Xenia’s Reviews > Coming Out Like a Porn Star: Essays on Pornography, Protection, and Privacy > Status Update
Xenia
is on page 115 of 320
One day I decided I wanted control of what people saw. Maybe that’s how I justify it now, like the eating disorder it was about control over my out-of-control body and visage. Not just out of control, but if people were going to interact with my body anyway, try to control what they believed I was, then I would be something else.
— Jun 11, 2026 04:49AM
Like flag
Xenia’s Previous Updates
Xenia
is on page 286 of 320
We all watch porn; we don’t talk about it. Porn exists in a kind of parallel universe, a shadowy underground. When you force something - anything - into the shadows and underground, you make it easier for bad things to happen, and you make it a lot harder for good things to happen.
— Jun 15, 2026 11:16AM
Xenia
is on page 272 of 320
What if I concerned myself more with coming in to me than on how to best come out to you?
— Jun 15, 2026 07:55AM
Xenia
is on page 271 of 320
More often, these days, I put the onus on them: your stigma, your labor. My work is to live and care for and celebrate and come into myself and my smutty community.
— Jun 15, 2026 07:52AM
Xenia
is on page 271 of 320
I started to care a lot less about how people responded to what I entered as my occupation on forms. Sometimes I’d even declare it in a completely matter-of-fact, almost deadpan way. I told my osteopath, “I’m a sex worker”, and that’s all I told him, and I chose not to own any of his discomfort.
— Jun 15, 2026 07:50AM
Xenia
is on page 269 of 320
(2)Coming into glorious shared space with others who share those intersections, and those who don’t care what kind of thing you are as long as you’re good people. Coming into an era of just being themselves.
— Jun 15, 2026 07:34AM
Xenia
is on page 269 of 320
[…] “coming in”- coming into their own delicious confluence of identities, spending more energy exploring and loving it, filling it up, poking at its peripheries and looking for the give. Accepting it as the already/perfect starting point it’ll always be. Spending less energy iterating it to others or caring much about their response.
— Jun 15, 2026 07:33AM
Xenia
is on page 269 of 320
We, the Others, are quite occupied with the process of projecting ourselves out into the world, with the ways in which our various identities are either read or invisible to the outside.[…] We’re anxious about how those individuals we interact with will receive the news that we are what we are.
— Jun 15, 2026 07:29AM
Xenia
is on page 249 of 320
Murphy’s Law of Inappropriate Behavior states that if you make a habit of taking your clothes off in public, eventually everyone in your family (including members so distant they share less DNA with you than a chimpanzee does with a cuttlefish) will somehow stumble upon documentation of what you’re up to.
— Jun 14, 2026 10:43PM
Xenia
is on page 234 of 320
Remember too, if we expect others to live and accept us for who we are and what we do, we have to extend the same love and acceptance to others. Next time someone comes out to you as something that you don’t approve of, be gentle, be kind, and try to not judge, but to understand.
— Jun 14, 2026 10:35AM
Xenia
is on page 232 of 320
It’s what we think of ourselves that matters most. When we tell people what we do, it’s how we say what we do that will radiate out and reflect back to us in the response we get. If we tell someone apologetically with shame and embarrassment, “I make porn”, then people will feel shame and embarrassment too and worry about us.
— Jun 14, 2026 10:32AM