Different Strokes: How Black Women Are Changing the Adult Film Industry (Daily Dot)

Read the full article by Kristina Nguyen at DailyDot.com

In 2005, Shine Louise Houston released her studio’s first film feature, The Crash Pad. Described as a “hot hardcore indie feminist dyke porn,” it told of a secret apartment in San Francisco where guests lucky enough to get the key could explore their deepest fantasies. From Black butch lovers to busty, tattooed femmes, the film was heralded for its authentic representations of sexuality and its diverse cast and crew.

Although it wasn’t the first—or last—erotic film to be made by a woman of color, its emphasis on an inclusive range of body types, sexualities, and ethnicities painted a vision of what porn could look like.

“Whoever wins the war gets to write the history, right? So whoever’s behind the camera is basically writing the story,” Houston, who has gone to win dozens of industry awards, tells the Daily Dot. “And if all we have are white cis guys writing their story, those are the only stories we have.”

The porn industry may seem like a glorified virtual boys’ club—and that’s because, well, for a long time it has been. But for Black women like Houston—whose 13-year-old Pink and White Productions houses the CrashPadSeries and has produced around 15 films since its inception—it’s providing an artistic outlet and an opportunity to expand the possibilities of porn beyond the white male gaze. Armed with social media, increasingly available technology, and the reach of the world wide web, women of color are putting themselves at the helm. They’re making space and they’re taking names.

Houston isn’t the only one driving porn’s Black renaissance. Nor is the only one who understands its necessity.

“One of the things I definitely can see with more people of color in different positions—whether it be productions, directing, owning, investing—is that we actually understand the ramifications of what it’s like to be on the outskirts of life and want to uplift people out of that,” says Lotus Lain, a Los Angeles-based sex worker and industry relations advocate for the Free Speech Coalition.

“When it’s sets controlled by women of color, it’s definitely more comfortable. We understand each other more and what needs to happen, and the jokes are more comfortable,” says Lain, who has worked on both mainstream and independent productions.

Trick is another Black female performer who has taken control of her own content so she could see her sexual desires represented on-screen and create opportunities for queer people of color. With her adult-oriented multimedia company Slanted Tendency, which is on hiatus at the moment, she has often collaborated with performers and tailored the videos to their ideas, an uncommon practice in the world of porn.

“I was like, ‘Let me create porn that I can get off on,’” Trick says. “Some days, it was challenging because some days, I was jerking off to my own porn, and I was like, ‘I gotta edit it.’”

She started Slanted Tendency in 2012 after she became frustrated with the lack of options available to her as both participant and viewer.

“Most of the big studios are straight, white, and patriarchal, so there wasn’t really an outlet for my look,” Trick says.