can pornography be good for you?

- this was my opening statement as part of the discussion can pornography be good for you at edinburgh science festival, april 2016.

I’m Vex. I’m an independent porn, performer, producer, director, editor, everything really. I’m able to talk about my experience with porn not just a viewer, although I’ve done a fair bit of that too, but mostly as a maker and performer.

My story in porn isn’t maybe what you’d think, but it’s not that uncommon. I didn’t sit on a casting couch in LA or answer a vague ad for models from craigslist. I decided to start performing on webcam and making my own clips at university, as a test to see if it would be interesting and maybe, profitable. It really was, I’d make more in a few hours on cam than I did in an 8 hour shift at my 0 hour contract retail job and I loved it. Like so much of the modern, online adult industry it’s completely self directed and determined. You work for yourself, do what you’re comfortable with, work when and where you want. Camming gave me the freedom and the time and the capital to begin learn and to fall in love with film making.

My porn project, Four Chambers began as an experiment, to see if I could put sex on film in a way that was creative and interesting for me, something I didn’t see represented in the majority of readily available porn. We started making our own and putting it out on social media. The response was incredible, I never imagined I could be in the position I’m in now where it’s basically my full time job.

I think this is maybe where I’m now expected to stand here and tell you how “empowered” I am, how I love my job and how I’m sexually liberated. And really I’m happy to say that, for me, that’s true - I mean - I’m my own boss, I have totally flexible working hours, I don’t answer to anyone. I put my own sexuality on film without compromise in a way that I’m truly proud of. I get to fuck my friends and travel and make my living in a creative way that I couldn’t have ever dreamed of. I have a better sex life, I’m a more open and honest person and a better partner because of the communication and honesty that making porn requires from a committed relationship. I have confidence, ownership and pride in my body and my sexuality that I never did growing up. It’s been the best, most challenging and interesting thing I’ve done with my life.

And now I’m going to say that that doesn’t really matter. 

Keep reading

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m so obsessed with this piece that I’m screenshotting it. WHITE ALLIES DOING IT FUCKING RIGHT! BNV 2015 “Letter To My Future White Son”!!!!!!!

http://youtu.be/ozBMFYnunrI

This was sososo good.

I’ll watch this later, but here it is if anyone wants to check it out.

This is our police.

stay woke people

okay but there needs to be more context cause it’s even worse than it sounds (if you can believe it)

the cover up had been going for nearly 20 years

in which we can’t’t tell the law enforcement professional from a wingnut in a white supremacist militia. The sad thing is this sort of confirmation of the worst ethical breaches and abject corruptibility (in Alabama) as it relates to race isn’tshocking enough to register on a national scale

Cop caught on video pepperspraying restrained teen in the face

Please explain how cop’s are innocent? Please explain how this cop was in a life threatening position that he had to mase the handcuffed individual? #Hate it!

For no damn reason

Seriously, it kills me when I see people hold scientists up as pinnacles of logic and reason.

Because one time the professor I was interning for got punched in the face by another professor, because mine got the funding, and told the other professor his theory was stupid.

This same professor told me to throw rocks to scare the “stupid fucking crabs” into moving so we could count them properly.

SCIENCE

thank you

this is one of the best comments this post has recieved

I have witnessed:

Two professors hiding around a corner and snickering, “Shhh, here she comes!” While a female professor approached and, when she finally found them, she proceeded to scream while pointing from one to the other, “You! I called your office but you weren’t there! So I tried to call YOUR office to figure out where HE was but YOU weren’t there!”

Two grad students standing outside a closed and locked door yelling, “Come out of the damn office. You haven’t left for days. If you didn’t have a couch in there I’d be concerned as to where you were sleeping!”

A religious studies professor apologizing for being late to class because, “security stopped me because I’m dressed like a hobbit”

Watched a professor snort the results of my experiment to determine if I had the right final compound.

Two archeology professors toss priceless fossilized teeth back and forth in an attempt to figure out who is smarter by “guessing the type of tooth and species of animal before it lands”

Multiple fully degreed individuals throw dry ice at one another in an attempt to be first to use the lab/get that piece of equipment/or change the iPod song.

A genetics professor build furniture out of stacks of paper and planks of wood because she is that far behind in grading papers/responding. One of the impromptu furniture pieces housed a fish tank.

I could go on but I think that covers the larger portion of the insanity…

Every time it comes around on my dash, it gets better.

- I have had a professor buy a huge fuckoff bottle of rum during fieldwork in Costa Rica and let the undergrads get wasted because “you’re not underage in Costa Rica and we’ll be up all night with the bats anyway!”

- Same professor hung a bat from her headlamp and wore it as a decoration for an entire night. 

- A whole swarm of older women - and these are women with PhDs and world-renown bat experts, the bigwigs - all, to a woman, go to the formal charity dinner at an international research symposium in Toronto in late October dressed in skimpy Batgirl costumes. Because Halloween was that weekend, you see.

- At a different conference, a professor get blackout drunk and pass out on the side of the road. 

- “Yeah, we have to say we did it properly for the grant but to be really honest, Miracle-gro works better.”

- Teaching lab: we had liquid nitrogen for a demo, and after class the professor, the other TA, and I spent a good two hours freezing and breaking things in it. 

a chemistry class begins with 30 students nine months later just six of us left sitting on tables dipping paper into contaminated chemicals to see what happens when we burn it teacher making idle suggestions while he marks our work

“go to the fume hood thing, yeah now put some potassium in chlorine” can i burn the results sir? “fuck it sure whatever its tainted anyway”

The prof I’m working for just asked me if I knew how to pick a lock, and when I responded “yes” she replied, “see, this is why I hire the former delinquents instead of the suck-ups. You’re actually useful.”

I then let her into her office.

“Security stopped me because I’m dressed like a hobbit.” I would bet anything this has happened to Dr. Medievalist.

Semi-related non-academic anecdote: The concert hall security guys tried to throw out our violone player in between performances this spring because they thought he was a homeless guy. Despite the fact that he was wearing concert black… and carrying a violone. There is no more obvious instrument.

One of my English Professors admitted that sometimes “you just have to do a soliloquy” and would phone up the main office of the department on the internal phoneline to recite a Shakespearean monologue at them. No greeting, no warning, just “To be or not to be”.

every time i read this stuff i think about how upset vulcans would be to meet earth’s greatest scientific minds

Seriously, it kills me when I see people hold scientists up as pinnacles of logic and reason.

Because one time the professor I was interning for got punched in the face by another professor, because mine got the funding, and told the other professor his theory was stupid.

This same professor told me to throw rocks to scare the “stupid fucking crabs” into moving so we could count them properly.

SCIENCE

thank you

this is one of the best comments this post has recieved

I have witnessed:

Two professors hiding around a corner and snickering, “Shhh, here she comes!” While a female professor approached and, when she finally found them, she proceeded to scream while pointing from one to the other, “You! I called your office but you weren’t there! So I tried to call YOUR office to figure out where HE was but YOU weren’t there!”

Two grad students standing outside a closed and locked door yelling, “Come out of the damn office. You haven’t left for days. If you didn’t have a couch in there I’d be concerned as to where you were sleeping!”

A religious studies professor apologizing for being late to class because, “security stopped me because I’m dressed like a hobbit”

Watched a professor snort the results of my experiment to determine if I had the right final compound.

Two archeology professors toss priceless fossilized teeth back and forth in an attempt to figure out who is smarter by “guessing the type of tooth and species of animal before it lands”

Multiple fully degreed individuals throw dry ice at one another in an attempt to be first to use the lab/get that piece of equipment/or change the iPod song.

A genetics professor build furniture out of stacks of paper and planks of wood because she is that far behind in grading papers/responding. One of the impromptu furniture pieces housed a fish tank.

I could go on but I think that covers the larger portion of the insanity…

Every time it comes around on my dash, it gets better.

- I have had a professor buy a huge fuckoff bottle of rum during fieldwork in Costa Rica and let the undergrads get wasted because “you’re not underage in Costa Rica and we’ll be up all night with the bats anyway!”

- Same professor hung a bat from her headlamp and wore it as a decoration for an entire night. 

- A whole swarm of older women - and these are women with PhDs and world-renown bat experts, the bigwigs - all, to a woman, go to the formal charity dinner at an international research symposium in Toronto in late October dressed in skimpy Batgirl costumes. Because Halloween was that weekend, you see.

- At a different conference, a professor get blackout drunk and pass out on the side of the road. 

- “Yeah, we have to say we did it properly for the grant but to be really honest, Miracle-gro works better.”

- Teaching lab: we had liquid nitrogen for a demo, and after class the professor, the other TA, and I spent a good two hours freezing and breaking things in it. 

a chemistry class begins with 30 students nine months later just six of us left sitting on tables dipping paper into contaminated chemicals to see what happens when we burn it teacher making idle suggestions while he marks our work

“go to the fume hood thing, yeah now put some potassium in chlorine” can i burn the results sir? “fuck it sure whatever its tainted anyway”

The prof I’m working for just asked me if I knew how to pick a lock, and when I responded “yes” she replied, “see, this is why I hire the former delinquents instead of the suck-ups. You’re actually useful.”

I then let her into her office.

“Security stopped me because I’m dressed like a hobbit.” I would bet anything this has happened to Dr. Medievalist.

Semi-related non-academic anecdote: The concert hall security guys tried to throw out our violone player in between performances this spring because they thought he was a homeless guy. Despite the fact that he was wearing concert black… and carrying a violone. There is no more obvious instrument.

One of my English Professors admitted that sometimes “you just have to do a soliloquy” and would phone up the main office of the department on the internal phoneline to recite a Shakespearean monologue at them. No greeting, no warning, just “To be or not to be”.

every time i read this stuff i think about how upset vulcans would be to meet earth’s greatest scientific minds

my gandmothers old paintbrushes

Just some sumos in training scaring each other at camp.

this is so pure i could die

I JSUT BURPED PLAYING THE TRUMPET AND I FEEL SO TERRIBLE NOW OMG

Burping into a kazoo is one of life true pleasures

by AxbyMag

This was a wild ride