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THE PORN PERFORMER

Angela Gabrielle White

Pornographic becomings: beyond the victim/agent divide

Within the media, as well as in the academy and in feminist debates, one image looms large
as a powerful symbol of victimisation or agency: the female porn performer. Three decades
after the ‘porn wars’ began, the victim/agent divide persists as the dominant framework
within which the discussion of pornography takes place. Too often female porn performers
are either described as having been forced by male pimps into a life of sexual degradation
and abuse or regarded as sexual freedom fighters, empowered by their transgression of
outdated social norms and paving the way to a future of authentically female sexual agency
(Corsianos, 2007; Coy and Garner, 2010; Dworkin, 1981; Hardy, 1998). A focus on the
female performer as either victim or agent has limited how performers and their work are
represented (Smith, 2012) and impeded research into other aspects of their lives as sex
workers.
This chapter moves beyond the victim/agent divide by engaging directly with female
performers in the Australian pornography industry. Direct engagement with the views of
performers offers a far more nuanced understanding of the experiences and motivations of
the female porn performer than has been possible in the majority of previous research – work
which has made little or no reference to their voices. Rather than focus on well-trodden yet
irreconcilable arguments, this chapter uses qualitative research to identify a theme within
the personal narratives of six female performers: that pornography offers possibilities for
female performers to explore creative sexual expression, exploration, exhibitionism and
same-sex sexual pleasures, and that performing in pornography has challenged these
women’s understandings of their own sexual identities. Drawing on the work of Michel
Foucault and queer theory, the article positions pornography as a queer space that subverts
heteronorms, destabilises sexual identity categories and can enable new sexual possibilities,
or, as I will characterise them here, becomings.

Performers as experts on their own lives

This chapter draws on research I undertook into female experiences in the Australian
pornography industry. Six female volunteers aged 20–25 were invited to write a personal

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narrative about their experiences working in the porn industry. The small sample size
reflects a focus on depth rather than breadth, and means that the findings cannot be
generalised or applied to all women who perform in pornography. Nor can the findings tell
us anything about how men or intersex or transgender people experience performing in
porn. However, the evidence gathered in these personal narratives enables a perspective
beyond the victim/agent divide presented in most previous work on this topic. Through
writing their own narratives, participants in the research became active contributors to
the production of knowledge about their lives, challenging the consensus both of anti-
porn feminists and of moral guardians about the motivations and justifications of female
porn performers. It proceeds from a respect for performers as ‘experts on their own lives’
(Wahab, 2003: 640). Sex workers are frequently denied self-representation, and without
reference to their voices, studies on sex workers do not reflect their realities (ibid.: 626).
Allowing sex workers to tell their own stories is necessary to put ‘a real face on the
mythological creatures that are the subject of so much fantasizing and demonizing’
(Oakley, 2007: 11).
The groundbreaking anthologies Sex Work (1987) and Whores and Other Feminists (1997)
created an opportunity for women in other areas of sex work, such as escorts and exotic
dancers, to speak for themselves about their experiences. However, porn performers were
largely absent from these texts. The recent publication of The Feminist Porn Book (2013) and
the 2014 launch of the peer-reviewed journal Porn Studies have begun to address this gap in
the existing literature by publishing the writings of porn performers alongside work written
by academics. Over the past two decades there have been numerous calls for a greater
amount of research on sex workers to be carried out by sex workers themselves (Agustı́n,
2010; Pyett, 1998; Wahab and Sloan, 2004). Laura Agustı́n draws attention to the way
in which most of the research on sex workers has been conducted by people outside of the
industry, often by those who tend to approach the subject from a position of moral or
political disapproval. Agustı́n argues that:

[W]e need a lot more research undertaken by people who are very close to sex
workers’ lives, or who are sex workers themselves : : : who will above all commit
themselves to recording honestly all the different and conflicting points of view
and stories they run into during research.
(2010: 26)

This chapter presents a contribution to that goal. A notable advantage of being personally
involved in the pornography industry as a performer, director and producer is the access
I have had to other performers, both through working directly with them and by being
part of a sex-worker community. Sex workers are often stigmatised and pathologised by
research and thus can be wary of researchers. Being a performer myself meant I was granted
considerable trust in pursuing the research presented in this chapter.
At the same time, my proximity to the industry could be conceived as disadvantageous to
the process of data analysis. Some observers may argue that I have a vested interest in
polishing the image of pornography in order to recuperate a possibly tarnished sense of self
(given that sex work in general, and performing in pornography in particular, are perceived
as either shameful, even disloyal to women as a class, or imposed by exploitative men on
women deemed damaged in some way). But qualitative researchers have consistently argued
that qualitative data and research findings are always the product of the unique relationship
between the ‘researcher’ and the ‘researched’, and the different social positions that frame

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their subjectivities (Warren and Karner, 2010: 245). Part of the ongoing feminist epis-
temological project has been to critique the idea that objective ‘truth-claims’ are even
possible, and to emphasise the ways in which research and knowledge are enriched through
acknowledging the social position of the researcher (Wilton, 2004: 37). This chapter,
written from within the community which forms its research object, expands scholarly
knowledge of the porn industry and women’s place within it.

Pleasure has no passport

In modern Western societies, sexuality is commonly understood as a natural force. Before
the 1970s, this was also the widely held view within academia. Many anthropologists,
psychoanalysts, sociologists and sexologists pointed to the cultural diversity of sexual
practices but continued to understand sexuality as a natural force subject to different
kinds of social organisation and varying degrees of repression (Garton, 2004: 1–2; Hall,
2003: 21–22; Weeks, 2003: 18–19). But the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault
argued instead that sexuality was invented in the nineteenth century (1978: 42–43).
Foucault insisted:

Sexuality must not be thought of as a kind of natural given which power tries to
hold in check, or as an obscure domain which knowledge tries gradually to
uncover. It is the name that can be given to a historical construct.
(Foucault, 1978: 105)

In his seminal work The History of Sexuality (1978), Foucault argues that sexuality is not a
pre-discursive, natural phenomenon that culture attempts to repress or liberate. Rather, he
asserts, sexuality is a regulatory system that only exists through its social organisation
(Weeks, 2003: 18). Foucault argues that sexuality is ‘an especially dense transfer point for
relations of power’ (1978: 103). Sexuality is a regulatory system founded upon an artificial
unity of disparate practices, sensations, pleasures, impulses, biological functions, hormones,
muscular activities, wishes, hopes and desires, and this regulatory system functions most
powerfully and effectively through categories of sexual identity (1978: 154; Angelides,
2001: 144; Grosz, 1994: 154; Grosz, 2005: 198).
Foucault’s work challenged the connection between sexual practices and sexual identity
that had long been taken for granted. He points out that in the West, prior to the emergence
of sexuality as a discourse in the nineteenth century, same-sex sexual practices (referred to
as ‘sodomy’) were considered unnatural but were not understood to be a defining aspect of a
person’s identity. However, beginning in the nineteenth century, same-sex sexual practices
were transformed from a fleeting transgression of (hetero)sexual norms into a ‘sexual
identity’: the homosexual. Quoting Foucault:

As defined by the ancient civil or canonical codes, sodomy was a category

of forbidden acts; their perpetrator was nothing more than the juridical subject
of them. The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage, a past, a
case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form
and a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious
physiology : : : The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual
was now a species.
(1978: 43)

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Likewise, opposite-sex sexual practices have come to be understood as the represen-

tation of an innate heterosexual identity. Foucault’s work demonstrates that the state-
ments ‘I am homosexual’ or ‘I am heterosexual’ have only become possible, and subsequently
mandated, relatively recently in the West. These assertions are only intelligible in a society
where sexual desires and practices are understood as having ‘an identity-determining capacity’
(Hall 2003: 23). In other words, through the deployment of sexuality as a regulatory system,
sexual practices have come to be understood as a reflection of an essential, stable and inherent
core.
Following Foucault, many queer theorists have pointed out that categories of sexual
identity are fundamentally limiting and exclusionary (Hall, 2003; Kirsch, 2000; Sullivan,
2003). However, the identification of sexuality as a discursive, social construct also enables
us to imagine the possibility for change. Foucault argues that ‘[t]he rallying point for the
counterattack against the deployment of sexuality ought not to be sex-desire, but bodies and
pleasures’ (1978: 157). The meaning of this enigmatic suggestion has been the subject of
significant debate (Butler, 1999; Grosz, 1994; Jagose, 2010). What does it mean to separate
sex-desire (that is, desire as it has been organised into sexual identity categories) from bodies
and pleasures? Elizabeth Grosz (1994: 155) wonders: ‘is it that bodies and pleasures are
somehow outside the deployment of sexuality?’ Or is it more the case, as Ladelle McWhorter
(1999: 184) suggests, that ‘normalizing discourses have not colonized pleasure as they have
colonized desire[?]’. Indeed, perhaps pleasure cannot be colonised, because it is unruly,
reckless and chaotic.
The six personal narratives explored here provide strong grounds for arguing that
pleasures are capable of exceeding the regulatory power of sexuality insofar as it is possible
to experience pleasures without recourse to desire or categories of sexual identity. And in
doing so, the narratives illustrate how the pleasures of pornographic performance are
capable of destabilising desire and sexual identity.
Annamarie Jagose suggests that intense pleasures may have transformative potential
since they are capable of detaching us, at least momentarily, from the regulatory deployment
of sex-desire:

Where desire is concerned with psychologisation and the deep attachment of an

interiorised sexual subjectivity to the classificatory categories of sexology, pleasure
is concerned with intensification and the temporary dissolution of the subject. As
Foucault puts it ‘Pleasure has no passport, no identification papers’. For Foucault,
intense sexual pleasure, particularly that which reorganises the body’s erogeneity,
is productively impersonal in so far as it has the capacity to reorder momentarily
the subject’s sense of self, to detach the individual from the stable, coherent
identity through which modern sexuality is administered and regulated.
(2010: 523)

In other words, intense and unpredictable pleasures have the potential to challenge our
sense of sexual identity as fixed, and at these moments we are most susceptible to new sexual
becomings.
Foucault’s work and his invocation of bodies and pleasures have been influential in queer
projects that challenge the regulatory and normalising functions of categories of sexual
identity. Queer theorists promote the creation of new sexual economies based not on static
identities but on permanently fluid becomings (Grosz, 2005: 213). One of the reasons why
categories of sexual identity are so limiting is that they tabulate past and present sexual

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practices in an attempt to regulate future sexual encounters (ibid.). In contrast, thinking

of sexuality as an evolving set of becomings points towards indeterminable futures.
Becomings are never fixed or static, and are queer in the sense that, as David Halperin
argues, ‘[queer] describes a horizon of possibility whose precise extent and heterogeneous
scope cannot in principle be delimited in advance’ (cited in Sullivan, 2003: 43). Similarly,
Mandy Merck suggests that ‘queer is not what has gone before but what has yet to come’.
Queer is a permanent becoming and an unimaginable future (Merck, 2005: 187).
The personal narratives explored below illustrate the ways in which pornography
functions as a queer space that opens performers up to new sexual possibilities (or
becomings). To begin with, all sex work is always already queer. Selling sex queers the
heterosexual economy because women involved in selling sexual services step beyond the
bounds of acceptable female sexuality and femininity and put a price (often high) on
sexual services which patriarchy requires that they give away for free (preferably only to
one man, to whom they are married) (Pendleton, 1997: 76). However, the narratives also
reveal that the intense and unpredictable pleasures experienced while performing in
pornography can challenge regulatory notions of sexual identity as fixed and inherent.
Pornography emerges from these narratives as a queer space that subverts heteronorms,
destabilises categories of sexual identity and is capable of opening performers up to new
sexual possibilities.

Pornography as a queer space

As a work environment, pornography creates a unique opportunity for performers to
experience sexual pleasures disinvested from sexual desire and what they take to be their
own sexual identity. For example, a female performer who identifies as heterosexual and
monogamous may believe she can perform in a girl–girl scene outside of her relationship
without having this impact on what she takes to be her own sexual identity. After all, the
same-sex encounter can be conceptualised as a requirement of a job rather than a rep-
resentation of desire. This logic is not uncommon in the pornography industry, and is
typified by the popular expression ‘gay-for-pay’. However, the intense and unexpected
pleasures arising from such a performance can lead to a dissonance between what one
believes oneself to be and what one feels – a dissonance between a heavily invested-in
heterosexual identity and the intense pleasures experienced through same-sex sexual
relations. The chaos, disorder and confusion brought about through the dissolution of the
self in sexual pleasure have the potential to undermine a presumed stable sexual identity.
Porn is unique in that sexual relations can occur without recourse to desire or sexual
identity, which are socially mandated in normative sexual encounters. Thus, a frequent
theme in the narratives which follow is that pornography places performers in sexual
situations that would have been very unlikely under other circumstances. These excerpts
highlight the unique capacity of pornography to create opportunities for sexual creativity,
expression, encounters and pleasures that may not otherwise have been possible.1

Jackie: I find pornography an exciting, creative and financially fulfilling career

option, which has opened me up to sexual, artistic and financial possibilities that
I never would have otherwise had the opportunity to experience.

Belinda: I have enjoyed every single woman I have ‘modelled’ with. The experi-
ence in itself, the places and situations you couldn’t possibly have been in without

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the help of the industry, the creativity of the shoots, the sexual freedom and
liberation you feel after your accomplishments and the feeling of being proud.

The creative elements of pornographic performance place the participants in unlikely

sexual situations where they are encouraged to experiment with different sexual personas
and characters:

Natalie: I love performing, dressing up and flirting with the camera. It’s so much
fun! We get to be very creative with different themes, backgrounds, poses, outfits
and scenarios. In pornography I have been able to explore being sexual in many
different ways.
Jackie: I’ve had lush sexual exchanges on camera with spontaneous, exciting
womyn who I’ve experienced chemistry with. I’ve had the pleasure of being crea-
tively involved in the process, whether contributing to shoot concepts or, with
more artistic erotica sites, being sole creative contributor as well as performer. I
love the process of crafting new personas to fit the sites I work with.

Pornography encourages sexual exploration and experimentation, and the active

fashioning of new personae sets performers up to think outside the restrictions of what
they take to be their own sexual identity. The presence of a camera during these sexual
encounters and the active sexual engagement with the non-human (through ‘flirting’ with
technology) already begin to queer heterosexual norms. These norms are queered further
when Sarah, who identifies as heterosexual and monogamous and who is engaged to be
married, employs pornography as a space to express herself sexually outside the confines of
her relationship:

Sarah: A latent exhibitionism seemed as good a reason as any to take the plunge into
amateur pornography. I felt like I had a split personality in terms of sex; the out-
wardly shy and nervous side hiding the very sexually active, curious and explorative
side. Sexual attention was both terrifying and completely addictive. However by the
time I’d realised how strong the sexual side of me was, I was in a very committed
relationship with the man I now have a child with. He’s a completely brilliant guy,
and matches me perfectly, but meeting at 19 years of age meant that it cut out any
possibilities for sexual exploration with anyone else, which, if I’m honest, I really
wanted : : : I think I spent the majority of my earnings [from pornography] on [my
partner]. I think this was because I was trying to say thank you for allowing me to
express myself sexually without him and for supporting me.

Pornography functions as a space in which Sarah is able to indulge her sexual curiosity
through exploration, expression and exhibitionism. Despite Sarah’s fiancé supporting her
career choice, Sarah’s involvement in pornography queers monogamy and facilitates her
desired sexual exploration outside of the bounds of their engagement.
Laura, also in a monogamous heterosexual relationship, had her first same-sex sexual
experience through her pornography work:

Laura: To say I was nervous was an understatement – I was terrified! Nearly 19,
here I was in front of this gorgeous woman (who I later found out was also her first

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lesbian experience too) thinking a million thoughts all at once. Does my breath
smell? What if she’s not attracted to me? Is she disappointed with the pairing?
What if I say something really stupid that puts her off? What if I fart and she’s
near there? Of course these were all worst-case scenarios, none of which actually
happened. It was in fact one of the most beautiful sexual experiences of my life,
which simply cannot be replicated. Not only did I kiss a girl and enjoy it, I wanted
to do more.

Pornographic performance not only opened Laura up to sexual experiences with other
women but also opened her up to the possibility of exploring these pleasures further.

Pornographic becomings
The requirements of work in pornography open performers up not only to new sexual
possibilities and creative sexual expression but also to new becomings. Pornography
creates a queer space in which performers can experience pleasures disinvested from
desire and what they take to be their own sexual identity. In the following excerpt,
Natalie describes the effect that unpredictable sexual pleasures had on her sense of sexual
identity.

Natalie: My favourites have been the girl–girl lesbian shoots. They are so much fun
because you get to interact more [compared with solo modelling]. I was so nervous
on my first lesbian shoot, I had never been with a girl before, although I had
thought girls were pretty and wouldn’t mind kissing them. Geez, I had no idea
what I was doing. But it was so much fun. I felt so many different sensations, it was
so lustful and carnal. I was so nervous my whole body was shaking from fear but also
from pleasure. I don’t know if I ever would have been with another girl in that
capacity otherwise but pornography opened me up to that possibility : : : I don’t
know how to explain my sexuality now because I have a boyfriend but I love to
have sex with girls. Although I haven’t had sex with a girl except on camera.
Maybe that makes it different, like it’s just playing around, but I get so horny
and we really get to have sex and orgasm. I guess I am bisexual.

The pleasures that Natalie experienced in performing for pornography challenged her sense
of her sexual identity as stable and fixed. Similarly, Tyler’s sense of identity was challenged
through her experience of same-sex pleasures in pornographic work.

Tyler: The more girls I had sex with [in pornography] the more I realised how
much I loved it, and I slowly found that I was losing interest in having sex with
my [male] partner. Sex with him started to become a chore. I mean I loved my
partner more than anything, but soon it got to the stage where I just lost
complete interest in having sex with him! I started to change slowly, and this
has been going on for a while. I guess when you spend so much time around
women, beautiful women, things can change, and they did for me. Soon I found
myself having no sexual attraction to males whatsoever and that sadly included
my partner. I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, but one day I realised that
I couldn’t fight it anymore – I was gay. I still loved my boyfriend more than
anything, but I had changed, I had become a different person : : : I became a person

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that couldn’t be with him. We broke up and it was one of the hardest things I ever
had to do, but I really had no choice. It wasn’t fair on him, and maybe it’s a phase I’m
going through, I don’t know, but I have realised that I just love women too much
and that’s where my life needs to go right now! Do I think the porn industry
contributed to my change in sexuality? Definitely in some way! I spent so much
time around attractive and confident women, it was only natural for me to go down
that path.

Tyler first suggests that her work helped her to discover her pre-existing lesbian identity
(she could no longer ‘fight’ the fact that she had been gay all along). However, later she
asserts that she ‘had changed’ and ‘had become a different person’. Later still, Tyler ques-
tions whether ‘it’s a phase’. In any case, her sense of self has been rearranged due to her
experiences of same-sex pleasures through her performances, and she has been opened up to
the possibility of new becomings.
Belinda’s narrative describes a similar evolution:

Belinda: Being involved in pornography has definitely affected my sexuality.

I started at a young age and have been drastically influenced by it. I have found
myself sexually more from the industry then any other vice because the industry
is revolved around sexuality. I wouldn’t say affected, though. It has made
me question myself in more ways. It has made me open-minded, more so than
I could have ever imagined. The advantages of being involved in such an
industry are more so than the disadvantages – if any. I have always been confused
about my sexuality. I think for the most part of my life I will be. I have at some
stages desired to be a man. Bisexual, lesbian, omni-sexual, they are all terms.
I have always been sexual and with an industry such as this, it lets me express
myself in a comfortable, controlled situation whereby the people I’m surrounded
by, I feel, will protect me and let me make my own decisions without
pressure.

While there is a sense of confusion in parts of Belinda’s narrative, she makes it clear that her
involvement has made her question herself in ways that would not have been possible
outside of her involvement in the porn industry. As a result of her porn performances she has
rejected rigid categories of sexual identity, and come to identify as simply sexual.
The radical potential of pleasure in pornographic performance that is highlighted by
these narratives is not unique to the Australian porn industry. Many contributors to The
Feminist Porn Book touched on similar themes when discussing their experiences of being
involved in the US industry, and observations by performers Sinnamon Love, Jiz Lee and
April Flores echo those of my Australian respondents:

Sinnamon Love: I wrote my sexual story, one chapter at a time, in each and every
video I’ve made. I’ve used my work in porn to explore many firsts and share those
experiences with my fans: sex with a woman, double penetration, group sex, double
anal, a blowbang, a gangbang or my first time with a Japanese woman who didn’t
speak English. I’ve let them watch me make love with a real-life partner and fuck
complete strangers I had just met moments before the cameras rolled. I’ve even
allowed my fans to watch me pregnant.
(Taormino et al., 2013: 102)

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Jiz Lee: People often ask me, ‘What made you decide you wanted to do porn?’ and I
tell them the truth: I want to share my sexual expression with others. I like it, it
feels liberating, and I know that it helps others feel free too.
(Taormino et al., 2013: 274)
April Flores: I feel very lucky that I have had the chance to explore and expand my
own sexuality through my work in pornography. I have lived out my own fantasies
by having sex on a stage with an audience watching me, and participating in a
scene in the middle of the forest in front of a huge waterfall. I’ve been able to
experience many scenarios – group sex, dominance and submission, sex with other
women and transgender men and women. These opportunities have led me from
identifying as a straight woman to understanding that my sexuality is fluid and not
dictated by the gender of my partner. These powerful, consensual experiences took
place in safe, controlled environments, and everything was fully discussed before
the shoots.
(Taormino et al., 2013: 281)

In particular, Flores’ experience in pornography, and of moving from identifying as het-

erosexual to an understanding of her sexuality as fluid, points to the radical potential for
pleasure gained through work in pornography to destabilise desire and normative categories
of sexual identity.

Conclusion
The personal narratives of Belinda, Jackie, Laura, Natalie, Sarah and Tyler illustrate the
ways in which a direct engagement with female performers can assist in breaking with the
victim/agent divide in examinations of pornography. They demonstrate that the experi-
ences of female porn performers can expose the volatility of categories of sexual identity and
subvert heteronormative understandings of identity, pleasure and the experiences of sex
work. If these accounts are not necessarily applicable to all female performers, neither can it
be argued that all pornography is oppressive or exploitative of the women who perform in it.
The narratives set out by these women illustrate the power of intense sexual pleasure to be
experienced as a dispossession and an undoing of the self, opening up the individual to new
sexual possibilities. The French refer to orgasm as la petite mort – the little death – and the
potential to be reborn, and reborn differently, makes pleasure a powerful rallying point for
the counterattack against restrictive categories of sexual identity, as well as for the
unfolding of queer futures.

Note
1 Pseudonyms have been used for all performers.

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