Lately people have been writing to me to tell me how excited they are to see a woman creating erotic films they can feel good about watching. I can’t tell you how much that means to me. In fact, if I couldn’t do something positive in porn, I wouldn’t be here at all. I have such love for the adult industry and for the brave men and women who endure the stigma placed on us by society (that is, by the very people who enjoy our work when they’re in lonely hotel rooms or need a little boost to their sex lives). It’s quite a service we offer and we don’t get a whole lot of respect for our efforts. It’s become very important to me to do what I can to change that.

But I wasn’t always so clear on how I felt about my role in the sex industry. In fact, I wasn’t always so clear on how I felt about sex work in general.

I was an exotic dancer for many years, and like so many sex workers, when I decided to leave and re-enter “mainstream America” the decision was abrupt. When you reach “burn out”, it often comes with little warning, although looking back of course the signs were there. After leaving the world of sequins and platform heels, I changed my phone number, moved into a new apartment, got a “real” job, and a new circle of non-sex worker friends. My resume was a pack of lies, and I avoided talking about myself except in the vaguest terms. I’d decided that my past was something best forgotten, and that I no longer wished to carry the stigma, or exhibit the mannerisms, of the girl I’d so recently been.

But instead of feeling “free” of my past, as the months went by I could think of little else. I analyzed my obsession with my former life to mean that the sex industry had damaged me even more than I’d thought. Why else would I feel so defined by it? Why else was I continually menaced by the intrusive thoughts and memories I was trying so hard to forget?

Confused and angry, I began doing late night Internet searches, googling the words “stripper” and “ideology”. I was hoping to find some smart person out in cyberspace who had written an article or thesis on stripping and its effects — something that could help me. I wanted to analyze what I was feeling, and I needed to figure out what I thought about the adult industry.

I simply wasn’t at peace.

From my searches, the name “Alysabeth” and “Feminist Stripper” came up several times. There was a site called Alysabeth.com, also known as FeministStripper.com and it addressed the very things I was feeling. The creator of the website was a stripper named Alysabeth who lived in Colorado. She was my age, with flaming red hair and a face like Botticelli’s Venus (literally – the paintings of Venus and photographs of Alysabeth are eerily similar.) Her writing style was brilliant, funny, sarcastic, angry and challenging. She was pro-sex work, pro-stripping, and anti the very ideologies I had recently decided to buy into. She rejected the position of people like me; strippers who blamed the industry for their own weaknesses, and who believed that their sexuality was the enemy of their personhood.

I kept reading her essays. And then I read some more. Alysabeth had a lot to say, and said it better than anyone I’d ever heard of.

Her response to the argument that stripping isn’t an art, but just a bunch of messed up women “humping a brass pole”?:

“Most strippers I know are exceptionally lovely. Not only that, but a talented stripper ‘humps a brass pole’ the same way a ballerina ‘jumps around the stage.’ Real erotic dance is graceful and evocative. There is nothing that keeps stripping from being acknowledged as dance and therefore an art form except sour grapes and closed minds.”

About the validity of porn and the value of women who perform in x-rated films?:

“Good porn, like any kind of art, is much more than the sum of its parts. Just as there are talented artists and hacks in any field, there is bad and good porn. In many cases, it’s a beautiful, sensual woman who chooses to share her sexuality as a piece of art. Yes, she does it for money. Revenue doesn’t negate artistic value, as any starving painter or actor will tell you when they’re waiting for their big break.”

This woman was brilliant. I had to talk to her.

I wrote her an email. I waited, compulsively checking my email, desperate to read her reply. It finally came, and thus began a debate between us that would last the better part of a year. I challenged her ideologies, she challenged my abrupt departure from the world I had called home my entire adult life. What we learned, in those months, was that we needed each other intellectually and as comrades in the sex industry, and that we were destined to be life long friends.

Though we were separated by thousands of miles, Alysabeth became as important to me as my own family. I can’t imagine how different life would be if I hadn’t “met” her at that dark, confusing time in my life. With her bigger than life intellect, insider’s take on the sex industry, and her deep love and respect for women, Alysabeth helped me to see that I didn’t need to reject my past to respect myself. I could be a former sex worker, or a current one, and still be smart, political, creative, beautiful and productive. A career in the sex industry was not synonymous with self destruction. The mere fact that Alysabeth existed confirmed this was true.

Years later, when I took over as the head of production at Girlfriends Films, I knew I would need to bring fresh writers on board. Alysabeth was the first person I thought of. I contacted her and asked if she would be interested. Although her essays have been quoted in Masters Theses and her articles have appeared in countless newspapers and magazines, she had never before written a porn script. And though she’s an acclaimed Shakespearean actress, she had never performed in a porn film. But with her typical aplomb, she dove right in and on her first try handed me a script with dialogue so superior to the average porn scene that I wondered if we might have to dumb it down.

And then I remembered – we don’t dumb things down. Not at Girlfriends Films. And Alysabeth certainly doesn’t. Her contributions will elevate our already rising company to something even greater – of that I’m certain.

Thanks for coming on board, Alysabeth. We’re honored to have your wit, style, and intellect on our side as we forge ap to a new future in adult erotic entertainment.

(Alysabeth “The Feminist Stripper” will be contributing scripts to Girlfriends Films on a regular basis. You can read more about Alysabeth at myspace.com/feministstripper)

Much love,

Sydni Ellis
Director, Writer & Performer
Girlfriends Films
sydniellisxxx@aol.com
GirlfriendsFilms.com

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