Sample Articles and Book Chapters
Community Sex Work: A Conversation with Nenna Feelmore Joiner
A conversation with queer porn filmmaker and adult novelty shop proprietor Nenna Joiner about her work and outreach in the community of Oakland, California.
This is What Porn Can Be Like! A Conversation with Shine Louise Houston
Mireille Miller-Young visited San Francisco for a conversation with porn producer and director Shine Louise Houston. They met at Houston's home to discuss her award-winning feature film Champion and her independent film company Pink and White Productions.
Interventions: The Deviant and Defiant Art of Black Women Porn Directors
A chapter in The Feminist Porn Book (Feminist Press at CUNY, 2013), co-edited by Mireille Miller-Young.
Image Courtesy of Vanessa Blue
The Pedagogy of Pornography: Teaching Hardcore Media in the Feminist Studies Classroom
Written for Films for the Feminist Classroom issue 2.2.
Putting Hypersexuality to Work: Black Women and Illicit Eroticism in Pornography
This article focuses on the labor marginalization of black female performers within the pornography industry. Their representations and experiences as sex workers are shaped by a racialized and gendered sexual commerce where stereotypes, structural inequalities, and social biases are the norm. Black women are devalued as hyperaccessible and superdisposable in an industry that simultaneously invests in and ghettoizes fantasies about black sexuality. In light of feminist arguments against the victimization of women by pornography, I have attempted to show that black sex workers, while facing multiple axes of discrimination and harm, also employ hypersexuality and illicit eroticism to achieve mobility, erotic autonomy, and self-care.
In Sexualities journal, issue 13.2.
Image Courtesy of Sinnamon Love
Forward to Coming Out Like a Porn Star: Essays on Pornography, Protection, and Privacy edited by Jiz Lee
Here I write the forward to the groundbreaking volume by Jiz Lee, now in its second edition. From the publisher:
To the uninitiated, the idea of a career in the adult film industry may come with stigma that porn performers and sex workers have long fought to shake off. For many, that fight begins with one awkward conversation.
When Coming Out Like a Porn Star was first published in 2015, it garnered cult status as an anthology of candidly intimate essays by diverse adult industry professionals and icons, relating the pain, pride, and surprises that accompanied their experiences coming out about their work. This updated edition includes new essays that explore issues transforming the modern porn field: deepfakes, AI, and OnlyFans; the inequity and fetishization faced by Black, Muslim, queer, disabled, and other marginalized performers; and the everyday, ever-evolving legal injustices compromising sex workers’ rights to live, earn, and bank.
