Behind the Scenes - The Sex Industry

Adult film star. Porn webmaster. Escort. Dominatrix. Hustler. Hooker. Stripper. Peep-show girl.

Have enough negative images in your mind yet? Maybe a certain amount of personal discomfort? Perhaps even a slight feeling of hypocrisy, as you realize that you, like so many of us, watch porn or go to strip clubs or visit sex workers, while in your daytime life thinking of the people who so please you at night as social outcasts, as people who have fallen through the cracks, perhaps as subhuman. Even other sex workers sometimes separate themselves quite deliberately from the “lower” echelons: the high-class call girl doesn’t want to be equated with the street hooker.

It’s only natural, only cultural. It’s how the climate in which we live encourages us to think: sex workers are an essential component of a healthy economy, especially in a society rife with taboos about what we are permitted to enjoy.

But this column is here to challenge the notion that your favorite stripper is somehow different, and definitely inferior, to your doctor, your secretary ,the waitress at your neighborhood coffee shop. Your sister.

Sex work is real work, done by real people. It’s time to end the separation.

Every month in After Hours, I will interview a different person in the sex industry in an effort to reveal their very real lives, both inside and outside the business. We hope that you enjoy it, and that it also leaves you thinking.

This Month

Little Trouble with Big Brother: An Interview with Paul ‘Max Hardcore’ Little

Paul Little, also known as Max Hardcore, has gone from a hardcore pornography star and director to a symbol of the fight against censorship. Willing to perform all kinds of sexual acts, and portray even more, Little has never used a non-consenting adult for his films, or sent any films to anyone unsolicited. That did not stop the US government, however, from sentencing him to 46 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and fining him $7,500 for “mailing obscene matter” and posting “obscene” trailers on his website. Little’s company, MaxWorld Entertainment Inc., was fined $75,000 and ordered to serve five years probation. The jury spared Little his house, which the government could have ‘lawfully’ seized.

Ron Jeremy is simultaneously ubiquitous and elusive. From his New York Times bestselling autobiography, Ron Jeremy: The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz, to Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy, a documentary pieced together from choice moments of his life, it’s safe to say the public is inundated with enough material on the AVN’s number one porn star of all time. With an estimated 4,000 women on his bedpost notch, he’s certainly popular with the ladies and he proudly admits in his book that he’s never had an STD in his life. He’s been known to rub shoulders with A-list celebrities and rock stars and recently made several cameos in both porn and mainstream media, and continues to gain ground in the mainstream arena. But who exactly is Ron Jeremy?

Like high heels and wanton glances, Dian Hanson will never go out of style. The goddess of the pornography publishing world has reigned supreme since her days running Leg Show and Juggs. These days, Ms. Hanson finds herself writing, editing and archiving for Taschen Books (working with the likes of Terry Richardson and Roy Stuart). Lifelong friend of Robert Crumb, Vanessa Del Rio and Tempest Storm; Dian’s memoir is a tale that could only be described as a publisher’s wet dream. Her sense of loyalty to her peers shines via her unwillingness to sell others out to make a fast buck. It’s clear; their secrets are safe with Dian. Her intelligence, candor and strength exude from being a groundbreaking force that continues to be reckoned with.

The late George Carlin’s “battle with dirty words was couple of decades ago and here we are now in 2008 still fighting against the same problems,” says author and editor Ellen Sussman. “Censorship hasn’t changed much over the years.” No truer, and sadder, words have been spoken. Sussman has felt the widespread negative effects of the FCC when she was denied spots on radio shows because of some of the “dirty words” that would have been used on air. Even bookstores have tried to hide the book’s cover from plain view and have buried them in the reference and, get this, the brides’ advice sections. However, Sussman doesn’t hold any grudges. A self-proclaimed feminist, she bides by Virginia Woolf’s tenet of every woman needing “a room of her own, and for Sussman that means not getting bothered by such petty things.