Dear Rashida Jones and Natasha Noman,

I’d like to share a few names with you:

  • Dana Vespoli
  • Angie Rowntree
  • Jessica drake
  • Joanna Angel
  • Bree Mills
  • Nica Noelle
  • Candida Royalle
  • Nina Hartley
  • Stormy Daniels
  • Dee Severe
  • Aiden Starr
  • Courtney Trouble
  • Lorelei Lee
  • Madeline Marlow
  • Holly Randall (who is rumored to be in the next Hot Girls Wanted series)
  • Erika Lust (who is rumored to be in the next Hot Girls Wanted series)
  • Kelly Holland
  • Shine Louise Houston
  • Tanya Tate
  • Angela White
  • Belladonna
  • Anna Lee
  • Kelly Shibari
  • Julia Ann
  • Chanel Preston
  • Mason
  • Raven Touchstone
  • Kayden Kross
  • Dixie Comet
  • Kayla Jane-Danger

Women who have helped shape the adult industry.

These are just a FEW (not all) of the women who have helped shape the adult industry. Who have been innovators, creators, directors, writers, advocates, producers, and visionaries. Most of these women came before me – giving me the opportunity to do what I do today. These are women who have actually worked within the industry, not judged it from afar. They are/were the ones on the front-lines that  fought to have their voices heard and built names for themselves. 

Rashida, your HelloGiggles article says that you want to “reclaim porn as a feminist space.” Do you realize that countless women have been doing this for decades? Do you realize how patronizing it is to women working in the adult industry to hear you say this as if it was somehow a new concept? It completely undermines everything that women have done for our industry and it discredits and diminishes the work of countless women. 

And while I’m on the subject of “discrediting”…

Natasha, several of the clips in your Mic video (the same video where you say that “lesbian porn is made by and for men”) were actually directed by women. If you paid for these films then you would have known the names of the directors by simply looking at the credits. So that begs to question, did you simply lift them from tube sites? I ask because the clip you used from my film was not a lesbian title at all. It was a hot-wifing movie. Completely different genre – although I can understand your mistake if you did steal it off a tube site. After all, tube sites rebrand content all the time for clicks. I am guessing you didn’t watch the entirety of that film either, because there was a whole lot more going on than just a “male” fantasy. 

It’s so disappointing that we live in an age where absolutely nothing needs to be fact checked anymore. Where celebrities or popular websites can spoon feed “facts” to the masses and nobody will even bother questioning or probing into the truth – and certainly not when it pertains to the adult industry. 

I absolutely love the adult industry, and I am aware there are a lot of areas of improvement needed. I don’t think anyone in the adult industry would disagree with either of you on that fact. But if you actually paid for your porn or dug a little deeper you would know that there are countless women in the industry directing, writing, producing, and more. Many of these women are feminists. Many of these women are doing what you both are implying hasn’t been done. 

Since both of you are so quick to educate the masses on how to improve upon the adult industry (when neither of you actually work in it), I’d like to take this moment to educate you. You cannot undermine the work of women and then act like you are somehow champions for their cause. The harm that you do by patronizing an entire gender with your vast “knowledge” of sexuality is truly detrimental to the progress so many women in our industry are making every single day.

Sincerely,

Jacky St. James

P.S. To the women (working in adult) whose names I did not include in this post, I sincerely apologize. Your work matters.