As mentioned in the introduction, there is absolutely no other type of legal employment that can ruin a person's life like sex work and pornography. That blew me away and I spent days thinking of any other job as despised, reviled as porn--spoiler alert: they're aren't any. By the end of the book, I feel more hopeful about inclusion and expansion of our society, but just nominally. ( )

Editor Jiz Lee has put together a fantastic collection here. They have acknowledged that they didn’t manage to hit all the possible demographics and all the potential perspectives, but I can’t believe this is for lack of trying. This collection, while tied together under the theme of “coming out”, covers much more than just whether or how the contributors told their families about their porn careers. For the most part the essays come across as authentic and personal, crossing generations, ethnicity, and gender identities (though trending a bit towards current and younger performers), and including the experiences of photographers, film makers, academics and educators whose lives in porn don’t necessarily include (or include anymore) taking their clothes off and having sex for the camera themselves.

Only a few essays are listed as outright anonymous, though one essayist wrote under the pen name Jaffe Ryder (a Dharma Bums fan, perhaps?). Most authors submitted under their porn names, a few under their given names, and another few under both. The Name is a big topic because whether a chosen porn name is part of the fantasy come-on (Jack Hammer or Denali Winters) or a plausible alternative (Connor Habib or Dale Cooper) most of the essays that touch on privacy touch on the issue of The Name as a thing that serves, however tenuously, as a veil against being stalked or outed. Being stalked, being at the mercy of someone who objects to pornography enough to willfully attempt to threaten performers’ jobs, housing, or child custody is a thread that cuts through a majority of the essays and colors why and how people have made their decisions to “come out” and to whom. And, in a very similar story to what LGBT people have long said, there’s never just one instance of “coming out”… it’s something that happens repeatedly as they travel amongst different groups (family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances, employers, and on and on) and the more labels that can be applied, the more “coming out” opportunities present themselves.

Coming out like a porn star is a first step toward dismantling some of that age-old shame behavior and I’m all for it. Bottom line: I highly recommend this book. ( )

Coming Out Like a Porn Star. The title says it all, but this is no doom-and-gloom book, full of sad and angry anecdotes about porn stars being shunned and marginalized for their profession. Yes, there are some heartbreaking stories here, but even more are surprising, inspiring, and even amusing. What they all have in common, however, is their ability to humanize a wider stigmatized community - and to do so honestly.

Jiz Lee’s own story is one of past hurts and future fears, but with a compassionate core of understanding and support. Genderqueer and poly, Jiz talks about how coming out is a process that never really ends. As friends and family become more aware of your work, they also become more aware of your sexual practices and fetishes – it is one thing to know your child is a porn star, but it’s another to know they’re into hardcore BDSM.

Bella Vendetta has a fascinating tale to share, being a classically trained professional lifestyle Dominatrix. She talks about the difference between coming out to parents, your kids, your doctor, your boyfriend, and your banker – and how it changes the way people treat you. No matter how much of your extended family you might lose, however, she praises the adult industry for being “filled with open, loving folks who also want a chosen family.”

Chelsea Poe is a writer, director, porn performer, and trans activist who has led the charge against the term “shemale” in trans porn. She actually came out to her mom before ever setting foot on set, shifting the worry from acceptance to stereotypes. Performing allowed her to express her gender in a positive way, to live out her fantasies, and be proud about being queer. Her relationship with her mom isn’t perfect, but it’s full of love for who Chelsea is, and respect for what she does.

Cyd Nova works at a peer run clinic for sex workers when he’s not directing gay FTM porn for Bonus Hole Boys. He talks about being rejected for being transgender, and about covering his tracks regarding sex work long before that initial coming out. Sex work made him feel powerful and independent, and his body was his tool. Like Bella, he also talks about sex workers being a family, but counters that with sorrow for a society that considers it acceptable for families to “take away their love for their child because of a choice that they make.”

Drew Deveaux is a trans woman who has had to come out as queer, as disabled, and as a porn star. There’s so much about her identity that she’s had to choose to disclose, “coming out as a porn star isn’t as big a deal as you might think.” She talks of disclosure as it relates to her career on and off she screen, and of coming out as an ongoing process. For her, porn is about “activism through the creation of imagery” with that imagery being her body.

Emma Claire is a transsexual sex worker who is currently producing and directing TransLesbians.com, which is dedicated to hardcore trans lesbian sex. Her coming out experience is layered by the years, the experiences, and the traumas behind it. As she puts it, “coming out has never been so much as an end goal as much of a continuous process - a kind of evolution/devolution of my body and self.” Ultimately, coming out as a sex worker is superseded by celebrating herself as a trans woman and a dyke, with her career a fine line pushing boundaries while protecting herself.

Tobi Hill-Meyer is a multiracial trans woman, adult performer, and experienced consultant for feminist and LGBTQ organizations. Growing up in a feminist household, her exposure to porn began (as mine did) with a floppy disc of “grainy downloaded photos” and a “printout of sci-fi BDSM stories.” Her coming out to the wider family was entirely accidental, and actually quite comical, but also supportive. Tobi’s focus has always been on making porn better, culminating in her erotic trans woman documentary series Doing It Online (Patreon.com/DoingItOnline)

There are far more performers who’ve chosen to share their stories in the book – I’ve simply selected some of those that are most relevant and identifiable for me (and, I suspect, for reads of Transformation). It’s a wonderful collection, with enough diversity to keep it from getting at all repetitive. As you’re reading through it, though, take a few moments to pay attention to the biographies of each star. They, more than anything, reveal what a wonderfully diverse word we live in. They may all be sex workers on screen, but off screen they’re gamers, rock climbers, novelists, nurses, and more, with degrees from universities across North America.

Not only that, but many of them are parents themselves, and learning how they’ve raised their children to embrace the openness they may not have always experienced is what’s truly inspirational.


Originally reviewed for Transformation Magazine ( )

I read this because Erika Moen talked it up in her comic. As someone who is not a big consumer of pornography and who knows nothing about the industry, I definitely learned a lot.

The premise was supposed to be people who work in the pornography industry (performers, directors, those on the technical side of internet porn, etc.) writing essays about how their families and friends came to know about their participation in this. Sometimes they were upfront, other times they were outed against their will. Some families responded with love, others were horrified.

Some of the essayists didn't stick closely to the theme, and just wrote about their feelings about sex work in general, or wanted to complain about their parents, etc. Other essays were completely fascinating, hilarious or sad.

For the most part, I felt the best essays came from older people, such as Candida Royale, who are looking back on a lifetime of sex work. A notable exception was Casey Calvert's essay about how she desperately wanted to make porn before she even had a good grasp of what sex was. While she's a relatively young performer, her story was fascinating.

Most of the essayists were involved in feminist porn, lots of gay/queer/trans stuff, a couple of women whose deal was being hairy, and lots of bondage. I learned that there are a lot of people out there who really, really, really want to make porn, that is their calling and not something they are doing for lack of options. Also, several essayists mentioned that their parents were upset about their chosen profession, but their grandma thought it was awesome. That was a surprise.

My main complaint is that a lot of the essays were really similar and some were kinda dull, plus the essays weren't well ordered. They were in alphabetical order by first name (can you believe that 90% of the contributors have first names in the first half of the alphabet?) rather than by type of worker, type of story, type of person, or any way that makes it easy to find the stories you're most interested in. ( )

It's not just about "coming out", especially as- not like- a porn star. These essays cover a lot more ground, mostly about how people engaged in sex work- very marginalized and/or stigmatized by mainstream society- deal with the intersection of their work and their other relationships, all the way from being very forthcoming about it to everyone, and to ways to keep one's porn and legal identities separate- and the problems with both approaches.

Not that it's mostly a book about problems! Some essays are, and some focus much more on the positive effects sex work has had for many of the participants. Since the mainstream story about sex work tends to be condescending- the workers must be trafficked, or drug addicts, or broken abuse survivors- it's especially important to hear the voices of sex workers happy and comfortable in their work.

(I will mention, though, that if this is the ONLY book one reads about the modern porn industry, one will likely have an overly rosy view thereof. While I don't think anyone was lying, I do know- from knowing workers myself- that this sunny view is not all there is, particularly as one gets into more "mainstream" porn rather than the queer and alternative porn that many of the essayists make.)

I read this because I have a personal friendship with one of the essayists, and have admired the work of several others in attempting to bring to our culture a saner view of sex and sexuality. ( )