In his porn star prime, Rocco “Italian Stallion” Siffredi was perhaps best known for sodomizing a woman while plunging her head into a toilet and flushing it.
He was an early champion of the rough and dirty before it went mainstream.
James Deen, the former porn sensation now mired in rape allegations, once called Siffredi his idol.
Now, the 51-year-old adult entertainment phenom and Gonzo porn pioneer has spearheaded a Change.org petition calling for requisite sex education in his native Italy.
Siffredi, born Rocco Antonio Tano, warns Italy’s Minister of Education that young men’s knowledge of sex is largely informed by head-in-toilet anal sex scenes instead of “dialogue, listening, openness” at school.
“Pornography should be entertainment, but for lack of alternatives has become a learning tool, especially among young people,” the petition begins—a rough Google translation from Italian to English—below a tasteful black-and-white headshot of Siffredi, who addresses the Minister of Education with come-fuck-me eyes and an equally suggestive smirk.
Siffredi looks more like a James Bond type here than the legendary, priapic Italian Stallion—a nom de guerre inspired by his truncheon-like anatomy—who has been lauded with numerous adult industry awards and accolades for his nearly 2,000 porno performances, including Buttman’s European Workout, Buttman’s European Vacation, Buttman’s Big Tit Adventure 3, and The Ass Collector.
In the early 2000s, when Siffredi’s Gonzo career was taking off, porn magnate John Stagliano said he had “far more power in this industry than any actress.”
Stagliano boasted of his role in making Rocco a star: “Together we evolved toward rougher stuff. He started to spit on girls. A strong male-dominant thing, with women being pushed to their limit.”
Siffredi and his rough-stuff repertoire, Stagliano said, was “driven by the market.”
Siffredi’s petition states that sex education is “compulsory in all EU countries except in Italy, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and the United Kingdom.”
Launched last week on Global Orgasm Day, it had accrued almost 31,000 signatures by Monday evening.
Naturally, Siffredi has volunteered to be the “face and experience…the first promoter person” of this educational initiative, a role in which he would visit Italian schools that don’t have mandatory sex education programs and teach young men about the distinctions between pornography and off-screen sex. (These distinctions are not specified in the petition, and Siffredi could not be reached for comment.)
Siffredi argues that 30 years in the adult entertainment industry qualifies him for this new leadership position: “I have acquired enough experience to ensure that what I do is not sex education, but other, pornography precisely.
“The boys have the right to open up, ask questions, get answers, receive training on a [sic] of the most beautiful and important in life.”
One imagines that Siffredi would have much to offer adolescent boys in the way of STD prevention (he was circumcised at 31 for “hygiene reasons,” according to Mother Jones) and clarifying that porno sex is not a precise reflection of real-life sex.
For example, despite how it goes in the films, not all women react with unrestrained enthusiasm when their lover spits on them, pulls their hair, or slaps them in the face with his ‘truncheon.’
Likewise, not all female or male lovers enjoy being “the patsy in the custard pie joke,” as Martin Amis describes the woman on the receiving end of a typical porno finale in his novel, Money.
These are valuable lessons that Siffredi could, in theory, impart in the classroom to Italian boys, many of whom may be taking lovemaking cues from the Italian Stallion’s adult performances.
Practical hurdles aside—including persuading the Vatican to back a porn star’s sex education initiative—the more immediate question is whether Siffredi’s petition is a genuine effort to parlay his exhibitionist career into an educational one, or a half-hearted publicity gambit.
Earlier this year, Siffredi announced that he was quitting porn after a traumatic, week-long experience in solitary confinement on a Survivor-like reality TV show in Italy, Island of the Famous.
“I never felt so naked as I did then,” he reportedly told a friend, adding that he worried his career was ruining his marriage. (Siffredi fell in love with his wife Rosa Caracciolo, a former model-turned-adult-actress, on the set of the 1995 Italian classic, Tarzan X: The Shame of Jane.)
Devastated by Siffredi’s alleged retirement, one female fan lamented to the Mirror: “These days porn is too mechanical and dull. He brought real flare and passion to the screen.”
This was the second time Siffredi “quit” the industry—although his Change.org petition suggests he’s still very active in the business.
Whatever, it’s clear that Siffredi has been attempting to diversify his resumé with non-porno gigs. Whether this one will fizzle out before the New Year remains to be seen.