by Jiz Lee
When I came out to old friends, they were totally perplexed. They didn’t understand why I would choose to do porn when I had so many opportunities. No one shunned me, at least that I was aware of. I did have one friend of years who one day told me we could no longer be friends because of my work. That experience was deeply painful; however, that wound was eventually healed by time.
Generally, I didn’t tell strangers what I did. I lived in Manhattan. Most days, I took a taxi or two. Inevitably, the driver would ask, “So what do you do?” Rarely (if ever) did I say, “I’m a porn star.” That would simply be TMI (too much information) for casual encounters. However, I didn’t outright lie. Sometimes I said I was a filmmaker or an actress, or that I was in public relations. I’d tell the truth, but not the entire truth. People have so many stereotypes and expectations about porn star’s lives that it takes a whole lot of energy to educate people.
When Jiz Lee asked me to write something about coming out like a porn star, these seven thoughts came to mind.
1.It’s what we think of ourselves that matters most. When we tell people what we do, it’s not what we do, it’s how we say what we do that will radiate out and reflect back to us in the response we get. If we tell someone apologetically with shame and embarrassment, “I make porn,” then people will feel shame and embarrassment too and worry about us. If we are clear that this is who we are, and this is what we want to do at this time in our lives, if we have worked through our own issues about it and feel empowered, then people will feel and see that too. Feeling at peace with who and what we are can be a process. Working on ourselves and how we feel about what we do can take some time. Coming out is an ongoing process, not a singular event.
2.What other people think of us is really none of our business. There will likely be some people who just won’t accept who and what we are—ever. For the few friends I may have lost coming out, it was well worth all the fabulous new ones I made.
3.People don’t expect much from people who make porn, which can work to your benefit. So anytime you do something of note, it surprises and impresses people. For example, in 1989, when I did my first one-woman theater piece, it got a lot of attention because people were simply amazed that a porn star could do a good theater performance. Then in 2001 when I became the first porn star to get a PhD, I got extra pats on the back and attention because people don’t expect porn stars to be very smart.
4.People might think that being a porn star can make us targets for violence, but in my experience being a porn star has been a cloak of protection that has at times kept me safe. For example, late one night I was walking alone on a dark Manhattan street, praying for a taxi. The neighborhood was known to be dangerous. A man came out of nowhere, with a scary vibe, and was walking straight toward me. I fully expected to be harassed, if not robbed, or worse. My heart raced. I wondered if I should cross the street or look down or be friendly and say hello. If I had to run away in my high heels, I would certainly not get far. I decided to stay my course and when I came shoulder to shoulder with the man, he squealed, “Oh my god, you’re Annie Sprinkle!” I was stunned. He explained, “When I was in prison, I saw all your magazine spreads, and I read all your columns.” (Note: Before there were blogs, porn stars had sex magazine columns, and they used to let sex magazines into many prisons.) He was over the moon to have run into me. He was not only respectful, he was worshipful. He offered to walk me to get a cab. Suddenly, I felt totally safe with him. His name was Sweets, and he told me that he had been in prison for several years for pimping. He said my photos and stories helped him through some tough times. I had a magazine column coming due, so I asked him if I could interview and photograph him a few days later. We did the shoot in my apartment. I hired porn star Sharon Kane to pose with him; we all had a great day, and I got a great story. Porn had given little ol’ me street cred. Sweets and I stayed in touch by phone for several years. The last time I heard from him, he was back in jail for selling a VCR from the back of a car that was actually an empty VCR box he filled with rocks.
5.Coming out gets easier and easier the more you do it. Eventually, you will tell people you’re a porn star (or whatever you are) with such ease that whatever negative responses might come at you will just roll off your back and won’t even faze you. Your buttons will only be pushed if part of you believes the critiques.
6.Coming out as a porn star can get weirder and weirder the older you get. Although I haven’t been in a porn movie for about twenty years, many of my old movies that came and went were rediscovered with the advent of the Internet. These days, once a porn star, always a porn star. If you are lucky enough to turn sixty, like me, you will be an “old” porn star. Try being sixty and telling someone you are a porn star. It’s a bit odd, and the responses can be amusing.
7.Coming out is a luxury and a privilege. Seriously, coming out as anything that isn’t “the social norm” can be very traumatic for all involved. One must weigh the risks and benefits. In some places and in some circumstances, coming out can mean you will lose your job, have your children taken from you, be put in jail for years, get you shunned from your entire community, and can even get you stoned to death. Coming out can have its challenges and be scary, but if you are able to do it, be ever so grateful for the privilege. Being out is being free.
Well, I hope something here was helpful or a little food for thought. Remember too, if we expect others to love and accept us for who we are and what we do, we have to extend the same love and acceptance to others. Next time someone comes out to you as something that you don’t approve of, be gentle, be kind, and try to not judge but to understand.
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
Anonymous
This writer wishes she didn’t have to be anonymous and usually is quite open about her involvement in porn and sex work, but she needed to be anonymous in this book to limit the risk her stalkers could discover that she has another name and use that to find and harass her employer. When not championing feminism and sex worker rights online, she enjoys a cozy home with a loving family and several pets, including an elderly cat that was on her lap for much of the writing of this essay.
Before I was performing in porn, I was blogging. It started just as a desire to participate in budding options for social media networks. LiveJournal led to WordPress, WordPress led to guest posts. Soon I was writing regularly for several blogs and building quite a reputation for myself. I wrote about racism and sexism; I wrote from my own perspective, shared my experiences, talked about the sex I had, about my friends’ experiences with sex work, and I did most of it under my actual name because everything I said was something I felt was important and I was willing to stand behind my own words.
When I began doing porn, I couldn’t imagine not blogging about it. I wanted my followers and readers to know about the work I was doing. I wanted some of the fans of my writing to have the chance to become fans of my performances. It was natural and only made sense. That’s when I realized that names were going to become a dilemma. If I came up with a new porn name, I’d be losing out on the reputation I’d worked so hard to build. But if I used my actual name, did I really want to be that public about being in porn? I considered using a new name for porn and blogging that name and links to my work, but that just seemed like the worst of both options. I’d lose out on some of the value of using the name people knew me by, as inevitably some fans would miss the connection and not realize who I was. At the same time, I’d leave a large enough trail for anyone to make the connection if they were to Google me, including employers, family, and so on.
I had grown up without having to worry about my Google footprint, but as I was considering it for the first time, I realized it was too late. I had already left quite a trail of information I wouldn’t want a potential employer to look up. If I’m applying for a job somewhere, I don’t need them reading about my experiences with fisting or group sex any more than I’d want them finding out I do porn. That’s when I realized I needed to com
e up with another option, another name that I could give potential employers.
I came up with the idea of doing porn under my actual name, the name I was known by through blogging, through activism, and with friends, but change my legal name to something entirely different that I would use with employers, banks, taxes, and anything else that requires a legal name. Kind of like a pseudonym in reverse. Of course, it meant my family would eventually find out, but I actually didn’t really care about that.
It turned out to be quite necessary in the end, and not even for the reasons I had been thinking about. As is unfortunately too common these days for opinionated women on the Internet, I found myself the target of a harassment campaign. It started just by writing about how something was sexist. As people argued with me, I tried to further explain my position, but soon it was clear this was a coordinated attempt to overwhelm me and they really had no desire to listen to what I had to say. I was swamped with harassing email messages; at first, I blocked anyone who said anything inappropriate. Then I had to set up comment moderation so I had to approve every single comment. Eventually, I turned the comments off. That was about when they escalated it.
They tried to look up my information, harassed my friends and family, and they even discussed having a call-in campaign to my work to let them know what a dirty slut I was. One of the harassers had a reputation as a hacker who could find that kind of information. But they never did find my employment records because they never knew the right name to look under. They never even tried looking for my legal name because they assumed they already knew it. And for that, I was grateful.
PLEASE DON’T PUBLISH THIS WITH MY NAME
Anonymous
The author’s name has been withheld at their request.
I’m a photographer who has worked in the adult industry for several years now. I began photographing people in the sex work industry early on in college, beginning with my friends who were dancers, pro-dommes, and escorts, as well as the various subcultures around San Francisco. A few years ago, I was hired for a full-time job with a local porn studio and decided that I needed to explain to my family that I’d now be shooting this “unusual stuff”—their words, not mine—for a living. I always felt that photography was my true life’s work, but I had to work day jobs to support myself in the meantime. This provided my parents with the usual cover story—that I was an administrative assistant, a marketing person, a server in a restaurant, and so on. I sat them down and explained that I got this new job that came with health benefits and a 401K, and that I’d spend all day, every day, on a porn set or in a darkroom editing what we’d shot. There went that cover story.
They weren’t thrilled about the content I was helping to produce, but I’d lived for several years without health insurance and it was hard to argue that the practical aspects of the job weren’t positive. I showed them the website I’d be working on, explained the rules of shooting, that we did our best to treat our performers with respect and consideration, that it was a positive workplace and that although outwardly the women might seem to be mistreated, it was all smoke and mirrors: We were creating a fantasy.
My father dislikes porn. He sees it as the objectification of women, and the rough sex and treatment of performers depicted is abhorrent to him. He’s feminist enough to acknowledge that a woman has a right to choose her path, but on some level, I think he’s horrified to see women treated poorly, even giving their full consent. He knows about BDSM and doesn’t think it’s unhealthy, but he expressed concern that it would be difficult for me to watch even staged sexual violence on a day-to-day basis. My mother feels similarly but is vehement in her insistence that women be allowed to make their own choices, even if those are choices she does not understand. Mostly, I suspect they are baffled by porn.
As much as I hate to admit it, he was right. When I left that job, it was an enormous relief.
I remain pro-pornography and will always stand up with my sex industry friends for the rights of performers to do what they do and to do it safely. I’d spent some time making porn full time while witnessing both the good and the bad sides of the industry. I went in with sex-positive blinders on, not wanting to admit that some of the detractors of the industry were right about problematic aspects. I witnessed some extremely bad behavior on the part of directors, and occasionally, performers. I overheard misogynistic and dehumanizing comments coming from other crew members and producers. I experienced instances where the need to get a shot or deliver a shoot overcame the physical and emotional safety of the models. I was removed from one particular shoot when I felt the performer was in danger of passing out and pointed this out to the director. These instances contributed to the burnout and exhaustion I was feeling, being so immersed in the visceral process of production in the adult industry.
I’d say about half of my family members know what I do for a living. I still shoot porn, but part time and not for mainstream studios. I do field a lot of questions about what it’s like on set, how the performers are treated, and occasionally get asked how someone can get into the industry as a producer. I do my best to give a fair and balanced view of the industry. I’ve met some incredible people working in porn—some of the strongest, most intelligent and articulate women I’ve ever met in my life. It’s only fair to them that my family hears about the human side of the industry. I can’t deny the very real problems inherent in such a male-dominated and commercial industry, but I’ve witnessed similar issues in the advertising and fashion industries. I do my best to speak out to support the performers, who are literally putting their bodies on the line.
I’ve never come out to my partner’s family about working in porn. They’re religious, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to tell some of them. As far as they know, I make “corporate training films,” which sounds so boring that no one ever asks for details. My older cousins know and are supportive, but as I move into shooting more nonpornographic work, they’re clearly relieved. There is a stigma to working in porn, for both performers and production people. I once took a video editing course in Final Cut Pro, and when the other people in the class found out where I worked, they all fell silent and stopped treating me as an equal. I still think porn is more valid than spending $50,000 on a thirty-second car commercial, but working on one gets you respect and the other does not.
I maintain a photography business completely separate from my adult work, and never the two shall meet. Not because I’m not proud of my on-set work, but because I work in a competitive and cutthroat industry where people are still biased against porn and the people who make it.
PERPETUAL COMING OUT
Bella Vendetta
Bella Vendetta is a classically trained professional and lifestyle dominatrix. She trained at the world’s oldest BDSM training chateau as a submissive before taking the reins as a pro-domme. Since then, she has worked in prestigious dungeons all over the country, is a leader in the New England kink community, and has opened her own dungeon and community space. In addition to being passionate about the BDSM lifestyle, she is also a founding member of Rites of Passage suspension group, which has allowed her to reign with the best riggers and piercers from all over the country. Bella is passionate about doing dangerous things as safely as possible and frequently lectures at colleges and universities about cross-contamination, disinfection, and blood-borne pathogens. When she is not doing all of this, she is filming weird art porn, clown porn, and fetish content for her own company, Beautiful Revenge Productions. And when she is not doing that, she is writing about her experiences in the adult industry, as well as metal and rock interviews.
I have written and rewritten this so many times. I have so many stories about coming out as a porn star and sex worker in such a variety of situations, I couldn’t quite decide which one to tell, and I kept putting this off to write and send. Over the course of about a year, this piece has changed so many times, and I think it’s a testament to how varied your experiences will be when you are a sex worker and yo
u come out to someone. It will be different when you tell your parents versus when you tell your kids, or your doctor or boyfriend or nail technician or banker. It changes constantly, and it will keep changing for the rest of your life. It’s going to happen a lot of times, and each time will be different depending on the person and situation. I’ve been doing it for fourteen years and I don’t think it’s ever really gotten easier. Because when you do porn and are involved as a performer or sex worker and people find out, it will change their perception of you. Every single one of them. It changes the way everyone looks at you; it changes the way people treat you. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the most awkward.
I am out in My life in every imaginable way. I am a heavily modified woman. I wear glasses, have a lot of tattoos, huge breasts, and scarification. There’s not really any toning it down for Me. I can put on jeans and a T-shirt, but I still look like, well, a tattooed freak with huge tits in jeans and T-shirt. It’s sort of hard for Me to fly under the radar. I don’t clean up real easy. I don’t take out My flashy gold and diamond facial piercings, and I don’t cover up My tattoos. What you see is what you get. I am simply Me all the time, Bella Vendetta, 24/7.
I have the extreme privilege of being out about My sex work. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and if you know Me, you know that I do porn, and I work as a pro-domme, and I am queer. You know that I am a sex worker and you deal with it; otherwise, I do not deal with you. I have enough awesome and supportive and open-minded people in My life, so I don’t have the desire to fight for acceptance and friendship from folks who judge Me in negative ways or treat Me as less than a human being because I am a sex worker. I do not have a cover story that I tell people, to hide the fact that I am a sex worker. In some situations, I just say that I am an artist, and that’s certainly not a lie!
