Where Do We Go from Here: Looking for Work Post-Porn

The Same People Who Crave Content Make It Hard to Move on.

It’s hard to have a conversation with anyone about pornography or other forms of legal sex work without someone worrying about the well-being of the workers. This is good. What isn’t good is the automatic assumption that sex work is inherently abusive, coercive, and damaging to those involved. There’s no question that it can be a tough professional path to follow due to cultural hypocrisy, emotional intensity, physical exertion, and social stigma just for starters. But what happens when a sex worker decides to retire and go mainstream?

Surprise, surprise! The very society that insists that sex workers should quit their work and get “real” jobs is not so enthusiastic about hiring those who do leave the biz. In fact, for some who have succeeded at landing mainstream work, being recognized has cost them those jobs, no matter how qualified they have been to do them.

While performers obviously run a higher risk of encountering someone who’s enjoyed their performances but doesn’t want them to work outside of the industry, it’s also a concern for programmers, photo editors, writers, and other off-camera professionals. The longer we work in the industry, the bigger the “gap” in our resume, unless we can spin our experience into something palatable for the masses. Even then, there’s the risk of being accused of covering up our past and being hired under false pretenses.

And, naturally, there are no laws to protect legal sex workers from this discrimination. The thinking is that unlike race, religion, disability, and other legally protected classes, sex work is a choice. Seems to me that religion is a choice, too, but that’s a sacred cow that is as difficult to discuss rationally as sex work.

What options are there, then? For performers, there’s always marrying someone rich or drastically changing appearance. The latter doesn’t always work, as Houston discovered when she attempted to leave porn and become a real estate agent. Even as a plump, church-attending single mother, cancer survivor, and nursing school graduate with a 4.0-grade average, her porn past was simply a bridge too far for her fans and porn opponents in hiring positions. Fucked up, right?

Performers with a lower profile have had greater success with some succeeding as real estate agents, nurses, and housewives. Some have turned on the industry entirely, becoming anti-porn activists like Chrissy Moran, who has done Christian outreach to women in the sex industry, Shelly “Roxy” Lubben, who created the loathsome Pink Cross Foundation, which has a goal of shutting down the porn industry entirely, and Brittni De La Mora, who married a minister, became part of the XXX Church anti-porn website, and promotes chastity as a form of spiritual purity.

When XXX Church was first offered for sale by Paster Tammy, I was approached as a possible buyer. I have often wondered what would have happened had I taken it over, but I didn’t want to be the next Paster Tammy. I wanted to be Darklady.

Those performers who were wise and saved their money have had an easier time of it. Tanya Tate and Amy Anderson invested in real estate. Tanya also continues to work with the industry and produce and perform in her own style of erotic video entertainment. Likewise, Lisa Ann had her implants removed and opened a porn agency where she could work with women entering the industry. Now she hosts a popular podcast.

Further evidence that leaving the business of porn is being made unreasonably difficult can be found in the story of Gauge, whose uniquely short height and excellent performances made her stand out in the industry. After feature dancing to afford a surgical tech certification, she was recognized by an anesthesia tech who spread the word of her past employment. Despite being top of her class, once it was time to graduate, no one would sign off on her hours. After moving on to gain education in criminal justice and makeup artistry with similar results, she returned to porn.

Likewise, Tiffany Six became a middle school teacher and was fired after a student found one of her videos online. Her day in court protesting this injustice was unsuccessful, with a three-judge panel determining that the combination of her past and the internet meant she could never be an effective teacher. How fucked up is that?

Fortunately, not everyone has found themselves floundering after porn stardom. Tyffany Million married, had children, and became a private investigator and dig this, bounty hunter. Eva Angelina became a firefighter, and Chloe Cherry appeared in the television series Euphoria. Of course, she played a drug addict in part because mainstream media still resists presenting former sex workers as respectable citizens or people who are not burdened by some serious character flaw or vice.

The rampant hypocrisy of the mainstream is just one of many reasons I have enjoyed working within the adult entertainment and sexuality realms for so long. The fact sexism is at least as common, if not more so, in many supposedly respectable careers including academics, has also made it less appealing. At least sex workers are honest about what they do. Or as honest as those who claim to be of superior morals allow them to be.

Meanwhile, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, and other pop stars hump and grind, celebrities attend high-profile events wearing less than an AVN Award recipient, and priests and ministers are regularly found to have sexually assaulted minors.

Sex work is work and, in my not-so-humble opinion, it is in many ways superior to the options. Alas, until we as a society overcome our shame and guilt about matters sexual, we will continue to both unfairly marginalize those who do sex work and suffer as individuals in our personal relationships with ourselves and our partners.