“I just say she makes websites,” said my Mum, sipping her wine. “And then I change the subject.”
“I say you do website administration,” added my sister, “because then it sounds boring and they don’t ask what website it is.”
It was 2015. We were at the local pub in my very small home town and the subject had briefly turned to what I do for a living.
I’m a pornographer; I film people having sex, and I run an adult website where I publish my films and erotic fiction. I make money from creating sexually explicit material.
Shall I add my usual caveats, the ones that are designed to make you feel a bit more comfortable with what I’ve just said? Here they are: I make feminist porn and porn aimed at women. I make ethical porn. I often film real-life couples and I try to document sexual and romantic relationships. It’s tasteful and arty. No, I don’t appear in the films, I work behind the camera, I’m more comfortable there.
Every one of those statements is designed to help me evade the stigma of porn. Saying those things is a “get out of jail free” card, uttered to make me seem less of a bad person, to try and escape the inevitable judgement that comes with being involved in pornography.
Unfortunately society insists that creating, working in and performing in porn is a Bad Thing. Everyone knows the script: porn is addictive, sexist, exploitative and run by organized crime. Porn objectifies women, it ruins marriages, it destroys the nascent sexuality of children (somebody think of the children!). And it can never ever be feminist. Porn performers are all abused drug addicts and porn creators are all nasty men looking to ruin the lives of young women.
Every assumption is a giant hill to be overcome and every statement perpetuates the stigma of porn.
When I sat in the pub with my family all those years ago and I heard their handy descriptions for my work, it struck me: my Mum and my sister are forced to lie for me. Every time someone asks about me, they have to feel uncomfortable and obfuscate and move the conversation along so as not to reveal the truth. They do it to protect me but they’re also protecting themselves. They live in a small town; it’s probably not something they want gossiped about at the local supermarket.
That is stigma in action. And it really hit me that the choices I’d made for myself had also meant I’d forced my family and friends to participate in that stigma.
I’ll admit, that made me feel pretty shit.
I have a chapter in Jiz Lee’s 2015 book Coming Out Like A Porn Star. I wrote it up quickly in October 2012 in response to Jiz’s original deadline. I dashed off a couple of pages talking about my experiences of revealing my vocation to strangers, friends and family. On the whole, what I wrote is mostly positive; I chose lighthearted anecdotes about “coming out” and reflected on how people react to this information; it’s typically a duality of either horror or fascination mixed with oversharing.
While I’m happy with what I originally wrote, I’m aware that it is also a fairly shallow essay amid a vast number of other very intense contributions. Jiz’s book expanded in the years after I submitted my piece; the final product contains over 50 other chapters, mostly from current and former sex workers and adult performers. Some of their stories deal with rejection by family or friends, harassment by police, stalking, outing, and assault by members of the public. There are tales of negative experiences when performing and also employment difficulties faced after leaving the industry. For so many performers and sex workers, stigma results in very real risks and dangers in their personal lives. “Coming out” is a huge decision to make and is often something that happens over and over, not just once.
When I wrote my piece in 2012, I hadn’t made many porn films, I’d mainly concentrated on the web side of the business. Since then I’ve produced and directed over 100 scenes. My paysite Bright Desire has been online for over 11 years. I’ve got to know a lot more sex workers and performers and worked closely with other people within the industry. In those years I moved from the fringes of porn into the centre.
I’m profoundly aware of the bravery of every porn performer and sex worker because I know how much shit they deal with to do what they do. They absolutely should be celebrated and respected.
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When I started curating porn 24 years ago, I went to pains to make sure people knew I wasn’t one of the performers. Part of it was because I could see them looking at me and thinking She’s not hot enough for porn, but the other part was because I didn’t want them to think I was a sex worker. Sure, I was making porn but I was still a level above those who appeared in it. I’m ashamed to say I perpetuated that stigma in my disavowals. It’s perhaps trite to say that I feel bad about that now, but I do. You live, you learn.
Coming Out Like A Porn Star also made me more aware of my relative privilege within the porn industry. As a producer, not a performer, I have escaped a lot of the really negative repercussions that working in porn can bring. I have a (mostly) understanding family. I have managed to stay relatively anonymous and have kept my porn identity separate from my “real life”. I haven’t had to face any legal issues (so far, touch wood).
Even so, the stigma is there. It’s there in the way we are nervous about whether the bank will cancel our account if they look closely at my source of income. It’s there when I write “web admin” on government forms asking my occupation. It’s there when I stop applying for a volunteer job because they’ll ask for references. It’s there when I change the subject when people ask me about what I do.
The stigma has put me back into the closet for the last six years.
When we moved to a new town in 2018, my husband and cinematographer/bookkeeper expressed a strong desire that nobody we met would know our porny business. The only people who could know were the computer repair guys and they were sworn to absolute secrecy.
Luke is my reluctant collaborator in this whole shebang. Porn was never his thing but he does like photography. So when I decided to direct sex films in 2009, he ended up holding the main camera. He’s good at what he does but, given a choice, he’d rather not be a pornographer.
Our experiences of coming out were different. We’d both choose our confidants carefully before spilling the beans. I tended to meet with positive responses. People would be curious and interested to know the ins-and-outs of the business. They’d also tend to overshare about their sex lives. The few people who were put off didn’t talk to me again but I’m not very social so it didn’t bother me at all.
Luke’s experience was mostly negative. While there were a few who were fine with it, there were more who distanced themselves. There was never outright hostility, just a withdrawal of friendship or interaction. Perhaps the fact that Luke is male made a difference to how they perceived his involvement. A female pornographer is an interesting anomaly. A male pornographer is a dirty exploiter in many people’s eyes. In any case, he found that it made his life in our old town increasingly difficult and he suffered from this stigma. He says that telling people never turned out well and he is done with it.
So now I’m honoring his request. Because just as it isn’t fair that my family has to lie about what I do to protect themselves, it’s not fair on him either.
In the beginning it was easy for me to stay in the closet in our new town. We hardly knew anyone in our first 18 months after moving and then the pandemic shut down social activity. After that, I was sick with a chronic illness, mostly stuck at home, not doing much work and not talking to anyone.
But then my health improved, I joined a local sports club and got to know the neighbours. And now I have to obfuscate and change the subject and not talk about my profession. I do web admin, I just work the back end of a website, its just tech stuff, I work from home…
I confess, the closet is constricting and frustrating. I miss talking to people about it and telling my anecdotes. I miss being able to shock people with the fact that behind my dull exterior hides a feminist porn expert with multiple awards to my name. I miss the interesting conversations that spring from such an unusual topic.
And it makes social situations that much more anxious for an introvert like me. When you do something for twenty-four years and it makes up a large part of your personality, it’s hard not to mention it. Things can get awkward. The closet has made a big hole in my small talk.
When I was still unwell I booked in to see a psychologist a couple of times. The sessions didn’t help me cope with the illness but at least I got to talk about my job and how I felt about staying silent. It was stupidly enjoyable to just tell this person my story and to express how lonely I was feeling without my community
Because the closet can equal loneliness.
If the pandemic taught us anything (and god knows a lot of people didn’t learn much), it’s that we need to stay in touch with our own people. It’s so important to be part of a community where you’re accepted, where you’re valued, and where you can talk and share ideas without judgement.
I’ve been part of the feminist / indie porn community for a long time. Throughout the 2010s I got to meet up with so many other filmmakers, performers, sex workers and academics at film events, conferences and get-togethers. These people were my colleagues but also my friends. United by the desire to make porn better, we were also a group of outsiders, sharing the experience of stigma. This made for a strong support network. After meeting up in person, we stayed in touch via social media and email.
The pandemic and my illness changed that. It took away travelling and networking for me. I haven’t been anywhere on a plane since 2019. And now social media is fragmented and failing. My friends aren’t on Twitter or Facebook anymore. They’ve either been forced out, shadowbanned or have just given up. It’s harder to keep up and keep in touch. Meanwhile, governments continue to crack down on porn, introducing age verification legislation that is effectively a ban for indie producers. It feels like the obstacles are increasing and my old cohort of porn colleagues are drifting away.
There’s a growing number of performers and filmmakers who I’ve worked with who are no longer in the industry. They don’t reply to emails and their socials are dead or deleted. I don’t know where they are or what they’re doing but I assume they’ve gone back to being “normal” and using their real names. They’re back in the closet like me.
I am jealous of my friend, Jennifer Lyon Bell, who has managed to make porn under her own name and continues to make films, write and speak about the topic in the Netherlands, where she is given respect for her work. Or my friend Zahra Stardust, who earned her Ph.D by writing about porn and censorship and who has just released a book about indie porn. They’re able to be out of the closet and can still live their lives. I can’t do that.
Right now I should be proudly writing my memoir and pitching it to publishers, ready to tell my porn stories to the world but the publicity required stays my hand. To even pitch an idea, you need to talk about how you’ll promote it. I can’t do mainstream media or much promotion for fear of revealing my identity in my new town. What would happen if the book actually did well?
I can’t even have a Wikipedia page because someone would add my real name and out me.
I am constantly weighing up the idea of living my truth versus the knowledge that – despite the loneliness – things are safer and more peaceful in the closet.
Peace and safety are winning.
***
I wonder if the end of my porn career is on the horizon. Every day brings a new setback, a new bit of censorship, a further enshittification of the internet. It gets harder to stay motivated in the face of increasing obstacles. Yet the question of what I do next is a big one. What do ex-porn people do back in the real world?
I’ve found myself wondering if I could ever have a real job when this one inevitably grinds to a halt. Could I ever go back to being a librarian? What the hell do I say in an interview about my past experience? Sure, I can dress it up and say I’ve spent all those years running my own business, making websites, learning web design, SEO, advertising, marketing and PR, copywriting, video creation, editing, social media management, accounting, image manipulation and design. Films screened at over 100 international film festivals, winner of several awards. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
But as soon as I say it was all in the business of porn, things get shaky. Will they assume I’m a terrible person, an exploiter or a criminal? Will they pass on employing me because I will bring the company into disrepute? Will they dismiss all of my skills as not being useful because they were “only” used for porn?
I’m not in any hurry to get a 9 to 5 job. Yet I still wonder if I can ever work in a regular profession or do volunteering work. I wonder if I’ll ever successfully be able to quit making porn.
Perhaps I shouldn’t complain. This is what I signed up for when I started in the porn business, what did I expect? It’s a fringe industry, a dangerous profession. If I didn’t want the consequences, I shouldn’t have become involved.
And yet I don’t want to buy into the world view that tells me to suck it up. Why should I accept this stigma as normal? Why should I just put up with the status quo? As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing wrong with pornography or sex work. They are legitimate professions and the people who work in this area deserve the same respect as anyone else.
I make good, ethical, beautiful films. I work with an amazing variety of intelligent and articulate people. I offer a quality product to people willing to pay. The only difference here is that my work deals with sex.
I make feminist, sex positive, female friendly films. I present different visions of sex and sexuality, one that is inclusive and diverse. I depict sex in its many forms, whether that be a pure, passionate meeting of souls or just some down and dirty fucking.
You could say that my work is art and I’d blush and be grateful but that wouldn’t be the whole picture. Fact is, I make porn so people can get turned on and masturbate. Or so they can get horny and fuck their partner/s. And that’s a perfectly legitimate enterprise. I don’t need to dress it up to demand respect. I’m doing something that makes people happy; why is that a problem?
Writing this won’t change the world, I know. The stigma surrounding sex work and porn goes deep; it has centuries of religious prudery behind it, backed up by societal demands for “morality” and legislative restrictions of various sorts. Indeed, it seems that things are getting worse, with crusades against porn given weight by governments and anti-sex-work organizations gaining traction with politicians the world over.
Still, I’m saying what I need to say, getting it out there. Coming out again, just a little bit. Even if I am back in the closet.
And I also want to say: despite the stigma, working in porn has been fantastic. It’s been an enormous creative outlet and allowed me to make important political statements. I’ve met the most wonderful people and made many friends.
As for the friends who went back into the closet, I want them to know that I miss them. I want them to know they are great people and I’m glad to have met them. Because they were part of the crew, part of the movement we had going, part of a moment in time where we changed things and made a difference.
****
Two addenda.
In my original essay I wrote about my then-16-year-old nieces. I was wondering what we were going to tell them when they turned 18. They’re 28 now, and the coming out story goes like this:
We were having lunch with them at a cafe, discussing their futures, hearing their stories about what university courses they might take. I didn’t mean to tell them at that point; it’s just that I was saying that what I did at uni didn’t really prepare me for what it was I currently did.
So… what was it I did, exactly?
“No way!”
“Wait? What? Really?? No, that’s not it. It can’t be. Don’t you just sell things online?”
They had absolutely no clue what we did or why we kept going overseas. It made me feel rather proud of our secret-keeping abilities, if nothing else. Or perhaps it’s our very boring suburban exterior that did the trick.
The good news is, they thought it was brilliant. We were already the cool aunt and uncle but then we became even cooler.
Interestingly, they had no interest in the porn themselves. And, like many other young people who I’ve come out to, they weren’t shocked about it. For millennials, porn is just another thing, something that’s everywhere on the internet, something that’s part of everyday life.
The second:
My nephew is heading for his 17th birthday. Unfortunately his mum recently let the cat out of the bag by accident, getting tongue tied after letting the “p” word slip. I had no intention of telling him anything until after he was 18 and only then if he asked.
Having given a quick explanation, including all the usual caveats detailed above, she asked if he had any questions. He just said “No”. And he hasn’t said a word about it since. I have no idea if this is good or bad. I won’t see him in person until Christmas. I’m not sure if I need to have “the talk” with him or if it will just make him die of embarrassment. I’ll just have to gauge the situation and see what happens.
Another day, another chance to come out of the closet.
****
Jiz is re-releasing Coming Out Like A Porn Star with some added essays addressing the new problems in porn. This prompted me to write up this new article. This piece is a combination of an article I wrote in 2017 called Coming Out Like A Porn Star Redux and a new piece which will go live on the 11th October. Both appear / will appear in the member’s area of Bright Desire.
Here’s Jiz Lee’s post about the re-release of the book with details of a book tour and where to buy it. I recommend buying directly from Jiz and getting a signed copy.