My Take: Stoya Asks the Question Nobody Answers: 'I Thought Female Sexuality Was an OK Thing?'
She got tired of journalists getting her industry wrong, so she started writing it herself. Sourced and SFW.
Key facts
- Who: Jessica Stoya, American performer, director, columnist and author (Wikipedia)
- Origins: Born in Wilmington, North Carolina; home-schooled, high-school diploma before 16; dance lessons from age three (Wikipedia)
- Name: Shortened from her grandmother’s Serbian maiden name (Wikipedia, The Guardian)
- Founder: Co-created pay-per-scene site TRENCHCOATx with Kayden Kross on March 4, 2014 (Wikipedia)
- Writer: Columns for Slate, Vice, The Verge, Refinery29; first book Philosophy, Pussycats, and Porn (2018) (Wikipedia)
A tech kid from North Carolina
“I was three when I was using DOS. My mom taught me how to read, and my dad taught me how to navigate DOS,” she has said (Wikipedia). In Philadelphia she worked as a secretary, flier distributor and go-go dancer before alt-porn modeling led to a 2007 Digital Playground contract (Wikipedia).
Writing her own story
She told The Guardian she started writing because of “parachute journalists” getting porn “so incredibly wrong” (The Guardian). On the double standard she grew up with:
“You can be anything you want to be, except fuck you for wanting to be that. I thought female sexuality was an OK thing?”
— Stoya to The Guardian, June 2018 (source)
She also described real-world stigma: being turned away by New York landlords, or asked to pay a year’s rent up front (The Guardian).
From performer to founder
In 2014 she left Digital Playground to focus on directing and co-founded TRENCHCOATx; she has acted off-Broadway and starred in the Serbian sci-fi film A.I. Rising (Wikipedia).
My Take (opinion — Máximo García)
Stoya is proof that the smartest person in the room is sometimes the one people assume isn’t. She didn’t wait for permission to be taken seriously, she built the platform and wrote the essays.
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FAQ
What is Stoya’s book?
Philosophy, Pussycats, and Porn (2018), a collection of essays (Wikipedia).
What is TRENCHCOATx?
A pay-per-scene site Stoya and Kayden Kross created in March 2014 (Wikipedia).
Where does the name Stoya come from?
A shortened version of her grandmother’s Serbian maiden name (Wikipedia).
How we fact-checked this
Every fact and quote was checked against the sources below. Quotes appear as the sources reported them; anything we could not confirm was left out.
Sources
- The Guardian: “Stoya: ‘I thought female sexuality was an OK thing?’” (June 28, 2018) — https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/28/stoya-philosophy-pussycats-porn-interview
- Wikipedia: Stoya — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoya