Is Israel Becoming A Gay Porn Powerhouse?
Image by Haaretz
Tel Aviv has been a happening LGBT scene for decades, but now Israel is becoming a destination for the gay porn industry.
“I’m not competing with foreign sites that show guys with abs who look like a million bucks,” a filmmaker identified as Shay told Haaretz. “With me, everything is homey; my films are amateurish.”
According to Haaretz, the gay porn industry has a boutique quality – with most of the content being made by about 10 actors, even as the sites draw huge traffic.
Actor wages can run from 1,000 to 2,000 shekels among the small outlets that produce most of the content. That’s about $280 to $560 a day – a good deal more than the average pay in Israel.
But not everyone is happy about the porn industry’s growth.
Prof. Esther Herzog, chairwoman of the Movement for Equal Representation of Women, said the industry is inherently harmful, whether it’s being produced by gay or straight people.
“Pornography, prostitution and trafficking in women are three sides of the same phenomenon,” she told the newspaper. “Ultimately, we’re talking about buying sex.”
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
