‘Good job Buddy Wood in getting a new night up so fast when Cobra closed their doors and providing a good Thurs night out – it seems there are more and more options for tranny parties in Los Angeles which can only be a good thing!’ –Grooby Steven

Fast? Yeah, I’d say the very next week is fast. I’d also say it was fortuitous, and not in a coincidental kind of way. One of these days that golden horseshoe will fall out of that leprechaun’s ass and what will he be left with? And ‘tranny‘ parties? Really? How nice of the community to continue to bless his indifferent, disrespectful use of that word, just like nobody’s ever even dared to say ‘boo’ about his domain name: shemaleyum.com. I can’t speak for any other models, but my struggle for respect doesn’t end with my paycheck.

Steven has no right to represent himself as any kind of community leader or savior just because he can pay girls next to nothing to shoot naked photos and give them a place to party… from which he also profits. In fact, I don’t feel that, outside of a few token or profitable gestures, Steven has ever done the TS community any favors, nor has Grooby, nor Buddy Wood, and he should be ashamed of himself for pretending otherwise. He’s just a businessman. He doesn’t care about anybody who doesn’t line his pocket and he’s said as much on message forums on the multiple occasions when he’s browbeat members who dare criticize him. He’s even posted the name and photo of a friend of mine on a popular TS forum in an attempt to shut me up as a response to me posting this article that describes the design details of his mansion.

If you don’t see any of this, then you’re living in denial because this is the way the porn business has always been. Apparently nobody wants to change it, so long live the status quo.

~BB~

To those who took offense, I can only hope you accept my apology. I’m sorry for going overboard, but as I’ve always been a fighter for equal rights for all people, my goal was never to have flame wars with my peers. I mean, with porn being most peoples’ only exposure to transpeople, I feel that even though we ‘sell ass,’ we can still set a standard in which we are viewed as sexy and classy, and more importantly, sexually acceptable. I know I’ve gotten carried away on my tirades on the subject a few too many times and I’m truly sorry.

And I don’t hate porn; I hate the porn business. I knew that coming in and I obviously came on much too strong about it after all of the warnings I’d received about how it’ll ‘bring me down.’ I try not to play defense, so I overdid the offense. Why get involved at all you ask? Well, I’ve been in other aspects of the adult business for years and southern California is a barren wasteland at the moment when it comes to ‘square’ jobs, and of those that are available, most seem to be going to the traditional ‘breadwinners’ (i.e. men). So in the immortal words of Priscilla Presley in the Naked Gun, ‘I was young. I needed the money.’

Regardless, I now have a plan that will allow me to contribute my vision of what transporn should be all about, and I truly believe that with it I will be able to lead by example instead of wasting energy fighting the powers that be and unintentionally insulting people (sorry again!), and at this point, I feel that there is room enough for everybody in this industry to co-exist. And that’s all I was ever looking for. I never really wanted to destroy anyone; I just wanted to protect myself.

It should be obvious to everyone that I’m far from perfect and I never claimed otherwise, although I do try really, really hard to get it right – maybe even too hard. Like most transwomen, I’ve been through a lot of abuse and have been kicked around a lot, both before and after transition, and while some people become weakened by it, I found ways to make myself stronger. My mentality is that if you don’t defend yourself, nobody else will either and so there are plenty of times when I feel provoked and overreact to those who would ‘dare’ cross me. All I can do is apologize and try my best to keep it from continuing. I think everyone here can relate to the fact that I don’t trust a lot of people and to be quite honest, very few have given me a reason to… which brings me to my final statements about that for which I will not apologize:

I’m not going to apologize to Nicole Dupre because turning a relatively civil disagreement on merits into an all-out nuclear, personally insulting clusterfuck is her stock in trade, and frankly I don’t think anybody really gives a shit about either of us anyway… and probably never did. Bottom line? Nicole’s got her issues and I’ve got mine and I think everyone really just wants us to stay away from each other and stop littering the board with our bullshit, so that’s what I intend to do.

I’m also not going to apologize to Hara for what I consider a fairly obvious reason: while she never struck me as a bad person, she still was the ‘sanctimonious, holier-than-thou bitch’ that came before me. But believe you me, there will be somebody else who will come along, probably sooner than later, who will pick up the mantle again. I suggest to anybody currently thinking about it to view both of us as cautionary tales!

And finally, I feel that I should apologize to Steven (Seanchai) for convicting him before I’ve really given him a fair hearing out. On the one hand, it’s pretty difficult to ignore his pimp-like vibe, and I do still think that companies regularly fuck with models to ‘keep them hungry.’ But on the other hand, I’m aware of the fact that a lot of the girls like him a lot and that the dynamic in the entertainment business in general (let alone porn) between production and talent predates Steven, and in fact the entire trans genre, by plenty of decades. That said, I apologize to you Steven for jumping down your throat before I really got a chance to know you as well as I should have. I’m willing to take a chance on you if you feel you can do the same for me.

Thank you all for reading this and I hope you will accept my most sincere apologizes.

~BB~

‘Recession proof’ was always a term I took with a grain of salt in reference to any business. Nothing ever truly is, but there are some companies that in a time of recession not only never skip a beat but actually gain market share. It’s not an indication of the state of the industry as a whole but merely who will lead it. Ours needs new leaders and what we have before us is an opportunity for change.

On the HungDevils forum, run by my favorite self-made porn star Vicki Richter, users are hemming and hawing over the ubiquitous link between AVN and porn powerhouse Vivid Video. They seem to have a pay-for-play arrangement that does nobody any good but them. In my view, this is all about keeping not the content nor the talent relevant, but instead bolstering those who produce them to retain their future ability for expolitation and relegation of ‘lesser’ niches of porn.

Happy talent takes care of the fans. Period. Producers would be wise to remember that. It’s simple marketing. It’s not all about the immediate bottom line and frankly, despite my being new to the content aspect of the adult business (but having run other adult businesses over the last decade plus), this is an attitude that I’m already starting to find extremely tiresome. Some in the industry call it complacency. I call it a self-serving business model that will eventually lead to a porn free-for-all as many ‘stars’ I know literally can only afford to eat once a day while more and more view the business with an attitude of ‘every man, woman, and TS for themselves.’ I don’t want to see that and I don’t think anybody else does either.

In one thread on HungDevils, Steve Gallon (Seanchai) of Grooby and I had a disagreement over whether or not a transsexual porn star could break into a mainstream media role either because of or despite her porn star status. Look at Kimber James for instance. She has mainstream representation. Will anything become of it? Who knows, but while I don’t think any casting directors are thinking, “hey, let’s get a tranny porn star to play ‘role B,’ I don’t think it stops an otherwise talented actress, musician such as Tempest or Jamie Coxx, or in my case a would-be radio/TV personality from finding a gig with a mainstream company as long as the audience is planted within a porn-friendly demographic, and in the upcoming decade that should be easier than ever. While it’s in a studio’s best interest to lower the expecations of talent and fans, there are plenty of trans-porn stars who are immensely talented outside of their ability to get naked or fuck. To me, insisting otherwise, despite the struggles we admittedly must face, is simply insulting. Just because somebody hasn’t done something yet, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be done.

The other issue people seem to have is with free content and the quality issues inherent with releasing it en masse upon an unsuspecting, but increasingly broke population of viewers. Many people think that the recession is not hurting the industry as much as the free content but it’s becoming more and more apparent to me that the two go hand in hand. Does anyone really think that crappy porn would survive in a good economy any more than well produced, more expensive material is surviving in The Great Recession? Don’t count on it. One and a half minute clips on X-Tube are no substitute for a full-length feature like Hazel Does Hollywood… unless you can’t afford anything else.

The power vacuum is becoming more apparent daily as more and more girls set up their own solo sites very much resembling the X-Tube quality of content in terms of production values, and the studios, while claiming they don’t have ‘it-girls’ (in order to avoid the possible embarassment of any future failures – Norma Jean doesn’t always become Marilyn you know), are scrambling to create superstar names despite their claims to the contrary by setting up some performers with higher quality homes on the web than those of their studio-homeless couterparts. In the meantime, they will continue to build capital for these projects by travelling the world and shooting girls at the lowest possible cost – and with lowered quality standards, and will earn the money necessary to move onto bigger and better things.

If you doubt my perspective, just look at the message boards. The buzz is not circling around some girl named ‘Delores in Lithuania.’ Sure, she’s cheaper to shoot, but nobody cares! She’s just another no-name studio girl. It’s girls like Kimber, Hazel, Morgan Bailey, Yasmine Lee, etc. that people are raving about and that give the business its vitality and it has a lot to do with the superior marketing plans laid out for them. Sure, money’s tight and in porn the marketing budget is usually the first thing to get cut, but I don’t see this recession as much of a nuisance as an opportunity. What say you?

~BB~