Please consider throwing some love & money towards Handbasket Productions this year! They are by far my favorite smutty employer (I’m in both of their currently available DVDs, Doing It Ourselves and The Genderfellator!) & an excellent emporium of smart smut. Get yourself or a love a video or a zine. You won’t regret it, I promise. :)

I’m a porn performer. I’m out as a sex worker in pretty much all areas of my life, but up till about a year and a half ago I was fairly quiet about the specifics of my sex work. That’s been changing for me as of late, as I’ve been performing in porn that means a lot to my politics and personal ethics (as well as my pocketbook).

I could say a lot about my work in the porn industry in this post — what I get out of it, why I keep doing it — and perhaps I’ll write about all of that at some later point. But what I want to note here in this post is that I’m very privileged to be as out as I am about my work in the porn industry, and to have performed in pornography that links back to my real name and indentity. I’m very deliberate about that choice, and it was a decision I came to after a lot of thought: The way I see it, people can’t “dig up dirt on me” if I’m already out and proud about being, well, dirty.

This choice absolutely limits some of my work/career choices down the line, especially in the academic/teaching sphere. I’m currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing, with a correlative in teaching, and a hope to some day teach at a university level. However, I’m honestly not as concerned about the “limitation” factor of being out about my porn work as I would be about having to hide a big part of my identity. The way I see it, if a particular school’s Creative Writing Department would have an issue with my work in the porn industry, or my work in the sex industry in general… Well, then they’d probably also have an issue with me teaching a writing class for sex workers and working at a clinic for sex workers and being a pervert and writing porn & erotica, and they’d probably have issues with sex workers in general, and you know what? Then that’s probably not a department I want to be teaching in.

I don’t blog super-frequently about my porn industry experiences here. I usually tweet more about porn than I blog about it. This is mostly because my work in the porn industry (like that of many folks who perform in porn, especially those of us performing primarily in queer & indie porn) waxes & wanes. I’ve had months where I’ve done 4 shoots in a week, and I’ve had months where the Porn Well has been completely dry (so to speak). My tendency is to tweet about shoots “on the go” as they happen, and then slack on doing further publicity till the footage comes out months (or sometimes years) later.

But in any event: Several porn movies I’ve shot over the past couple years are finally seeing the light of day, and I’m feeling excited about this and want to tell you about them.

Note to platonic friends, family members, and others who don’t want to watch me having sex: All trailers & links feature explicit sexual footage. You have been warned. ;)

First off, Doing It Ourselves: The Trans Women Porn Project (which I blogged about when it first came out a year ago) finally has a trailer up on the internet! DIO is also available for purchase at various locations, including but not limited to directly from Handbasket Productions.

To steal from the back of the DVD:

“Doing it Ourselves is a hot collection of trans women and their partners of all genders engaging in sex the way they want to be represented.  Starting with a group of trans women who are tired of the way that they have seen trans women portrayed in porn, this film tells the story of its own creation when they decide to, well, do it themselves.”

I think this trailer is beautiful, and I’m very proud of both my sex scene (with the amazing Tobi Hill-Meyer) & my interview for this film. Take a look:

Secondly, The Genderfellator (a very silly, campy, sci-fi porno parody of The Gendercator) has a trailer up and will be available for purchase over at Handbasket Productions very soon. The Genderfellator just won an Honorable Mention at the Feminist Porn Awards (DIO also won an FPA in 2010!), so I’m especially excited to have a role in it. In this film, I play (I am not kidding) an Evil President who gets the revolutionary furvor fucked back into her (by the very dreamy Texas). Performing in The Genderfellator is pretty much the campiest thing I have ever done. (And I have done many campy things in my life. So that is saying a lot.)

Thirdly, GUSH: The Official Guide to the G-Spot & Female Ejaculation* is out, and I’ve got a scene in that (with porno newbie Altair Shadow — it was hir first scene, what an honor for me!) that I am stoked to finally get to see. :) The cast & crew are having a release party at the Roxie Cinema on May 5th, so if you are local, you should come out. I’ll even sign your DVD!

Also, amusing GUSH notes: 1) I went to college with Mirabelle Hayes (one of the lovely starlets who is featured in the film) and 2) I went to high school with one of the owners of The Roxie. So this will be a weirdly nostalgic porn screening for me. Also, I was bemused to find a picture of my tits up on FleshBot last week as a part of the GUSH promo — 38,000 views? Jebus!!!

* Foxy folx, what are some alternative words/phrases for what is commonly referred to as “female ejaculation” that don’t specifically gender the act? The term “female ejaculation” has always bugged me for that reason — plenty of men and genderqueers and non-binary-id’ed folks have g-spots and can ejaculate that way, you know (not to mention that plenty of trans women “female ejaculate,” just in a different way)? All I can think of is just referring to ejaculating, squirting, coming, etc… but I’m wondering if other folks have other words/ideas. I’d love to hear so if you do. Thanxxx!