by Jiz Lee
I may sound carefree or tough, but actually, I set things up so I did what I wanted but in a way that no one could disappoint me. I couldn’t get kicked out because I supported myself. I couldn’t lose my cousins’ friendships because I didn’t live in their town and talk with them daily. I couldn’t get kicked out of church by my God because I decided my God lived somewhere else.
Also note that all these reflections are of my childless years. Now that I’m a mom, do I tell porn stories on the playground to other parents? Of course not. Before kids I wouldn’t have scrutinized each person before discussing work, “I am who I am!” being my battle cry. Now strangers are sized up before I decide someone could be a real friend and then we might talk about it. Part of this is everyday life with kids; you’re thrown together with parents because your kids have something in common, not you. And part of it is specific to my background. Did I quit video production and open a cupcake business so that we could adopt? Yes. And when someone working in the adult industry asks my advice about becoming a parent or someone who is a parent asks me about going into the industry, I don’t have pat answers but instead listen to their situation. Many factors can affect your life’s decisions, including prejudiced exes, adoption, and the state or county you live in, among others.
Recently, my mother moved in with us. Cleaning out boxes in the rafters of her barn I found files of all my correspondence to her. First letters, then emails that she’d printed and saved. I wrote so earnestly to her and Dad about every step of our company S.I.R. (Sex, Indulgence, and Rock-n-Roll) Productions.
When I was going to perform live on stage and would get a set of nerves, I’d call Mom. Sometimes I timidly, barely gave the perimeters of the event (it’s a benefit for AIDS, or at a dive bar or at a fancy university). Without knowing any details of what I was about to do, she would say, “Well, Darlin’, I hate to hear you get yourself so worked up and I just wish you wouldn’t. You always get up there and do just fine, and that’s exactly what’s going to happen tonight.” Her confidence was immediate comfort, like ice on a burn. If my mommy says it’s so then, yeah, it’s so. I’m so big, I’m so much, I’m so overwhelming—but not to her. Her honesty and knowledge of me is my humility. And humility is safety. The comfort of the truth.
Now I am a mom with my own kids. I recognize that I have that same power to provide immediate comfort. I sometimes do a Mavis play-by-play. I repeat the mantra: In our family, we talk. In our family, honesty is important. In our family, we can tell each other anything. In our family, we aren’t scared of love.
Our oldest child is grown now and he never really thought or cared about our hard-core work. He is gay, he was a dancer for years and has a sensitive artistic nature, so maybe that influenced him. I don’t know. He just never cared. Our two younger children don’t know anything about the adult industry. What they do know is that in our family, we believe in education, doing the right-for-you thing, individuality, standing up for anyone being bullied, standing against racism and homophobia, and being a support system for trans people (in the language of that age, a kind friend or having their back on the playground). We make a point to show we don’t slut shame, and when someone makes a derogatory remark about strippers or working women, I openly state my opinion in a fun and neutral tone. I take questions on all these topics and more. We’ve had conversations around twerking, Beyoncé, and lap dancing. We’ve discussed economics, personal joy, personal job satisfaction, and not having shame about our bodies. We talk about how it’s complicated to talk about certain names that are derogatory to many people, yet others might use them as reclamation. I think and hope that our attitudes prepare them for when they know about our past work so that, like our oldest child, it won’t be a big deal.
NOOOOOOOODIE GIRL
Stoya
Stoya is an adult performer, writer, and master of avoiding pants. Her writing has been published by the Guardian, the New York Times, and the New Inquiry. She maintains a blog at GraphicDescriptions.com and recommends you refrain from Googling her at work.
Murphy’s Law of Inappropriate Behavior states that if you make a habit of taking your clothes off in public, eventually everyone in your family (including members so distant they share less DNA with you than a chimpanzee does with a cuttlefish) will somehow stumble upon documentation of what you’re up to.
My grandmother is a very smart woman, and I’d been dodging the question of what I did for a living for at least three professionally naked years. I really had been meaning to tell her about my job before she found out from the television or a newspaper, but I thought I’d do it when I was ready. “Ready” consistently being defined as any time except for right now.
So I was completely unprepared when she called and said, “Your mother says that you’re sort of like a model. I don’t know what that means because if you were a model she would just say you’re a model, and you’re a bit short for that anyway. No offense, dear. What do you do with your days?”
I wished I’d discussed this inevitability with my mom or had some legitimate reason to get off the phone. My usually dodgy cell service was clear as a bell. I worried: What if I failed at easing her into the whole idea of my career in pornography and she had a heart attack, leaving me accidentally guilty of grand-matricide? What if she decided to just cut me out of her life? More pressing—how was I supposed to explain what a modern pornographic actress was to a woman who doesn’t know how to work a cell phone and still had typesetting tools laying around from her days in advertising?
“Well, um, do you remember Bettie Page and pinup? What I do is kind of like pinup but more explicit. Like, with no clothes on.”
“Oh! So you’re a noooooooodie girl!”
Either I was hallucinating or that statement had been delivered in a positive tone.
“Yes, ma’am. But, uh, pop culture is a bit more edgy now than things were in the ’50s, so I have actual sex with people and it goes on video or DVD.”
“In the mooooving pic-tures! Do you enjoy it?”
“I have fun. It’s always interesting. I only do things that I want to do, with people that I want to do them with. It’s good.”
“Well then, that’s all very nice and I’m glad to hear you’re doing something you like.”
Since the conversation was going so well, I figured we might as well get everything over with at once.
“There’s something else I should probably tell you while we’re on this subject.”
“Ohhh?”
In addition to being smart, my grandmother is an incredibly expressive woman. You know that Mehrabian’s rule thing about how communication is 93 percent nonverbal? In my grandma’s case, 99 percent of communication is pure vocal inflection. There’s something in the way she draws out the vowels. They become a whole adventure.
This particular “ohhh” had started out some distance into curiosity land, passed over the gosh-what-else-could-top-the-last-thing mountains, and settled on the patiently-waiting-to-hear-more plains.
“I’m using your name as my stage name. Well, I’m using the Americanized diminutive. The point is, I’m using part of your name as my stage name.”
“Vera? That’s not very sexy.”
“No, ma’am. I mean, I think Vera could actually be quite marketable with the current neoburlesque scene, but I’m using Stoya.”
“Oh? Oh.”
The first oh was surprised, and the second oh sounded less than enthused. In my head, I stared into the largest imaginable pit of uh-oh. I wondered if she could hear my heart pounding over the phone. My left hand frantically picked at the stitches on the hem of my shirt. I became concerned that I might be the one to have the heart attack, and I wasn’t going to die without one last cigarette. I lit up, inhaled and exhaled, inhaled and exhaled again. Finally, I couldn’t take the extended silence any longer.
“Gramma?”
“I was just thinking. I hope none of the men at the nursing home get us confused and try to put my feet behind my
head. I don’t bend that way anymore.”
Apparently, since the death of her last husband, she’d acquired three boyfriends. Because it takes that many of them to keep up with her. My stressful and dramatic coming-out-to-Grandma moment turned into a farce because although the promiscuity gene may have skipped a generation, it most definitely runs in my family.
EXHIBITIONISTS AND EXPOSURE
Tina Horn
Tina Horn is a writer, teacher, and media maker. She produces and hosts the sexuality podcast Why Are People Into That?! Her first book, Love Not Given Lightly, is a collection of nonfiction stories about sex workers; she is currently writing a book about sexting etiquette for Quiver Press. Her writing appears in Vice, Nerve, and Best Sex Writing 2015, and she was the cocreator/director of the Feminist Porn award–winning Queer-Porn.tv. Tina once sold a golden dildo to Beyoncé. Find her on Twitter @TinaHornsAss and at TinaHorn.net.
In 2013, at the very first Feminist Porn Conference, I curated and moderated a panel called “Being Out Now: How Performers Navigate Sexual Morality and Media Representation.” For two hours, five other queer porn performers and I discussed the stigma we face when disclosing to our families, dates, friends, and communities that we had been paid to have sex on camera. Some of our experiences were constructive, but many were dispiriting. We shared stories of excommunication, stalking, slut shaming, ridicule, nonconsensual outing, and being fired, all in response to our honesty about our jobs.
Afterward, many professional academics and other conference attendees approached us to say how impressed they were that we had shared our intimate selves in the interest of truth and understanding. We all looked at one another nonplussed. Of course we bared ourselves in public! We’re porn stars. That’s what we do!
Frankly, I am not the world’s most prolific porn performer. You could count the scenes I’ve done on two (fapping) hands. At this point, I’d rather be moderating academic panels about porn than making it. I have, however, spent nearly a decade devoting myself to numerous jobs that employ my naked body and wicked mind: professional BDSM with private clients, explicit kink education workshops, producing and directing explicit art. I’m very proud of that work, and I’m very lucky to have had safe, lucrative platforms for my shamelessness.
Yet every time I submit a resume, CV, and cover letter to an editorial or educational job listing for which I am qualified, I have to figure out how to spin the story of the work I did for most of my twenties.
The reason it can be challenging to come out as a sex worker is that in order to be a sex worker in the first place, you have to put aside the neurotic voice in your head that says:
You’ll regret this.
Your father will be disappointed in you.
Your mother will be scared of you.
Your dates will be disgusted by you.
You will be forced out of the jobs you want.
No one will let you near children again.
You have to decide that the adventure and the money are worth it.
About a year into being a professional dominatrix, when I knew it wasn’t a lark but rather the best paid improv gig in town, I decided to come out to my parents. I figured I’d get up the nerve and get it out of the way.
My mom and dad are very different people. Dad’s face got all twisted, and he said something about remembering one woman he’d known at one point whom he thinks did sex work kinda and she had issues then so I shouldn’t do it now (#daditude).
Mom asked, “What’s a dominatrix?”
It didn’t go horribly, but it didn’t exactly go well. So I’ve retreated back into the closet somewhat. It has become a “don’t ask, don’t tell” subject in my family.
When I started doing sex work on camera in the Bay Area queer and kinky porn scenes, I knew I wasn’t going to bother telling my parents. I justified this to myself. They knew I was supporting myself being a sexual extrovert; they didn’t need to know the details. It may be appropriate to tell your parents that you’re sexually active, but it’s not all that necessary to tell them specifically that you really, really love it up the butt.
I’m not ashamed of what I do. But I am terrified to my core that the people I love will be ashamed of me for doing it.
The saddest part about this is that my parents raised me to be honest with them. For the most part, I have been, and suffered very little judgment. Nothing makes me happier than making them proud. Yet I couldn’t call my mom when I won Feminist Porn Awards, and I couldn’t tell my dad I was saving more money than I had ever before in my life.
Coming out to your family as a sex worker isn’t all that different from coming out to your family as queer. We’ve all heard someone proclaim, “Oh, I’m okay with it, as long as my child isn’t gay.” Even people who are politically and socially comfortable with sex work have emotionally complicated reactions to someone in their family identifying with that work. Sex work sets off insidious moral panic that is validated everywhere. For this reason, many people feel that their aversion is justified; instead of what it actually is, which is a big conflated tangle of misogyny, homophobia, moral imperialism, and most likely also hypocritical envy.
Many incredible people are studying the rise of feminist porn. However, a fact that isn’t being discussed enough by well-meaning fans, academics, and journalists is that the production of feminist porn requires feminist sexual labor. It must be a key tenet of the feminist porn movement to dismantle the whorephobia that oppresses sexual laborers.
The thing to remember about being a feminist porn star is that the stigma is exactly the same as being a nonfeminist porn star.
Here is something that will never happen: The administration is going to fire you because they have discovered you are naked on the Internet (and not, like, socially sanctioned “wearing nothing but a heteronormative bikini basically advertising Bacardi on Myspace” naked—more like, “you had the nerve to get paid to be naked” naked).
You’re in the office getting the pink slip, and you protest, “Why, Sir or Madame! You don’t understand. It was Feminist Porn!”
And they say, “Oh! Well, why didn’t you say so? How embarrassing for us. How about we give you a raise and just forget this little misunderstanding ever happened?”
People claim all of this is evidence that people shouldn’t do sex work. On the contrary, social microaggressions about whores are more traumatizing than anything that has ever happened to me in the sex industry. When I perform in porn, I make myself vulnerable in ways that I have negotiated, that I have control over. The judgments that people make when they find out are beyond my control.
We need to keep fighting for ethical porn production and sex worker rights. In the meantime, we need to accept that media representations and social conceptions of sex workers are not changing. The big red “W” that goes on your forehead when you out yourself, or are nonconsensually outed, still closes the same doors it always has.
I chose “Being Out Now” as the session I wanted to lead at the Feminist Porn Conference because it has been one of the most difficult things in my life to figure out. I wanted help and support but I also wanted to raise awareness. I want to be bold, but I don’t want to be stupid. I want to be honest, but I’m terrified of not being taken seriously.
Like many sex workers, I’m a professional exhibitionist who is terrified of being exposed.
FAMILIAL FEMINISMS
Tobi Hill-Meyer
Tobi Hill-Meyer made her filmmaking debut with Doing It Ourselves: The Trans Women Porn Project, winning a Feminist Porn award for Emerging Filmmaker and being named #3 in Velvet Park Media’s list of the 25 Most Significant Queer Women in 2010. She is a multiracial trans woman with over a decade of experience working with feminist and LG-BTQ organizations on a local, state, and federal level, having served on several boards and offering support as a strategic consultant, currently serving on the board of the Gender Justice League. With her background in activism, she uses her media production company, Handbas
ket Productions, to create stories and entertainment that reflect community needs and values. Most of her work can be found at HandbasketProductions.com or DoingItOnline.com
One day when we were out shopping, my mom casually asked, “So what are you going to San Francisco for?” once we got back to the car.
The question hung in the air for two, three, maybe four seconds as I searched my mind for an appropriate answer. Previously, I had always avoided outright lies by going with half-truths—mentioning some other thing I was going to do on the trip without bringing up porn. But it wasn’t pride season, my annual board meeting for LGBT advocacy organization COLAGE wasn’t for another couple months, I didn’t have a performance, and I was only going to be there for a day or two to wrap up the final shoot of Doing It Ourselves: The Trans Women Porn Project. It was a shoot I’d been trying to schedule for almost a year, and due to the timing, there wasn’t any chance to visit friends or family.
So after a long pause, I finally said, “I’m, um, making a feminist porn film.”
I must have been eleven or twelve when my moms first caught me with porn. It was a floppy disc containing 1.3 megabytes of grainy downloaded photos along with a ten- or twenty-page printout of sci-fi BDSM stories in small text that I had hidden in my closet. They then sat me down for a rather mortifying discussion about how unrealistic porn is, how it sets up unfair expectations of women, and how it depicts a life where sex is all that matters. They told me stories of protesting porn in the ’70s and told me about the infamous Hustler cover with a woman being run through a meat grinder.
I understood exactly what they were saying, but their arguments felt off, like a reflex that didn’t quite match the situation. Of course the sex stories I was reading were unrealistic; it was set in space ships and on extraterrestrial planets. I wasn’t going to start believing that women ought to work for interstellar spy agencies interrogating captured space marines.