MONTREAL — Quick: What’s the world’s third largest center of pornography production?If you said anything other than Montreal, think again. The French-Canadian capital is outranked only by Los Angeles and Amsterdam.

“Montreal is on top for content production,” Quebec City-based Michel Plante, who coordinates the annual Qwebec Expo adult industry trade show, told The Canadian Press. “Toronto is on top as far as marketing and sales.”

Judging by Montreal’s history, no one should be surprised. Although the city’s erotic underbelly reeled under a dedicated crackdown in the 1950s, adult stores, swingers clubs, gentlemen’s cabarets and escort services continue to thrive. That the city’s flesh merchants would move to the online space in the modern age hardly surprised 2much Media General Manager Greg Jones, known in the industry as Mediaguy. He said the area’s technology infrastructure and talent pool made the transition smooth and natural.

“We have the big game companies here,” he told TCP. “We have a lot of well-known computer-graphics generators here. It just stands to reason that some of that would derive into the adult expansions.”

Also supporting the city’s rapid expansion into porn is what is generally conceded to be a “European mindset” among the citizens.

“The girls are less shy about posing nude in front of a camera or having sex in front of the camera compared to girls from Ontario, for example,” Plante told TCP.

Jones, who was a dairy farmer and a writer before making the leap to porn, added that many college students work in adult entertainment to pay their tuition.

“It’s like a bull session in a university debate club sometimes here…, except everyone’s wearing lingerie,” he said.

He defines the behind-the-scenes staff differently, however: “What we all are — especially the online [community] — is ex-geeks,” he told TCP. “Ex-computer freak geeks, nerds, the kid who wore the horn rims and got his head kicked in the locker room. That’s us. We couldn’t get the girls, so we’d go to the computer and get those girls.”

With “going big time” come industry changes, insiders acknowledge, and most of them are for the better. Female performers no longer feel the shame once associated with adult entertainment, and women feel more empowered to set limits and stick to them — with both employers and viewers. Viewers, too, have learned to accept their own sexuality, and that in turn has contributed to increased respect for sex workers. Violet Manson, a 24-year-old star of 2much’s Live Cam Network, said “jerks” simply aren’t tolerated.

One thing Montreal’s adult entertainment community hasn’t kowtowed to is what members see as a misguided notion that the adult industry is responsible for everyone’s children. The industry does not involve children in the creation of its wares and takes considerable measures to ensure minors don’t access content they aren’t meant to see. However, to a man they point out none of them is a nanny.

“I don’t have the responsibility of monitoring your kids,” Plante noted bluntly.