Porn Star Kyle Dean Dead At 21

Kyle Dean (image via Twitter)

Adult performer Kyle Dean (real name Brandon Jason Chrisan) has passed away at the age of 21.

No cause of death has been released. Toale Brothers Funeral Home lists the date of his passing as September 28.

An obituary there shares that Dean “loved to play football and physically train his body.”

“He won fourth place in an Adult Physique Competition at the age of seventeen,” the entry adds.

Dean had worked for gay adult studios Corbin Fisher and GayHoopla in recent years.

According to South Florida Gay News, Dean had several arrests over the past few years involving “multiple drug and burglary convictions.”

In March of 2017, he was ordered to take part in a drug intervention program.

SFGN also notes that Dean was described by some online commenters as “gay-for-pay,” often requesting pre-paid Uber rides or presents from his Amazon wishlist.

Over on Instinct Magazine, I've reported on the deaths of several porn performers this year including Falcon Studios’ Dave Slick and BrokeStraightBoys’ Tyler White.

Often, in posting these stories, there are inevitable comments blaming the porn industry for the passing of adult performers.

But it’s worth noting that people from every walk of life succumb to drug use or suicide.

Over the past 20 years, having lived in Las Vegas and the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, I’ve met several adult performers who have their lives together and continue to thrive.

It might be just this writer’s opinion, but perhaps because these people are in the public eye, to whatever degree, their deaths get more scrutiny than people in other walks of life?

While the porn industry connection is titilating, correlation isn’t necessarily causation.

Earlier this year, Rosie Hodson – PhD candidate with an emphasis in studying pornography – told Dazed that making generalizations about the deaths of porn performers does them “a ‘disservice’ to define them simply by their careers in porn and is a gross oversimplification to connect all of their deaths directly to their work in pornography.”

“They are individuals,” she emphasized.

And behavioral scientist Gad Saad, a chair at the John Molson School of Business in Montreal, who studies the porn industry, told the New York Post this past January that people who enter porn are no more prone to mental issues than anyone else.

There is an interest in the passing of adult performers as evidenced by the traffic these posts receive.

While I’m sure there are many who can testify to the emotional toll working in the adult entertainment industry can have on people, I don’t know that the blame for every porn performer’s death lands squarely on the industry.

But I freely admit I’m not a trained professional in assessing the issue. I’m just a writer thinking out loud.

What do you think, readers? Is the porn industry to blame for young deaths? Or is this something we see in every walk of life?

Rest in peace, Brandon Jason Chrisan.