Sex, clinics, and videotape

Being in a sexual health clinic is like being on the London Underground—people don't make eye contact and they want to get out as soon as possible. Walking through the waiting room of this particular sexual health clinic in London, you probably wouldn't notice a man chatting to three other people. And you probably wouldn't register that it is an odd setting for a group of friends or colleagues to be together. No one would guess that they have at some point had sex with each other. And looking a little closer, to some, their faces may be familiar.

Sexual health services provide specialist treatment for many groups of patients, but one of the more unusual is men and women who work in the pornographic film industry. Until recently, this group tended to use standard private or National Health Service clinics without mentioning their profession. This situation changed in 2002, when a sexual health clinic in London set up a pioneering service for performers in pornography, named the Indigo Clinic, as a reference to their work in “blue movies.”

Before studying medicine, I worked for more than two years as a sexual health adviser, delivering care to patients at the Indigo Clinic.