to make their own choice, then it is their life to live, and their mistake to make. I don't know if the wrestlers knew when they started their careers that there would be potential health risks further down the line, and I don't know if they would have chosen a different path or not had they done so. The same goes, in general, for porn performers and the consequences they face.

The best we can do is give people the information to make their own choices and then not judge them if they choose differently from the way we ourselves would (or would have them choose).

We can also work hard to make sure that entertainment industries (whether pro-wrestling, porn, or whatever else) change to a better culture for performers, and where porn in particular is concerned, that society shifts so that the costs are lessened and those who enter porn are more likely to have the tools to deal with what's involved.