The XCritic Interview: Dr. Heather Berg

It’s not often that I get a chance to sit down and talk with a University Professor about current topics. So, when the opportunity came up to speak with Dr. Heather Berg, who wrote the book “Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism”, I felt like I was a little out of my comfort zone … for a minute. I couldn’t help but wonder what a book about porn, written by a PhD would be like. Would she be kind to our little group? I was curious to know what this book was about. After texting back and forth a few times, to work out scheduling details, and just chatter to see what was up, I was like, “She seems like a cool girl, this will be fun!”

Then, I started in on the book. I didn’t want to miss anything in there, cuz I was going to have to talk with the book’s author. Dr. Berg wrote about all these topics: labor, work, the way that bosses treat people; she discussed concepts of capitalism, and how it was all wrong, and on the way out. Alright, fine. But how did it tie in with the adult industry? I couldn’t remember meeting any outspoken Marxist actors or actresses as of late. I called Don DeMarko and Dominic Acerra, both of whom helped set this up. I remember asking them about angles, how best to approach such a hefty theme for a book? They were both telling me that, “Yeah, there’s workers’ struggles everywhere dude, just start talking with her, see what’s up. You’ll do fine!”

I got a support network … I’m tellin ya!

After getting a little ways into the book, my first thoughts were that although Dr. Berg was writing from a Marxist point of view, the ideas she brought up would exist with or without Marxism, Capitalism, or anything. The problems facing workers, in the adult industry, or anywhere, are uniquely human. Mind you, I grew up in middle America, during the Cold War. I had been taught at birth to despise Communism. Still, I could see parts of what this Professor was talking about. The ideas discussed in this book are universal.

I’m not sure how else to say it, other than to say it like that. The things discussed by Dr. Heather Berg in Porn Work, affect everybody. I dialed her number at our appointed time. We started off kind of timid at first, getting a feel for one another. At times, the terminology we used was academic. As our conversation continued, it became as casual as a Saturday afternoon walk in the park. I came away from reading and discussing Porn Work with a better understanding of myself. I felt like I understood everyone else a little better too.

I hope that you’ll have similar feelings. Let’s try to understand one another. Let’s try to make our lives better. We’re only here for a short while. I’d like to think that doing our best, to make it all work for everyone … it’s the right thing to do.

***

Jim Steele–Thank you for taking some time this afternoon to discuss your book, “Porn Work”, and I guess the first question that comes to my mind is why porn? I understand your angle from gender and women's studies, but that could include a host of different issues or topics, all of them having to do with labor, or work. How did you settle on porn work?

Dr. Heather Berg– Thanks for having me. “Porn Work” is about the larger question of labor. I had been involved in sex worker’s movements, labor movements, and labor more broadly before coming to this project. So, I was concerned with those questions. It was also clear to me that there was a gap in the scholarship around porn labor specifically, that so much attention media studies, and in feminist and sexuality studies was on porn as a text. So, it felt like an area that needed more space.

Jim–Sure. And would you say that a part of that is, and I think a part of that is by its nature, with Nevada being the only state where prostitution, just as an example, is legal in some counties, not the whole state, but that porn, or the industry, as we call it, is so closed off and secretive?

Heather– I think that might be part of it. But I also think that so much of it comes because porn studies, as a field, emerged in response to anti porn, conservative, anti-porn, feminist, and conservative critiques of porn that focused entirely on the text, on the images, on the scenes themselves, and really ignored what any of this meant for workers. …

'This is right on point, and a big reason why I was so happy to see a book like Porn Work. At a glance, you might expect to see some interviews, maybe a little insight, and then– BOOM, you’re off to the 15-20 photos at the MIDDLE of the book. You know, the nudes, the behind the scenes type stuff. Newsflash, there aren’t any pictures and that’s a good thing. The book is about a much larger conversation, that goes outside of Porn Valley. It doesn’t need pictures.

Heather–… And so, I think that a lot of the allied, or pro-porn response of that came in response to those critics on their own terms. They were critics concerned with what porn means for everybody– except for workers. I think that a lot of the scholarship tried to respond to that, and in that process, continued some of that erasure.

Jim–You bring up an underlying and recurring theme throughout your book, that porn work, whether the outside world chooses to acknowledge it or not, it is indeed work. It has all the trials and tribulations that go along with any other job. So, to shine a light on that, and maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like that is the underlying theme of the book is to highlight the worker struggles. Then, here’s this subset of the society, meaning the industry, and here's how they're dealing with it.

Heather– Yeah, absolutely. And I'll say the other thing that brought me to this project, in addition to, on the one hand, so much academic writing on porn was focused on the images and not worker struggles. But then, in labor studies, there's just very little attention on porn workers', or any workers' struggles against capital, against the state. I wanted to correct both of those.

Jim– Ok, so the full title of the book is “Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism”. You just mentioned some aspects of capitalism, and how it is failing in different areas of our economy, certainly our society. So, do you feel like maybe … the men you describe in the book tend to, in some ways, fare better than women? Do you think that’s a good microcosm, if you will, to look at women's struggles within the porn industry as a whole? Again, kind of a glimpse into our larger society because they're able to treat them that way? Somehow, it was allowed up through the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. At some point in the 2000s and 2010s, it started to change. But is that an aspect of what you looked at?

Heather– I certainly think that capitalism is gendered, and is bad for women, and for people of color in a number of ways. But I think one thing that has a lot of potential in the porn industry that isn't available in what I call straight jobs, is that it is a space in which women can just make more than their male counterparts. They can also maneuver, and have kinds of freedom and access to money, and autonomy that just isn't available to them in straight jobs. So, I think in some ways the porn industry is a microcosm, but in others I think conditions there are a lot better than they often are in the mainstream economy.

Jim– O.K., so I might have worded that last question a little bit wrong. I don't I think that, in practice, it happens every day, but I think at times, women can be talked down to or treated differently. But you mentioned something, and it's factual, they are able to make more in compensation and in pay. That's almost a reversal of straight jobs.

Heather– Yeah, absolutely.

Jim–But that plays directly back into the inherent gender bias. Example of “whoever”, and they’re like, “Oh, well, that's a beautiful young girl. And she can make that much more money on a scene.” It just really objectifies the gender.

Heather– I think you could say that, but I would say that we are all objectified under capitalism. And I think that sex workers find ways to make that objectification work for them. So, I mean, one thing that the women who identified as sex workers talk about all the time is that in their straight jobs, they were also objectified constantly. The only difference is that they get paid for it in sex work. And so, I don't think the objectification in porn is a problem in ways than it isn't.

Jim–Ok, but they do make it work for them, and you mentioned the 2008 financial crisis in the book. Certainly, it went on through the 2010s, and then Covid affected everybody. A lot of people who had not even considered work in the sex industry, started an OnlyFans account, and were suddenly in front of a camera. So, they do find ways to make that work. I think that that speaks a lot, not just to porn workers, but to workers in general, that a lot of people find things to make their jobs work. They do whatever it takes to get that extra little break or find a loophole to get some extra money on tax returns. Yeah, it translates well across the spectrum. So, you're at Washington University?

Heather– Yes, I'm at Washington University in St. Louis. I love it.

Jim– How did your peers react to your study of porn work? Were they able to see the larger picture?

Heather– I'm so lucky in this academic job market to have a relatively secure position. So, I think in terms of that, I've been very fortunate, and a lot of people in academia have been very welcoming. But it was also, you know, incredibly hard to get funding for the work. And I was on the job market for four years before I got this position. Even now, Academia is in its own crisis. I don't know how much of that was due to the project and how much of it was due to the nature of academia right now. I've certainly experienced some blowback, but also a lot of support. I always say that equal, if not more so than negative reactions to the porn piece are our negative reactions to the anti-capitalist material. That almost freaks people out to a greater extent.

Jim–Well… O.K. The anti-capitalist part of it would probably, I'm just going to take a wild guess, probably play better to your students than perhaps the 50- or 60-year-old guy down at the cafe. They’re all like, “I fought against that … that communist crap!” 

Heather– Exactly!

Jim–Speaking of students, do they come into a class expecting to see A, B, C and D list of porn stars invited to lecture? Do they know what it's going to be about?

Heather– You know, I don't teach a class on porn. I teach a class on sex work. When I can get funding from the university to pay people to talk, then I love doing that. I'm not comfortable with people giving their time for free. So that just depends on the funding that's available. But the students … every year the students are more and more supportive of sex workers, and of labor struggles. I have a lot less work in undoing basic prejudices at the beginning of the semester, more and more of the students are ready to go. I think that it is largely due to online sex worker activism, you know, on Twitter and on Tumblr. Students already have a lot of exposure to these ideas. Some of them are sex workers. Those who aren't are allies in ways that I think has gotten better in the last several years.

Jim– You've got this book out. Let’s see … it took 81 interviews to get the book. How long did it take you, not only to do the interviews, but then to compile it and polish it all up into this neat little bundle, this terrific book?

Heather– I started doing the research in 2013 and it came out 9 years later. One of those years was just production. So, I was done with it in 2020, which makes it 8 or 9 years. It's a process, on the front end, you have to build trust with people, then especially porn workers, and other sex workers, have experienced a lot of bad behavior from journalists and academics. And, so it takes time to build trust. But then also I think for me, something that took a lot of time, and I think it should take time, was thinking about how to weave these things into a narrative, you know, especially when people don't all agree with each other. I needed a coherent narrative, but also one that didn't flatten the variation within this community, which is so diverse.

Jim– I’ve said that my take on the underlying theme, is that porn work is work. I think Nina Hartley made the comment, let me find the page … well, it's on several pages, but here on page 29, Chapter 1, she says that “It feels different than it looks.” And that certainly says a lot if you read on, because it's not just that … So, where was I going with that? I had a really good point. I'm sorry, sometimes I lose myself.

Heather– Oh, I do too.

Jim– Nina, it must have been that I mentioned Nina's name, and …

'For me, this was a turning point in our conversation. I have spoken with as many college professors as the next person, but I have to admit, I approached this interview as I might have prepared myself for an assignment in one of Dr. Berg’s courses. I told her that I probably had 25 pages of notes, not necessarily questions, but notes and page numbers to fall back on. I was a little nervous. Here she is, a PhD teaching at Washington University, and for any who know the difference, that’s not a place that slackers hang out at. But, around this point in our talk, I started to loosen up a little, and enjoyed the back and forth. By the way, each “Haha” throughout was probably 10-15 seconds of BOTH of us laughing, chuckling at some of the stuff we were talking about. I had fun with the book, and more fun talking with the author. Oh yeah … Haha … Nina really IS all that, plus a little more, and Dr. Berg knows it too! I think that is the 3^rd or 4^th time I’ve lost my place in an interview after talking about Nina …

Heather– Right! Haha, she takes your breath away.

Jim– So, let me back up, because I forgot completely where I was and I apologize, but. Yeah. Oh, my goodness, I know. It was my take on the book- porn work is work. And then, you know, the Nina quote that kind of followed that up. You wrote the book, what do you feel like the theme for this work is throughout?

Heather– I think it's two things that seem like a contradiction. On the one hand, porn work is work. On the other, porn is a way to escape some of the most tedious and harmful aspects of straight work. Porn can be like straight work in so many ways. Yet, it also offers these really interesting opportunities for refusing some of those things that can be damaging.

Jim–Ok. So now we're mentioning the escape, and that ties directly into the late capitalism. Everybody's kind of looking for an exit strategy.

Heather– Yeah …

Jim– And that's another really interesting part, because it brings up a multitude of different things that go on. I think that one of the most obvious misconception is that the performers are part of this monolithic industry, this thing that everybody thinks exist, as in Porn Valley, the San Fernando Valley. It … kind of doesn't exist. It used to, but not so much anymore. Everybody's on camera, and they’ve got an OnlyFans, or ManyVids, whichever platform. So, they get they get a certain amount of freedom, but they also escape into a whole other set of parameters and restrictions. Now, some of these are, you know, there's workarounds to everything. But one thing that did struck me were the different ways that shoots are structured, the trade for content, however it is, it’s sometimes outside of a “studio”. There is, at times, not testing like we're used to seeing, the TTS, every couple of weeks. In the past, it was paid for by the studios, by the agents. Nowadays, not so much. Do we see this as some very damaging effects that can go out from this where people are …?  Yeah, sure, they're finding workarounds or finding ways to do things differently, but certain safeguards that the “industry” did provide are no longer there.

Heather– Yeah, well, I’ll say a couple of things about that. One is that those safeguards were only ever in place because workers … the performers, fought for them. So, it was not a case that adult industry medical, for example, emerging because directors were trying to do the right thing by their workers. I think that's important to remember. I'd also say that by the time that I was doing interviews, my understanding is that this was an ongoing concern. But the studios, directors, and the agents had really never paid the majority of the costs for testing, and certainly not for treatment. With the exception of a handful of very select contract stars, most of those costs and risks were already on workers’ shoulders. So, I don't think that in terms of those questions, things are worse now. Sure, it is a real concern that as the industry gets more and more dispersed, any kind of efforts, whether they be led by employer groups like the FSC or by performer groups who have less ability to set a coherent set of standards. I do think that's a question worth asking. But I would also say that as the work is more concentrated into direct consumer platform-based distribution, performers have a lot more autonomy to choose their partners and to communicate directly with partners about the safety methods that they're comfortable with. Under a studio model, that really wasn't the case. So, again, I think that some of this dispersal is worrying for workers. But there are also a lot of ways that workers have more freedom to perform in the ways that they're comfortable with.

Jim– And I won't argue with that, I had to pose the question as kind of a devil's advocate, if you will, but I do know that in a lot of ways it’s better. People say that social media, that the internet is impersonal. But the performers are using that. They'll be texting, they'll be calling. They'll be, you know, chatting on Twitter, and everything else prior to a shoot. And they kind of get to know each other. They’re like, “What’s up, what's going on?” They talk boundaries. I know that there's some that don't do that, and it's unfortunate, but it's different than the early or mid-1980s. They were just driven to a set, they walked into a room, and they started doing their work. So, it's very different. And yet, I guess at the end of day, you know, lights, camera, and it's still action. Yeah, but there's also the 2257, the releases. Do you feel like, from your conversations with those who are going it alone, that they’re taking the necessary legal stuff? Yes, they are 18 and older, and that they have given consent. Do you feel like that's the case as well?

Heather– Yeah. I mean, … platforms, because of their own liability issues, are quite strict about that kind of documentation, especially after the December 2020 controversies over Visa and MasterCard. So, the platforms are not less stringent about that. In terms of age and consent, I think that the performers shooting trade are often better about it than directors who have never done sex work themselves. Perhaps they have only a profit motive behind how they run sets. Obviously, there are plenty of traditional directors who have an ethical compass. But I think that the move to trade presents some risks. Some of that is that most people don't want to have a boss, and that's a good thing that they can avoid having one. But it can also be tricky when things are so diffused that if something goes awry. If consent boundaries are crossed, it's hard for performers to know who they complain to if there's no studio. If the production is under the auspices of the FSC’s sort of vague oversight. Although that never really was the case. So, I think it’s a continuation of a lot of these questions. My feeling is that a lot of the narratives around the move to direct-to-consumer production and more trade scenes, as this kind of crisis for health and safety and for consent practices. I think a lot of it is coming from the agents, directors, and producers who feel marginalized by this emerging economy. I don't hear that as much from the performers themselves.

Jim–Yeah, and marginalized is a good word. I know that there are good agents, and there's bad agents. Same with directors, producers. You know, everybody would like to get into a $20,000 budget movie, and there's just not many of them out there.

Heather– Sure … Right!

Jim– But this notion from the outside, from civilians talking about this Stockholm syndrome that gets bandied about quite a bit, that people are in here against their will, that they're being used. And that now, it's like the wild, wild West with everybody having their own cam. Dominic Acerra, who helped set this up, and was in your book, made the comment that everybody gets used. Right here on page one, he said whether you're a secretary, a janitor or whatever. And the difference is, and he's told this to me personally, is how are you going to let people use you, and then, how are you going to use them in return? Everybody does that. Is that something that we see, or in your opinion is that little bit of negativity, from an outsider's point of view, diminishing? Or, do people still think that we’re just running wild, and doing whatever goes?

Heather– Yeah. I think in some ways, anti-sex worker stigma is lessening. But I also know that anti-porn feminists, in their bizarre coalitions with conservative organizations like Exodus Cry and the Polaris Project have a lot of sway over public opinion. I think that's really worrying. I know that it is. I’m interested to in people who think, and who recirculate the narrative, that porn is uniquely damaging. I’m interested in what they have at stake in terms of their own class position and pretending that the other kinds of flavors that they consume every day are not also exploitative. I always try to ask that question, and they never answer it.

Jim–To follow that up, I'm always interested to know exactly how is it damaging? And I know that it can be, don't get me wrong. But is it strictly emotional, or is it physical, or is it spiritual? You know … if they want to throw that into the mix.

Heather– Yeah, … that happens.

Jim– What are your thoughts on that? I mean, do you personally see that the industry, this particular line of work as more damaging, let's say emotionally, than somebody that goes in and makes minimum wage? Someone in a straight job that still struggles to pay bills, and maybe they're emotionally damaged in that way from a week full of worry, and then going back to it again on Monday morning?

Heather– Absolutely. I think that it's really important how you phrase the question to the damage, that economic worry does, not just to your mind and your spirit, but to your body. Worry and economic insecurity are bad for you. And minimum wage work absolutely wrecks those forms of havoc on people. We see what that looks like, and the public health statistics make that very obvious. I don't think there's anything more inherently damaging about doing sex work. And again, it can often be better work. But it's also true that stigma does a ton of damage to people, and that's not the work itself. I think it's incredibly stressful to experience the stigma, and the isolation that sex work, and anti-sex work ideas expose people to. …

'THIS– Right Here. It is absolutely true that, despite the fame and sometimes very public way that sex workers bask in a limelight, their daily lives are often extraordinarily isolated, and lonely. Still, if it's a sex worker, a straight worker, it doesn't matter. I want to encourage everyone to read this book, because it covers aspects of the daily lives of anybody. You don’t have to be involved with the adult industry to appreciate how a boss made you feel, or how you wish that things could feel a little less stressful. We have all felt isolated and didn't have a good way to deal with those emotions. While it’s true that Dr. Berg used the industry as a basis for displaying her findings, and whether or not you agree with a Marxist point of view, it is true that these workers’ struggles transcend any class or point of division. The ideas discussed by Dr. Berg in her book affect everyone.

Heather– … And that's related to some of the ways that the labor abuses, and consent violations, and forms of everyday racism, etc. on a porn set aren't necessarily taken as seriously as they might be in some other kinds of work. I always want to remind people that straight jobs are, you know, they are absolutely abusive in all those ways. The regulations that nominally support workers if they experience racist pay inequality, or an OSHA violation in a mainstream job, are weak and have never really served the workers to the extent that I think a lot of folks who haven't had to work working class jobs assume they do.

Jim–And even people that aren't working class, they're white collar. They're on the whatever number floor of a building, they have a great paycheck. But maybe they're dealing with an amazing amount of emotional stress on a completely different level, to where they can even go out for supper without their emails going off on their phone. I suppose I've probably been in both situations. No pay, too much pay, too much stress, too much worry. So, I think that's lost on a lot of people. And I will say that probably morality, people's supposed morality on what other people should or shouldn't do, tends to override every single other good or bad aspect of any job.

Heather– Yeah, absolutely. And again, I'm always curious about someone who is a spokesperson for an organization like Exodus Cry, who has a maid, who has a secretary, who … Polaris Project has unpaid interns! Haha. So, I'm really fascinated by how people in those situations do the mental gymnastics to tell themselves that that's alright but getting paid to do a sex scene is uniquely exploitative.

Jim– And yeah, those you mentioned those, we'll call them support or action groups. I know that the one that I'm kind of fond of is Pineapple Support. I interviewed their founder, Leya Tanit, and she will tell you that a lot of the cost for that organization came out of her own personal savings for a number of … I think it was 9 or 10 months? You know, it was on her until they got some corporate sponsors. But that's one example of, OK, so maybe we don't have an H.R. department but here are some of the resources that are being made available by the performers and the performer advocates, if you will, to combat things that might go awry. Or, you have people say, “Yeah, I do need to talk with somebody.” Well, here you go. Here you get the text messages, the emails. They’ll set you up with some support. And I'll tell you that a lot of the people that I meet and talk with seem to be better grounded in their own mental stability, working within the industry, than people working straight jobs. And it’s like you said, it’s a weird set of parameters … how do you justify this to make that one wrong … when the other one (other one meaning straight jobs) just seems so upside down once you get inside? I know that everybody doesn't have that inside point of view. But that's what I have found to be true.

Heather– I think in terms of, you know, what you're calling the H.R. departments, that having worker friendly and worker designed support services is a hell of a lot better than what corporate H.R. offers! The corporate wellness programs are infamously terrible. Sex workers, because they've been left out of those really weak systems, have gotten creative about devising other means to support each other. And I think that those are overwhelmingly superior in terms of how they actually serve people. The problem, of course, is funding, as you say. I think that much of that should absolutely be provided for by the state. But that's a question about universal health care rather than the sex industry.

Jim– It’s kind of like if you live in an apartment or a rental house for, I don't know, six months a year, you're going to find everything that is wrong with that. Then, when you build your own house, granted, if you have enough money, then you're going to build it exactly like you want it. And I think that's a lot of what we're seeing with that.

Heather– I like that analogy …

Jim– It speaks to your other kind of narrative, that there are … I can't recall the page, but for each rule that was broken, this was a performer talking about studios, and the contracts. Well, there's always a clause, and it’s named after the person that broke the rule. There's a whole list of them, and they said, “Well, when I go around this one, at some point, they’re probably going to name ‘Clause X, Y and Z’ after me!” Haha

Heather– Yeah, that’s funny.

Jim– But yeah, they're finding their ways around the headache of having a boss, and to be able to do that on their own, so …

Heather– Yeah, I love that story. It’s …

Jim– I mean, it's true. And it's the kind of thing that you just can't make that stuff up. But it's kind of funny, you envision this guy in an office somewhere, yanking what's left of his hair out, because these performers keep going around his last clause in the contract.

Heather– Exactly. And you mentioned earlier, it's kind of condescending, particularly men in management, especially to women performers. I always giggle about how they would talk about dumb performers are, and then talk about all the ways that the performers outsmarted them, sometimes in the same breath. I just thought that was such a funny, funny pattern.

Jim– Since we're talking about the industry, it's an interesting thing because I know that people on the outside, they see it, the industry, as these kingpin's sitting in some office. But the fact of the matter is, that many of them have been bought out, as you mentioned in your book, and might or might not be working for the performer that they were berating, or talking down to 10 years ago, or even a year ago.

Heather– Yeah, exactly. One thing that is so twisted about how anti-porn people think is that they would rather performers have no power because then the world makes sense to them. So, they ignore that this is the case. Whereas, if you are nominally concerned with men abusing porn performers, then it should be good news that a lot of these directors have no power, right? And I'm not saying that was never the case. But even from the framework of people who think that porn was this horrible industry, it should be good news that workers are on top in very particular ways, and yet they ignore that entirely.

Jim– Well, I don't think that it's sexy enough from their point of view. It's like Las Vegas. It was cool when everybody thought the mob ran Las Vegas. Now you go out there and somehow, it's lost some of the allure. I'm not convinced that’s not part of it. The person sitting in a cubicle next to you might or might not be running an OnlyFans at night. So, somehow, it's a little bit less than … how to put it? It's almost ordinary.

Heather– I think that's true for your everyday person, but there's also a long history of anti-sex work advocates, both feminists and religious, who really prefer this image of people as victims, because then they can justify their paycheck for saving them.

Jim–Yeah, and that's a much easier thing to do when there actually is in place a monolithic “industry” or “mob”. I’ll use the term mob carefully when we're talking about industry work, but people want a central figure to point at and blame for it.

Heather– Exactly. Yeah.

Jim–So, I'm interested to know. Marxism, and I know how it ties in loosely, but how would you, being the college professor, relate it to porn? If we don't have one thing to point a finger at, like the industry. If it's suddenly every man that's doing it, does that make the late capitalism and Marxist argument easier, inasmuch that this is absolutely where we are at this point?

Heather– There are all sorts of ways that porn usefully disrupts traditional Marxist categories. You know, this idea that we have one group of people who are workers, and another who are bosses obviously isn't true, and I think that's a good thing. This idea that class struggle always must look one way obviously doesn't bear out here. Again, I think that's a good thing. Certainly, Marxism has … orthodox Marxism has all sorts of baggage around its own sexual moralism that makes sex workers a poor fit. And yet, if we're going to think about the nature of class struggle today, which is a core Marxist concern, then we absolutely have to be paying attention to sex workers' struggles. And I think the porn industry confirms but also, pushes forward a lot of core group interventions around this key Marxist point that history is made through the process of workers struggling against exploitation. And you could really see that in the porn industry, right? So, many innovations and developments in porn production are coming from people's efforts to steal a little bit of autonomy to improve their conditions, to hustle. And that changes the history of the industry. I think that lines up with Marxist ideas really well.

Jim– Alright, so we have the workers’ struggle. So, let's talk about … let’s see, we have a few minutes left. The big deal now, I'm seeing the trending going towards trans, cis, bisexual, lots of different genres. You look at this, and even a few years ago, it was not an accepted part of what I’ll call mainstream. Now, it is. We're also seeing in straight society, more acceptance of this, where people are not going to laugh out loud, and point in public, and call people names, because you just don't do that anymore. I see this as the industry kind of leading people in society by the nose and saying, “You know, this is kind of what's going on, and you might want to pay attention to it, because it's actually going on in your own backyard. You just don't know it yet.”

Heather– So, is this a question you're asking specifically about trans?

Jim– No, that would lead into … we talked about class struggle. So, I was kind of parlaying that into different gender and persuasions, if you will, that were not previously accepted. Now, in some places, they're at the helm of the industry, and they are being more accepted in straight society.

Heather– Trans and gender nonconforming people still experience a ton of stigma and violence. I think there's a tricky dynamic with regard to the porn industry. You have the hyper visibility of trans women, but also forms of fetishization– that on the one hand, can give people job opportunities, but can also contribute to fetishization and to forms of objectification that many trans people say are harmful and that trans performers are actively working against. And so, in terms of how that affects social acceptance more generally, I think that's really complicated. But I will say, returning to this theme of workers having more power to produce the kinds of scenes that they want to produce, to not have to rely on traditional agents or directors, that has meant that people who had been excluded entirely from production, or only were able to produce, according to a good old boys’ idea of what would sell; they now have a lot more room to maneuver. So, I think that's a good thing.

Jim– Ok. Hmmm. …. I'm still with you. I was pausing, I didn't want you to think you'd lost me or anything.

Heather– No, and …

Jim– I’m guilty of that. Sometimes I just have to stop for a minute, and people get …

Heather– It’s good. You want to absorb it!

Jim–Well, it is so much to absorb though. And I had it I had a funny question about Milton Friedman, but I don’t know if it’ll fit here, and that's even a bad analogy with what it's about. So, I'll skip it. I'll tell you later. …

'The question had to do with the fact that I was laughing my ass off at the fact that Dr. Berg had managed to get economic concepts by Milton Friedman and a short discourse on “fisting” in the same paragraph. I mentioned to her after our interview that, in my undergrad I had taken economics, and being able to get those two things in one place was, as far as I was concerned in most things, an accomplishment, in and of itself.

The other part, me pausing throughout the interview, yeah … I did that, maybe more than usual. Once you read this book, once you get through finding your fav pornstar or director and seeing what they had to say to Dr. Berg, you’ll understand just how much information she packed into this book. I spoke with her for just over an hour, but her work could easily cover several interviews.

Jim–… I'm curious to know, in your personal life, before you wrote the book and then afterwards, did your personal views on sex worker’s or the industry, did they change? Did they stay the same? Did they get stronger or weaker in some ways?

Heather– Interesting. I wasn't raised with anti-sex worker ideas, and I had been in sex worker communities, before starting this research. So, I didn't I didn't come in thinking that this was a uniquely harmful industry or anything like that. But the process of doing the research has taught me an enormous amount. My ideas about the ethics of sex work haven't changed. But these interviews and being in conversation with people over the years, have changed a lot of what I think about politics, about what I think about we should demand from the state and about the nature of class, that's moved the needle for me. One of those areas that I came to the research with, was this traditionally more Marxist understanding of workers against bosses. Something that really destabilized that for me was hearing from so many performers that their best bet for autonomy was to become managers. So that's changed what I think about the politics of that kind of entrepreneurship. And while I still think that is a tricky class position to organize around, it's one that we can't ignore in favor of more stable definitions and categories of who counts as working class.

Jim– And that's a tricky way to really look at anything, is to call, I guess, anything stable at this point?

Heather– Right… Exactly!

Jim– I can't remember which page it was on, but it was about the white middle class worker in the 1950s with the, you know, with a good job… and well, that's just not here anymore at all.

Heather– Oh, no, no. And even then, it wasn't here for very many people.

Jim– Well, and that's the thing that's lost on so many people is they have this idea, a recollection somehow that everything was all the time with picnic baskets. Or that people had a three-day holiday weekend, and everybody went to the lake and yeah, for maybe a few people. For the rest of the people, it wasn't like that. So, yeah, I like what you did, though, in looking at this topic. I do it, in other ways … I’ll tell friends or whoever that for me, if I’m looking through things for the industry, it's almost like reading the newspaper. It doesn't affect me like it does people that aren’t … that don’t see this material all the time. It's difficult what you've done to, I guess, remove the images, and remove the XXX stuff, and strip it down… Haha, I don’t mean that as a pun. But, to take it down to a worker class struggle. I think that's probably why I keep taking a minute to think about these questions, because there's just so much material in your book that we can't possibly go over all of it. But it is if you take the act of sex out of it, so it’s just a regular job. It is absolutely a workers’ struggle. And workers have found ways to not only be their own boss, to make their own business, to make their own money, to pay their own taxes, to get their own testing, their wardrobe, you name it. But … they also get everything that comes along with it, good and bad.

Heather– Yeah, I mean, thank you. It is hard to do. I think one thing obviously, I don't want to totally strip sex out of it. And that's just because I think there are specific ways in which being in the sex industry introduces for some people concerns around health concerns, etc., that they don't experience in say food service. Although for some people, giving a blowjob feels exactly the same as making a latte. Haha. But then also, the pleasure piece really does matter for people sometimes, and I don't want to ignore that either. So, in some ways, it looks a lot like other people's working class struggles economically. One way of struggling against tedium and alienation is … to sometimes do work that feels good. And in that, the sex part really does matter.

Jim– We’ll say it's good physically, but it is also an emotional acceptance among likeminded people.

Heather– Absolutely. I think is.

Jim– We see a lot of performers that come from backgrounds where they were ostracized, where maybe they weren't accepted because he's got a weird fetish, he's got weird ideas. You know, he's done doing this, and she's doing the whole football team. Yeah well, the natural progression is maybe to go into the sex industry and they’re like, “Everybody loves me here and I fit in!” So, yeah. I see that there is not only a physical level of pleasure, but emotional as well. And just being accepted.

Heather– Sex worker communities are incredibly powerful, the kind of chosen family that people develop, you know, despite stigma and marginalization. I think that those chosen families can often be a lot healthier than biological ones.

Jim– You bring up families. Let's face it, a lot, not all of them (performers), but I think probably a larger percentage than is the case in straight jobs come from …  not what's called ideal, or what society would call an ideal family situation, the traditional nuclear family. Maybe it wasn’t there, maybe they didn't have a dad. And so, yeah, I've seen that, maybe even on a personal level, when they get into sex work, there's an acceptance there from people who understand what you came from, what they have come from. And that counts for an awful lot, especially when you are supporting each other emotionally, and at times financially.

Heather– Yeah.

Jim– You find community with each other.

Heather– Absolutely. I don't have data on the family background question, so I wouldn't want to want to say anything one way or the other about that. But the idea of a nuclear family … it’s often an incredibly violent, or at the very least, an alienating space for people. So, you know, I always want to remind people of that when they have that kind of, what's called the “damaged goods thesis”, this idea that sex workers come from broken families. For people in straight jobs, as well as in sex work, the nuclear family includes a lot of breaking. And that's really important to me. Particularly, when we're talking about sexual violence, so much of that comes from within the nuclear family.

Jim–Thank you for putting it that way. That's the way I wanted to phrase the question. They come out of a family where everybody would say “Well, that's a beautiful environment.” Except, it's not. Often, it's not until they get, until “we collectively” get into a good space that you can really grow into the individual that you need to become.

Heather– Absolutely. Yeah, and I don't think that sex workers necessarily have higher rates of that, although, of course, being alienated from your family would expose you to financial insecurity, and perhaps make you seek out ways of making a living as a young person. …

'I was so happy that Dr. Berg expanded on this. My question almost seemed loaded, as if everybody in the industry came from a “broken family”. That’s obviously not true. However, we have all heard about this, that it's a place many performers come from. Then, there's the inherent gender bias, and a cancel culture. These are factual, and sometimes it's a hard pill to swallow … that you might be part of the problem. It’s the kind of thing that, if you don’t think you’re a part of the problem … well, if that’s your mindset, that “It’s not me, it’s somebody else that’s doing it?” I would guess that, if nothing else, those kinds of attitudes are feeding an ongoing problem rather than offering solutions. I’m not sure there are any among us who are completely innocent, and the roots of it are in what is often termed as a “normal childhood.” Point is– we can ALL be better people. 

Heather– … Sex workers talk all the time about how being on a porn site was the first time that someone actually asked them about their boundaries. And that is so true, that in straight civilian dating relationships, but also in the family itself, that kind of respect for consent is so rare.

Jim– Yeah, and you said it. In a lot of ways, straight society, not only teaches, but in some ways … I hesitate to say, but it almost demands that we act a certain way. I’ve experienced that as a guy. We’re kind of brought up to look at women in ways that aren’t always healthy, and to marginalize. And that's the inherent gender bias. You're not born with it, but you're told that since you're a little bitty kid, and it takes a minute to get away from that, and to see that's not the way it ought to be. If you put the shoe on the other foot, and you imagine that somebody is talking to you like that, you can immediately see that, like “Well, I wouldn't want to be talked to like that, so why would I treat somebody that way?” The answer is you wouldn't.

Heather– Right. Yeah, and I think because those dynamics are so hyper visible that some people are more aware, and the conversations are more transparent. Although obviously, there are plenty of people who violate boundaries on porn sites, too, because they're bringing in all that socialization that you just described.

Jim– So, with all that said, where do you see the industry … I’ll ask the question, how do we make it better, or how does it get better? Is it going to get somehow worse than it is right now, with the late capitalism and the social norms, plus everything that we've talked about? What are your thoughts?

Heather– One thing I'll say is like, you know … when I use the term late capitalism, that brings obviously some forms of crisis that are bad for working people. But, like other Marxists, when I say late capitalism, that is a good thing, because it means it's on its way out. I really do believe that the walls are closing in, and in ways that are already bringing forms of crisis, there will be something else. Whether that's the old phrase of socialism or barbarism, that's another question, and I really hope it's the first. But in terms of right now, how to make the industry better? I think so many of the problems of the industry aren't specific to the industry, so what would help porn workers have better conditions right now? A lot of those things are universal health care, disentangling benefits and protections from having a single employer. These are the kinds of things that would help all sorts of gig workers. Sex work decriminalization would be crucial, even though porn is not only decriminalized because porn workers do so many other forms of sex work and because they are vulnerable to many harmful policies. So, not only decriminalization, but the removal of various forms of Internet surveillance would do a ton to improving improve working conditions.

And then in terms of the industry itself, a huge struggle right now is to combat the monopolies of platforms such as OnlyFans and some of the bigger webcam platforms that get to make terms and conditions that are exploitative because workers don't have a lot of other places to go to access to consumers. My ideal situation, short of full communism would be that workers have platform cooperatives. It would be where some tech guy isn't making money off their labor. I think that's totally possible. It's just not possible given the laws as they are now. So, those things are related.

Jim– That kind of brings us full circle into the things that are going to help the industry, and they are going to help everybody. You mentioned the universal health care, the fair wage, or a living wage. That discussion could lead into a whole other set of questions that we won't go into. But it brings us back to Point A, which is the title of your book, Porn Work. And yeah, it is work, whether you're working for yourself, or for somebody else. So, yeah, I can see that.

Heather– Yeah… I think we can ask the question beyond the stigma and decriminalization, which would be our first battle, the questions then would be in making Uber drivers’ situations better? There are a lot of parallels there.

Jim– Sure, I think anybody would have to be blind not to see how you've laid this case out over, oh, my goodness … You’re at 196 pages at the end of the appendix, right before the notes. So, if anybody really read this with some honesty and even some self-introspection, it would be really difficult not to see all these parallels.

Heather– Thank you. I like that take– if anyone were giving it an honest read, they would know that I'm right! Haha, … Ha

Jim– I'm not saying that just because I'm talking to you, but … Haha!

Heather– I appreciate that …

Jim– That was what I got from the first few pages. The book, this “Porn Work”. Meanwhile, I didn't know what to expect, but right off the bat, it's apparent that you’re aiming for something at a much higher level than just “Porn” or “Work”. O.k? Sure, we're going to use sex workers as an example. But there's no pictures in the book. There's nothing like that. It's all about … just the lives of, I'm just going to say, ordinary everyday people. It’s about what they're doing to make their lives better, and what we should all do to collectively try to make things better.

Heather– Yeah. Well, I appreciate that so much. That's exactly what I wanted to come from this. I'm so happy to hear it came through like that for you.

Jim– Well, it didn't take much. I think it was beautifully written. Like I say, I think that anybody and everybody should go out and give it a read. …

Heather– Thank you.

Jim– My pleasure, I think it would shine through. The comment I was going to make, and I’ll give you a chance to make your last stand here in a minute. Haha. But I was going to say thank you, even though I'm a fan of Chicago style in formatting, for not using footnotes. I would have never gotten through it. I always read the footnotes and then go back, and I'm suddenly reading 10 other books to find out about the footnotes. I appreciated the endnote format. It gave it a lot of more fluidity.

Heather– I'm glad that worked for you!

Jim– That was just my own funny sidenote. Anyhow, let me ask you, was there a particular point or a question that you wish I would have asked about this book that you've worked so hard on?

Heather– Oh, no. Those have been really fabulous questions. And I mean, you gave it such a read. I'm so grateful. I am hopeful that everyone gives this book a try. I think people will enjoy what it has to offer.

Jim– Well, I enjoyed reading your book, and talking with you. Thank you so much. There you have it, Dr. Heather Berg, the author of “Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism”, printed at the University of North Carolina Press. Everyone, go out and give it a read. Follow Dr. Berg on Twitter @DrHeatherBerg, and find her at her website, DrHeatherBerg.com. Thank you again Dr. Berg, enjoy the rest of your afternoon!

Heather– Thank you, please do the same! Bye now. 

Special Thanks to XCritic, Cyber5, Don Demarko, and Dominic from the EmmReport in Setting up this Interview!

Follow Jim Steele on Twitter @TheJimSteele & Insta @TheJimSteele

[INSERT_AD]