TRAILER - Digital Playground presents My Haunted House starring Stoya and Tanya Tate, Brandy Aniston, Baily Blue, Marcus London, Evan Stone, Johnny Sinns and James Deen.
My Haunted House is available on DVD/Blu-Ray Combo Pack 01-15-2013.
Hey look! It’s another porno!
It’ll be out just in time for AVN/AEE.
Have I mentioned that Bailey Blue is incredibly cute?
I used to be able to say that, for the most part, the sex I had on camera was very much like the sex I have at home. Sure, I don’t usually groom my pubic hair, shave my legs, and put on a full face of makeup for sex in my personal life. There’s also the attempt to avoid showing the camera nothing but the back of someone’s head or blocking penetration with one’s thigh and the interruption of makeup artists running in for touch ups. However, the pounding, biting, spanking, scratching, choking, slapping and shoving a dick so far into my throat that I gag are all par for the course at home. Fun fact: gagging produces a thick, clear fluid somewhere in between spit and vomit that works better as a lubricant than anything I’ve ever purchased in a bottle.
At least in my experience, there have always been guidelines for sex on camera. Four fingers in an orifice are ok but a full fist is largely banned. Rough sex should be continuously asked for and visibly enjoyed or accompanied by a disclaimer explaining that it’s a fantasy being acted out by consenting adults. “Squirting” or female ejaculation is acceptable in most parts of the world but urine is not. Feces and blood are not shown.
The ways that media is purchased and distributed have changed. Streaming video and downloads on the web are now more popular than DVDs. This means that we now cater to the tastes of the credit card and billing companies, which means even more guidelines. At the company I work for, as of a couple of months ago, we are required to refrain from biting, spanking, scratching, choking, slapping, and - while gagging has yet to be discussed - the hands of a blow job recipient on the head of a blow job giver are not allowed. Sex can absolutely be quite enjoyable without these things, but further rules being applied to the way that I copulate at work made me start thinking about some of the other differences between sex-for-pornography and sex-in-real-life.
For instance, let’s look at anal sex. At work, there’s a process of clearing out all traces of fecal matter before we start filming. Sometimes it involves sticking my finger in my rectum and making sure it’s clean, and sometimes it involves 20 minutes to an hour of enemas with bottled water. Sometimes all that water just makes the intestinal situation liquid and we only get five minutes of footage or the anal part of the scene has to be cancelled. In my personal life, I’m more casual about the whole thing. It’s a rectum, and while putting things in my rectum is fun its main purpose is temporarily storing feces. If you want to stick your finger or penis in an anus there’s a possibility that you’re going to encounter some poop and I believe you have to be ok with that. It’s buttsex. Small (or sometimes horrifyingly large) amounts of poop happen. Wash whatever has poop on it with soap and water before putting it anywhere else and move on with your life. Or fingerpaint with it if that’s your thing. While I’m sure my personal disgust for playing with feces is coming through, I’m not here to judge what you do for sexual gratification.
And what about blood? Germaine Greer, one of the luminaries of mid-20th century feminism, wrote in The Female Eunuch that “If you think you are emancipated, you might consider the idea of tasting your own menstrual blood - if it makes you sick, you’ve got a long way to go, baby.” Menstrual blood is a significant part of being a woman between puberty and menopause. I’ve spent almost a quarter of the past thirteen years with blood coming out of my vagina, and I’ve never let it stop me from having sex. Some people think menstrual blood is gross, others find it arousing, and I see it as yet another type of fluid that happens in my underpants. For the camera we have various techniques including cold water douches, absorbent sponges, and cutting multiple times during the sex scene to wipe up any traces of blood. Also, people may try not to book scenes when they’re likely to be bleeding heavily. If I wanted to play with context and phrasing, this could easily be construed as billing companies deeming the visible evidence of my natural fertility offensive.
Keeping my legs open in a particular way for the camera, twisting my torso so my face is visible, and refraining from certain acts that make a product more difficult (or impossible) to sell is part of doing my job well. Pornography is a business and the sales are the reason that I get my paycheck. However, when the portrayal of women in media and the cultural effects of pornography on sex are being talked about the (incorrectly perceived) lack of pubic hair gets plenty of discussion time but I frequently find talk about the realities of menstruation and anal sex conspicuously missing.
…and here’s what I have to say about it at the moment:
Sex, like shelter and food, is something that humans are generally wired to desire. I recognize the legitimacy of asexuality, but this can’t wait until I have the ability to see where asexuality fits in here. I also don’t know enough about trans people and the struggles they face to discuss how they are affected by the closed-minded moral panic in our culture. Some humans have XX chromosomes, others have XY chromosomes. The ones with XX chromosomes generally have an extra orifice and the ones with XY chromosomes generally have an extra protrusion. Females (the ones with the extra orifice) have fought in an organized manner for over a century to have the same rights as men. We still don’t have equal opportunity and pay in the US and in some other countries treatment of women is truly horrific. A solid half of humanity has been for centuries and still is written off as inferior over an extra hole.
Men who mostly or entirely desire men in a sexual way and women who mostly or entirely desire women in a sexual way have fought in an organized manner for over forty years to have the same rights as heterosexual people. Their romantic partnerships still remain unrecognized in many states. In many countries homosexuality is still a punishable crime.
I could go on at length about various groups of people who have or still are experiencing discrimination for being “different” than another group.
I don’t understand how anyone could read an article like this one in the New York Times and still believe that there was any reasonable cause for Measure B. Scientists who devote their whole careers to studying HIV say that they don’t think there is any question that the adult industry’s methods of protecting ourselves work.
Women are people. Homosexuals are people. People of all colors are people. Low-income people are people. Rich people are people. Sexually open people are people. Professional pornographers are people. Every last one of us has been a hypocrite at some point in our lives. We have all failed to sympathize with the persecution and suffering of another person or group because or in spite of our own struggles.
Measure B is our version of the December 2009 defeat of same-sex marriage legislation in NY, a “women in binders” moment. It could become our Stonewall or our Roe v. Wade.
We (the adult industry) are still speaking against it. We need to fight the lack of understanding about and discrimination against our industry, the same way that women and homosexuals have fought over the past century, to be seen as actual people with actual rights. Women (and men) who passed through the edges of the naked person business and moved on to other things shouldn’t have to make a choice between honesty about their past and credibility in their present. “Career” sex workers shouldn’t have their jobs used as excuses to strip them of rights. The personal is still political.
Wrapping up from parts 1 and 2:
Are you totally freaked out and considering never having sex again or only having sex with a completely faithful monogamous partner? Some of you definitely are. I know this because some of you have said so privately and publicly.
That’s ok. You have this really awesome thing called free will. You have the privilege of deciding what you are and are not comfortable with in any situation. You have the right to tell your partner(s) and potential partners what you want and expect them to respect your limits and boundaries. They also have free will and may have desires and boundaries that are different than yours.
You can choose complete abstinence. You can choose to masturbate alone only after carefully scrubbing your hands with bleach. You can choose to kiss and masturbate together without exchanging any fluids aside from spit. You can choose to only have sex with partners who have been tested within the past three days and use every form of barrier protection available. You can choose to never ask about tests, never get tested, and never use a condom, much less a dental dam or latex gloves. In my opinion, that last one is an extremely unsafe choice, but you have to make your own decisions. Ideally, you make these choices after looking at the benefits and consequences of each of the possibilities. Ideally you only act on these choices after coming to terms with the risks you’re taking.
Sometimes people who you want to have sexual interactions with will not agree with your choices. You can choose to compromise but it’s really important to remember that you can also choose to say no. You can say no at any point. You can say no when you’re already back at their place and a part of you is inside one of their orifices or vice versa.
When you say no, you have to say it. If you don’t say it, they can’t hear it.
They might not want to take no for an answer. They might get offended or not like you anymore because you rejected them. It sucks when that happens, but here’s the thing: there are going to be people in the world who dislike you for no reason at all. There are going to be people in the world who dislike you for reasons that come from places of bigotry or misinformation. There are also probably going to be people in the world who dislike you for valid reasons. To me, deciding what you’re comfortable with sexually, expressing those limits, and expecting others to respect them doesn’t seem like a valid reason for dislike.
When you want to say yes, it’s pretty awesome to say yes, too.
Personally, I’m shy when it comes to the yes part. Most of my yeses are communicated through a wide variety of noises which are not actual words, body language, and text messages that actually cause me to blush when I push “send.” Let me reiterate: I, a woman who gladly has all sorts of sex for public consumption in front of super high-def cameras and regularly tells the internet (and friends/complete strangers who make the mistake of asking in real life) ALL about her menstrual cycle, get shy about expressing specific sexual desires. I can’t imagine how difficult it might be for people who grew up with sex-negative parents or were frequently shamed early in their sexual development without a helpful support system.
The point here is that after educating yourself and choosing the protective measures that you want to use in a given situation, the next step is to communicate.
If you’ve been following my twitter and tumblr in the past couple of weeks, you’ve hopefully seen my explanation of how pornography’s self-imposed safety regulations work. You’ve also hopefully seen Kayden Kross’s practical discussion of Measure B on xbiz.com and James Deen’s blunt opinion on his blog. To my knowledge, Nina Hartley has not felt the need to weigh in on the subject recently, but as a veteran performer who started working in porn in 1984, is still in the adult industry, and is a registered nurse, I believe she has the most credible and educated opinion on the subject of safer sex in the straight porn industry. I’m not linking to anything that the AHF or Yes on Measure B has to say because I have faith in your ability to google it and I kind of just don’t want to.
Ideally, you’ve ingested the information and formed your own opinion. Likely, some of you have done this and others are blindly cheering us on or wholly swallowing the opposition’s propaganda. I frequently struggle to come to terms with it, but I can’t force people to listen, fully comprehend, or think critically.
Our point is that Measure B and other condom laws attempt to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. We do not have rampant HIV transmission in pornography. We have not had a single case of performer to performer HIV transmission since 2004. In my experience, we openly tell each other when something may not be right with our genitals. Digital Playground has replaced talent the morning of a scene because the performer called in saying their genitals felt or smelled off and they needed to re-test before exposing others to them.
I work at the glossy, couples-oriented contract performer end of the industry. I choose not to use condoms at work. I do choose to use them in my personal life when I have partners that are not in the adult industry who I am non-monogamous with. I did four girl/girl sex scenes before signing my contract with Digital Playground. I have never worked with an agent. I cannot speak for the women and men who perform in the majority of the sex scenes produced each year.
Wicked Pictures requires condoms. Most companies say they are condom optional. From what I hear, with some companies the option is to use a condom or not, and with others the option is to not use a condom or not work for that company. Ideally this should be an industry-wide actual choice. Requiring that all performers in a section of California, or even all of California or the USA use condoms at work does not give us that choice. It either forces us to use condoms when some of us do not want to and find it less safe than the testing system we already have in place, or strongly encourages the adult industry to move to places where condom use is not mandatory.
Here’s the thing though: Performers who are unhappy with the amount of condom-optional or condom-mandatory work don’t have to work in hardcore pornography. There are softcore and solo options. Nude photo sets for websites and magazine spreads are options. Also: webcamming, solo or masturbation scenes, and niche fetish-oriented clips involving (sometimes non-nude) acts like tickling, wriggling of toes, or consumption of phallic shaped foods. One day I’ll tell you about the time I was hired for a day of “sweater fetish” work, but that’s way off topic right now. Sure, there isn’t as much money to be made and it is more difficult to build a popular or recognizable brand, but disposable income and notoriety are not a right.
According to the US Department of Labor, 2,289,010 people in our country wait tables. I waited tables for a little over eight months when, unhappy with my working conditions at Digital Playground, I made a choice to use one of the loopholes in my contract and stop working in the adult industry. Part of using that loophole meant that I wasn’t able to write, perform on stage or appear in front of a camera as Stoya or under any other name without putting myself in a more precarious legal position. It was scary and I spent the entirety of my savings on lawyers. My boss was aware of my employment history when he hired me and, due to the size of the town, a significant portion of the patrons knew as well. It was actual work every day, it wasn’t glamorous or exciting, sometimes my hands got burned because I didn’t know how to hold a plate, and my entire life smelled like old duck sauce. This is called a job. I kept doing this job until the (now former) owners of Digital Playground and I were able to work out something acceptable to both of us. Some people make a profitable life long career of serving food. Most people in the US work jobs that aren’t glamorous or lucrative. Working two jobs or working while getting a college degree or vocational training is common.
Now that we’ve established why the problem that Measure B attempts to fix does not exist, and briefly discussed the fact that most adult performers unhappy with the work available to them are capable of finding some other type of employment, there’s another concept in this mess that really stands out to me.
It isn’t the pornography industry’s job to provide sexual education. If you look back through my archives here on tumblr though, you can see that I feel and act on a personal responsibility to try. In the US we have this intense squeamishness about sex. Practical, easily understood information can be difficult to come by even for someone who makes a career out of sex. The same line of thinking that led to anti-drug PSA’s from Pee Wee Herman and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles leads me to believe that there are cases where an adult performer would be seen as a more credible source than say, Dr. Ruth (who, by the way, is AWESOME). As discussed in the post I linked to at the beginning of this paragraph, some performers and companies do try to raise awareness about and encourage safer sex practices, some of us do try to further discussions on sexuality and sex performed for entertainment vs. sex performed purely for personal enjoyment. We just aren’t as effective as we could be, and I’m not sure how to get there.
A production assistant on a music video shoot I did recently works with children during the week. She said that, for her, the most effective way to get the attention of a group of kids is to stand at the front of the room, loudly say “If you can hear me, touch your nose” and then wait for everyone to have their finger on their nose. She uses this method for large groups of adults, too.
So: If you can read me, touch your nose.
Thank you.
Pornography is entertainment. Pornography is a business. Pornography is not a substitute for sexual education. The scenarios in porn plots are not a guide to dating or picking up partners for casual sex.
I always figured that anyone old enough to be legally viewing pornography would be able to comprehend the difference between entertainment and real life. I forget that we don’t all understand that a movie like Forrest Gump is not the same as a History Channel documentary on the Vietnam War. I also forget that we don’t all understand that a History Channel documentary on the Vietnam War may not be entirely accurate. I forget that even though pornography is made to be entertaining and portray fantasies, there is a large void in practical sexual education that people sometimes attempt to fill with porn.
I want to believe that people use critical thinking skills. I want to believe that people see Brazzers/Manwin’s Get Rubber campaign and the safer sex/condom use speech at the beginning of Vivid’s DVDs. I want to believe that people watch the pre and post scene interviews included in Kink.com’s videos. I really want to believe that people don’t need to see these disclaimers and interviews to understand that what they are watching is done by tested, consenting professionals. Apparently, though, this comprehension is not always the case.
As adult performers, our job is to show up with a clean STI test and act/perform in an adult production to the director’s satisfaction. It isn’t our responsibility to take on the task of educating people about sexual technique or safer sex practices. Our job description does not include worrying about the people who can’t differentiate between what they see on a screen and what is acceptable behavior in real life, the same as it isn’t Bruce Willis’s job to go around reminding people that action movies are super cool but shooting actual people with real guns isn’t, or that calling 911 is a much better tactic than shooting someone full of adrenaline in the event of a heroin overdose. But some of us do…
There are adult performers and sex workers who talk about these things: When Nina Hartley recounts a recreational sexual encounter on her blog, she regularly mentions the use of condoms and gloves. Sometimes she mentions less standard practices, such as having a specific pair of boots for BDSM that don’t touch the ground outside so that they can be licked without concern for what they’ve walked through. Danny Wylde writes frankly about his experiences in sex work and openly discusses his thoughts and emotions. There are countless others who do frank interviews or keep blogs discussing topics relating to sex work, the adult industry, and sex-for-work vs. sex in personal lives. If someone actually wants to know about porn, there’s a wealth of information online from a variety of perspectives.
We just don’t get nearly the amount of traffic or visibility that a major news outlet gets. Our voices need to be louder, because we are talking.
Everything you do can be taken by other people and shown out of context for their own purposes or to support a view that you may or may not share. Everything I do can be taken by other people and shown out of context for their own purposes or to support a view that I may or may not share. Most of the time I accept people projecting their own opinions onto me as what happens when you put things (art, photographs, writing, orifices) out there (on the internet, in stores, museums, or plastered over a spray painted stencil of “Post No Bills”) for others to consume and go on with my life. Sometimes, though, I feel like words are being put in my mouth that I strongly disagree with and need to contradict.
Just because my job is in the category of sex work does not mean that my opinions and experiences are the same for all sex workers. Just because I like my job and chose it doesn’t mean that all sex workers like their jobs and actively chose to be sex workers. Just because I had other options and opportunities that are not sex work easily available and grew up in a comfortable middle class household does not mean that all sex workers had that same level of advantages. Some had more, some had far less. Being an exclusive performer for a couples oriented plot-driven porn company is not the same as being a freelance performer. Also, the American pornography industry is not the same as the European pornography industry, neither of which are the same as prostitution, professional BDSM, stripping, or any number of subcategories of the sex trade.
Pornography is entertainment. The final product is a fantasy. Most companies don’t discuss the testing protocols we use. They don’t explain that actually the guy playing the pizza delivery man (Mike Blue in one case and James Deen in another) is someone that I at least casually know. They don’t show the viewer the parts of our day where we discuss limits and specific preferences before we start a scene. I would draw a parallel to the way that romance novels don’t have an epilogue reminding you that relationships don’t actually work like a fairytale. They don’t point out that two people can be head over heels for each other but both parties have to put in serious work or have a likelihood of breaking apart the first time they have trouble resolving a major conflict. Alternately: the same way that action movies don’t have pop-ups saying “This daring maneuver would never have worked in real life because of physics.” This is because we expect the viewer, as an adult, to know the difference between entertainment and reality.
I am not trying to tell you that all porn is good. I am not trying to tell you that we are all healthy and happy. If anything, I am trying to provide a balance to all of the sensationalized stories (Linda Lovelace, Jenna Jameson’s autobiography, the Mr. Marcus debacle, statements from feminists who seem to mean well but don’t seem to have actually watched much pornography, news outlets who I suspect find it much easier to paint all sex workers as victims than show a potentially unpopular but neutral or positive view). Most of the time I’m just saying “Hey, a few thousand people on the internet seem really interested in this stuff so here’s what I did today or my thoughts about something” or “This thing happened to my vagina and I thought I’d share since it’s a common but infrequently discussed gynecological issue that could use some more awareness.”
Not all pornography is sex/body/woman/queer-positive. Not all pornography is sex/body/woman/queer-negative. It isn’t all exploitative, but it isn’t all ethical either. Like most industries, it’s a mixed bag. If you’re going to paint pornography as entirely bad, know that I’m going to put my experiences and opinions out there to balance yours. If you’re trying to paint pornography as entirely good, know that I will not sit quietly and be used as your paintbrush.
Club Magazine, July 2012
Steve Prue takes a lot of photographs of me. Sometimes we like to play a game where I get dressed up all fancy (Agent Provocateur bra, thong, Vivienne Westwood shirt, those translucent Agent french knickers I keep wearing as though they’re actual shorts) and then we try to make the makeup and poses dirty enough for a porn magazine to publish it.
I’d say this one was a win.
Here’s a production still from UnSEXpected. It comes out on August 7th. Meanwhile, please consider watching the trailer or pre-ordering it from somewhere like AdultDVDEmpire or TLAraw. They’re both very nice companies who also carry my fleshlight.
digitalplaygroundxxx put up the trailer for Unsexpected.
Purchasing an adult movie is kind of like voting with your wallet for more of them to be made. Actually, I’m not even sure if that makes sense. I had a really long day involving rigging, signing, performing on the hoop and then a pillow wrestling match with Tanya Tate for Fleshlight. Now I am going to faceplant on the hotel bed and sleep because I probably shouldn’t be writing things on the internet when I’m this tired.
