by Jiz Lee
To be fair, my mother is one of the only family members who has regularly allowed me to speak openly about my professional experiences. Consequently, I believe she’s been allowed to see some positive effects of my involvement in porn.
“You used to be extremely shy,” she told me. “I feel like you can pretty much walk into any situation and say ‘Hello,’ and be who you are. If you’ve been in front of a camera for a long time without your clothes on, it gives you something on that level.”
She continued, “And you do promote positivity within it. You bring out the best of whatever you’re involved in. You bring out the most positive aspects of pornography.”
To me, such examples are proof of my mother’s love. Given her ideological stance, I can never expect complete approval for my career path thus far. It is only these hidden gems of congratulation. In some ways, it’s extraordinary that a person who professes to hate (or at least strongly dislike) porn can tell me that it’s changed me in positive ways, or that I’m doing some good within it.
It is also important to note that my mother never asked me to stop. Despite her claims to my “naïveté” in the beginning (which I totally agree with), there was no point at which she said, “I know better and this is bad for you.” I believe that a parent who respects their adult child will undoubtedly share their own opinion, but will also allow that child a choice—without persuasive terms.
My mother never gave me an ultimatum. This conveys a level of trust. In terms of the relationship I want with my mother as I continue into adulthood, this is one of the only things I can ask for.
Love, respect, and trust: all of these are inherent to our familial bond. It is why I could approach my mother with the news that I was a burgeoning porn star. It also why I felt the need to. Because the feelings are mutual. I love, respect, and trust my mother. When a piece of my life becomes big enough to take on some importance to me, I want her to know about it. Even if she disagrees with the entire premise.
Going forward, I can only hope that my mother will understand that I am capable of flourishing as a human being within my current environment. Pornography may not be all of my life, but it makes up an important part of it. Because it is my job, I take it very seriously. I try to do the best that I can and promote the work that I feel is the most interesting. I can only imagine I’d do the same with anything else.
When it comes to my father and I, our history is a bit more complicated. I don’t know if this made the coming-out process harder or not.
We were on decent terms around the time I told him I was doing porn. But a few years prior, things were different. I hadn’t lived with my father since I was eleven. Around the age of thirteen, I refused to speak to him for an entire year.
I’m sure my story is similar to that of many who’ve been raised by an alcoholic. However, the tumultuous father-son relationship of my youth is not the topic at hand. The only relevance is that by the time I was twenty years old and an active sex worker, I was a bit ambivalent about whether I should tell my father, and equally ambivalent about whether or not he would care. In fact, it was during my interview with him that I first truly learned of his opinion.
I should note that I have a very good relationship with my father at the present time. At least, the best that I can remember. He’s been sober for a while now, we talk about every other week, sometimes more frequently, and although I don’t visit him often due to distance, I enjoy the time I get to spend with him.
But back to the coming-out conversation. To be honest, my memory is a bit of a blur. I more or less knew what I was getting into when it came to my mother. Prepping for the conversation was a pretty big deal, so it remains an important event in my personal history. When it came to my father, I had no idea what he thought about porn or sex. And because he didn’t have the ability to really do anything to me if he disapproved, there wasn’t much riding on his response. To put it simply, I had no qualms about telling him to fuck off (albeit in a more passive-aggressive manner) if he got upset.
“I have a vague memory of a conversation with you where I expressed that I don’t understand why you do it,” said my father. “Because it’s so foreign to me. It’s not part of my life experience to even consider this. I couldn’t relate to it.”
That sort of matches my memory of his initial response—meaning, there wasn’t much of one. I have this image in my head of my father nodding and perhaps looking confused or unsure of what to say. Then a memory of something that caught me off guard.
“I remember one of the first things you said was; you asked me how I keep an erection for so long,” I told him during our interview.
“Yeah, that certainly was a big question,” he responded, laughing. “You know, how do you do that? Certainly, when you get older this becomes a big deal to get one at all or to maintain it for any length of time. I was just curious from a physiological point of view.”
The physiological effects remain one of my father’s primary concerns. “When I found out that you were using erectile enhancing drugs,” he continued, “I was worried about what that might do to your physical apparatus. You know me. I’m always keenly aware that you pay a price for whatever you do.”
For anyone familiar with the male performer side of the adult industry, it’s no secret that a lot of guys use Viagra, Cialis, and many other erectile dysfunction drugs in order to maintain erections under pressure and for long periods of time. The pills aren’t fail-safes, but they’re better than nothing.
My father is a chiropractic neurologist. Much of his work deals with how one’s environment affects brain function. “One of the simplest ways to assess brain function is through muscle-tone testing,” he told me. “Muscle tone is not strength. It’s the resistance to the stretch of muscle fibers. If you hold your arm up and I push down on your wrist, I stretch the fibers of your deltoid muscle.”
He went on, comparing the muscle fibers to an instrument. “You have strings that have a certain tension so you have a certain tone—a note. The same thing holds true, that all muscle fibers have a certain base tension. They have to have one to function properly. When you bring me medication that you use, if it decreases your muscle tone, that’s not a good thing. It means it has a negative effect on your brain function.”
This is one of the objective side effects of porn that I have no real argument against. I am a health nut in many aspects of my life, but I also consume a large number of pharmaceutical ED drugs. It can’t be that good for me, but I mostly shrug it off. I figure I’m no worse off than many Americans. Luckily, my father is not only there to remind me of the consequences of such behavior. He’s taught me ways to counter the negative effects.
However, physiological function was not the focus of our interview. “My main concern was AIDS,” he told me. “There’s an inherent danger in what you do that you have no control over. Ultimately, you can be preventative. But you can’t say, ‘I’m safe.’ You can’t.”
I acknowledged his fear but reiterated, as I have with my mother, that it is statistically unlikely for men working in heterosexual porn to contract HIV. Still, I’m aware there is always a chance.
It was interesting, however, that halfway through the interview, my father showed no signs of being upset or even morally opposed to my participation in porn. He hadn’t shared much about his stance in the past. But I was curious. Did my father really have no emotional or ideological response to my career in sex work? I had to ask.
“ To have a partner and not share that partner, that’s a sacred thing for me,” he responded. “In terms of my basic stance, I’m totally monogamous. I was that way with your mother. It never occurred to me to cheat on her. That doesn’t even enter. I can’t imagine it any other way.
“It’s also true that I’ve watched porn—especially when I didn’t have a partner—to get some satisfaction,” he said. “Ultimately, I felt my own response was actually worse afterward. I masturbate and I actually feel worse. Because there was nothing fulf
illing. I wish you saw that my way. That was my debate.
“But then the real debate was, ‘What do I do?’” he continued. “Looking at how I treated my mother? I mean, I disappointed her with everything I did because she had very strong wishes for me. I did everything the opposite. Not intentionally. But I had my own way. Who am I to judge what is appropriate? Especially given all the havoc I’ve wreaked in my own life. I knew that then. I’m even more keenly aware of that today. To run around, sit on a high horse, and dictate what the world should look like has never worked very well for me. It actually made things worse. From my limited capacity at that point, I wanted to at least let you know that I heard you, and that I appreciated that you were actually telling me.”
I was a bit taken aback. When I first told my father that I was doing porn, I had no concept of his internal process. He listened, said some things about erections, and that was that. When I came to him with the request for an interview, I was mostly curious. But as a grown man, and also a son, I suppose I was looking for something more. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it. Approval, maybe.
There was something in me that wanted to know that my father not only respected me, but looked at me as an adult, and acknowledged that I’d done a good job. I guess when I listened to his response, I tried to decipher it in such a context.
He said that he appreciated that I was telling him. It was an obvious step forward in our relationship to share such things with honesty. Something on par with respect. But it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. Maybe because our relationship had more of a conflicted past. Or perhaps it was inherent to the father-son dynamic. Because I couldn’t say I needed the same thing from my mother.
It’s funny, but his approval, or my interpretation of it, came in the form of a question.
“Let me ask you something,” said my father. “How do you feel if I tell friends about what you do? Is that okay? Or is that not okay?”
I wasn’t sure why my father would want to tell someone. But I thought about it as if I were a doctor or lawyer, or some other universally accepted professional. In conversation, I might be brought up as a bragging right. As in, “Look, my son has had success.”
“It’s interesting to me that you would even ask that,” I told my father. “No one else [in my family] has even thought about asking that. Because I don’t feel like anyone is usually willing to tell other people what I do for a living. I feel like it’s always masked.”
My father told me that he often goes on walks with his friend. They’ve established a routine where one person talks for five minutes and the other listens. There are no interruptions and no responses.
“I actually told him that,” said my father. “I said, you know, ‘My son works in the porn industry.’ He was going to react, and I said, ‘Uh uh. It’s not your turn.’ That was pretty cool because I didn’t have to defend or anything. I said to him afterward, ‘This is something I wanted you to hear. But I don’t want your comment.’ I don’t.”
It may have not been a boastful act, but it made me happy to hear that my father wanted to share such a thing about me. It meant that he was at least not ashamed. In fact, I could interpret it to be quite the opposite.
I told my father that I didn’t mind, that it was totally fine.
“Good,” he responded. “Thank you. That clarifies that. I didn’t think that would be an issue. But that’s probably weird that nobody wants to say or speak what you do, right? I can’t imagine. What a bummer. Walk around on tip-toes and come up with some bullshit story.”
The following was my response. It may reiterate some of the things I’ve written in this piece. But it is meant as a most sincere explanation to my parents, and any of my family, as to why I’ve chosen porn:
I feel like I live in a bubble. I surround myself with people who essentially agree with my politics, which involve fairly radical sexual politics. Or I surround myself with people who are in the sex industry. We have a little community. Within that community, I think I am well respected. Especially within the past two years, a lot of the work I’ve done is very important to me. Prior to that, it was a very interesting journey within my own self that involved figuring out how I felt about this career.
Starting out, I didn’t intend for it to be a career. I intended for it to be some sort of sexual exploration. A way to make a little extra money while I was in school. In my head, it was like, “Well, I’m going to get out of school and go off and do something else.” The more I was exposed to the mainstream film industry—which is what I thought I wanted to be involved in—it became really upsetting to me. I don’t really want to have a lot to do with that, except on the fringes. To work within things that I think have some artistic integrity.
So I think that porn allows me to make, not an incredible amount of money, but I live a middle-class lifestyle like I always have growing up. I’m able to do a lot of things that I’m very proud of. It also allows me the time to create art in other contexts. That’s incredibly important to me.
I think most people who go to school with the intentions of being an artist have to make a decision at some point to either make money or fulfill their artistic pursuits. A lot of times one of those has to kind of drop off. Unless you’re incredibly lucky and make some big hit, or something. But for most of us, that’s never going to happen.
A lot of the things I’m interested in live on the fringes of people’s interests in general. Especially when it comes to things, that are monetarily successful. Like the music and film I want to create. I know it doesn’t make a tremendous amount of money.
Porn is both a way to fund those things and keep creating those things, because I don’t have to work twelve hours a day, every single day.
I have also become a part of a community of people who I really respect, and I think respect me as well. And we’re able to do some really interesting things. I have people who write me on a regular basis now, thanking me for my work. I don’t know that in any other profession if you received the same response, you could say that you’re doing something wrong or go, “I don’t want to be here.”
CHANGING THE WORLD THROUGH SEX
Cindy Gallop
Cindy Gallop started up Bartle Bogle Hegarty New York in 1998, and in 2003 was named Advertising Woman of the Year. She is the founder of IfWeRanTheWorld.com, a marketing coaction software (and Harvard Business School case study) that enables brands to do good and make money simultaneously, by implementing the business model of the future: Shared Values + Shared Action = Shared Profit (financial and social). She founded MakeLoveNotPorn.com in 2009—the subject of a notorious TED Talk—and in 2013 with cofounders Oonie Chase and Corey Innis launched MakeLoveNotPorn.tv in beta: “Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference.” She speaks at conferences around the world and consults, describing her consultancy approach as ‘I like to blow shit up. I am the Michael Bay of business.’ Follow her on Twitter @cindygallop.
I date younger men—usually in their twenties. Which is how I began encountering, seven or eight years ago, an issue that would never have crossed my mind if I had not encountered it personally, directly, and intimately: what happens when total freedom of access to hardcore porn online meets our society’s equally total reluctance to talk openly and honestly about sex, and results in porn becoming, by default, the sex education of today. In not a good way.
The average age today at which a child first views hardcore porn online is eight—not because eight-year-olds go looking for porn, but as a function of what is inevitable in our digital world today: they stumble across it. That’s why, as I discovered for myself in my own dating life, young men and women who grow up today watching hardcore porn online for years before they ever have their own first romantic or sexual experience assume that is what sex is and that is how you do it for real.
When I realized what I was encountering, I decided to do something about it. Six years ago, I launched MakeLoveNotPorn.com, which posts the myths of hardcore porn and balanc
es them with reality—”porn world” versus “real world”—in a straightforward, nonjudgmental, humorous way.
MakeLoveNotPorn is not anti-porn. Our tagline is “Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference.” The issue we’re tackling isn’t porn, but the complete lack in our society of an open, healthy, honest dialogue around sex in the real world, which would, among many other benefits, enable people to bring a real-world mindset to the viewing of porn as artificial entertainment. Our message is simply “Talk about sex”—openly and publicly, and privately and intimately with your partner. Great sex is born out of great communication all around.
I launched MakeLoveNotPorn at the TED Conference in 2009, and the response was extraordinary. It resonated with huge numbers of people globally—young and old, male and female, straight and gay, from every country in the world. They wrote and poured their hearts out to me. They told me things about their sex lives and their porn-watching habits they had never told anyone else. Receiving those emails, day after day, made me feel I had a personal responsibility to take MakeLoveNotPorn forward in a way that would make it more far-reaching, helpful, and effective.
I decided to pursue our mission of “Talk about it” by deploying the dynamics of social media to socialize sex, to build a platform to act as sexual social currency, with the aim of making discussion around real-world sex more socially acceptable and socially shareable.
