Ex Porn Star "Jessie Rogers" Exposes Shocking Abuses of the Porn Industry and Tells Her Story
The below is the text of a speech given by Jessica Mendes to a class at Arizona State University. The video of the speech can be watched below the text.
(NOTE: Jessica was formerly known as porn performer "Jessie Rogers.")
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Hi everyone. Today I'm going to explain pornography and share my story with you. I'm currently 20 years old, and I retired from the "adult" industry in 2012, just a few months after I turned 19.
To give a little background about me, I was born in Brazil but I grew up in San Francisco. My parents got divorced when I was 10, and my dad moved back to Brazil at the time.
I didn't actually start having sex until I was 16, and at that time I was only having sex with my ex-boyfriend, whom I had been with for almost a year. I wasn't promiscuous or anything like that, but I did go through a lot of damage as a teenager.
The pastor from my church molested me when I was 12, and I got raped by an older man when I was 15. I haven't told people these things publicly because they're so personal, and I never thought it was really necessary until now. Also, from getting to know so many different "porn stars," their childhood stories are fairly similar.
How I got into the porn industry is actually a funny story because I didn't intend to become a porn star, but I do think that on a subconscious level I attracted that negativity into my life.
So I was searching for jobs on Craigslist, and on one of the ads it said: "Make $20,000 - $30,000 a month modeling." I had a lot of modeling experience which I had made money off of, but never that much. So, it looked appealing to me, to say the least.
Long story short, I met up with an agent when I was actually 17, and they explained to me that it's not regular modeling, it's porn. And they booked me solid from the day after my 18th birthday, until just a few months after that. I wasn't really thinking about what I was getting myself into, I just wanted the money, and the validation that people in porn gave me.
Since I did live in L.A. after getting into the industry, I hung out with a lot of people in the adult industry, and their stories were always the same, and negative. None of them liked doing what they were doing. They were just doing it for the money, and they dreamed of getting out -- doing something else and having a normal life, like being married with kids. This wasn't just female performers -- the male performers and the directors as well.
Almost all, if not all the girls, go to their shoots high on something, whether it's painkillers, weed, ecstasy or cocaine. So that's why when people watch it, it looks like the performers are having a blast, but in reality they're just disassociated and don't even want to be there.
This drug thing was actually pretty foreign to me, because I had never done drugs before getting into the adult industry. And even though people in the adult industry offered me drugs several times, I kept saying "no," with the exception of smoking and alcohol. I did however start turning to alcohol, and after being in the industry for a few months, I did develop an alcohol problem. But after I quit porn I also quit drinking, and I've been completely sober for one year and four months.
What I quickly realized was that the porn industry is kind of like a "cover up" to run prostitution rings, where the agents who are actually pimps make even more money sending their "girls" out to those type of gigs. And it's also like a cycle of porn, escorting, stripping, and webcamming. I did a little bit of webcamming, but I refused to do the others. It just wasn't appealing to me.
My former roommate Leilani (who was also in the porn industry) and I kept talking about quitting, every time we would hang out. She actually quit too. She's engaged, and is about to have a baby now.
But what happened around the time that I was thinking about quitting, was: 1) a veteran male performer who was in the industry for over 8 years, caught syphilis and faked his test, worked knowing that he had syphilis, and transmitted it to other performers. And 2) I won't go into much detail about this because it was so traumatizing, but I was actually hanging out with another veteran male performer off camera, who I knew was sadistic, but what he did to me the night that I "woke up," I was definitely not expecting.
Long story short, he kept beating me, banging my head on his wooden floor, to the point where my face and my head was bleeding. He choked me out to the point of me passing out twice, and when he would stick my head in his toilet, he would not let me come up for air when I tried. So I thought I was going to die that night.
Through the course of my porn career I had to go to the emergency room several times. I had several instances where I would cry on set, because things had been so painful. But none of them like this one -- to the point where I would actually be woken up.
As I drove home that night, I was so distressed from what had just happened, but I didn't feel bad for myself. What was really going on inside my head, was, "What the hell am I doing in this environment? If I died today, would I have done good for myself, for society, or for the world? Is this is really how I want to be remembered? Why am I disrespecting my body, and allowing others to disrespect me?"
And it was like the the light bulb switched on in my head that night. I woke up, I decided to quit the industry and re-create my life, my identity, and the rest is history. A few months after I quit, I started getting messages on my YouTube channel from girls telling me they want to commit suicide. After watching my videos and hearing my story, they said it helped them feel better, and not go through with it.
I also got emails from guys who were dealing with porn addiction, and they told me that seeing my change inspired them to let go of that negativity in their lives as well. And there were a few random emails from guys not knowing how to talk to girls in real life, because their only relationship with a woman had sadly been on a computer screen.
It doesn't take a psychiatrist to figure out that porn not only affects the lives of the people working in it, but also the lives of the people watching it, and in turn the lives of the people who are surrounded by people that watch it -- whether they consciously realize it or not. There have been several rape reports of men admitting they watched porn or were porn addicts.
So, I tell my story not for people to feel bad for me. Trust me, I don't want your pity. I just want you to understand that nothing positive comes out of that industry on either side of the screen.
Some people think that they are doing nothing wrong by watching porn, but in reality they are supporting filmed prostitution that influences individuals to degrade, beat, rape, and sometimes even kill other individuals.
I'm thankful not only to be able to live the life that I want now, but simply to be alive, unlike ex-porn star Taylor Summers -- rest in peace -- who was killed during a BDSM "shoot." (And several other victims as well.) It was also really hard for me to accept the fact that porn films I did will be forever on the Internet.
Everything I do on the Internet -- from live-streaming video games on Twitch TV, to blogging on YouTube -- I used the name "Jessie Rogers," because I didn't want my real name out there. But I had to accept the fact companies are forever going to be marketing my films under that name. And using that name publicly is going to continue to attract the "weirdos." So I decided to change my name on all my social media accounts.
The only reason why I keep them going and haven't deleted them, which I wanted to, is because I have such supportive, loyal, and loving followers -- who love me as a human being, and want me to continue to be able to interact with them.
So it's not easy. It's been a year and a half since I got out of the industry, and I was still waking up to companies tagging me in pictures, saying things like, "Jessie Rogers with a big black c*ck," or angry masturbators, who would watch one of my scenes on a porn site, and think it's okay to call me names on my accounts, ignorantly unaware that I retired in 2012.
It's annoying, and I'm definitely over it. I changed, and it was still haunting me. But the fact of the matter is that porn is not a "fantasy." It's real human beings with feelings doing real acts. Thank you.
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Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexualitytakes an unflinching look at today’s porn industry: the stories woven into the images, the impact on our culture, the effects on us as men and women, the business machine that creates and markets porn, and the growing legitimacy of porn in mainstream media. Above all, PORNLAND examines the way porn shapes and limits sexual imaginations and behaviors.
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Saavi Accountability -- The only online accountability program that works with all online addictions. It is also the only program that sends notifications instantly via text message to an accountability partner so that they can be supportive when an individual needs it the most at the point of weakness, while they are accessing the online content. The software was created by a young man (26) who overcame his addiction and is trying to help others.
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Gloria Steinem, 2006
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Hi everyone. Today I'm going to explain pornography and share my story with you. I'm currently 20 years old, and I retired from the "adult" industry in 2012, just a few months after I turned 19.
