SAN FRANCISCO—ThreeL Media and Jiz Lee celebrated the one-year anniversary release of the acclaimed anthology Coming Out Like a Porn Star: Essays on Pornography, Protection and Privacy recently.
Hailed by the adult industry, academics, and fans alike as a must-read collection of voices and experiences, Coming Out Like a Porn Star offers a diverse insight into the world of more than 50 professionals coming out about their work (or choosing not to) in a variety of situations. With Proposition 60 threatening the privacy and safety of porn performers on Nov. 8, the personal is political has never rang closer to home than this year.
“Porn is a very public and permanent form of sex work and its workers face a lot of stigma,” said editor Jiz Lee when asked for comment. “To be 'outed' creates very real harms: porn performers are frequently harassed by stalkers and abusive exes. We face occupational discrimination from having bank accounts frozen and housing rejections, to the most heartbreaking of all – fighting custody battles over our children. The topic of names—of the choice to use stage or given name—is a common theme throughout the book, and represents self-expression as well as the necessity of privacy.
“One of the greatest concerns performers have against Prop 60 is the release of our legal name and address—information that will be used to harass and harm us,” Lee continued. “Coming Out Like a Porn Star highlights the ways workers are vulnerable.”
Pornography and those who perform in it have been in the headlines more than ever, with several protests against Prop 60 being covered by mainstream news outlets and industry news alike. Performers past and present expressed the hope that their stories being told in their own words will ultimately assist in humanizing them.
“It’s wonderful that now all kinds of people can read porn stars’ coming out stories, because many people far outside the porn star worlds will totally relate and learn a lot from them,” said Annie Sprinkle, sex educator and former porn performer, about the anthology. “There are morals to these stories.”
Tobi Hill-Meyer, award winning producer, performer, and editor of upcoming anthology Nerve Endings: The New Trans Erotic, added, “People have always been interested in my experience as a feminist porn maker who grew up with anti-porn feminist parents. It's been great getting to share my story, which is actually a lot less of a conflict than you would think.”
Camgirl Anna Cherry agreed. “Having my words published in such a paradigm-shifting book as Coming Out Like a Pornstar has been very meaningful to me in my life. This is my first true publication, both as a hopeful healer AND a porn performer. Both of these identities are the core of my being and having been presented to the world in that light is an immensely validating experience. I cannot describe the joy and floods of emotion I experience when random strangers (on Twitter and Instagram) quote my words back to me along with a confession of how it touched them in a most personal way.”
Coming Out Like a Porn Star is available on Amazon.com.
