CYBERSPACE—Unquestionably, the Internet Adult Film Database (iafd.com), founded by the late Peter van Aarle, has been a valuable resource to anyone interested in finding information about adult movie titles as well as current and past adult performers, producers and directors, including their birthdays, their measurements, their tattoos and, if applicable, when and how they died.
But if adult fans have found one major flaw in the IAFD database, it's that gorgeous trans women like Aubrey Kate, Chanel Santini and Venus Lux and all other trans actresses are classified as "male," while Dicky Johnson, Buck Angel and other vagina-having trans performers are classified as "female."
AVN wrote to one of the officials in charge of IAFD several years ago, pointing out this discrepency, and received an answer essentially stating," As far as we're concerned, if the person has a penis, he's male."
But transgender performers are a much bigger part of the adult industry now than when IAFD was created more than 20 years ago, and Steven Grooby, owner of the trans-centered Grooby Network and Grooby Productions, and owner of the annual Transgender Erotica Awards show, has offered to help IAFD correct its male/female misinformation regarding trans performers.
"Dear IAFD," Grooby wrote in an open letter just posted to the Grooby.com website.
"Thank you for your tireless work throughout the years to make your database what it is today. Your site is an important resource for viewing the body of work of an adult performer. After seeing complaints online from trans performers about being misgendered on your site, we wanted to reach out and offer to help rectify the situation.
"We understand that a project of this size can be costly and resource-heavy and that even if you wanted to make these changes, practical and logistical considerations might potentially hinder you from being able to honor the requests of trans performers in our industry.
"We’d like to offer our support and services to help update the gender markers for the transgender performers so they are correctly categorized on your site. Our staff would move trans women into the 'female' category and likewise trans men into the 'male' category—there’s no reason to create a third category.
"This would be at no cost to your company. Grooby would like to donate our time and money to make these changes so the site can be updated as quickly as possible. We are also more than happy to have our staff sign NDA disclosures and/or have limited access to the site.
"As a company, we have been fortunate for the support from many trans performers and the adult industry as a whole. We would be honored to help in this situation and to enable IAFD to be a resource for the whole adult community and fans for years to come.
"We look forward to hearing from you and hope to work with you on this. Please email me at [email protected].
"Kind Regards,
"Steven Grooby"
