- REUTERS
Dancers perform at the Namco Bandai stage at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on May 11.

Nicholas Richards and Marlon Vickerman, Gleaner Writers

ON A damp, chilly night at the beginning of the rainy season, a throng of hedonists crowds the stage at a popular nightclub in the Corporate Area to watch live sex onstage.

This is one of several exotic clubs that have mushroomed across the island in recent years. Patrons go to witness the production of pornography. Tonight is one of those nights.

However, this is nothing new, as for almost two decades now strip clubs have been morphing into cafés of pornography. But the question for many is, what has caused this increase?

For Dr. Glenda Simms, former executive director of the Bureau of Women's Affairs, the high unemployment rate is the primary cause of the growing pornographic industry.

UNEMPLOYMENT

"What can you expect when we are not producing anything, whether it be in the agricultural sector, the manufacturing sector or in education. Even socially, we are disintegrating," she says. "There are hardly any opportunities, so this is what our young girls, and some young boys too, get involved in, these anti-social activities."

She laments that it is the "poor, uneducated and miseducated-educated" young girls who are most likely to end up getting involved in the industry, based largely on the fact that women have a higher rate of unemployment than males.

Furthermore, the Statistical Institute of Jamaica reveals that the unemployment rate for women in Jamaica is two times greater than their male counterparts. In 2005, the unemployment rate for men was almost eight per cent, while for women was near 16 per cent.

Hilary Nicholson, programme coordinator at Women's Media Watch, points to this high unemployment rate among the nation's females, coupled with the meagre pay from dead-end jobs, as a significant factor in their getting involved in pornography.

"Generally, there is a huge responsibility linked to females in half the households in Jamaica, and the jobs that are available for the mass of these women are very poorly paid," Nicholson said. "So, the issue arises where these females are forced to exchange sex for money in order to survive (as the unemployment rate is twice as high among them compared to males)."

She stated that the money persons earn from the sex industry "would stretch much farther" than a normal day job.

And, in most cases, there is the scenario where single-parent mothers often get involved in the pornography when they are faced with the task of fending for two to five children without any financial assistance from the children's fathers.

Thirty-eight-year-old mother of three,Blondie, is one such person.

This parent of two daughters - one 19 and the other eight year old - and a six-year-old son, said irregular, low-paying jobs combined with the absence of support from her children's fathers drove her into 'the business.'

At first, she started out as a dancer and a year and a half later she started performing live sex on stage.

"Sometimes, if you have a good night (made extra money) you can make up to $20,000 a night," she said. "But, the shows (sex acts) pay better. You can make up to $40,000 in one night from doing shows."

NOT IN MY FOOTSTEPS

The exotic dancer who has offered her services in a range of nightclubs in the Corporate Area said she only entered the sex industry to adequately provide for her family.

"I would never want any of my kids to enter this field of work, you know," she said. "My parents didn't have much so I dropped out of school by age 16 and was working in a garment factory. The reason I'm dancing and doing the shows is to offer my children a better life and opportunity at education than I had. I would never want them to follow in mommy's footsteps."

As the father of one found out, having a seventh-grade education could not suffice. In relating the years of hardship to The Sunday Gleaner, a disheartened Morrisonexplained: "A just pure hardship an sufferation mi go through. Mi father don't tek care of mi, an mi madda was not thekind a woman who go out an' fen fi har pickney dem. All she do is just stay home and depend on man fi mine har but them neva care 'bout we.

"So, basically, I grew up on my own, and started working from mi about 13. When I was growing up, I didn't have anyone to talk to. As the oldest brother, I always have to go out an' find work an' tek care a di younger one dem, a so my life did set up."

However, a chance encounter with an exotic dancer in a nightclub in Spanish Town, St. Catherine, was to change his life.

"I was sitting in the audience and she was on the stage dancing, and she asked me to come and have sex wid har up there," he said. "At first, mi did feel 'fraid but mi go up an' do it (had sex) an' a so mi start."

Pleased by what he saw, the club's owner struck up a halting conversation with him and, within several months, Morrison was performing regularly at the Chocolate Nightclub. And, except for a six-year break, he has been earning a living in pornography ever since.

THRIVING BUSINESS

But what started as a trickle has now morphed into a thriving underground industry. It is not certain how many pornographic movies have been made in Jamaica,

However, 'Matrix', who sells pirated videos in downtown Kingston, says that the industry is growing rapidly: "Fram dem film Yard Grine, a pornographic film, dem jus' start pop up ova di place."

Steve, another downtown vendor, agrees that the industry is growing: "People dem caan get enough, as dem come, dem gaan," he related.

But while unemployment and the harsh economic climate might be seen as the main contributors to the island's budding pornographic industry, Dr. Simms believes it also has to do with "our love of being seduced by the "seamier side of things, we want to copy what is en vogue. We are a very imitative society, and if porn is all that we can produce, then it says something awful about us."

She believes that eventually Jamaica's will move beyond being a mere facsimile of the American pornographic industry to becomingone that usurps it.

In the meantime, she hopes that this problem will be placed on the moral agenda for debate.

Not real names