Fox News was tipped onto the event, and the resulting media buzz pushed various anti-porn agendas and also overshadowed a hate crime experienced by a queer student on campus earlier that week, yet another example of why it is necessary to have safe spaces and events for LGBT. Judging from the Fox report, which actually did seem “fair and balanced”, and the students interviewed articulated some pretty open-minded responses.

Is it appropriate to talk about porn in an academic setting on human sexuality?

Of course it is! Particularly when you consider that society’s lack of cohesive sex education has positioned pornography in an awkward role of substitute teacher. When we don’t have any other explicit sexual information, we turn to porn for examples. And when porn has a limited view of what sex looks like, it starts to define our notions of who has sex, what kind of sex they have, etc… and we don’t see ourselves reflected as sexual beings. This is why I find queer porn valuable, and why I was asked to speak.

Here is the Fox News Article, and the similar story picked up by MSN.com. While Daily Mail UK first incorrectly posted me as a transgender woman, they have since corrected my pronouns, which feels like a small victory in itself.

Adult Video News (AVN) also interviewed me about the appearance, and for the first time in my porn career, the major industry publication used my preferred gender pronouns. I responded extensively: AVN Interviews Jiz Lee About Recent College Appearance.

As to be expected, a number of conservative blogs, including G.O.P. USA, picked up the story. While I find the articles interesting studies on sex shaming and queer-phobia, it did hurt to see these publications post my image and use my sexuality as a platform for entertainment based upon fear and shame. After some consideration I’ve decided to not link to any article that disrespects my gender or sexual identity. As queers, it’s not worth our energy to be brought down by ignorance and negativity.

I personally prefer to focus on progression, and overall, I’d say the event was a positive one that helped to validate many student’s identities and allowed for one-on-one and follow-up emails on questions about queer topics, and on a broader level, resulted in major media using the term genderqueer and respecting gender-neutral pronouns. The college reacted in a way that is to be commended, ensuring (quite literally) a safe space and committing to education through challenging programs that encourage dialogue.

In response to the controversy surrounding the event, Williams students wrote a phenomenal editorial piece We Will Not Be Silenced, in The Williams Record. It is a definite must-read and a future I’m proud to be a part of.

Follow along with Jiz Week, where I’ll be posting random tidbits, as well as updates from the Feminist Porn Awards and events.

Have a burning question you want to ask about the Feminist Porn Awards and participants, or something you want me to write on? Let me know!

Follow me @jizlee on Twitter, or check out the hashtag is #FPA2012. And GirlzPorn.com will be live-streaming the Awards’ Ceremony.

Because “better” is in the eye of the beholder, and given that all adults involved are legal and consenting, there’s not really such a thing as “bad” pornography in an ethical, sex-positive culture. Better might just mean different — it might mean a more diverse selection that can give us new choices and show us things not found in most porn. That’s why I like MORE, because pornography’s danger is when it paints a limiting view on who gets to have sex and who likes what. When so many of us don’t have access to sex education or examples of sexual expression, the “one-porn-fits-all” approach creates and maintains stereotypes and even implies what is “normal” — and I think that is really what the heart of the issue is.

2010 Feminist Porn Awards. Photo: Lana Paiement

The Feminist Porn Awards, ingeniously created by Toronto’s women-owned sex toy store Good For Her, bring visibility to a small but growing porn market of content created outside of (and more and more recently, within) the predominant mainstream market. In order to be considered for an honor, the work either depicts genuine female pleasure, has a woman leading an integral creation of the work, or expands the boundaries of sexual representation on film and challenges stereotypes found in mainstream porn. I was thrilled to receive “Boundary Breaker” in 2010 for my work in the porn industry, specifically being present online and vocal about my experiences. I’m really flattered by the honor, because I think anyone can do this. Maybe I’m just one of the few right now.

If you film them… they will come!
- Jiz Lee

The more positive reinforcement there is behind budding filmmakers, new companies, alternative views of sex, the more diversity we’ll see in the industry. I’ve been doing porn for the last seven years, and it’s just growing and growing! This year, I’m proud to have been involved with 10 11 of the nominated projects, including five six DVDs and five websites. WOW!

FUCKSTYLES features re-edited scenes from QueerPornTV, including a beautiful and artsy scene of myself and fellow genderqueer performer Papi Coxxx. Gush: The Official Guide to the G-Spot & Female Ejaculation features a solo scene within the context of Dr. Carol Queen’s beginner sex ed for couples. Live Sex Show was a live performance featuring myself and Nina Hartley filmed during the Center for Sex & Culture’s Masturbate-a-thon. What’s special about this particular film is that it includes explicit vaginal fisting, something usually cut out of most distributed DVDs, but a few sex-positive retailers are awesome enough to fight the censorship and carry it! Mommy is Coming is Cheryl Dunye’s explicit raunch comedy filmed in Berlin; in it I play Teo and have a lighthearted BDSM scene with Judy Minx and Lil Harlow. It premiered at Berlinale and is now hitting film festivals across the globe! Taxi Vol 2 includes an emotionally intense scene with myself and Dallas Fivestar, as well as an AVN Nominated three-way with Madison Young and Nic Switch. Padded Submissives includes a scene with Kellly Shibari and Courtney Trouble, which I shot at Jamye Waxman’s crib. BobbiStarr.com includes a POV scene with me and Bobbi from her film Vicarious. CrashPadSeries.com is directed by Shine Louise Houston and includes several scenes I am in — this summer is it’s 5th Anniversary and it has almost 200 episodes! NoFauxxx.com is Courtney Trouble’s first website, including great photos and scenes from her Good Releasing films and more. And my own site JizLee.com — Yes, this one! — is nominated and includes my membership section “Karma Pervs“, an erotic philanthropic art project where I raise funds for sex-positive, queer and kink friendly non-profits and causes. Phew!

So let’s make MORE porn! Just how MANY submissions were accepted to be nominated for the 2012 Feminist Porn Awards! Congrats to everyone, and I can’t wait to see you in April!

2012 Feminist Porn Award Nominations

Website Nominations: 

Feminist Porn 2012 Events 

MOMMY IS COMING is a raunch comedy directed by Cheryl Dunye and co-written by Sarah Schulman, and produced by Dunye, Claus Matthes, and Jürgen Brüning, who you might recognize as the producer of Bruce LaBruce’s works, such as LA ZOMBIE.

MOMMY is a sexually explict feature, an “adult comedy”, which I think will be a big hit for fans of queer porn. It is also one of five films selected for the Panorama that is female-directed. It stars Lil Harlow (Dylan), Papí Coxxx (Claudia/Claude), and Maggie Tapert (Helen). There’s also HOT appearances by Sadie Lune, Océan LeRoy, Carrie Gray, Mad Kate, dj Metzgerei, Kay, Pau, Marit Östberg and others — it’s an amazing international cast! I play Teo, Dylan’s best-friend and BDSM play-pal, and the two of us enjoy a three-way with Judy Minx. I also have a short scene with Stefan Kuschner (Jay) in the Axel hotel lobby, where much of the film takes place.

MOMMY IS COMING is raunchy queer sex filled romance set in the international creative melting pot Berlin. A take on screwball romantic comedies, director Cheryl Dunye (THE WATERMELON WOMAN, STRANGER INSIDE, THE OWLS) adds sexual imagery to her ingenious form of storytelling. Structured like an off beat fairy tale, we follow Claudia, Dylan and Helen as they bumble their way through hotels, queer Berlin nightlife, and their hearts only to realize that in matters of love it sometimes pays to listen to your Mommy.

Legendary American underground director Cheryl Dunye has a penchant for sex, fun, gender-bending and taboo breaking. She takes great relish in this humorous tale of three women’s sexual journey that is both a buoyant reference to and a self-confidently queer interpretation of a porn scenario. Dunye will be familiar to Berlinale audiences from her Teddy Award-winning WATERMELON WOMAN (1996). She returned to the Panorama in 2010 with THE OWLS.

Dylan is having troubles with her girlfriend Claudia: while Dylan mostly wants sex, Claudia is looking for affection. To top it all, her mother Helen just announced her visit. Set in the international creative melting pot Berlin, this raunchy, explicit romantic comedy of errors confronts the last lesbian taboo: Mommy. 

Here’s some images, most taken by Emilie Jouvet

MOMMY IS COMING Website: mommyiscoming.com (Press Release)

Program Notes: berlinale.de

Find MOMMY on Facebook.

Raspberry and Cream Distribution: raspberryandcream.com
Also: teddyaward.tv, lambdaliterary.org, indiewire.com, sannekurz.com

While I’m in Berlin I’ll be enjoying some parties with the cast and crew, and will be speaking with SoulCats, a Berlin-based Sex Worker group.
Want to tag along? Follow me on Twitter or Facebook during the trip! Big thanks to Five&Diamond for supplying costuming for my character!

It’s a question I get asked a lot and it’s a fairly simple answer: Yes, many close family members know that I do porn, and they support me. And some of them I haven’t told yet because I want to come out to them when the time is right.

Simple enough on the surface, but there’s much more.

I am seeking submissions of personal narratives from porn performers, videographers, photographers, producers, directors, web producers, industry writers and reviewers, and anyone else who works in the field of adult videos, websites, and other explicit content. The current focus is on submissions approximately 1000 words, but longer or shorter works will be considered. (I will also accept submissions that are creative, including poetry, visual art, music and video as supplemental elements involved in the promotion of the final ebook.)

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

• Please provide your experience coming out (or not) and whatever details about the situation that feel comfortable to you and the parties involved.
• Please include name changes, pen names, or anonymous submissions.
• Submissions should be approximately 1,000 words in length.
• Writers retain rights and may publish their work at any time, as they see fit. Exclusivity is not required.
• Please send as a Word, Text, or Google Doc, or in the body of the email.
• If your work is selected, I will contact you in regards to publishing information, payment, and contracts.
• If your work is selected, I will contact you in regards to any desired biographies and website URLs.

Email: Jiz@JizLee.com
I will respond to all submissions no later than October 11th, 2012. (National Coming Out Day.)

So, what was your experience like? Or what information do you withhold? Do you work behind the camera in video, photography, editing or web production, and are you out about it? Do you generalize what you do when asked? Are you more open to disclosing your job to friends or strangers? Do your children know about your work? Do their teachers know? Do you have any advice to others? Did you find acceptance and excitement about coming out? Are there other coming out stories you think are relevant?

- – -

Without getting into too much specifics, because I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to speak on behalf of someone else with such a personal topic, I’ll share some of thoughts I’ve had since coming out a few years ago.

1. Coming out about porn can mean coming out about other things.
In my case, my porn involves a lot of aspects of my personal life. This means incorporating queer and kinky sex with many of my lovers, my gender expression, and this very website with my blog describing how I enjoy sex work and think it’s fun and healthy. That sentence alone incorporates at least five things to come out about, besides porn itself: My 1) queer sexuality; 2) Kink; 3) polyamorous lifestyle; 4) genderqueer/trans* identity; and, 5) sex work as sex-positive pleasure.

It can be difficult to come out as just one of these things, so the fact that they’re wrapped up in one another adds complications. Since my teenage years, I’ve come out as gay, then poly, and the last three all together.

2. You don’t just come out once.
As I’ve come out over the years about different things, I’ve come to understand that the act of coming out is not a one-time event. It’s not like once you’ve come out, it’s over and things are either fine or they’re not. There are the on-going discussions that come up and there’s further outings that happen (either by you or other people, sometimes accidentally). It takes an open heart to commit to being honest about the fears and anger that can arise, and to communicate these feelings in a healthy way.

I’m blessed to have a lot of love in my family. And that love is there even when there is fear or confusion.

3. There’s very few resources.
Books have been written for parents of transgender youth, for teens on coming out as queer, and BDSM lifestyles such as “When Someone You Love is Kinky“. When one of my partners and I were first exploring non-monogamy, we found “The Ethical Slut” and “Opening Up” full of helpful information. And while there are books about sex work and sex & culture, there’s not much specific to pornography. Of the sex educators and sexologists I’ve asked, it seems that this book has yet to be written.

For a brief history on the beginnings of the porn industry as we know it, check out Michael Stabile’s documentary “SMUT CAPITAL OF AMERICA“. A strange fact is that the very people I’m coming out to have been alive longer than the industry itself. Porn — at least the kind that’s sold online and in stores for personal viewing — hasn’t been around for very long. Perhaps the fact that it’s still so new is one reason why there’s not a lot published on the subject.

Another reason of course, is the subject itself.

4. Porn is a four-letter word.
One of the reasons it took me so long to come out was my fear that I would be judged and I would lose my family’s love. No matter how brilliant and loving someone is, I still am afraid that coming out to them will cause them to think poorly of me, pulling from society’s stereotypes of sex workers being naive or damaged victims, powerless or coerced. There’s so much shame around sex in our culture, that even though it’s legal and very common, there’s stigma around P-O-R-N. Many of the people I’ve worked with refuse to call their work “porn” because of these terrible associations. For myself though, I think that breaking down the stereotypes is part of the process. While much of the work I do can be described as erotic, sexual documentary and adult cinema, and my intentions can gravitate towards sex-positive representation and alternative views of healthy sexuality through working primarily with people whom I’ve loved… at the end of the day: I did porn.

5. The Internet is Forever.
Part of my organic, “self-agent process” entails my decisions to meet directors and co-stars before agreeing to do a project. And if that can’t happen for whatever reason, they must come with strong references or recommendation from people I know. When you perform in porn, you sign the rights of your image over to a producer. When a sexual image of you is published online, it’s there forever. It’s downloaded to user’s computers, it’s shared on Tumblr, and as much as you might try to control it… once it’s done, it’s done. This is the reason I try to work with directors and producers who I feel understand and respect me and my identity. The process of putting myself out there in ways I have some control over, establishing my identity and creating representations of people like me, outweigh the dangers of people behaving with malicious or exploitative intentions. It’s a known risk, and one I’m willing to take even though it can be frightening, especially for loved ones. It can also mean that you can be outed through an image online at any given time… regardless if it’s flattering or not.

So where am I now?

Honestly, I think I’m still the same place I was before I first came out, only now I can share my excitement and pride in my accomplishments. How GOOD it feels to not have to tell white lies about my trips abroad, traveling half-way around the world to “visit friends”. I hate lying. I feel more shame in the fact that I lied to my family, than I ever will about the sex I had on film.

And coming out hasn’t changed my decisions about doing porn. (Although knowing that my family can read my blog means I’ll try to remember to proofread.) As always, I’ll continue to do projects which I think are satisfying to me while exploring the genre — in a way that is safe and sustainable, and teaches me and others about sex and pleasure. From the beginning, each project I do is a choice. Even though I can’t claim that they’ve all been brilliant, shining examples of my sex-positive philosophy, and that sometimes I work with a production that probably wasn’t the best fit, each project has been lesson in helping me define and articulate the power I have of my own sexuality and autonomy.

So, I feel proud about all this. And, I want to ask for your help.

I wrote this blog post in hopes that it will help me form my thoughts about coming out, and maybe it can offer something to you. But I need more resources. Do you know a good book or blog post I can use to create a “syllabus” of supporting materials to help other performers, families and friends find the information and validation they need to come out? (This information will help me and my own family too, that’s for certain!)

Thank you everyone, for the support you’ve given to me through your emails and messages, for purchasing my work, for respecting my gender pronouns and sexuality, for inspiring me to write and share my experiences, and more. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

Shine Louise Houston and I modeled the new RodeoH Harnesses, and Tristan Crane took cute pics.

Want to see the harness below the belt? Check them out at RodeoH.com.

Nominations I’m a part of include:

Best All-Girl Group Scene
Taxi 2, Juicy Pink Box/Girlfriends; Madison Young, Jiz Lee & Nic Switch

Best All-Girl Release
Cherry 2, Jewelbox/Digital Playground
Taxi 2, Juicy Pink Box/Girlfriends Films

Best Girl/Girl Sex Scene
Cherry 2, Jewelbox/Digital Playground; Jiz Lee & Andy San Dimas

Best Educational Release
Gush: The Official Guide to the G-Spot & Female Ejaculation, Good Releasing
Tristan Taormino’s Expert Guide to Female Orgasms, Vivid Ed

Best Vignette Release
Rough Sex 3: Adrianna’s Dangerous Mind, Vivid Entertainment Group

Best Alternative Website
QueerPorn.TV, Trouble Films Network
JuicyPinkBox.com, Jincey Lumpkin

Specialty Release – Other Genre
Crash Pad Series Volume 6: Wide Open, Pink & White/Good Releasing

Best New Line
Jewelbox Films, Digital Playground
Juicy Pink Box, Girlfriends Films

Best New Series
Taxi, Girlfriends Films

By the way, you can buy these films and others directly from me — just email jiz@jizlee.com.

That’s a whole lotta porn!

Award shows in themselves are interesting to me because they offer a reflection of the industry. I remember learning that the Feminist Porn Awards chooses not to post categories, yet the films are given a title for their win. Such as “Movie of the Year” or “Most Tantalizing Trans Film”. The AVN Awards seem to build categories that relate to the way the movies are marketed, which makes sense and also shows trends and changes in the industry. For example, this year there is a “Best Celebrity Sex Tape” category, and several Porn Parody categories. Also, we see “Best Female Performer of the Year”, “Best Male Performer of the Year”, “Best Transsexual Performer of the Year”, and “Best MILF of the Year”. Huh.

Queer pornography tends to fall under the Specialty Release – Other Genre, which this year includes Crash Pad Series Volume 6: Wide Open and Carlos Batt’s Sola — which was an independent limited time release that my doll April Flores would mail wrapped in her colorful fishnet stockings.

My explorations into mainstream pornography have placed me in “Girl/Girl” categories, which as another performer explained is simply based on my female sex and “female/female” doesn’t have the same ring to it. I suppose she’s right, still, the categories will continue to fascinate me. I wonder if there will ever be a queer porn category, as many websites are doing to create a new space for porn that has a blend of sexual identities and gender expressions, or if queer content will continue to exist in “Other Genre” or “Alternative” sections, or, if that’s even a categorization that will also be problematic. (Who’s to say what’s queer?) So far the awards are boxed as Girl/Girl, B/B/G and G/G/B, various straight sex acts, transsexual (usually just Trans Women), and Other/Alternative. For cisgender gay men, there’s the GayVN Awards, which have been inclusive so much as to nominate films featuring transmen, such as Trannywood’s movies. So it’s a pleasant surprise to see Buck Angel’s SEXING THE TRANSMAN XXX nominated for not only “Best Transsexual Release” but also “Best Sex Education Release” for the AVN Awards.

Though it was shot about 2 and a half years ago, I’m really interested to see TAXI and Juicy Pink Box nominated now that they’ve partnered with Girlfriends Films to distribute DVDs from the web content. I had the pleasure of watching my scene with Dallas Fivestar while at the Berlin Porn Film Festival, and it really conveyed the chemistry between Dallas and I, who were lovers at the time it was shot. Juicy Pink Box and their DVDs through Girlfriends received a lot of nominations, including a Best Girl/Girl scene between Justine Joli and Syd Blakovich, and another nomination for Justine in the “Best Solo” category. I look forward to seeing what’s next for Juicy Pink Box, as they’ve cast another genderqueer performer, Papi Coxxx, in an upcoming production, as well as Drew DeVeaux, another popular queer porn star and outspoken, boundary breaking, transwoman. Will Drew be the next nominated New Starlet? I hope so.

It was a beautiful and somewhat surreal experience to work with Digital Playground and Jewelbox Films, because Digital is such a mainstream company. The production quality of their films is outstanding and the script for Cherry is dark and complex. I was thrilled to be cast as an androgynous DJ “Carson”, and felt so accepted on the set — shaved head and all! Cherry received a slew of nominations, from “Best Cinematography” and “Best Screenplay” to “Best Director” for Kay Brandt, and the star of the series, Judy Thompson, received a nomination for her Non-Sex Performance. Kay asked me who I’d like to work with, and I suggested Andy San Dimas, who I’d had a crush on, and still do. We had a quick and dirty scene that takes place in Cherry 2 — I loved that I could wear my realistic cock, and neither Andy nor myself took our tops off during the scene, something that you might expect from porn created with a straight male audience in mind. So it’s really cool to see our scene nominated!

One of the first mainstream companies I had the pleasure of working with was Vivid, with multi-talented director and self-identified 3rd genderation queer, Tristan Taormino. My first shoot with her was Tristan Taormino’s Expert Guide to Female Orgasms. She welcomed me on set and everyone was super respectful of my gender pronouns. The film has a diverse cast and I appreciate that it is focused on education around the female anatomy and sexual pleasure — so it’s not specifically womens’ orgasms, but anyone with female sexual anatomy. Tristan’s other nominated film is Rough Sex 3: Adrianna’s Dangerous Mind which I was lucky to be a part of. Tristan is nominated for “Best Director”, and the film has a number of nominations including “Best Vignette Release” and I got to watch the filming of the Best Threeway scene with Adrianna, Keni Styles and Danny Wylde.

Other interesting things to me about the nominations are the slew of Crossover nominations, which includes Yasmin Lee who performed in Hangover 2. I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’m interested in it specifically to see her performance. You can read an interview with her about the role on translabyrinth.com.

Also of note are what looks to be growing similarities of nominated titles between this list and those of the Feminist Porn Awards, which make me think that the mainstream industry is shifting its marketing a bit, to create films like A Little Part of Me, and to submit it to places like the FPA’s, where it was awarded “Steamiest Romantic Movie” last April. For AVN, it’s nominated for “Best Feature” and “Best Screenplay”.

Just celebrating 1 year on the internet is QueerPorn.TV, which is nominated for “Best Alternative Website”. With CrashPadSeries.com being nominated last year, it’s great to see some familiar sites getting recognition. Congrats also goes to queer friends Bren Ryder (GoodDykePorn.com) and “Transsexual Performer of the Year” nominees Aly Sinclair and Juliette Stray. (One of Juliette’s first scenes was with CrashPadSeries.com.) And also to Bobbi Starr (BobbiStarr.com) and Nina Hartley (Nina.com) for their website nominations, Belladonna and Joanna Angel, Julie Simone, Kimberly Kane and Dana DeArmond for tons of nominations, and Lee Roy Myers who has a nomination for his Katy Perry Parody, for an outrageous scene between Kimberly and “Elmer”. It looks like a wacky flick. Here’s the Youtube Trailer. Tickle me, Elmo!

I hope everyone has a great time in Las Vegas. I’ll catch a wave for ya — A Hui Ho(s!)

UPDATE:  Cherry 2 (Jewelbox/Digital Playground) won “Best All-Girl Release” — congrats to Kay Brandt and everyone on the production!

The event is hosted by the sex toy store “Good For Her” in Toronto. Each year the screening and awards ceremony gets bigger and bigger, grabbing the attention of international media and raising important discussions about pornography. And bringing visibility to filmmakers working within new ways of producing and marketing pornographic movies and websites.

I’m very proud to be the 2010 recipient of the “Boundary Breaker” Award, and have also performed in films which have been awarded “Hottest Trans Sex Scene”, “Hottest Dyke Sex Scene”, “Most Diverse Cast”, and “Movie of the Year”. You can read about my experiences at the 2009, 2010, and 2011 ceremonies, or check out the posts tagged Feminist Porn Awards.

The official nomination period for consideration (they accept film AND websites) opens on December 1, 2011 and will close on February 17, 2012. In order to be considered for a Feminist Porn Award, submissions must meet at least 1 of the following criteria:

* The work depicts genuine pleasure, agency and desire.  These movies may also include a focus on connection, communication and collaboration between the performers and/or between the performers and filmmakers.

* The work expands the boundaries of sexual representation on film, challenges stereotypes and presents a vision that sets the content apart from most mainstream pornography.  This may include depicting a diversity of desires, types of people, bodies, sexual practices, and/or an anti-racist or anti-oppression framework throughout the production.

You can find submission, rules, and other information at Good For Her.

Thank you to the brilliant minds at Good For Her, to all the directors and people in front and behind the camera, and to bloggers, reviewers, fans, and supporters who are helping to fuel more diversity, consent, and expressions within these adult mediums.

You ready for a monster post? Well grab your lube, lay back, and relax. It’s late on Thursday night and I’m typing this out at one of my favorite bars, El Rio. San Francisco just felt it’s second earthquake today. It makes me shiver thinking about the fragility of our lives, the great divides between the earth and our existence. And then, you know, there’s fisting. Crossing my fingers the ground below my feet withhold a mighty quake, let’s get this blog going.

Not too long ago, I was chatting with my friend and fellow pornographer Courtney Trouble, about her recent film LiveSexShow, which is a fundraiser for the Center for Sex and Culture filmed during the non-profit’s annual Masturbate-a-Thon. I performed with Nina Hartley, for an audience of pleasure activists. And the chemistry was high with me and Nina, and we jumped into each other, and we had a grand time, and during that time, her fingers and then her whole hand went inside my cunt. And then I came for the crowd and for myself, and for my friend holding a video camera for the world to see.

At least, we hope the world could see.

For as long as I’ve done porn, distribution companies and retailers have banned the act of fisting in the films I’ve been in. It feels like it’s always been this way, but that’s not true. It’s only been a little over a decade.

Anti-porn movements, in particular the administrations which coincide with them, have had a bone to pick against pornography. For obvious reasons, I’m pro-porn, sex-positive, and a firm advocate of consensual, ethical, and artistic erotic imagery. For the circles I run in, the act of making porn is a brave, powerful, and righteous thing. We’re representing marginalized communities, taking power through creating our own images of desire. As my friend Shine Louise Houston infamously says, that as a queer woman of color, it’s especially important for her to create her own sexual images. And I completely and passionately, agree. Explicitly demonstrating our pleasure shows authenticity that rivals anything shown of queers in Hollywood films and brings examples of healthy sexuality that have long been denied in sex education classes. Safer sex? Check. Communication? Check. Equal gender agency, you bet. Lube? Right here.

Since 2005, I’ve been appearing in porn for DVD distribution that I knew would not include fisting, one of my favorite sex acts. Even my very first porn scene with my lover at the time, Syd Blakovich. It didn’t make sense that fisting couldn’t be shown, but I tossed it up to it being the fact that porn is marketed and driven by a lot of assumptions about what sells, what sex should look like, what the people who have sex should look like, yada, yada, yada. Basically all the reasons why I knew I was doing something important.

But wait, why is fisting so important? What do I like about it? Ask me? Okay, here’s some actual questions I’ve had, about fisting:

Why is fisting important to you?
My first experiences with hand sex, where my body took in the entire fist of a lover, happened around a time of galactic sexual exploration. I was in my early twenties and it was mind-blowing. The orgasms were intense and I was in an open relationship and was dating a lot of people so it was exciting for me to have sex with friends and teach them how to fist me, to fist others, and to really enjoy practicing sex in a safe way and to experience this with lovers of all kinds of genders and sexual orientations. It was so much fun. Fisting is about being really present and in your body, and ready for a good time.

Why do you love fisting?
What I love about fisting someone vaginally is feeling them take me in. There’s an moment where the person just opens up to you. Once inside, they’re so warm, wet, and every little movement you make can be felt. It’s something that may take time. Fisting is something that doesn’t necessarily happen right away. You put a finger in. Then two. Then three, four, and then… and sometimes after long gentle coaxing, the thumb. Sometimes lovers can try several times in sex before fisting happens. But once you’ve got it, it’s golden! You can angle your hand for G-Spot stimulation. You can find your lovers’ “A Spot”, which is just under the cervix and some like to feel a bit of pressure there. You can carefully stroke and “jerk-off” the cervix, as if it were a small, internal cock. Unlike using a strap-on or dildo toy, my hand can feel every motion. It’s incredibly intimate and really sexy. If the chemistry and connection with my partner is strong, can literally come from penetrating someone with my hand!

As someone who loves to receive a fist, what I enjoy about it is an unparalleled feeling of fullness. The most sensitive areas of the vagina are just within the first few inches inside the vagina, which is where I like to use my kegel and pelvic muscles to grip snugly around a lovers’ wrist, which can be compared to the girth of a medium-large dildo. Deeper inside, pressure feels good for me. I like to rock my hips against a lovers’ hand, or hold very still and squeeze hard, creating a game where I try to hold their hand tightly in place as they move against me. I do my kegel exercises and am pretty strong so I have a lot of control over my vaginal muscles and can make myself very tight, or, allow myself to stretch open. Or pulse between the two extremes. Combining clitoral and vaginal stimulation, the network of nerves and contracting of muscles orchestrate some of the most amazingly intense orgasms I’ve had.

What do you say to people who think it’s dangerous or scary?
Some people think fisting is intense in a bad way — that it hurts. But anyone who loves fisting knows that it can be the most intimate and beautifully connecting experience with a lover. Or a really fun in a three-some — I’ve held the hand, fingers locked, with a lover while the two of us have fisted a friend. I’ve also had both my fists inside two different lovers at the same time, while they kissed intensely. I’ve 69′ed with fisting, and I’ve even fisted myself!

Fisting isn’t any more scary than any kind of unwelcome sexual advance. However many people don’t know that much about it. We learn about sex as only being penis-vagina intercourse. But sex is so much more! We don’t learn much about sexual anatomy, how to communicate with lovers, or about pleasure. In fact, when we see a fist, we may be more inclined to think of it punching someone in the face because we see images of violence more common and at a younger age than we do sex. (ie: Cartoons show characters throwing punches and shooting guns, yet wont show even a bare breast.) In “This Film Will Not Be Rated”, we see the MPAA approve violent scenes with more leniency than they do sex scenes, especially ones featuring female pleasure. So when we as a culture are more familiar with a fist being used to harm someone, it’s no wonder that someone who hasn’t had a healthy sex-positive education about fisting would assume it is painful. In our culture we see fists as painful weapons, when I see them as revolutionary weapons of sex-positive progress. Or, you know, the ASL symbol for the letter “E”. See? That’s not so scary.

What’s your experience with fisting?
Personal love of the topic aside, my work in adult has primarily featured fisting. In fact, I fist in my films more often than I’ve worn a strap-on. This may come as a surprise to many DVD buyers, who would never see the act as it’s been edited or angled out of the scenes, with the exception of online website content for queer porn sites. And with the exception of Courtney Trouble’s new film “LiveSexShow” where I am fisting by Nina Hartley. I’ve also performed as a demo model for Fisting Demonstrations in adult classes such as Reid Mihalko’s Iron Slut: Sex Educator Showdown! and have taught it as a guest lecturer on sex ed at colleges and universities. I am also a contributor in “The Official Book of Sex, Drugs, and Rock n Roll Lists”, where I give my Top Five Songs about fisting.

So there you go. And while it’s not the first time I knew fisting couldn’t be shown in a hardcopy DVD, this year it was the first time I’ve heard of fisting being banned by a Video on Demand (VOD) company due to fisting. And here’s where some background comes into play. Because: WHY is it okay to show fisting ONLINE, but not in a hard copy DVD?

Well. Here’s what I know.

DVD distributors, retailers, and porn producers, are afraid to SELL porn if it means they might be charged with an obscenity. To date, some men are in jail or have had court orders for showing “obscene” content, such as John Stagliano and Seymore Butts. This content includes female ejaculation, enemas, and in 2001, fisting. The charges in the case of fisting were dropped with an plea bargain for a meager $1,000 fine. However this scared distributors because since that date, at least in terms of the companies who have distributed my films, fisting was NOT to be shown. If fisting was present, footage was edited out if it was visible, or left in if the camera angle was such that you couldn’t tell fisting was occurring. Why fisting?

Fisting is on the Cambria List of sex acts not allowed for inclusion in content meant for physical distribution.

From PBS:

On January 18th, 2001, Adult Video News reported on the so-called “Cambria List.”  Paul Cambria, a longtime attorney for the porn industry, was involved in the list’s preparation. The list is controversial within the industry and interpretations differ on how it was meant to be applied. Some in the industry say it represents guidelines for the box-covers of adult videos, not for the sex acts they depict. Nevertheless, there is wide agreement that the Cambria List shows how the adult industry is seeking to be more careful, fearing a potential crackdown on pornography by the Bush Administration.

The Cambria List:

Box-Cover Guidelines/Movie Production Guidelines

Before selecting a chrome please check facial expression. Do not use any shots that depict any unhappiness or pain.

Do not include any of the following:

• No shots with appearance of pain or degradation
• No facials (bodyshots are OK if shot is not nasty)
• No bukakke
• No spitting or saliva mouth to mouth
• No food used as sex object
• No peeing unless in a natural setting, e.g., field, roadside
• No coffins
• No blindfolds
• No wax dripping
• No two dicks in/near one mouth
• No shot of stretching pussy
• No fisting
• No squirting
• No bondage-type toys or gear unless very light
• No girls sharing same dildo (in mouth or pussy)
• Toys are OK if shot is not nasty
• No hands from 2 different people fingering same girl
• No male/male penetration
• No transsexuals
• No bi-sex
• No degrading dialogue, e.g., “Suck this cock, bitch” while slapping her face with a penis
• No menstruation topics
• No incest topics
• No forced sex, rape themes, etc.
• No black men-white women themes

Several things are not on this list and several things are on this list which should never have been. I mean, WTF?!

I emailed Queery Bradshaw, who has a legal background and she confirmed what I expected about the legal aspects behind several porn obscenity trials when they come to bringing visibility to marginalized sexual practices. Particularly in terms of freedom of expression. She wrote back:

It’s a double edged sword because the more a topic, scene or act becomes mainstream, the least likely it is going to be considered obscene against the community standard. But, if you’re constantly censored for fear of being prosecuted, you can’t make those acts known or common place. I know authors that have had fisting (or the mention of sex at all even) censored out of their beautiful non-erotic literary works of art. People are afraid and the only way to stop that fear is to talk about it, but you don’t know if you talk about it if you’re going to be prosecuted. And that is why I totally agree with you Jiz that this is completely and totally a free speech censorship issue and that we need to talk about how healthy it is so people stop seeing fisting as this thing that people do to degrade and dishonor another (which is justification often for censoring anything).

Despite this go-to list, there’s more info to know about pornography and obscenity, which is the Miller Test, which courts have gone to in efforts to determine what might be obscene when there’s no written rule. Here’s Constance Penley talking about obscenity and pornography. (Constance is a co-editor of the upcoming “Feminist Porn Anthology” which will be made available to the gender studies classes to colleges and universities world-wide.)

The Miller test was developed in the 1973 case Miller v. California. It has three parts:

• Whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards”, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
• Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,
• Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

The work is considered obscene only if all three conditions are satisfied.

The first points are up to the standards of the community. What community? Whatever applies! That’s what makes it vague. The last one in particular is held up to whatever is reasonable to a person of the United States as a whole. The Miller Test is basically the reason why it’s okay to have more freedom of sexuality online, while less on physical DVDs. While there are many areas in the United States where it is illegal to mail pornography, it’s more difficult to determine online community. This is especially true for queers who at least in my case have found community online. To further prove my point, many queers think fisting is completely normal. (If not just normal, it’s amazing!)

If I had a dime for every time I’ve given a talk and had people give me a confused “WTF?” look when I brought up the fact that fisting was banned from DVDs “Why? What’s wrong with fisting?” I would have enough money to pay my way into congress and provide adequate (queer and kink friendly) education to every citizen in the US so that people will understand pleasure and sex-positivity.

So here we are.

I’ve fisted in much of my films and online content. In fact, I think I’ve fisted more times than I’ve squirted or even worn a strap-on. It’s that common. While I have been somewhat unfortunately hesitant to fist on film because I know about the ban, I also have the liberation with companies who have web content because I know they wont have to edit it out. I also know that film crews can film a “soft” shot of the action if they so please. It’s something I’ve dealt with for a while now, and because I know that the way we consume porn is changing and going more and more to the internet so eventually fisting will reign.

Imagine my surprise when I heard that Courtney’s film submitted for VOD was denied because of the scene. Not VOD! The internet is supposed to be okay with fisting, because it’s my community who likes to see it. That’s what prompted our Fisting Day. We have to let people know more about fisting. Why it’s supposedly banned, why it’s awesome if they’ve never thought about it before. Why it’s okay, even political, to love fisting.

If you want to watch me fisting, I recommend QueerPorn.TV scene with Papí Coxxx and most of my scenes on CrashPadSeries.com, including cool double fisting and simultaneous fisting scenes with Syd Blakovich & Micah Riot, and Dallas & Vai. And ANOTHER fisting scene with Nina.

Finally, as promised in my post announcing fisting day, here is a small gallery of fisting!

The introduction is for my longer blog post which I will publish October 21st.
The invitation is for you to join me and my friend Courtney Trouble in bringing awareness to one of the most amazing sexual acts I know and love: fisting.

Anyone who does it knows it can be one of the most intimate, consensual, and beautiful connections between lovers. Everyone can enjoy fisting. And for those of us in the queer community, fisting is a sex act that is actually quite popular. It’s for this reason that I say: Fisting censorship discriminates against queer sex. You may be surprised to know that fisting happens quite often in my films, you just can’t see it because it’s been angled or edited out. While many queer porn websites celebrate and show hand sex proudly, the act has been cut out of DVDs and left on the editing floor for over a decade. For as long as I’ve known, vaginal fisting has been censored by distributors, and while it’s still okay to show it online, where many people are increasingly watching their porn, some Video on Demand websites have started to ban fisting footage in an effort avoid possible obscenity charges. It’s just not right, and it’s downright homophobic. I hope that very soon we look back at this moment and think: “WTF?!”

How can you help?

October 21st is unofficially officially International Fisting Day!

Join me in being vocal about fisting! I include my love of fisting on all my bios and do it on camera whenever I can. Let’s celebrate and normalize the act! On Friday, October 21st, post a blog about fisting — what it means to you, what you like about it, tweet about #fisting, Facebook about the act. Share my post, share others’ posts. Tumblr the fuck out of it. Read a fisting how-to book. Watch queer porn online. (Check out my scenes on CrashPadSeries.com and QueerPorn.tv!) And if you want to be one of the first wave of supporters to order a DVD that actually has fisting IN it, October 21st is also the release date of Courtney Trouble’s LIVE SEX SHOW. So get excited. Learn something. Teach someone. Talk about it. Watch it. Love it. Join our FIST FIGHT!

At the very least, think of fisting in a sex-positive way. Even if it’s not your thing, know that for some people, it’s a sexual act that brings pleasure. Now who’d want to censor that?

Helpful Links:
Fisting Day Tumblr – Follow and Repost!
Facebook Fisting Day Event – Attend and Invite Others!
How to Fist – a Primer if you want to celebrate literally
Courtney Trouble’s Fisting Day Post
Twitter – Follow @JizLee & @CourtneyTrouble Hashtag is #fisting

P.S. You may have noticed I haven’t used any images of fisting in this post… sad thing, isn’t it, if there’s no fisting to be seen?! Well, make sure to check back on October 21st!