Sex Talks With Emma-Louise Boynton - From cam-girl to porn performer and director with Vex Ashley: "porn doesn't have to be feminist or not feminist, but you can critique it through a feminist lens"

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

On this episode of the podcast, Emma sits down with porn performer, director, editor and producer, Vex Ashley, to find out how she went from cam-girl to running her own independent porn platform, and why she considers sex such an interesting and important topic for us to discuss. After rejecting being demoted to ‘muse’ while at art school and then getting naked online as a cam girl, Vex started up the independent porn platform called Four Chambers back in 2013 in order to expand the idea of what sex on film could do, be and say. The platform explores the intersection between sex, psychology, technology, art history and well everything in between and Vex is both behind and in front of the camera, something she sees as key to the way she works. "I'm pretty hardline on this", she told us previously, “if you're making money off of asking people to fuck on film, you should yourself have fucked on film.” Book tickets to the next live recording of the Sex Talks podcast here. And subscribe to the Sex Talks Substack here.

Hello and welcome to the Sex Talks podcast with me, your host Emma Louise Boynton. Sex Talks exists to engender more honest, open and vulnerable discussions around typically taboo topics, like sex and relationships, gender inequality, and the role technology is playing and changing the way we date, love and fuck. Our relationship to sex tells us so much about who we are and how we show up in the world, which is why I think it's a topic we ought to talk about with a little more nuance and a lot more curiosity. So each week, I'm joined by a new guest, whose expertise on the topic I'd really like to mind, and do well just that. From writers, authors and therapists to actors, musicians and founders, we'll hear from a glorious array of humans about

the stuff that gets the heart of what it means to be human. If you want to join the conversation outside of the podcast, sign up to my newsletter. We have a link in the show notes. or come along to a live recording of the podcast at the London Edition Hotel. Okay, I hope you enjoy the show. Feminism is a lens through which to critique things, not a label to assign things. So porn doesn't have to be feminist or not feminist. You can critique porn through a feminist lens, and I think it's important to do that. On this episode of the podcast, I sat down with porn performer, director,

editor and producer Vex Ashley. After rejecting being demoted to Muse while at art school and then getting naked online as a camgirl, Vex started up the independent porn platform called Four Chambers back in 2013 in order to expand the idea of what sex on film could do, be and say. The platform explores the intersection between sex, psychology, technology, art history and, well, everything in between. And Vex is both behind and in front of the camera.

something she sees as key to the way she works. I'm pretty hard line on this, she told me. If you're making money off of asking people to fuck on film, you should yourself have fucked on film. I interviewed Vex a little while ago at a live version of Sex Talks, the London Edition Hotel, and was eager to get her back on the podcast for an extended interview because I really love the way she thinks and talks about sex. For those of you haven't heard me wax lyrical about why I started sex talks. I started the platform after doing sex therapy personally, an experience which had a profoundly transformative impact on me and my life more broadly. It not only changed my relationship to sex, but to my body, my confidence, my sense of self.

Something I realised in the course of speaking to my brilliant sex therapist, Alex, is that sex is probably the most fascinating prism through which to explore so many different intersecting issues, from gender inequality to body image issues, to the ways in which technology is fundamentally changing our society. Beck shares my fascination with looking at society through the lens of sex and articulates what she sees and what she's discovered through her work in such a thoughtful, thought-provoking way. So, we began our conversation addressing, well, exactly this, as I asked her why sex is a topic she was so interested in

and whether it had always been a topic she'd been fascinated by. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. Vex welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for having me. I really love the way you talk about sex and sensuality. The level of nuance that you go into when you describe the all-pervasive nature of sex, how it relates to every aspect of our lives and our society, I think gives such an interesting and important perspective on the topics. Before we go into answering some brilliant agony on questions I've had sent in from the sex talks community, I want to first to have a bit of a deep dive into your career, which it goes out saying is a pretty

fascinating one. I don't know many people who are working both in front of and behind the camera in the porn industry. What initially prompted your interest in going into porn? Did you grow up watching lots of porn? Was it always something that you were really interested in? I think I always kind of remembered being really fascinated by sex, like the concept of sex. a young person finding it really captivating and wanting to be the kind of person that knew loads about it and like thinking about like why it was kind of kept in the shadows or like why we know what you spoke about it and I think as when I became a teenager I was interested in thinking about the power that it kind of had over us and I think that sex itself just conceptually was

interesting so it was less that I was really interested in watching loads of porn because I was like I mean, I was horny. I was a teenager, obviously, but it was more the idea of like learning about it and kind of expanding my understanding of it and thinking about it in a way that was almost like, it felt like almost like academic research. And I spent a lot of time on a site called literotica.com, if you know what that is? No. It's basically stories, like erotic stories. And as a teenager, that was my primary source of masteratory material. because A, some of the stuff on there was absolutely wild,

like completely way worse than anything you would see in porn today. Nothing was too taboo. So it became like this kind of investigative research that I was like combing to find out all kinds of different stuff like, ooh, what do people think is hot? What's interesting? Like, you know, what do I think is interesting? So I think that it kind of stemmed from that really, like just wanting to understand more about why it was so taboo to talk about sex and the fact that it had so much power over

everyone. And you ended up going to art school first and I know it became a little bit disillusioned I think by as I said in the introduction that kind of being constantly cast like the role of the muse. How did you end up going from I guess the role of the muse at art school being typecast into that to then becoming a cam girl to then running your own independent platform? When I was at art school, I got kind of critiqued for wanting to make work that was beautiful, like wanting to make work with my body. Like that was not the vibe at art school. It was like you had to make this like very self-referential ironic work.

It was very stripped back. And I just love like maximalism. I love like emotions. I love like the mess of it all. And that really didn't resonate. And I really felt like the art world very deeply was a place where you had to kind of ask permission to exist from all of these like old-fashioned art institutions, from, you know, the tutors that you had at university, from these spaces that have all of these kind of old-fashioned, like, archaic rules. And the thing that was amazing

and really fascinating to me about porn was that actually there wasn't necessarily this blueprint to follow. It was kind of all like outcasts and people just making it up as they went along. So it felt like a space that was, it had all of this freedom for me to kind of experiment and do whatever I wanted, which felt really freeing. to kind of working in this kind of prescriptive environment. The muse thing is kind of interesting because I obviously, like, looking back at the ways in which using my image and my body was something that I always did in my artwork. But through sex work, there's some kind of semblance of control of that image where it's

like, well, I'm going to be sexualized and I'm going to be kind of demoted to muse anyway. Like, why should I not have some kind of control of that? Why should I not benefit from that? why should I not be the person who is putting myself out there rather than necessarily having that, like, subjected onto me, if that makes sense? I suppose it's kind of objectifying male gaze in many ways. And it's almost like taking the reins of that gaze and saying, I will, I will show you, I will show you how to look at me or I will kind of take control of the image that you see.

Yeah, that's a really nice way of putting it. I don't necessarily think it gives you total respite from that. But I think having some semblance of control over how your image is being objectified, it gives you some of that power back from a world. Like, as women, I feel like we're acutely aware of the ways in which our image is objectified on a daily basis, whether we like it or not, you know, whether we wear makeup or not, whether we do porn or not. Like, these things seem to be relatively incidental. Like, we exist in a world where we move in a space.

that feels often like objectifying. So exploring that and being like, well, let's lean into it. Let's see what I can get out of it. Can it be interesting? Can it be subversive? Can I confront that? And how do I play into that myself as well, which is obviously another factor? I mean, inevitably it was a very interesting thing to pursue

is it ended up totally shaping your career since. Talk to me then about how you went from initially kind of starting out as a cam girl and i know tumbler had a role to play in your early cam cam girl days which definitely feels like such a such a throwback and suddenly makes you do think god wow so much time has passed but a bit a while exactly but yeah talked about how how you went from her started as a cam girl utilising tumbler and then end up going on to setting up your your own platform what was that what was that kind of evolution of your early career like yeah i think like camming basic came off of the back of being like being on Tumblr, seeing people who looked like me

doing sex work, which was really the first time that I had any idea that you didn't necessarily have to be my kind of cliched idea of like the 90s porn model to do sex work and to be successful at it. And camming was like more interesting, more fun and better paid than like the zero hour contract minimum wage retail job that I was working at the time. And I was like, huh, there's like real scope for this. And like I was seeing porn on Tumblr being really like curated next to other aspects of people's lives. So Tumblr was one of the few online spaces really that people have taken work with sex and mixed it in with all of the other inspiration, aesthetic content that they were curating. So it sat right there next to like pictures of sunset.

and your memes and your personal posts and it felt very much like it was integrated into your life. For me, I was like, that's really interesting. But the porn that I was seeing, I wasn't like, ah, it feels like that porn's just kind of, you know, not necessarily exploring the potential of porn as something that you could curate as like something that could look beautiful, that could look interesting that could be kind of conceptually interesting. So I was like, well, I'm going to, you know, start maybe. been doing some little experiments with other people who were like camming. I was kind of getting to know through the community. We just started making these little videos. They're essentially like I love

music videos and I feel like the first four chambers videos were very much like essentially like porn music videos where we were like, oh, I like this song. Can we make like a little sexy sort of short film like using that music? And it just kind of blew up on Tumblr in a way that like we would have never expected like the response that we got was so incredible. And it really felt. felt like it was doing something that I wasn't seeing anywhere else. So when I finished a uni, I was going to go and become a teacher. And I was like, ah, maybe I'll give this like, this porn thing ago, you know, just for a year. And then I'll like sack it off and go and do my like teacher training. And it is 10 years later and I'm still here. And still doing.

What do you think has kept you doing it for, for a decade when it was never really the plan? I think that it is an endlessly fascinating kind of facet of human existence to explore. So I think that there's so much potential and because there's not necessarily been loads of media already made, loads of kind of, you know, public exploration of sex, it means that there feels like there's still so much work to do and so much more to kind of touch on. so you never really feel like you get to the end of it. You never feel like you're repeating yourself because there's always more to dig into. And being your own boss is very seductive. It is both a blessing and a curse,

but like the freedom to make my own time scale to be able to like travel and to meet people for work in a way that like really builds community. Like the community of people who do sex work is really, it's really strong and it's taught me so much. I continue to learn from all of those people even now. So it's just one of those things where I'm like, I just can't imagine doing anything else anymore.

And the idea of, I mean, I've probably ruined my chances of being a teacher anyway now. You never know. If we can progress our ideas around porn and sex education, then maybe it's exactly the perfect person we do need to have in schools. Now, I want to understand a little bit better, the specificities of four chambers, the type of porn that you create. I think what is most notable for me.

And as someone who doesn't watch a huge amount of porn personally, but my experience of porn has historically been with free mainstream porn, which a lot of the cliches I think we have around what mainstream porn like perpetuates really do ring true. And then seeing your very art-housey, very sensual, very artistic films, I was pleasantly surprised. Ethical pornography, no ethical porn is a term that, or kind of genre of pornography, that's been around for a while.

I know it emerged, I think, in the late. 1980s, in reaction to this, kind of the centrality of the male gaze and that kind of cliche what we think of when we think of mainstream porn very much kind of centering male pleasure oftentimes being quite misogynistic and perpetuating kind of quite harmful ideals when it comes to sex. Now, you choose not to refer to the porn that you create at Forn Chambers as ethical porn, but you do have a very clear code of ethics really that you, subscribe to you're very transparent with how you work, with what you pay your performers. You can just go on the Four Chambers website, I've been on, read your manifesto for how you create

pornography. Why do you reject this, this term, ethical form? I think it's complicated because I can completely understand why people want to look for labels like that in a space that feels quite like overwhelming and confusing. And it's hard because I do think sometimes those labels have some merit, but for me, unfortunately, the reality is that everyone's ethics are entirely subjective. So we're existing in a world where if I say the porn that I make is ethical, what does that mean for you? You know, my idea of ethical might be entirely different. So when someone says, I make ethical porn, for me, the next question should always be like, what does that mean? What are the criteria by what?

which you're defining that, how do your personal ethics kind of influence your porn making? And I think it's this idea that, you know, often independent porn filmmakers will look at mainstream porn and go, mainstream porn, that's unethical, that's bad, we are independent, we are ethical, we are good. And I think that the reality is that everyone who's hopefully making work thinks that they're making it ethically, at least by their own standards. But what's important is really to be able to understand what that actually means. Because I know lots of people who have worked on independent sets who have not had a good time and do not feel like they've been treated ethically. And I know lots of people who've worked on mainstream sets who've had a great time

and have felt like everything's kind of been fine. So it's really about like the nuts and bolts of actually getting into what those terms mean because otherwise it feels like they're just used as advertising. It's just a way to sell something to you. A bit like, you know, when you're like buying something and it sells like, oh, this is the eco version of that. You're like, oh, great, I'll just buy that one. That makes you feel better as a consumer because it feels like you're making the right choice. But I think we need to look a bit deeper into what those things actually mean. So really as a consumer as well, there's kind of quite a lot of owners on the consumer to really investigate and understand how the porn they are consuming is being made rather than being

reliant on this term ethical as being a stamp. What for you personally defines a kind of code of ethics for porn that you create personally? I feel like performers and the people who are actually there putting their sexuality on film taking that risk, like taking that societal risk, the risk of like stigma, the risk of ostracization. Those people are the people who's like well-being should be prioritized. So for me, on my set, I think what everything kind of comes down to is that everything's up for negotiation, everything's up for collaboration, the film comes second to the experience that people have on the day and we can make a really good film.

The nice thing about making very like conceptual creative films is you can save it in the edit. If something happens on the day that you're like, damn, this thing that we really wanted, we couldn't get that. generally like we can do something with that footage that will still make a really great film and there's been times when that's happened where it's felt like we didn't maybe weren't able to get exactly what we wanted but it's actually pushed us to kind of we had we had to think more creatively about how to get the thing that we wanted so for me it would kind of just boil down to just being like people are the priority performers of the priority they're taking the risk they're the

people who are, you know, it's their bodies. It's, it's their lives. They're the people who have the like final say in like what goes on and how everything's kind of structured. That is really everything that kind of underpins at least like what I would like my set to feel like. And I think that's what's hard is that if you're on a bigger set, if you're on a set where there's lots of people's livelihoods at stake, there's lots of people's paychecks on the line. There's lots of pressure from, from studio companies, sometimes the people on the ground aren't necessarily prioritized in that way or they're not able to prioritize those people in that way. And we see that not just in porn. We see that, you know, across like media. So like I know I have friends who work in in film

who have been on shitty long days, no food, no kind of, this is all stuff that happens like across the board. So it's one of those things where I don't necessarily think it's a conversation that's even exclusive to porn but there is something special about porn which is that sexual performance is an inherently very vulnerable thing to ask someone to do so you have to treat people extra carefully.

Do you think that what really makes a difference of the way that you make your films is that you are both director, you're from behind the camera, you're in the edit suite, but you're also performing yourself. So you know what it's like to be in front of the camera and to be exposed to be vulnerable.

Yeah, I think for me anyway, that's very important. just because I think that, yeah, the asking someone to do something that is as, yeah, as kind of complicated and vulnerable as performing sex can be, I feel like having that experience myself hopefully makes me a better director and a more empathetic director to my performers. And yeah, I just think it's one of those things that because it's such a risk, I am the person at the end of the day who gets, you know, the profit from from that film as a studio. I feel like the person getting the money for, you know, for someone's sexual performance should

themselves have also performed sex because you are asking people to do something that comes with a level of like societal pushback. And if you're prepared to take money for someone's sexual performance, I just think like there is no reason why you shouldn't also have had that experience yourself. So you should be comfortable being able to be having sex on camera if you're going to ask other people to do it? It's not a hard and fast rule, but I just think that it gives you a level of kind of sensitivity

that I think is required. And it doesn't mean to say there are plenty of people, I'm sure, who have been performers who are maybe not great directors. And I'm sure that there are great directors who would not be good performers. But I think it's just one of those things where I think it's such an interesting, experience to perform sex for a camera and I just think in general it would just it I can't see how it wouldn't make you a better director to have that experience and you mentioned you've now been running four chambers for some 10 years so congratulations on on the anniversary of its launch

the industry has obviously changed dramatically in the time in which you have been running four chambers and have been a performer yourself from being cam girl to being from a the camera now to the proliferation of ony fans i recently read and actually interviewed polly barton around her new book porn oral history in which if anyone who hasn't read it yet she interviews 19 people about their views on and relationship to pornography and one of her respondents comments has really kind of stuck in in my brain i want to put to you now he notes how much technology has to state the obvious change the porn industry diversifying what is available to us by virtue of opening up the doors for more independent born creators like yourself. OnlyFans has also created a new

tranche of so-called DIY pornography, as he terms it, meaning that kind of every kink, every fetish is now catered to with porn that is available online. He says the kids don't know how lucky they have it these days. Having, I've been doing this for 10 years, do you agree with him? And when he says to the kids, obviously we mean consenting adults who are of age to have sex and what sex. But do younger people who are growing up in this environment with the porn that we have available online, I mean, do you think they're lucky? Do you think this become the best porn has ever been? I think it's one of those things that I almost can't pass like a kind of moral judgment on it. Like I can't say, ah, this is objectively good and everyone should be

really grateful for the situation we're currently in. Or no, it's so terrible. I think it's one of those things where it has incredible benefits and we are not just important existing in a world that is so overwhelming in the amount of media we have access to how quickly we can access it, how much it turns over, you know, how fast we're expected to produce content, how disposable it is. And I think back to an age of pornography where finding something niche was very special and very hard work and it required a commitment and it required a lot of digging. So if you had a, you know, a very specific fetish that you weren't necessarily feeling like was serviced at, I don't know, the VHS, the top counter of the VHS shop or whatever, you would have to put the

work in to find it and therefore maybe you would pay a lot of money for it and you would really treat it with a lot of respect because you were like, wow, I can't believe that I found this. I'm going to really appreciate it. I'm going to love it. I'm going to treat it like it's very precious. The way that our society now views this kind of stuff as like disposable content that just cycles through and you just need to produce more and more and more. I see that very deeply in only fans kind of stuff where it's like you have to be posting two, three, four times a day in order to kind of keep people's interest up. The amount that you're expected to make just feels so overwhelming and I think coming into this kind of space maybe as a young person it would just

feel like almost I can't remember what the phrase is like something about choice where basically like it's like you're overwhelmed with choice so it almost paralyzes you there you go yeah choice is something I talk about and think about a lot I think we oftentimes equate more choice with more freedom and see it as inherently a good thing and actually as I think as a psychologist just Barry Schwartz wrote a book about this a number of years ago in which he talked about choice paralysis and says, actually, then the more options we have in front of us, kind of the worse we have it in the sense that we become totally overwhelmed by the optionality in front of us, that whatever choice we do make, we are less happy with the outcome because we are

always wondering, what if, what if, what if. But I wonder sometimes we kind of lost the value in things. And we think that must be a good thing because we can choose. between all these different things and actually it's making us kind of less happy and it is that kind of tyranny of optionality as I often like to call it. So we're going to go into Agony Aunt question number one which someone has written in and said,

I'm a feminist and I try and live my life in a way that only promotes gender equality. But I do sometimes feel bored when I'm having a wank and I want to add some visual stimulation to myself pleasure. But I feel like porn is misogynist by default. Can I be a feminist and still watch porn? So I would say

Short answer, yes. Long answer. I always refer to this really good tweet that I saw about this, which is really like it's stuck in my mind so much, which is that feminism is a lens through which to critique things, not a label to assign things. So porn doesn't have to be feminist or not feminist. You can critique porn through a feminist lens,

and I think it's important to do that. I'm a feminist. I critique porn through a feminist lens. I understand why people come to pornography going, fuck, it really feels like, you know, the kind of the worst aspects of like, you know, misogyny, racism, transphobia, sexism. These things are like at the very forefront of some of the content that we can see. And I think that's primarily because we have existed in a world where the only kind of people who were paying for porn were men and so that means that people were like, well, we need to, we need to make content for the people who are going to pay for it because we need to make a living. And I feel like that has more and more recently been challenged.

And I think that there is more and more access to work that's made from a different perspective by different people and having a different kind of sex. But what it does require is it requires a little bit of digging to find things that maybe fit more with your personal idea of what you want to be seeing. I think that there are loads and loads of great options for exploring porn while thinking about maybe subverting some of the stereotypes that we would normally see. One of the most, one of the things I recommend generally to two people is actually there's some amazing reddits that are basically just like women talking about the kind of porn that they like and requesting other women to find porn and it has a really wide range of

stuff from like stuff that's very queer to stuff that's normative but it's really nice because you actually get to have like discourse with other women about like whether or not they think it's good whether or not they don't think it's good I saw some recently about them talking about you know when someone looks at the camera in porn does it put you off because it makes you very aware that you're watching porn or that there's a camera watching you you absolutely can be a feminist and watch porn, but you might just have to do a little bit more work to find the kind of thing that's going to fit you better because unfortunately it just is very easy to look at the first page of Porn Hub and get immediately put off. And I feel like that's kind of the

problem is that the way that porn is discussed publicly and politically particularly, it's often kind of homogenised and seen as a monolith. So the porn industry is spoken about as though it's just one big, giant, misogynistic mess. There is one type of pornography and exists on porn hub. And I think we can't really have this conversation without addressing that because I think this is, in the background of this conversation, there's obviously the humdrum of the ongoing political moralising debate that is kind of always happening in the background when it comes to pornography and kind of attitudes towards sex.

And I was just reading before this interview, a recent report that was put out by the all-party parliamentary group on commercial sexual exploitation, if I can say it. It's a cross-party group of MPs led by Dame Diana Johnson. They published a portrait that said pornography is found to fuel sexual violence and social and political harms against women and girls as well as perpetuating racist stereotypes. And when I read this, I am very much hearing that homogenising of the porn industry. But I think this kind of causal relationship porn and violence against women

has become really entrenched in our public conversations around pornography so that we don't really have much of nuance and so when this person's written in and said can I be a feminist and watch porn, I'm not surprised to hear that because the way that porn is being presented and to be honest, a lot of porn that does exist online

it really does challenge one's kind of feminist feelings. What do you think when you hear that? When you see that debate in Parliament, when you become aware of reports like that being published, What's your reaction? What's really hard is that porn, I think, becomes a scapegoat for our very complicated societal fear and distrust of sex and sexuality. So unfortunately, that plays out in the arena of going, okay, sex is scary, sex is, you know, dangerous.

sex is bad for you you know sexually liberated people are less easier to control so it's very easy to go ah the reason why we have a problem with society with sex and society is because of porn and that's an you know nobody wants to no one wants to go to bat for porn no one's out here going yes i'm going to be the person who's going to be like by the way guys i'm the MP that's like porn is great so it's very easy to feel like you they're doing something about some of the ways in which sex is complex. We do have like real issues with sex education and sexual consent and sexual freedom. But the problem is, is that those things much more wide reaching solutions like, you know, changing our education system. And it's much easier just to be like maybe

if we make it harder to access porn, then people will want to watch it less. But we know that's not true. That's never worked anywhere. There are countries where porn is considerably you know, more limited than it currently is now. But the reality is that people want to see it so much that they will go to like dark places to find it and they will go to places that are less regulated. They will find it in areas that, you know, feel way further away from the kind of safety nets

that we currently have now. And they leave people more open to exploitation, not less. Like having all of this stuff out in the open, being able to have an upfront conversation about it, being able to talk about labor practices and the safety of the people, who do make porn, that is all of the stuff that actually keeps people safe to try and lock it up in a little box means that people are just going to go looking for it in places and in ways

that are regressive rather than progressive. It's a bit like if we spoke about, I guess, the media industry as just one monolith and we know that it's comprised so many different types of media. I can see reports like this being published. I just think, what good does this do to reduce quite a multifarious industry with so many different people, so many different types of people in it, to just this one reductive idea, which becomes, I guess, like the summation of all the things we're most scared about when it comes to sex, when it comes to our desire, when it comes to pornography. How then would you like to see the public conversation around porn change? But if you could, for a day, step in to Westminster. And, you could, and

lead the discussion on pornography and how we should be approaching this conversation and approaching the industry. What would you, what would you say? How would you guide that conversation? I think that it needs to be driven by an idea of porn literacy, really, in the same way that we would have literacy about anything else. I think one of the major issues with many aspects of our society is the fact that we don't get taught how to correctly put into context the massive information that we are bombarded with at all times. I think that teaching people to put porn into context in the same way that we would be able to put any other kind of media that we consume into a context of reality or unreality, a normal expectation

in day-to-day life versus a kind of theatrical exaggeration for our entertainment. These are things that people just don't understand and because our sex education is so lacking and our ability just in day-to-day life to discuss like normal sexual expectations feels so limited. Porn ends up like picking up all of this slack. It doesn't mean that you can't learn things from porn, but what it means is you have to be able to know how to take that content and go, how does this fit with the kind of sex that I actually want to have? Do I just want to explore it in the realm of fantasy? Is there a way that I can do this safely? Everything to do with consent and trust and the way that porn performers keep themselves as safe as possible while

shooting, you know, things that maybe seem or look less safe than day-to-day sex. All of this stuff is just like not part of the conversation. So I think that like just teaching people about the basics of like how porn is made, why porn is made, what a day is like on a porn set, you know, how this content kind of comes to be, gives people a tool. to be able to understand it in a way that allows them to explore it without like demonising it or without kind of presuming that it's all quote unquote like real life and because sex education is so lacking porn just has become this villain for sex education and so if we're not talking about sex

in a productive way publicly if it's not given much tension in schools and yet inevitably everyone is having sex or at least like Your first sexual experience is kind of the most universal thing. It's something we all go through. And we're kind of left to learn about through hearsay of what our friends say, through kind of crappy first experiences, from feedback from partners, which might be being guided by some particular type of pornography they've watched. We're not really given a kind of filtering system through good sex education,

which to navigate our own sexual experiences and then what we see increasingly online in terms of what's available porn-wise. So porn has just become sex education, but we're not, because we're not acknowledging the, how prevalent porn consumption is, there are certain times when 30% of internet traffic is form. It is, the stats around porn consumption are huge. So this constant state of denial

around the fact that people watching porn, it just means we're not addressing and taking responsibility for the, for the, for the, for essentially what is becoming the sex ed film. And Olivia Coleman recently did an interview with Woman's Hour in which she stole your line. So I want to give, Vex, I want to give you, so for context, she was saying to Woman's Hour

that she thinks that porn should be dinner party conversation. So we should make it kind of part of our daily conversations to remove the taboo and help educate our kids around this most universal topics. Now, I want to give you the opportunity to take, to reclaim your line. I would just like to say, I probably stole it from somebody else too. It doesn't matter.

I'm taking it. It's mine. I'll have it, but I'll co-cline it. Yeah, basically, I think that, you know, just as an example, is that when we're learning about driving, we can watch something, a film like The Fast and the Furious, where the driving is completely exaggerated, completely unsafe, completely over the top. but it's very entertaining and we enjoy watching it. But then we're walking around and we're seeing examples of like everyday driving, like the way that people drive in everyday life. So we go, okay, I know that I can't, you know, I don't know, run my car off of a bridge

into an ocean and survive. This is not realistic. That's the kind of context that we need with the pornography that we're watching. So we can still have the exaggerated, Fast and the Furious entertainment, but we're also able to see examples and talk about examples and understand what is expected in our day-to-day lives so that we can make a judgment about what feels right to do in the bedroom. Love it, reclaimed.

Working in an industry, which is constantly being attacked by politicians, being made the scapegoat for society's social, sexual ills, which I imagine also carries with it a lot of social stigma, which you alluded to at the start of interview. It must be a very challenging industry to be working in, aside from the fact that, as you've articulated at the start, has many joys and benefits. What keeps you going in the work that you do? Honestly, really, like the people that I, both that I get to work with and that also respond to the project, so positively, it's feeling like this is something that people have wanted and needed. and really connect to getting to hear from people who are like,

I explored porn for the first time with my partner today watching your films. It's really given us a new way of connecting that I never expected. Thank you so much. Really getting to see people doing something that essentially is about pleasure and it is about joy and is about exploration. Sex is inherently something that should just be about how, having a nice time, or at least whatever, in whatever way that means for you. You know, sometimes that maybe doesn't look like a nice time, but it's about like

an exploration of your body, an exploration of your mind, an exploration of the ways in which we connect as humans. These are all things that sex really drills down deep into. And for me, that still has so much potential. and I just think it would be such a shame if we tried to kind of legislate that out of existence. Like we still have so much work to do. We have so much to learn. We have so much to explore.

I want to go on that journey. And I think it is very sad that some people don't think that that is something that's interesting to us. Your relationship to sex is fundamentally about your relationship to your body. and when we don't acknowledge how we don't acknowledge the importance of cultivating a positive relationship to sex we're also neglecting a specific part of our relationship to our body and I think that has a hugely detrimental impact on our kind of overall health and well-being and sense of self so I think to your point yeah they kind of our sex shouldn't be underestimated in how important role it plays in our lives more broadly we're now going to go on

to a topic that I'm super excited to discuss. The second question relates to fantasy and that and desire, which I'm really interested in talking about, and I wish I had more time for. This person's written in, I'm sure I'm 100% straight. It's all on spectrum. But the only form that makes me come is a lesbian porn.

Does the type of porn we like correlate to our true sexuality and desires? Unfortunately, there isn't just a yes, no answer to that. Because I think that exactly what you said, which is that all of this stuff is a lot more complicated. It sits outside of these little prescriptive boxes that we like, that we ascribe to ourselves. I think that the kind of porn that you like is, a facet is an interesting way of exploring your sexuality or thinking about your sexuality or maybe learning a little bit about yourself. but it doesn't define you. It's a way of learning about yourself. And I think you could have a really interesting conversation

about why it is that you consider yourself straight, but that watching lesbian porn, you know, turns you on. I know lots of straight women who watch gay porn exclusively because they just really love seeing men experiencing pleasure in a way that doesn't necessarily feel like it has some of the, like, tropes of more traditional mainstream porn. that doesn't necessarily mean that they're gay men but it is an interesting way of like discovering what it is that you're looking for in sexual content so maybe you can use it as a

barometer or you can use it as a tool for self-experation but it doesn't necessarily you don't necessarily have to go oh I guess that means I'm a lesbian in my experience I've always gravitated towards lesbian porn primarily because I think the the pornography seems much gentler. It's much more sensual. There is obviously an onus on female pleasure because there's only women there. And so in contrast to a lot of the other mainstream porn I've come across, which has been very male-centric because the primacy has really been placed on male pleasure. It's often felt, again, anecdotally, it might be quite rough, not the kind of sex I want all the time. There is a certain sensuality that has felt inherent to the lesbian porn that I

have come across. And so I guess what I then take from that is I make perhaps that's something I want in my sexual experience I want more sensuality I want more of a kind of slow sensual massage orientated style of sex but I do think this question is also interesting in that it relates to how I think we're really scared of our fantasies at a fundamental level and scared of what they we fear they may say about us

and I think this is kind of why porn remains the ultimate taboo when it comes to conversations around sex because we're almost scared of admitting to having out their fantasies because what does that say about us? What does that mean? And I interviewed sex therapist Kate Moore a little while ago and she noted how fantasies, obviously they're not real and said we need to be able to separate the shame that we have about the fantasy from ourselves because it is just a kind of facet of. our imagination and it's okay to let your kind of imagination run wild and kind of sex is like the perfect playground for that it doesn't say anything inherently bad or negative about who you are

but i do think there is that kind of kind of kind of fear that i think also kind of comes up in this question yeah for sure i think that like it's important to yeah to navigate and to kind of like think deeply about huh like why am i into that like what is that telling me about myself or what aspect of that do I find interesting? You know, for me, often some of the stuff that I really want to get into in sex is stuff that does feel like a little more dangerous, that does maybe feel like it's like allowing me to maybe like look into the void and like kind of face something that maybe is like either a fear of mine or an anxiety or something that overwhelms me.

And I think that fantasy is an incredible space and sex is an incredible space for play. Like as adults, we don't get to play very often, but sex really allows us, you know, the ability to like take on roles, to explore archetypes to like get into the mess of our psyche and be like, interesting what that's throwing up for me. Like, I kind of want to do this. I think that sex really like it kind of unseats us a little bit. Like it detaches us from the part of us that feels very careful and considered and putting a public face on stuff. Like sex at its best really like strips all of that away and it allows you the ability to really like take an interesting look at yourself. And just because you want to imagine doing something doesn't necessarily mean that that is anything to do with your, the reality of who you are as a person. But it also shouldn't necessarily be discounted. I think it's just important to yeah, think about ways in which it can just like teach you about yourself. Like what, what, why is this interesting for me? Like, what can I learn from this? What can I maybe take little bits of into what I want to do? And what bits do I

want to very much leave in the realm of imagination? And I think that you're completely right and that people often go, either, oh, it's just a fantasy. I'll just pretend like that doesn't count at all anything to do with my normal sex life. Or people go, oh, it's a fantasy. I must be a terrible person if I if I think that and the reality is that it's actually just like it's like our brains our minds are amazing like and our sexuality is really complicated and diverse so it's just nice to be able to have a space to be like I'm just going to explore this and enjoy it and see where it takes me and I think we also can't forget just how inherently political desire is and that was really a concept that I was kind of confronted by when I read Amia shrivavasen

book. I was getting asked the right to sex. She's a brilliant philosopher at Oxford University for anyone who hasn't read the book. And it was the kind of first time she she mentioned them on the chapters how we think that we're brought up to think that desire is somehow innate is just part of our imprinted with our DNA. And actually it is so political. We need to, in her words, ask ourselves what we want, why we want it and what it is we want to want because our desire really is shaped by society and whatever kind of the prevailing narratives are around sex and sexuality and who is sexy and who is sexual. And I even think just, you know, how porn is often labeled online on like porn hub. And it really plays into quite reductive tropes of like teenage girl

being sprits with cum and stuff. Lables that I know you actively don't, do not use. But, but really do that, a culmination of all these things are shaping what we, define as sexy and what we associate as being within the sexual realm and then shape what our desire looks and feels like so i think having that kind of critical lens on our desire so i mean even as this person's asked does it translate to our true sexuality and our true desires what is your true desire it's a matter of unpicking and unpacking what society has built it up to be i ascribe to the idea that like you know there's not like you can't find yourself you can't find your true desire you can't, there's no amount of like digging that will kind of like burrow down to this one point

where you go, ah, I am my true self and this is my, you know, the reality of my existence and this is my one true desire. This stuff is multifaceted. You adapt. Sometimes you're reacting to somebody else. Sometimes you're unearthing something. Sometimes, but all of this stuff is just part of the mess of being human. Like unpacking it as part of the fun. And sometimes maybe you'll be like why I really want this currently for some reason and even if you're kind of aware that you want it for a reason that's maybe complicated or maybe it's a reason that you're a bit like I can critique that all of this stuff is the fun of it like it is really the bit where it gets good and so reject the idea of that you have a true desire and just go I'm going to play around

and just see see what this brings up like see what I can learn see where this takes me like it's like a little journey throughout your whole life, I feel like. I don't think anyone ever gets to the point where they feel like, ah, that's done now. Like, achieved enlightenment. Levitating and nonstop state of orgasmic bliss. As someone who has been in the porn industry for a decade, as we've discussed, has your, have your sexual desires changed and evolved through the work that you've done and through the fact that I guess you've had to be continually critical as you're creating your work

in investigating lots of different types of desire and fantasy, both personally and then with the films that you're creating. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, despite being somebody who makes porn, I think that the reality for me is that I've got to the point where I've gone, I've seen enough images of hot people. There is enough. I have ingested enough. It's almost like I've had an intensive driving course in performing sexuality and also

in, you know, being exposed to the performance of sexuality. And for me, what it's done has made me go, well, I feel like I've got really good at that. Now it's the time to get really good at the bit where I don't make myself into an image that I don't necessarily commodify this aspect of my sexuality, that I don't spend ages like scrolling through images of people like looking better than I think that I could ever look, doing things that, you know, I don't feel like I'm able to kind of do. I feel like it's almost like turned me inwards to be like, huh, I just want to, I want to explore myself, myself outside of that. Like I want to, I want to like to feel like embodied in a way

that doesn't feel like it's a projection outward. And I think that that's going to be, that's much harder work. I feel like often as women, women, we're socialized to become these like images from like a very early age but I think there's very little that kind of teaches us how to feel how to be outside of that so that's like definitely work that I'm kind of doing now but I've learned so so much from porn and like my idea of like sexuality my idea of what's attractive what's not I love watching people having sex like it is just genuinely beautiful feels like a really trite reductive word it's not necessarily beautiful but it feels like very much like getting to see people doing something that's like very intense very vulnerable getting to see

people kind of like putting all of this energy into something and then making something that feels really like immersive and kind of at the end of a shoot you feel really connected because you feel like you've all done this kind of intense thing and it is like it really does like reaffirm my belief in the power of like connection and sex and sexuality in a way that I feel like I'm able to kind of take forward into my life. Do you watch porn outside of porn that you create? I don't. Not really, no. I feel like, yeah, one of the more difficult things about porn is that it's no longer like a, you know, a little naughty treat for me to like escape my day-to-day life. It's very much like it is deeply ingrained in the humdrum of my day-to-day existence.

So I love the fact that people are making it and when I see some that looks hot, I'm like, yes, that's great. but I think that I've just maybe oversaturated myself somewhat and who knows maybe if I went and took like a little pawn sabbatical I could come back to it in a way that felt good I'm kind of at the level of like I don't I don't know if I need to see anymore right at this very moment next we've got to wrap up there I have so loved this conversation I always love hearing your thoughts on this huge topic this multifarious complex topic I feel like we can need to do part two at some point. Just to wrap up, I think throughout this interview, I've alluded to in various questions, I think a lot of the assumptions that are entrenched in our society with regards

to pornography, sexual fantasy, sexual desire, all these things. And I would love to hear from you one misconception that you confront most frequently in the work that you do that you would love to address and dispel. It's interesting because I feel like I've been doing it long enough now that either I'm kind of a little bit blind to it or just maybe I just surround myself with sycophants who like never challenged me on anything. I think that yeah, the idea that people who make porn are better at sex than you know more about sex than you, have it all together with regards to sex, don't have the same kind of sexual anxieties that you might have. I think just in general that everyone is having better sex than you is just a huge

misnomer and that everyone, everyone needs to really stop, like, drinking everyone else's Kool-Aid where it's like we all have complex, difficult stuff to work through in this regard and actually, like, not allowing yourself to compare yourself too deeply to the kind of content that's out there, like not allowing yourself to get to pet up on not feeling like you, you measure up doing this work and being in porn for so long. like everyone's got their own shit going on. Everyone has these kind of anxieties and everyone is looking at someone else to be like, oh, I wish I was them.

I think this person's better than me. So just like letting go of the idea that like people in porn are somehow these like sexual goddesses who or gods and goddesses who, yeah, have it, have it all together. It's not the reality. Everyone's just figuring out themselves. It has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on Sex Talks podcast. Thank you for agony-aunting these brilliant questions.

And thank you for our listeners to sending in such amazing questions. Thank you. Have anyone for the rest of your day. Thank you so much for listening to today's Sex Talks podcast, with me, your host, Emma Louise Boynton. If you'd like to attend a live recording of the podcast, check out the event bright link in the show notes, as we have lots of exciting live events coming up. You can also keep up to date with everything coming up at. sex talks, plus get my sporadic musings, via the sex talk substack. I've also popped that link

into the show notes. And over on Instagram, where I'm at Emma Louise Boynton. And finally, if you enjoyed the show, please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to this on, as apparently it helps others to find us. Have a glorious day.