With all the voices shouting about pornography-pro and con-the ones least heeded are those of women who work in the industry. Usually, when you want to know about something, you ask people who have first-hand experience of it. With pornography, however, most of the theories come from people who are "outsiders," with no direct knowledge of the industry.

I am open to this charge, as well. To provide a balance for my own inexperience, I interviewed women in the industry. I didn't expect to like them as much as I did. As much as I do.

I could claim that I plunged into my research with no preconceptions, but this would be a lie. My assumptions about the women had been formed by decades of television, movies, and trashy novels. I expected porn actresses to be hardened, uneducated, abused, and promiscuous women. Although some of them might have "hearts of gold," they were women who had nothing to offer but their bodies. I know I expected this by how surprised I was not to find it.

I have less excuse than most people do for being so reactionary. When I was eighteen, my best friend was an older and far more experienced woman named K., who had red hair, green eyes, a stacked body, and a benevolent spirit. Over a Mexican dinner one night, K. explained she was financing her way through grad school at UCLA by working in a massage parlor.

She told this to me because something was worrying her and she needed a friend with whom to talk it over. A few years earlier, she had acted in a porn movie-short by the well-known director, Damiano. Recently re-released, the movie had been reviewed in the latest issue of Playboy. The critic had panned it, but he'd singled K. out for praise by name. Unfortunately, she'd used her real one. Now that she was closing in on a Ph.D., K. didn't want to carry the stigma attached to sex work. As a masseuse, she was anonymous; as a porn actress, her name was in Playboy.

Talking to K. constituted a crash course on sex for me. It was a friendship from which I am still deriving benefits.

For example, during a recent phone interview with a somewhat reserved porn actress, I mentioned my friendship with K. The conversation stopped abruptly. A cautious question came back from the earpiece. "How did you react to her stories about the massage parlor?" I could tell I was being tested.

"I was jealous," I admitted. "K. was older than me, prettier, and much better with men. I figured she knew something I didn't."

The relief on the other end of the phone line was palpable. I had passed the test. I was a "straight" woman who didn't make moral judgments. Being puzzled, jealous, threatened, and intrigued-all of these reactions were acceptable, because they were honest and not insulting.

The woman warmed to my questions and the quality of the interview improved dramatically.

Upon hanging up, I started to realize how deeply women in porn have been hurt by the condemnation they have received from women outside the industry. Even those few feminists who are supposed to "champion" the rights of sex workers tend to treat them as somehow pathetic. As a class apart. Not as women with husbands and children, unpaid phone bills, and sick pets. Not like all the rest of us.

Few feminists seem willing to grant them the simple courtesy of respecting their choices. Few of them believe women in porn have anything of value to say about sex or politics or human relationships. Certainly, this was true of me before I actually met the women and found so many of them to be articulate.

Part of the schism that separates women in porn from the women on the outside is simply culture shock. Pornography is a dramatically different world and it is easy to misinterpret it. For example, in the corporate world, commenting on a woman's body or calling her "honey" might lead to a lawsuit. In porn, it is standard practice. In fact, an actress might become insecure or insulted if her flaunted assets were ignored. Bernie Oakley of Adam and Eve, the major distributor of adult videos in America, told me that-as a southerner-he had referred to women as "girls" for years. He went to great pains to break this habit only to find himself working in an industry in which the women are always called "the girls."

Take another example. While I was speaking to "Jane" at the CES, a well-developed porn actress walked by us. "Jane" stopped talking, ran her tongue over her upper lip, and smiled at me, saying, "Isn't she a walking wet dream?" I was speechless. I wouldn't have known how to respond to a man who'd made such a comment. But a woman? I was at a loss.

Do these differences make pornography a bastion of sexism? Maybe. But compared to what? To corporate boardrooms or government corridors, where men mouth the proper attitudes while maintaining the sexist status quo? Perhaps pornography is just more open about its attitudes.

Moreover, in pornography, women are starting to make a real impact; there are women directors like Veronica Hart and Candida Royalle, whose work was described in Time magazine as "the best example of porn in the feminist style." Women like Betty Dodson and Fanny Fatale are empowering women through videos that teach masturbation. And, recently, Femme Distribution, Inc. announced a new series of adult videos by women directors, which-among other things-eroticize safe sex. This is the cutting edge of women's sexuality; feminists ignore it at their own peril.

But entering this world-even as a tourist-can be disorienting and disturbing. The women are not always friendly. I have had my share of curt dismissals, unreturned phone calls, and outright suspicion. It would be a miracle if women who have been stigmatized by feminists reacted less defensively. I learned to begin every conversation with the name of a mutual acquaintance that served as a reference. I made a point of knowing something about the woman, so I could open with a knowledgeable compliment.

"I'll have to check you out" was a common response to my requests for an interview. And even when I supplied referrals and copies of my articles, some women declined to discuss their work with me. Some may have thought I wanted intrusive details about their personal lives, which they wanted to jealously guard. Others may have suspected I would put an unflattering slant on the interview. Even women on the fringe of the industry were often suspicious of me. The business manager of Vivid Video was cautious for no other reason than that I wanted to interview her and not the actresses working for the company. For her, this made alarm bells ring.

At first, I thought it odd that the women seemed more suspicious of me than the men did, until I realized the explanation. I was a woman. A short, petite, youngish woman who was asking the men for information-in short, for help. I kick-started the "macho" response that typifies much of the porn industry.

Rereading the last line makes me uncomfortable. Next to nothing really "typifies" the porn industry, which is in transition. It is moving from the old school of pornographers to the Young Turks. From cinema verite to home porn. From a male bastion to feminist videos. The entire industry is in flux.

In the same sense, nothing seemed to really typify the women involved in porn. Not one of them was interchangeable with any other. Not one actress had the same story. Some performed sex scenes only with their boyfriends or with other women. One actress had her mother baby-sit her four-year-old child on the set of her videos. There were four actresses living with a male manager whose real given name was "Lucky." One women lamented leaving prostitution for the less profitable and more impersonal world of pornography but -- after two arrests for soliciting-what else could she do?

In trying to paint a collective portrait of "women in porn," I run the risk of losing the sense of their rebellious individualism. To prevent this, I wish to present a few of the flesh-and-blood women who breathe life into pornography.

During my weekend at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show, I heard a common refrain: "You must meet Bobby Lilly." The woman wasn't difficult to find. Her flouncy black-and-white polka-dotted dress might have been flashy at most events, but Bobby looked downright conservative as she politicked her way through the aisles of scantily clad actresses. She and I connected at a meeting of the Free Speech Coalition, just after I had badly mangled my first attempt at an interview. Because she spoke, and eloquently, on the same political issues as I did, I immediately relaxed and regained some of the confidence I had lost moments before.

Hopefully, Bobby Lilly can act as a bridge for readers, as well. A political activist, Bobby is the moving force behind the Californians Act Against Censorship Together (Cal-Act), which defends "our right to free expression, especially sexual expression." She is also a partner in a three-way marriage between porn superstar Nina Hartley and a man who seems to prefer standing in the background. Bobby is not an actress, but she has appeared in a porn video. She explained why:

"To defend it [graphic sexual expression] without being willing to partake and play a role in it ... only taking the position `I'll defend it, but it's not right for me' . . . I just couldn't do it. I had to have the experience. I had to see what it would feel like. And, for me, it was very enjoyable. I found an exhibitionist streak in me that I did not realize was there."

Was she coerced into the industry?

"Oh, absolutely not. It came out of my relationship with Nina. I had been offered a role in an adult video, which had significant redeeming social value because it dealt with people over forty who still had sex lives. And it was done in conjunction with a sex therapist and a book the therapist had written. So I really felt very good about the final product and how it would be used."

Bobby's first experience is probably not typical. She was already familiar with many of the people on the set and had personal values that made her comfortable with nudity and nonmonogamous sex. I asked whether anything about the experience disturbed her. "There were things I did not totally appreciate. I mean, every time you go in to a job you can't do everything the way you want to, but that's the right and the role of the director: to decide the order, and that's fine."

Did she know any women who had been coerced into porn? "I do not personally know of anyone, however I know it does exist and I have heard an apocryphal story here and there. But that's not the norm. The level of coercion is very subtle, a very peer-pressure kind of thing."

This is the answer I heard again and again. No one seemed to personally know anyone who had been physically coerced into a pornographic act. But some women spoke of psychological or economic coercion. By "psychological coercion," they usually meant that inexperienced actresses found themselves on a set where they were asked to perform unexpected sex acts. The women could have walked off, but peer pressure is difficult to resist, especially for newcomers who are eager to please.

By "economic coercion" they meant that many women are into porn only to make the money they need to give themselves and their children a decent standard of living. In this, pornography is similar to any other highly paid industry that attracts people who want the money.

I sensed a paradox. Women said there was a lot of money in porn, yet most actresses earned appallingly little for appearing in videos. The standard flat fee for a full day's work is a few hundred dollars; royalties and residuals are unknown. Even superstars rarely make over a thousand dollars a day. Since the cheaper videos are shot in one day and the high quality ones only take a few days more, even hardworking actresses find it difficult to make a fortune.

Bobby explained that the real money to be made from porn was in the dance circuit. What was the dance circuit? "There are many different agencies and clubs around the country, to which adult actresses or Playboy centerfolds and what they call `the big tit girls' travel in a circuit. It's not a circuit in that you go to one place first and then to another. But women book various club dates and go from town to town, dancing. Sometimes they are on the road for weeks or months.

"Many women go into pornography, particularly into videos, to become part of the dance circuit, because porn gives them status and increases their pay for dancing. So the payoff for a video is that, when that box cover gets out into the market and people see it, the actress can get big weekly paychecks on the circuit."

I remembered reading a newspaper article about a woman named Amy Lynn Baxter, a Penthouse centerfold who had been lucky enough to be promoted by Howard Stern on a national television program. A high school graduate, Amy had been earning close to $250,000 annually by working about two months a year as an erotic dancer on the dance circuit. With the new publicity, she was hoping to boost that to $500,000 this year, putting her in the same financial bracket as prominent women doctors and lawyers. Whenever Amy travels, she takes both her baby and a nanny.

(And since it is a question that comes up-I should mention that I saw no indication of prostitution being part of the dancers' arrangements.)

I made a mental note to ask dancers I interviewed about "the circuit," then I pushed further on the idea of economic coercion. Specifically, did Bobby know of any producers who refused to pay women who said no?

"On one occasion and it was very unusual.

"One thing people have to understand about this industry is that it has only been legal for about twenty years and it is becoming more . . . `bureaucratized' isn't the right word . . . `proper procedures' are now being followed. Ten years ago, when videos started, a lot of people never even thought about paying taxes. Now taxes are being withheld ahead of time. Relationships in the industry are conforming to the regime of society."

What about women who become disillusioned by pornography and want to move on to legitimate film or theater? Bobby acknowledged that "crossovers" happen for technical or support workers, like make-up people. But for actresses? ...

"Rarely. Porn work does not give you any credentials; in fact, it stigmatizes you. There is no real stigma attached to technical work. I've been on porn sets where the make-up people talk about the legitimate actresses they've made up just days before. But with porn actresses, your biggest example of crossover is Traci Lords, who thoroughly denounces the industry and on that basis has managed to get some roles. A major actor or actress has never become a major Hollywood star."

With this intro into how society stigmatizes porn, I ventured into my main area of disagreement with Bobby: namely, she still believes that the Radical Right ("porn is sin") and not the Radical Left ("porn is violence against women") is the greatest threat to sexual expression today. It is an honest disagreement that comes from our differing experiences. Bobby lives in the San Francisco area where COYOTE has been very effective, largely due to the efforts of sex workers such as Priscilla Alexander and Margo St. James. These women have generated genuine respect within the San Francisco chapter of NOW, which remains sexually liberal.

For better or worse, however, NOW is a decentralized organization in which regions display independence in forging policy and strategy. Liberal chapters like San Francisco and New York have come down with some consistency for the rights of sex workers. But in Texas, for example, the anti-porn membership of NOW did a hostile takeover of the chapter; sexual liberals fled the organization. NOW is clearly in crisis over this issue.

The polarization within feminism has led to the sad spectacle of feminists violently opposing each other on vital issues. For example, the 1992 McConnell Bill-the Victims of Pornography Compensation Act-was supported by radical feminists, yet denounced by the New York chapter of NOW and the Feminists for Free Expression. When a Los Angeles fireman was recently accused of sexual harassment because he read a Playboy magazine in his own living quarters while off-duty, NOW supported the sexual harassment charge. Feminists for Free Expression opposed it.

An even sadder spectacle has been that of radical feminists joining with the Religious Right to support legislation, such as the anti-pornography ordinances popular in the eighties. Bobby, who is a child of the Left, lamented, "I'm appalled and frightened by the united front in backing certain legislation, not only against pornography but on the issue of violence in general. What I see happening is that some legitimate concerns within the feminist movement about the abuse of women have been pushed to an extreme by those who say `we're going to fix it by this process.' Their concern has been taken and used as a battering ram by the right."

I asked Bobby whether she thought the polarization in feminism was getting worse or better?

"I tend to see it leaning toward the pro-sex side, but it may be that I live in California, which is sort of a cutting-edge force, bringing innovative ideas into NOW. For example, this past year, I was able to get a resolution on sexual harassment out of the California State Board that basically took the same position I did. It was a very strong statement about how women are not inherently offended by sexual imagery."

Bobby blamed some of the polarization on how the media has chosen to present the feminist movement.

"The media, for their own reasons, have acknowledged the voices of women such as Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. They have ignored the many women on the other side from Priscilla Alexander to Nan Hunter to porn stars. In my darkest moments, I almost think it is a plot against women . . .."

I suggested it was a plot for sensationalism-the type of furor that Dworkin stirs up when she proclaims "Every man is a rapist." Bobby threw back, "I think the statement `All women love sex' should be every bit as sensational."

More thoughtfully, she added: "We have to understand the potential there is [in pornography] for women to speak about ourselves. This has not been tapped. It is only just beginning. If we close the doors to sexual expression, we will never find the connection between sex and our power."

She and I quickly agreed that this power would come as the result of women asserting themselves in porn and insisting on the power of producing and directing. But even without this, Bobby assured me that the industry was responding to the pressure of social criticism:

"For example, about fifteen years ago, it was sort of obligatory to have a rape scene, even if it obviously was a fantasy rape. It is no longer there. There were scenes women found offensive or crude-like being called `bitch' in the throes of passion. Most of that is gone. There is a sensitivity to complaints and a fear that if there are too many complaints, legal action will be taken under the guise of obscenity. You have to remember that under Reagan and Bush a lot of people in the industry went to jail for sending a videotape across the wrong state line. Now the industry is going to an opposite extreme in self-censorship. Pressure from women, inside and outside the industry, is a part of this."

I asked whether most women in the industry consider themselves to be feminists.

"Most of them don't, no. They believe in equality. But like many mainstream American women, they don't see themselves as bra burning and man hating. They have bought into that media stereotype. Yet when you ask them how they feel on issues affecting women, they come down on the side of women's rights."

These are the same women who receive the least protection and respect from society. I mentioned reading an account in the Cal-Act Newsletter about porn actresses whom the police had terrorized. I assumed the incident had come from the "bad-old days" (twenty years ago) when porn was clearly illegal. Bobby quickly corrected me:

"That was less than ten years ago, here in the state of California. It was during a period in which everyone assumed pornography was legal and so they were shooting a lot of it. Then the Los Angeles DA got the creative idea of charging the producers with pimping and pandering, the actors and actresses with prostitution. On that basis, the police raided sets and arrested people."

In the face of such persecution, women in porn desperately need protection not only-or even primarily-from exploitative producers, but from the police and court system. A first step toward such protection is for women to demand to work only on the basis of contracts. As it stands, the only contracts that exist are releases, which protect the producers by guaranteeing that the women are over eighteen years old. Bobby expanded on this:

"Contracts will help a lot, and they are something that may well happen over the next few years. I know there is a consciousness out there that is open to those things. And as it becomes more common, the established people can say `Well, I won't work without a contract.' There already are those who are 'contract people,' but usually that means they are signed to a long-term contract, which might be considered indentured servitude. Although they do get a lot of money. A union would be the best sort of contract we could get."

Being new to pornography, I did not know Nina Hartley was a superstar. I first heard of her in a political context. Nina was one of the Erotic Eleven-eleven women who were arrested in January 1993 in Las Vegas on charges of felony lesbianism and pandering.

The charges resulted from their participation in a live sex act that took place at an after-hours fund-raiser held by the "adult video industry." Most of the women arrested wanted to fight the charges, but they were intimidated by the probability of a conviction, which carried a jail term of six to twelve years. Unfortunately, the man who videotaped the fund-raiser had turned his tapes over to the grand jury, so there was no question that the women had engaged in public sex with each other.

In a phone conversation, Nina described the doubts with which she had entered into the performance that had caused so much grief. The benefit act had been set up to raise money for a good cause. Since everyone in the audience was of age and in the porn industry, the performers were urged to spice up the show. Feeling uncomfortable with a "no-limits" situation, Nina opted for the relatively innocuous role of standing onstage and describing into a microphone how to make love to a woman. Other women acted out her descriptions. Unfortunately, an undercover cop was in the audience; the women were arrested.

Nina characterized the treatment of the women in prison as similar to that of "animals on display in a zoo." She added, "The looking-down-their-noses from the female cops was palpable. They were triple gloving before they touched us because we were brought in on prostitution charges. One woman was body searched in a non-private area, not taken to a private room to be cavity searched.... One woman is a recovering junkie and, because of her arrest on prostitution charges, they took blood samples to test for HIV without her consent. She was saying, `Don't use that arm, use this arm,' but they disregarded her and she had a tremendous swelling on her arm for several days thereafter because they used a damaged vein.... I didn't appreciate that they allowed our real names to be posted, which, for women in our line of work, can be very dangerous."

Eventually, the prosecutor agreed to drop the charges down to a misdemeanor if the women pleaded "guilty" and if they made a "voluntary" donation of $20,000 to local charities. People in the industry banded together and raised the "donation." But the women still face tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid legal bills.

The repercussions echo on. For example, Nina was recently refused entry into Canada-where she often works as a dancer because of the misdemeanor conviction. On lawyer's advice, Nina crossed the border as an ordinary citizen and met with fans, without receiving pay. Despite these precautions, Canadian immigration held her in jail for three days and then, after a hearing, a judge gave her thirty days to leave the country.

Fortunately, Nina Hartley's career can weather such storms. Best known as an actress and feature dancer, Nina has recently made the leap into directing.

I caught up with Nina in Atlanta, where she was on the dance circuit. Nina spends two weeks of every month on the road, which she describes as being "too much." Nina began as an erotic dancer over a decade ago while she was going to school to become a nurse. A strong exhibitionist urge led her (and her husband, then boyfriend) to check out a local club, where she was quickly offered a job. Nina had discovered her true vocation.

Nina became involved in the video industry because of what she calls "a long-standing fantasy of creating explicit adult material." This, in turn, sprang from the radical literature she read in her youth, such as The Joy of Sex and the feminist classic Our Bodies, Ourselves. Nina speaks of sixties feminism as the intellectual "cradle" from which she emerged. Feminism convinced her: "If it's consensual, it's okay," and "Sex is essentially good."

Recently, she directed the video Nina Hartley's Book of Love. She also produced the first two in a series of educational/entertainment films. From Adam and Eve, they are titled, Nina Hartley's Guide to Better Cunnilingus and Fellatio. Her goal is to infuse pornography with a fresh approach that provides it with a larger context of music and movement, body humor, and theatrical flair. Perhaps even a two-character sexually graphic play.

These ambitions will be difficult to fulfill, since "home porn" and inexpensive videos seem to be dominating the industry at the expense of high-budget movies, such as the classic Behind the Green Door with its crafted script and exquisite sets. Videotape has democratized porn and caused a drop-off in artistry, simply because producers no longer have to be filmmakers to rake in the profits. The chains of adult theaters that formerly existed to promote large-budget films-e.g. the Pussycat chain-are almost a memory. Moreover, films like I Am Curious Yellow were made two or three decades ago, when women were allowed to be adventurous and kinky. The whole world has become a little bit meaner and less tolerant than it was a few decades ago.

I asked Nina the obligatory question: Have you ever been coerced into a pornographic act?

"No, never, no, goodness." She added, "Like bosses everywhere, some will push at you until you say no. There have been situations where people are emotionally vulnerable and taken advantage of, yes." This is particularly true of the "women who knock on our doors every day, asking if they can be in videos.

"I feel bad for the women who get into pornography not for the fun, but because they seek only economic gain," she continued, "because they are the ones who will be hurt by the experience. They will feel exploited, used, and abused even though they are responsible for putting themselves out there. To do a highly stigmatized activity with a permanent record just for the money ... this is what causes the real damage."

Women in porn have to love what they doing because it is a tough way to make a living. In fact, it is not possible for women to earn a truly decent living just by appearing in videos, because they have to work too many days. Moreover, they usually have to work either in Los Angeles or New York, where living is expensive.

So they get exposure through videos and then take their show on the road, where a feature act can make as much as $6,000 to $10,000 a week. But if they don't get pleasure out of their dancing -if it is just a matter of money-Nina thinks they are selling themselves short. She routinely counsels women who are unhappy with the industry to take a month or two off in order to think about where they are in life and whether they want to continue in pornography.

She calls this her "mother-hen rap." I asked her how she would counsel someone like Linda Lovelace, whom many in the industry seem to dismiss as a liar. "I wouldn't dismiss her. That's how she experienced things. But I would tell her to take responsibility for the situation in which she found herself."

I wondered aloud about violence in pornography. I told her I had been searching through movies, TV channels, and magazines without being able to find anything really offensive. It is difficult to find nasty pornography. Yet I keep reading radical feminists who claim that seventy-five percent, or some comparably huge chunk, of pornography is violence, containing scenes of rape or torture. "They are out to lunch on that," Nina replied, "especially on rape scenes; they were passe by '80, '81.

"Ever since the early nineties, when all the obscenity prosecutions were going on, the industry has been paranoid about censoring itself. People have stopped doing anything that might be objectionable. For example, some producers ask actresses not to say `Oh God, Oh God' when they come in sex scenes.

"Nor do they dare to show a scene that remotely resembles nonconsensual sex. So you have bondage movies which look ridiculous," Nina explained. "Bondage is a pre-orgasmic experience, but most producers will no longer couple it with sex for fear of the hysteria over `sex leading to violence.' Producers think they have to divide fetish activity from sexual activity. So you have bondage portrayed as something apart from foreplay and sex, which makes the people involved in it seem even more perverted than they did before."

Everything in porn seemed to be skewed to conform to outside pressures. I asked Nina how she, as a porn actress, was treated by mainstream feminists. "As long as the women have an okay attitude about sex to begin with, I am usually treated respectfully. Once they meet me, they realize I am not an idiot, not a sexual-abuse survivor. I'm just a person who can talk about weather, and cars, and kids, and politics. They realize there is another side to this business and that not every woman is oppressed who's in it."

In fact, a lot of Nina's fans are women, whom she tells to take responsibility for their own orgasms. "This is the most powerful thing any woman can do. Take responsibility for the timing of lovemaking, the mood that's set..." Here she sighs deeply. "But taking responsibility requires a generous heart, and women, right now, are very, very angry. Many do not seem to have the generosity in their hearts that is necessary to ... for want of better words ... to honor Aphrodite. They are killing their own well of life."

This remark, of course, drifts directly into a discussion of the anti-porn/anti-sex tendencies of modern feminism. Nina sees this as a response to men. Anti-porn feminists actively hate men and blame them for what they see as the "victimization of women." According to Nina, "Pornography, as they understand the word, is the ultimate personification of everything that is bad. Actually, their response to porn is a throwback to Judeo-Christian ethics. A true feminist is a compassionate person, who tries to encourage women to speak their own `truths.' "

But feminists are so angry at men they will not listen to dissenting opinions-and especially not to men's pain, their voices or their needs. As she put it, "We're still just so angry at them and their penises and their need to put it in us. It is a very anti-sexual response." Their anger_. prevents feminists from realizing that men are as oppressed as women are by sexual, social, and political attitudes, if only in different areas of sexuality.

I asked Nina if she had ever had a dialogue with an anti-porn feminist, like Dworkin. Nina declines to debate such women, because they are irrational zealots who are not interested in listening to her. "Why should I put myself through that?" Nina's afraid she'd get more flustered than she likes to be in public; instead of arguing, she might just sit there, saying over and over, `You're full of shit, you're full of shit."

About the hatred and fear directed at her by Christians, she seems more philosophical. "These are the people who are truly obsessed with sex. Sex with them is still a very big issue and they are not at all comfortable with it. Then, there I am ... poking them with a sharp stick." She tries to be sensitive to their pain, but admits "their pain amazes me, because I have no background on which to pin it." Mostly, she fights an urge to scratch her head and walk away.

Next, I asked about the prospect of women like her rising to positions of power in the industry. "The business is not that old, and back in the seventies men ran everything. The pornography business, like most businesses in the United States, is predominantly male-controlled. However, there has been matriculation up through the ranks and, certainly, Candida Royalle is the most thrilling example of that. Individual women have made individual deals to direct."

But even an actress of Nina's stature does not receive royalties, residuals, or any of the niceties that women in any other branch of entertainment have come to expect from a contract. Indeed, most of her contracts are verbal, not written, because-after all -what court would uphold them? Nevertheless, things are a lot better in porn than they used to be, from small things like providing a hot lunch and a shower after scenes, to large and exciting things like women beginning to direct. "In another twenty years, we might be unionized ... who knows?"

I pointed out that many reactionary industries have been revolutionized in the last twenty years and women in them are now well represented. But pornography has not kept pace by integrating women into positions of power. She explained, "A lot of the original people are still alive who were in power when it was still illegal." The old guard is the wrong age, the wrong gender, and the wrong attitude to be of assistance to women. Also, porn has been isolated from political and social change because society has pushed it off to one side. One reason for this is that producers of porn do not have advertisers and backers who threaten to withdraw their money, as regular TV or film producers do. "Fortunately," she added, "the pie is huge."

I concluded by asking Nina what was the one thing she wanted women to know about porn. She didn't miss a beat in answering, "Sex isn't something men do to you. It isn't something men get out of you. Sex is something you dive into with gusto and like it every bit as much as he does."

Crystal Wilder was the only woman I interviewed who made me feel protective.

Bernie Oakley of Adam and Eve had given me Crystal's fax number and encouraged me to use his name as an intro-a common method of networking in the industry. He had also provided me with a bit of data on Crystal. She had started out as a dancer and proceeded on to videos as a way to boost her into "feature dancer" status. I was intrigued to hear she was now in transition from actress to producer, playing both roles in a company she co-owned and operated with her husband. This was a smart woman, who wanted to keep the profits that resulted from her own performances.

Crystal's company, Wilder Productions, is a new business venture that produces X- and R-rated movies. The company's first release is entitled Wilder at Heart; the latest one is an R-rated documentary on the Miss Nude Universe Contest. In order to control quality, Crystal's husband handles postproduction, but I was heartened to hear that Wilder Productions uses outside scriptwriters. This means the company is less likely to fall into the trap of producing amateurish films that are shot spontaneously.

In our first phone call, I scheduled a convenient time for Crystal to be interviewed. She was bubbly at the prospect-an enthusiasm that was entirely missing when the appointed time rolled around. From the tone of her voice, I suspected a problem and immediately switched tactics by asking if there was anything she wanted to know about the book or me. Yes, there definitely were things she wanted to know. What was my educational background? What were my qualifications for writing this book?

I realized that in the intervening week Crystal had been having second thoughts, perhaps about my motives or whether she would be fairly treated in the book. Given how most feminists treat sex workers, who could blame her? Fortunately, in porn, the names of those you know often serve as credentials for who you are, and I had carefully constructed a network of solid contacts. I briefly answered Crystal's questions about my credentials, then referred to some prominent people in the industry who had offered me the use of their names as calling cards. Crystal relaxed.

I began by asking if she had ever been coerced into a pornographic act. "Never," the adamant response came back, then her tone softened. "I wondered about that before I was in the business, before I was a dancer, and I'm glad to say `never.' " Nor did she know of anyone who had been coerced. But she had seen borderline things. While watching a hair-pulling scene, for example, she became convinced that the woman-although technically consenting-was not enjoying herself. She suspected that the woman was new to the business and just going along with whatever the director wanted. "This happens a lot to newcomers," she assured me.

Moving from consent to contracts, I asked what paperwork she was used to signing before making a video. Although the twenty-six-year-old actress had acted in over a hundred videos, she had never signed anything beyond a release, which protected only the director. Crystal worked on the basis of a verbal understanding. So far, no director had refused to pay her, and only a few checks had bounced. Her worst experience? Being shorted money by a club owner in Canada, with whom she did have a contract. Knowing that no judge would take her seriously, Crystal wrote the money off. She refers to industry contracts as "a joke," because they are unenforceable.

If she had been shorted by someone in video, Crystal would have had some recourse. A few well-placed phone calls would have resulted in pressure being brought to bear on the erring party. Adult Video News-the most influential periodical in the industry-makes a point of gently policing business practices. Powerful men like Phil Harvey, owner of Adam and Eve, are known to take strong ethical stands. But such self-regulation is not the norm on the dance circuit, which crosses borders and is not represented by centralized organizations. There is not the same sense of community.

Having cleared away the obligatory questions about coercion and contracts, I asked Crystal how she got involved in the industry. Her first experience, on the fringe of porn, came when she posed for some magazines. What impressed her the most were the women; they were "very, very nice people." From here, she almost stumbled into exotic dancing: She and her husband were on vacation and happened to go to a dance club in Nebraska. On a lark, Crystal entered a wet T-shirt contest and won $100-a fortune to her at the time. Thus encouraged, she checked out a local dance club, which she found to be clean and tasteful. "Nothing nasty was happening there, and the girls were having a good time."

As for progressing into porn videos-a lot of dancers do this in order to work their way up the financial ladder to "feature dancer." In this, Crystal has been overwhelmingly successful. These days, she travels from club to club with a truckload of over $30,000 worth of lights, which add glitz to such dance routines as the one in which she dresses up like an ice cream sundae and slings her toppings around the stage. As she explains, "I don't want to just take off my clothes. People can see that in a video." I pulled the conversation back to how Crystal had gone from her first dance club to her first video. "I met an agent," and through him she arranged to make a "couple of movies" to see if she liked the work. At this point, Crystal made a statement to which I would later return and which would ultimately define the interview for me. She said, "I figured if I made only a few of them, no one would know. I didn't want it to be known all over my hometown, I guess." This was a theme I did not immediately pick up on.

Sensing that Crystal's ambitions extended beyond acting in porn-and, perhaps, beyond producing it-I asked whether she wanted to cross over from porn to more legitimate films, like Traci Lords was attempting to do. "Yes," but she felt "branded" from having done porn. This comment, coming on the heels of not wanting it to be known in her hometown, began to flash a red light in my mind.

When I asked what-besides money-made porn worth being branded over, she talked about the dance clubs, where male fans lavished attention on her. "They think I am an ultimate fantasy. Some of them call me a superstar and come into the clubs for no other reason than to see me. It is the greatest feeling in the world," she bubbled on, "to be taken so seriously for something that most people don't see as legitimate. It makes everything worthwhile."

Here it was for the third time. She did not want to be known in her hometown; she felt branded by porn; she was delighted to be finally taken seriously. This was a woman who craved acceptance and expected rejection. Yet, Crystal was also clearly proud of her work and craved recognition for it. There was a tension and ambivalence about Crystal that contrasted with the self-confidence of Nina Hartley and the political sophistication of Bobby Lilly. A major male producer had assured me that Crystal lived up to her name: She was "Wilder" than most. To me, she seemed vulnerable.

I picked up on the theme of being branded by porn. I asked how the people in her small Midwestern hometown reacted to her being in the industry. "They know about it, but they don't acknowledge it. It is not really discussed, but they accept me because we are family and friends and we were prior to the porn. They realize I'm the same person."

Do they think there is something wrong with you? "Yes." How did you feel about that? "You know what? At first, it really did hurt my feelings, but being brought up in the Midwest, I understand that a lot of people are very closed-minded and it is something that is hard to overcome. As far as what I do, I know my parents look upon it as something totally unacceptable. I can understand them now because I have become a lot more understanding and nonjudgmental ... but I wish they could open their hearts and understand that I'm doing what I want to do and I'm not hurting anyone."

I wondered aloud whether she had found more acceptance from people since moving from the Midwest to California.

Yes and no. She bonds with other women in the industry, but hardly ever tells outside people what she does for a living. She is painfully aware that "regular" women view her as an "outcast." This keeps her from getting active in political or social causes, because people might ask her, "And what do you do?"

At one point, I started describing a party I'd attended at which pornography had become a hot topic of discussion. I had a point in mind, but I never managed to reach it, because Crystal broke in. "I really miss going to things like that," she said.

"It [the ostracism] hurts me a lot because I enjoy being around people and having close friends and they [regular women] just can't look at you in the same way once they know what you do. I guess I am just really afraid to get close to women who are not in the industry because I don't like being judged and every time, when I am asked by a female what I do and I'm honest about it, that look on their face! ... All they are seeing is what I do. They are not looking at me. It's a hard thing to overcome."

As we spoke, Crystal's voice kept sinking until I had trouble hearing her. For the first time in the course of my interviews, I felt impelled to stop being impartial. I just talked to her, like I would to any other human being. I explained that one of the things women in her position do not appreciate is how intimidating and threatening they are to ordinary women-to housewives or even to a happily married career woman like me, who is approaching forty and starting to sag faster than I can prop it up.

I reminded her of what she had said: The men come into the club and say, "You're my ultimate fantasy." Well, most of those men have wives or girlfriends, yet they are saying these words to her, not to them. Crystal should understand how that makes these women feel and how easy it is to blame her for it. They are threatened and intimidated.

"The women don't find me intimidating," she objected; "they call me sleazy."

"But if they said, `You're intimidating,' " I replied, "that would give all the power to you; you're so powerful, you threaten them. If they say, `You're a sleazy, sick bitch,' that makes you the wrong one; it makes you pathetic and not them. When you make people feel insecure, you also make them angry."

Women like Crystal are a socially safe and convenient dumping ground for the jealousy and insecurity of others. Most women cannot live out their fantasies nor have what they want sexually. This is the nature of reality: Not many of us can have it all. Perhaps we are not attractive enough or too inhibited or just unlucky. Even women who are reconciled to not having "it all" are likely to resent women like Crystal, in much the same way the rich. After all, there she is dressed up like an ice cream sundae, to the applause of their husbands.

The fact that she is happily married doesn't decrease the jealousy. But it does explain something that was puzzling me: How did she escape the somewhat hard polish that I saw in most of the other women. Crystal's husband seems to form a barrier between her and the harshness of the "non-porn" world.

Crystal recounted an incident that occurred at the Canadian border when she and her husband drove up to conduct a three-to-four-week tour. Since she travels with a caravan of lights and equipment, customs routinely checks things out before waving them through. This time they were carrying a few videotapes of Crystal, not for sale-which was prohibited-but to show as promotion. Her husband took responsibility for them and was arrested for attempting to smuggle pornography. (That particular province prohibited anal sex and facial come-shots, both of which were in the videos.) It is little wonder that, when I asked Crystal what she would change about the industry, she immediately replied, "I want a written guide for what is and is not illegal to produce and distribute from place to place."

Crystal's marriage intrigued me. Many porn actresses are married, but she was the first one with what seemed to be a conventional marriage-a monogamous partnership, which included a small mom-and-pop business and the desire for children: the American dream. I was curious, but I had resolved never to intrude into the personal lives of the women I interviewed.

Instead of asking direct questions like, how does your husband feel when he watches you have sex on-screen? I asked, how do porn actresses such as you reconcile on-screen sex with a monogamous marriage? "Many of them restrict themselves to girl-girl scenes or have sex only with their husbands to keep from `complicating' their marriages."

I wondered aloud whether married men in porn handle things with as much delicacy. Apparently, they didn't, because they don't attach the same importance to sex as women do. "The men in porno are not like your average man, because sex is a job, sometimes mechanical. They are the ones who have to perform as far as the come-shot."

As the interview dissolved into a conversation, I drew it to a close by asking what she wanted to tell other women about pornography. "Just that I don't like getting feedback that's so negative ... But I try not to be judgmental back. I keep asking myself, Who am I to judge? Because I don't like it when people judge me."

Without question, Candida Royalle is the most powerful woman in pornography today. In 1984, having acted in several porn classics, she founded Femme Productions in order to create sensual adult movies that would appeal to women, allowing them to explore their sexual potential. For example, the promo literature for Femme's futuristic movie Revelations reads:

Women desperately need their own form of pornography. According to a 1989 study by Adult Video News-the closest thing the industry has to a Bible-twenty-nine percent of adult video customers were couples and fifteen percent were women; that segment of customers was growing rapidly. Candida addresses this huge audience through award-winning movies, such as Three Daughters, which tell a story-complete with original soundtrack, soft focus, and few genital close-ups.

Her films are reminiscent of porn classics from the seventies, which were carefully scripted with intricate plots and good acting. There are two reasons for this: Ms. Royalle is willing to spend months, if necessary, developing a concept-Revelations took two years-and, her budgets are often ten times larger than those of most adult films. Although the "old guard" of porn claims it is not possible, Candida makes a profit without lowering her staggering sticker price of $79.95 (mail order $39.95). And this, despite the fact that the theater system that formerly supported "big-budget" porn is now dead.

When I asked how she was able to survive, she responded, "The fact that we are so unique means that our work doesn't live for just one week and then die off and become what they call `catalog.' The phenomenal thing about our line is that the first movie we ever made in '84 sells as strong as the last movie."

She never lowers her price. Instead, she does an incredible number of interviews and personal appearances to promote Femme Productions.

I caught up with Candida in her office, in a dead period before she dashed out to rehearse for her second career as back-up singer in her boyfriend's rock band. I began by asking why Femme advertised its products as "erotica" rather than pornography. "I like to think that my work takes more of a holistic approach to sexuality and lovemaking. I like to pull away from the obvious hard-core and get to the more subtle nuances of lovemaking. And I like to avoid the word romance, because I want to get away from the conception that women need romance as part of having sex.

Candida's commitment to women's sexuality led her to create Femme's Star Director Series-a collection of thirty-to-forty minute short stories which are directed by women superstars such as Gloria Leonard, Veronica Hart, Veronica Vera, and Annie Sprinkle. These women came together in July 1983, when they began a support group for adult film actresses; they went on to become business associates.

Femme's movies blend compelling content with filmmaking niceties such as original sound scores. Gloria Leonard's Fortune Smiles, for example, is advertised as taking "us on a touchingly funny walk through the minds of two people who have been dating and are about to take the leap into bed." Candida explains why she took a chance on such an innovative series. "I wanted to give each of these women an opportunity to express their personal views and fantasies about sex, love, and men."

Candida's philosophy is also expressed in the working conditions on her sets. "I bring a respect and compassion to the people who work for me, perhaps because I've been in front of the camera myself." She can remember walking on less pleasant sets as an actress, only to find them filled with sleazy producers/directors she didn't respect. That made her feel sleazy to be there. Candida offers her people respect; in turn, she demands professionalism. She will not hire anyone who has an active history of drugs, alcoholism, or other self-destructive behavior.

Part of this professionalism is a commitment to safe sex, which includes using condoms on the set whenever the couples are not real-life lovers. Candida is the only major producer of heterosexual porn I have found who implements this policy. Femme has used condoms since 1986, when they became standard equipment for two basic reasons: to protect the talent (actors and actresses) and to set the example of a responsible approach.

Candida told me about the only time she breached this safe sex policy. "I remember with Jeanna Fine when we did Taste of Ambrosia-she and Randy [Paul] had worked together a lot and I really wanted her to use a condom. She tried, but she really didn't want to use it so I just said, `Fine, we won't use it.' But I thought, `This poor woman, she doesn't realize that she should be happy that I'm asking her to do this.' "

Candida went on to explain that if she is filming a dream or fantasy sequence, condoms are still used but the scene is handled differently, because-after all-condoms rarely exist in dreams and fantasies. Camera angles and other techniques mask their presence. In Rites of Passion, the sequence directed by Veronica Vera [Shady Madonna] used a condom but the camera didn't go in so tight that you could see it.

It is a sign of how "in control" Candida is that I did not ask my obligatory question about coercion until twenty minutes into the interview. I finally blurted out: "Have you ever been coerced into a pornographic act?"

"No. The only time it ever came close-and it wasn't bad was when I was working with one of the bigger filmmakers. It was one of the first films I ever did and it was about this big albino guy who, in the story, had been abusing prostitutes. Some women throw an all-night party for him and they get him really drunk. At a certain point, the women all stand over him and pee on him.

"This wasn't in the script and all of a sudden they started handing out beers to all the actresses. Now, I don't drink beer. I don't like the taste of it. So I said, `Excuse me, what is this?' And I was told that there was a scene in which we were all going to pee on him. I said, `Excuse me, I did not say I would do that. I was never told I would do it. I am not doing it.' " Candida rallied the other women; finally, some of them did the scene and some didn't, depending on whether it offended them. The only coercion used against Candida was the threat that she would never work for him again. She was paid for the work she'd done.

I ask if she knew of any women who had been coerced.

"No."

Then, before I could broach the subject of my next question, she brought it up herself. "Have you read Linda Lovelace's book Ordeal?" Candida asked.

"What is shocking to me," she continued upon discovering I had, "is that this is not a book about pornography; it is about domestic violence. It is about a woman who is abused as a child, who marries an abusive man and is turned into a prostitute by him. Not by pornography. If you read the book-in her very own words!-you find out that the whole thing about a gun to her head came from her own husband and was never part of the set of Deep Throat. In fact, she says that making the movie was the first time she felt she could smile, because the people were so nice to her. The reason she ended up with bruises was because her husband was so jealous of how nice they were to her on the set that he beat her up in their hotel room. If any violence had occurred on the set, the crew would have stopped it, but they were so intimidated by him that they didn't say anything about what he did to her after hours.

"Rather than being an indictment of pornography, getting involved in the industry and becoming a star is what enabled her to finally escape. Women Against Pornography grabbed onto her story and acted every bit as exploitative as her husband did. They took her story, and instead of really trying to help the woman, who desperately needed help, they decided to misconstrue the facts and to wave her like a banner for their cause."

As long as the anti-porn cause had come up, I wanted to know whether or not-as a producer- Candida had started to shy away from the sort of scenes that have been criticized as degrading to women, such as come-shots on the face or mock rapes.

This was the only time Candida-a veteran interviewee-paused before giving an answer. On one hand, she doesn't have come-shots on the face in her movies, because it has become standard (thus boring) and because she thinks most women do find it degrading. On the other hand, she believes women can get "as down and dirty as the best of them." Besides which, occasionally "playing nasty" with your lover can be good, clean fun. If an actress wanted to do a come-shot on her face, Candida was not sure how she would react.

As for mock rape scenes-she is comfortable enough with them to include them in her films, and believes society misunderstands the distinction between consensual power play and real abuse. In fact, her semi-documentary, LOVERS: An Intimate Portrait, has a scene of mock rape.

Candida is well aware that anti-porn feminism is a radical departure from the early days of the movement. "I was a very active young feminist in college between '69 and '71. We [The Bronx Coalition] had a storefront, we ran groups, we gave free pap smears once a year and we were really working hard. I finally left the movement because everything was getting full of anger pointed at men. Men did this to us; men did that to us. At the time, I noticed also that if you had anything to do with men you were basically `sleeping with the enemy.'

"You know, the feminist movement was so essential to my growth, but I didn't do it to hate men. I did it to better my life. So I left the movement ['72], right around when it was becoming fashionable to be a lesbian. I really see that this [the anti-porn hysteria] is the outgrowth of that. The movement was co-opted by women who decided there was no hope for men, that we really had to be split off from them and that sex was our enemy as well ... unless it was masturbatory or lesbian."

Candida sighed, "Now we see that `feminism' has a bad connotation to it for the younger generation: It is anti-man, antisex."

The responsibility for this lies with radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon. Candida told me about the only time she encountered MacKinnon. It was in 1986, when they were on a panel together on the Donahue show. At that point, Candida didn't know enough about the anti-porn zealot to get the full impact of who she was sitting beside. The show was somewhat stacked against MacKinnon. MacKinnon managed to dig her own grave by talking in impenetrable legalese. Now that Candida knows who these women are, she would love to confront them. But, as she says, "Now none of them will even get on the same stage with someone like me, which is very telling. Norma Ramos loves to call me a `pimp' on the news."

I asked her what she wanted people to know about the industry. Candida said that society's reaction was a catch-22. People complain about the low quality of porn and pity the "poor" women who work under such awful conditions, but both of these things are caused by society's repression and intolerance. Until this changes-until society grants sex and pornography the legitimacy it deserves-the industry will never attract a high level of filmmaker, who has a social consciousness. As long as pornography is stigmatized, everyone who works in it will be victimized.

Historically, the most important vehicle for pornography has been the printed word. Today, as videos and computers assume a leading role in mass distribution, newsprint has become the main haven for less popular forms of sexual expression about which producers are beginning to feel uncomfortable. This seems especially true of sadomasochism (S/M) -the game-playing foreplay that focuses on dominance and mock violence. S/M, with its leather costumes, whips, and snarls has become less welcome in a video industry trying to reassure society that there is no connection between sex and violence.

Newsprint is also the main way that people with unusual sexual preferences contact each other through personal advertisements. Although home porn-the unpolished amateur videos made and marketed by real people-also addresses this need, it does so through the printed word in the form of newsletters, which establish a sense of community.

The published word, like the broadcasted image, faces unique challenges. No one knows this better than publisher/editor Brenda Tatelbaum of Boston, who publishes the sexually graphic EIDOS (Everyone Is Doing Outrageous Sex). Brenda may soon be conducting a one-woman crusade against British customs.

Her troubles began in September 1993, when a female subscriber sent EIDOS a notice she had received from British customs; the notice declared the magazine to be obscene and duly confiscated under a law dating back to 1876. Ironically, EIDOS would be entirely legal if published domestically in England. Brenda wrote a letter of appeal to the British government-the only official course open to her-then contacted such organizations as Feminists Against Censorship and the Libertarian Alliance -- to no avail. Indeed, the feedback she's received from some feminists has been hostile.

One feminist organization attacked her for running personal classified ads. Although the spokeswoman had never read EIDOS, she accused Brenda of putting women in jeopardy, because criminally intentioned people might answer the sexually oriented ads placed by women. Brenda assured her that in ten years of publishing, such a situation had never arisen. But the woman remained adamantly hostile. Rather than being angry in return, Brenda was baffled. She kept repeating to me, "I just don't get it. They say I'm promoting violence against women. They say images are criminal. I just don't get it."

Brenda is paying the price for promoting an alternate view of sexuality. This is an increasingly unpopular thing to do. As she explained, "With the increasingly centralized distribution of information worldwide-everyone is getting the same messages and images, whether from the newsstand or TV. There is a wall going up against secondary or alternative sources. The alternative press is being driven more and more underground." Soon, there may be only one societal sanctioned view of human sexuality.

In mid-July '94, Brenda's distributor faxed her a letter declaring his intention to refuse further shipments of EIDOS. Perhaps because the magazine is popular among Brits with alternate lifestyles, it has been tagged for special treatment. The distributor feared that if shipments of EIDOS slipped through customs, officials might raid his home and confiscate not only that periodical, but his entire inventory.

When Brenda called the British Consulate, she discovered she would be liable to arrest if she flew to England and tried to transport EIDOS on her person. From former run-ins with U.S. mail authorities, she knows they often "misinterpret" the law to fit their own needs. Accordingly, she is planning to touch down on British soil with the offending material and hold what she hopes will be a reasonable conversation with the officials there. Four alternative publishers in England have promised to run ads publicizing her plight. They are trying to rouse support for Brenda's plans to confront British customs and picket the place, if necessary. When Penthouse faced the same sort of repression from British customs in the seventies, it had the resources to fight in court and win. Brenda has to rely on moral suasion.

With this conflict in my mind, I opened my first issue of EIDOS: Volume 7, Number 3-the tenth anniversary issue. Its cover sported the photo of a dominant woman dressed in what appeared to be a lace and leather corset. A muzzled man crouched between her spread legs, one arm wrapped around her ankle. In one hand the woman held a paddle; the other hand had a firm grip in the tangles of the man's hair.

The inner pages contained letters from The Progressive and North Carolina State University, as well as the request for a sample copy from the Institute of Scientific Information of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences; news clippings with information on sexually oriented news items, such as the ongoing abortion struggle; and notices of seizure by British customs. There was an extensive poetry section with titles like "Pussy Feels Like" and "Ablution." Fourteen pages of book reviews covered topics from anti-war to all versions of erotica. The middle section advertised such products as stationery that sported a personalized nude photo, a video entitled Daddy and the Muscle Academy, and several sexually oriented computer bulletin boards. There was a feast of specialty phone services, with names like "The Whip Line" and "The Venus Line," which was devoted to "CrossDressers and their Admirers." And, then, there came the pages of personal ads, some with revealing photos.

What distinguishes EIDOS from dozens of other sexually graphic periodicals is the philosophy of Brenda Tatelbaum, who self-consciously identifies with nineteenth-century free-love periodicals, such as Lucifer, the Light Bearer. The credo of EIDOS is spelled out in each issue:

From the start of our interview, Brenda laid the philosophical groundwork for her position. She objected to the word pornography, referring instead to EIDOS as "sexually explicit material written by and for adults." "Pornography," she insisted, "carries too much baggage." She sees EIDOS as documenting sexuality -the dark side, as well as the enlightened one.

EIDOS is an alternative to the slick, commercially motivated magazines like Penthouse and Hustler. It is the sort of publication that comes out because the people believe in sexual freedom so much they would operate at a loss, if necessary.

For Brenda, the commitment dates back to the early eighties, when she was writing erotic poetry and giving live readings. This was a period when women's study groups and periodicals were still talking about female eroticism and sexuality. Back then, she was putting out a publication that resembled a literary/art magazine on slick paper, with a color cover and little advertising. Nevertheless, it was attacked as smut. Brenda remarked, "No one in the community was upset with what I was doing; they were more upset that the police searched my home without a warrant." Ten years later, the atmosphere has changed, and Brenda doesn't believe people-especially feminists-would stand up publicly to defend her anymore. "It is as if all the sexual freedom that came before had never been."

Brenda knows that much of the new censorship comes from anti-porn feminists, whose "propaganda has been foisted on the public, especially the myth that crime and violence are related to sex."

I asked if she had ever been coerced into a pornographic act. "When I was married, of course, there were times when I didn't want to have sex. I agreed to when I didn't really want it, but that's basically it." Does she know of or has she heard of women being forced into sex acts by men using pornography? "I have never heard of such an incident. I have never been contacted by someone who conveyed such an incident to me. No."

I asked about S/M and bondage-activities that had been prominently displayed in the issues of EIDOS I'd read. "Is S/M more prone to violence than normal sex?" Brenda's reply was adamant. "The goal of S/M is to not go beyond the limits that have been set by the people involved," she assured me. "The scenario is laid out in advance; people know what to expect and there are certain code words that they use. If the code word is evoked, then that's that."

Brenda receives no support from feminists. This, despite the fact that she is a member of NOW and a pro-choice activist. It was when abortion rights came under attack by Reagan/Bush that Brenda first came into contact with the leaders of NOW in Boston. Many of the interactions were not pleasant. One day, a past president of the chapter stopped Brenda on the street; standing nose-to-nose, she looked Brenda in the eye and declared, "It is very difficult for me to take anything you do seriously." Brenda was stunned, "I thought to myself, `Oh my God, what is this, out of nowhere.' I never spoke a word about it to anyone for years, but it kept crossing my mind."

Was this a typical reaction from NOW members? "NOW is quite happy to take my money, so I will be a member. But as far as my input on erotica ... here, in the Boston area, they don't want me to be part of their workshops."

Brenda actively lectures on her own, but the circumstances are often skewed against her. Recently, for example, she was asked to speak on sexual freedom by the Women's Center at Northwestern University. The situation wasn't quite what Brenda had been led to expect. "I got there and they showed me a flier that had been posted on the wall. I hadn't realized that the night before Gail Dines of Wheelock College had been there in the same room presenting her slide show of pornography."

This is a slide show of tortured and mutilated women, often shown by anti-porn feminists as a prelude to a speech. Audiences naturally react with horrified indignation. The show is similar to the slides of mutilated fetuses that pro-lifers present, also as a prelude to discussion. Pro-choice advocates routinely denounce this tactic as unfair. They are not above adopting it, however, when it serves their own agenda.

The college paper The Northeastern News described this show: "She [Dines] cited Hustler magazine as a major contributor to the `incredible holocaust against women going on today.' Dines showed the enthusiastic 50-member audience graphic photography of a staged pool-hall gang rape that appeared in that magazine ... those photographs were tame in comparison to some of the others projected on the wall behind Dines. Other images featured women being tortured with ropes, pliers, vacuum cleaners, and high-heeled shoes."

Brenda had been given no indication that she was part of a two-night debate on pornography and violence. "I had prepared a speech, not a debate.... I thought about it and decided that I wasn't going to deal with their issues, but to address sexual freedom as I bad been asked to do. I decided to establish the rich history of individualist feminist voices in abolitionism, suffrage, abortion ... and how they were hounded by public opinion and censors. I went on for an hour and concluded that there really should be a course on the subject of sexual freedom."

In covering Brenda's presentation, the university paper reported, "She listed women's publications such as On Our Backs and Taste of Latex as examples from `the wonderful world of sex scene publishing.' Over 30 people were part of Tatelbaum's original audience, which dwindled to 11 by the end of her speech." The coverage ended by concluding that Brenda did not address the issues.

Brenda gave me her account. "The women in the audience were angry because I totally ignored the issues of the night before. They didn't want to hear that there is a history of women suppressing women that no one knows about. No one challenged me, but some people-quite a few people-walked out."

Not surprisingly, Brenda believes that feminism's focus on politics is enslaving women sexually rather than empowering them; by denying sexuality, women lose their power. Brenda cited the Anita Hill sexual harassment case, during which now Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was accused of slipping a pubic hair into Hill's drink: "It is amazing to me that an Anita Hill-educated, successful, a beautiful woman-could be so devastated or brought down by a pubic hair put in her drink. What has happened to women's instincts for survival?"

Are things getting better or worse for sexual expression? Although Brenda expressed great relief at the Religious Right's no longer having such influence in the White House; she followed up with an interesting statement. "I did [Morton Downey's] show three times and when the show was eliminated-mostly by pressure from the left-that important forum for the alternative voice was gone."

In speculating on how the Religious Right (who view porn as sin) and the Radical Left (who view it as violence) are linking hands in a push for censorship, Brenda concluded with a question that has occurred to many of us, "Isn't it kind of bizarre to see the Left meeting up with the Right?"

Kat Sunlove is the publisher and owner of the Spectator: California's Original Sex Newsmagazine. She describes herself as "a little Texas missionary." She adds, "When I was thirteen, I wanted to be a missionary to Russia and save the communists." Now she is a missionary for sexual freedom, especially for S/M, which "is so misunderstood."

I approached Kat through a mutual acquaintance in the industry, who vouched for me. Nevertheless, Kat wanted to know more about me. I immediately sent her several articles I had written on porn, scheduling our interview so that she would have time to look them over beforehand. Kat later explained her caution. Years ago, when she had a phone line as "Mistress Kat" her persona in a column that advised S/M practitioners-she used to get threatening calls about how sick she was and how they were going to "get her." She has been cautious ever since.

I began by asking about an issue of the Spectator that I'd read. The July 22-28 issue featured "Samantha Strong Live at Kit Kat Club," the "Free Speech Coalition Awards," and "Stonewall 25 Snapshots." Clustered at the bottom and to the side of articles and personal ads were boxes that hawked a wide variety of phone-sex services-Chicks with Dicks, Slut Talk, Sexy SheMales, Clit-Lickin' Lesbians, to name a few. On page 7, respected feminist Pat Califia had a column called "Topping the News," which monitored efforts to suppress sexual information worldwide. On page 8, a "Public Services" section provided readers with phone numbers for suicide prevention and shelters for battered women.

"The Spectator," Kat informed me, "is an adult news magazine in tabloid format. It is an outgrowth of the old Berkeley Barb, which in the sixties was the mouthpiece for the free-speech movement on campus." The Barb-because it did not censor expression-tended to attract the fringes, the people whose lifestyles and opinions could find few other forums. Soon, the ad section was dominated by massage parlors, vendors of sex toys, and just ordinary people who were sexually adventurous. The Barb developed an extensive ad base of people with unusual sexual preferences.

Kat described the crisis this caused among the politically correct staff of the Barb. "As the MacKinnon philosophy started to take hold of the feminist circles-the flawed concept that somehow sexually oriented material led directly to violence toward women-the staff split and the Barb tried to find a comfortable place for everyone. They first put all the adult material into a center section. So you had this little irony of people riding on BART [San Francisco's transit system] supposedly reading the politic Berkeley Barb and really reading adult ads in the center section. Even that was not sufficient separation for the staff, so in '78 the two sections divided into two papers. The center section became the Spectator. In so doing, the Barb gave away its ad base and died within a year and a half."

The early Spectator tended to be a bit fluffy in its content: readers' fantasies and such. Kat was aware of this problem because, at the time, she was "Mistress Kat" writing an S/M advice' column-"The Kat Box"-through which she became known as the Dear Abby of S/M. With a masters degree in political science, she brought a political orientation to her writing from the start. Then, in '87, the employees had a chance to buy the paper. As the Spectator changed hands, it became more political and unmistakably committed to free sexual expression.

I inquired into the political background Kat brought to the Spectator. "A strong sixties feminist background," she replied. She was one of the early members of NOW as well as of the Coalition of Labor Union Women. But now "I have a very hard time even using the term feminist. I really prefer the term humanist. I have been persuaded by the argument that if men went around calling themselves masculists, we would probably all be somewhat offended.

"If by feminist we mean someone who is devoted to the idea that the sexes should be equal in society, institutionally and every other way you can imagine, then I can wear that mantle very comfortably. But if there is another agenda underlying it, then I have some discomfort. I really believe that men have been-in quite different ways-equally oppressed by our society. They need as much help in getting to a state of equality.... Their inequalities come in the form of being the ones who get killed in war, who shoulder the financial burden.... The social expectations on them have been unkind in exactly mirror opposites."

How does she react to current feminist attacks on men, and on periodicals like the Spectator? "Well, I react first of all emotionally. Anger and irritation and sadness, because I feel they are so misled and so confused. Primarily, I'm insulted, because I'm an intelligent, independent, self-determined human being. And it is one of the reasons feminism originally appealed to me. It defined for me exactly what was in my heart and soul. I am insulted by the suggestion that I am incapable of making a choice around my life, lifestyle, sexuality, career, avocation, and entertainment. I can define these things for myself and have been doing so for a very long time, thank you very much."

Has she ever confronted such feminists? In the early eighties, when talk shows and other forums seemed to want to get information out, discussions were still possible. In the more recent years, however, debates tend to become circuses. Talk shows are now geared to controversy, not to understanding. As an example, Kat recalled a recent stint on the Jerry Springer show, where both she and anti-porn feminist Judith Reisman appeared as guests. Kat groaned, "The woman called me an adulteress on TV. I thought-'Get a grip, lady, I'm not even married."' During a break, Judith pointedly informed Kat, who was trying to open a conversation, "I'm not here to have a dialogue with you."

Any real discussions she's had on porn have occurred at meetings, such as NOW conferences. Recently, however, Kat has felt alienated from those NOW members, who seem determined to identify as victims. At a recent San Francisco NOW conference, Kat got so irate at a panel on sexual harassment that she almost walked out. Remember that, in '94, NOW joined in accusing a L.A. fireman of sexual harassment because he read a Playboy on his own time. At the panel, women in the audience kept standing up to say how intimidated or degraded they would have felt by the fireman's reading habits. "I can't cope with that." Kat recoiled from the women who seemed to be embracing weakness. `Women have a lot of power sexually. It's supply and demand. We definitely have something that men want very badly."

Had she ever experienced the sort of intimidation the panel discussed? Had she ever been coerced into a pornographic act? `Most certainly not. Quite the contrary. My persona as `Mistress Kat' allows me courtesies from producers and theater owners."

What about the mock violence in porn? How realistic is it? Although a lot of videos in seventies had mock rape scenes, when the line that "porn leads to violence" started to gain acceptance, the industry said, "We won't mix anything remotely like that with hard-core porn."

The Spectator is particularly vulnerable to such ordinances, because it is one of the last accessible forums for the discussion of S/M, which has few defenders. Why? "If you haven't had the experience of enjoying S/M, it may look silly or like violence. If you have had the enjoyment, it looks like erotica because you know what is happening, what the people are feeling and thinking. It has its own rules." If you take S/M at face value, as though the behavior was taking place spontaneously in your own living room, then the scene might well be degrading and frightening. The point is that S/M is game playing. Far from being spontaneous, everything is discussed and agreed-upon in advance.

So, how did a self-described "little Texas missionary" get to be the Dear Abby of sadomasochism? She was lovingly seduced to it by a male friend she had known for four years and, so, trusted. She started by being submissive to her partner and then, "I turned the tables on him a few months later and became the dominant one." Both experiences were valuable. "During my submissive period, I reowned a part of myself that is precious and that through my upbringing in this society and my adoption of feminism, I had abandoned, I had disowned. A loving, submissive person.... On the other hand, being a dominant and getting comfortable with power has helped me become a good publisher who makes the company grow."

As a woman to whom S/M has seemed very strange, I wanted to know what attracted her to it. "The joy of S/M is to trust your partner and relax, to flow like a leaf on a sexual river. You know you are basically safe, but there is the thrill of danger, as on a roller coaster or in sky diving. There is an energy exchange ... almost a telepathic connection takes place. It is a magical thing. S/M has to do with the side of human nature that we do not like to look at."

Is real pain involved? Yes and no. "If you burn your tongue on a cup of coffee, it hurts. If your lover threatens you with a match close to your lips, you are going to feel a thrill in your tongue, I guarantee it. The erotic component changes it from violence to something that is exciting."

She just wishes it were possible to talk more freely about S/M and to have a real dialogue with its critics. But they have made it clear that discussion with women like her is not welcome.

As a feminist who has taken the trouble to do empirical research -to look the porn industry in the eye-I have come to several conclusions:

1. Although amateur porn may contain scenes of real violence, I have not found even convincing scenes of mock violence in the pornography put out by the industry today.

2. To the extent that sex workers are battered, it seems to result from being denied the protection of law and legitimacy. Whenever porn is allowed to emerge from the underground, even into the shadows, the working conditions of the women improve tremendously. And they are safer.

3. I like the women. As in every industry, some women in porn are undoubtedly damaged by the choices they are making. But the women I encountered were not victims. They were rebellious, a bit raunchy, shrewd at business, and they didn't take shit from anyone.

4. All of the willingness to openly discuss women's sexuality seems to come from the pro-pornography side. The women in porn seem unwilling to denounce the sexual attitudes of others, even of feminists who were trying to silence them.

5. The most interesting work on women's sexuality is coming from the women in porn who are pushing through all the barriers to produce, direct, and own their own companies.

6. On a strictly personal level-the porn I viewed and the women I interviewed provoked some strange reactions in me, uncomfortable reactions. For example, I felt threatened by a prostitute's fervid arguments that no man-not a single one was capable of monogamy. It would have been easy for me to translate my discomfort into a dislike of the woman who was "causing" it. It would have been easier to blame her than to dwell on my own insecurities.

Perhaps this is why society reviles sex workers. Perhaps they show us things we don't want to see.