Coming Out Like A Porn Star

For porn stars, “coming out” is a process that never ends.

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.

Edited by veteran industry professional Jiz Lee, and featuring a new foreword by Samantha Cole, the second edition of Coming Out Like a Porn Star continues to celebrate the rich and varied voices of the adult industry, offering a panoramic view of the world of sex work that has been described in recent years by Melissa Febos, Margo Steines, Charlotte Shane, and Michelle Tea. New contributors include Arabelle Raphael, Jessica Starling, Jet Setting Jasmine, King Noire, Maria Riot, Sinnamon Love, Siri Dahl, and Tyler Knight.

Porn polymath Jiz Lee is an adult film actor, author, and industry advocate. Lee works behind the scenes as marketing director at San Francisco queer porn studio Pink & White Productions (creators of CrashPadSeries.com, PinkLabel.TV, and the San Francisco PornFilmFestival). Lee has presented on porn at institutions including Princeton University, the American Studies Association Conference, and Wonderlust Helsinki (awarded by the Finnish Association for Sexology), was an invited speaker at the Conference on World Affairs, and has been featured on MSNBC, the BBC, G4TV, and proudly, Lifehacker. Their writing has since appeared in The Feminist Porn Book, Best Sex Writing, OUT magazine, Jezebel, Global Information Society Watch: Sexual Rights and the Internet, and Sex With Everybody.