Why she started doing porn

Why she started doing porn: In a twist on the old line about porn being tantamount to abuse, Phoenix says she now believes she began working in porn to recover from abuse: “My dad molested me for ten years, nine years, on and off.” Starring in porn films, she says, helped her regain control of her sexuality. “That specific style of sexual empowerment, being able to wield sexuality as power — I needed to do that in order to be able to turn into the woman I am now.”
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What she liked about her job: “I really love having sex in front of people.” The shoots, she says, were empowering, “I was in control, I was picking this guy and that guy to do.”

Problems she sees in the porn industry: “Generally porn is fine,” says Phoenix. “The problem I have is when a kid gets a hold of porn, what it teaches them.” Kids who use porn as sex ed, says Phoenix, “learn this really cold, sterile way to have sex that’s not intimate. The receiving and the perception of porn as instructional material versus fantasy is the biggest issue in porn right now, but the creators can’t regulate that.”
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While working in porn, Phoenix was also frustrated with how little control she had over her own image. While Phoenix emphasises that she was in control during shoots, in the editing room it was different. “No matter how many good intentions I had, the editor always made me look like a mindless s***. I’ve seen some of my own porn, and I was just like, ‘I can’t.’ What you see of my porn is not me, it’s this other image that’s taken out of me and put into the universe.”

How the “real world” treats sex workers: “I’ve seen my girlfriends get out of porn and try to work for places and it’s the saddest, worst nightmare I’ve seen,” Phoenix says, recounting stories of friends in pornography who returned to mainstream society only to be fired, refused jobs or sexually harassed (usually without recourse) because of their history as adult entertainers. “If people see a whore, they’ll always see a whore. Like, this is a talented whore, but she’s still a whore. Or this whore’s good at business, but she’s still a whore.”

The stigma around adult entertainment has even harmed Phoenix’s current career as an illustrator. “I have to really tell people I’m an artist because once I tell them I did porn, even though it was 4-5 years ago, it’s immediately I am a porn star. I am an ex-porn star turned artist. They don’t see me as anything but that.”
Giving back to the sex worker community: Phoenix co-developed “I Hit It With My Axe,” a web series and outreach vehicle about porn stars and others who work in stigmatised “adult” professions playing the popular sword and sorcery game Dungeons and Dragons.