Transformative: How Bold Visions for More Inclusive Content Are Rewriting 'Mainstream'

Three years ago, XBIZ published a special report titled “Trans Pop! How a Fringe Genre Captured the Imagination of Adult.” It was a follow-up, of sorts, to another article, 10 years earlier, titled “A New Trans Generation.”

The 10-year stretch between the first two XBIZ stories on trans adult and its performers and the — relatively — quick three-year wait until this month’s spotlight is in itself a short story about the business.

We are seeing the rapid mainstreaming of trans content and performers. This means higher budgets, more involved storylines, more trans performers crossing into other non-trans-specific genres. It means more overall general interest in trans performers and content, as opposed to just a narrow audience segment.

In other words, the genre is certainly no longer “niche.”

This time around, we examine how the content producers — both studio and individual performers — have positioned themselves in 2022. Why the increased mainstream interest now? Some of them, in fact, disagree that what we’re seeing is anything new.

Running parallel to these concerns is the crucial question of labeling, which proved to be provocative. Could “trans” as a separate genre become irrelevant? The answers were either a definitive “nope” or a heartfelt “yes” with almost no middle ground.

Such performers as Natassia Dreams, who was the first trans performer to win an XBIZ Award for a non-trans-specific category, and the reigning and twice-crowned XBIZ Trans Performer of the Year, Casey Kisses, urged the industry to look beyond labels and algorithms.

“It’s time,” said Dreams, who was recently recruited by Aiden Starr to conceive and direct content for Evil Angel’s nascent label, PansexualX.

“It is time for this industry to think differently about how we are categorized. When you put people into a category, you create shame about that category. We are a big, big business. This industry needs to grow up,” Dreams said with alacrity. “We are women; we are performers. Nobody, absolutely no one, goes onto their computer and types ‘straight women’ or ‘cis women’ into the search bar. It’s already right there for them. That’s what comes up first. There is no need to go looking for it; this is what the industry still says is ‘normal.’ But trans women are always on a separate island, over there somewhere. We are not a niche that has to be hidden away.”

We invited the performers, producers and directors interviewed for this story to share their vision for the future of trans adult by imagining taking control of the economic and social forces that help determine the evolution of this industry. What would trans adult would look like, moving forward, if they could shape it?

We’ll offer a small spoiler: more empathy. Trans adult and the community at large would have more empathy. Trans men and women are outnumbered by cisgender people, straight and queer alike; our colleagues need allies in adult who are willing to look beyond anecdotal evidence gathered in the ’80s and outmoded programming methods first developed in the ’90s. There are always going to be customers who hold tightly to their cherished habits, but empathy and a willingness to break long-standing traditions are needed if this vibrant genre is to truly transcend past assumptions and limitations.

The Strangest Kind of Silver Lining

The rapid evolution of trans content over the past few years was undoubtedly spurred along by the COVID-19 pandemic, observed multi-XBIZ-Award-winning filmmaker and Adult Time CCO Bree Mills, who steers studio brands Transfixed and Transgressive Films. She called the occurrence “the strangest kind of silver lining” to the lockdowns.

Mills and her colleagues at Brazzers and Grooby on the studio level, as well as such independent producers as Roxxie Moth of Femtop.xxx and Kimber Haven and Raven Roxx of Bad Girl Mafia, identified the novel coronavirus and subsequent lockdowns as the accelerant that allowed trans content and performers to become more fully unfettered.

And the mainstream adult industry has taken notice.

Casey Kisses recalled shooting content with an A-list cisgender female performer shortly before the lockdown was imposed. They had a great time together, with fantastic chemistry; afterwards, the starlet revealed that she’d always wanted to shoot with Kisses, but had never been given the go-ahead by her representation until recently.

Kisses admitted she is still agog over the revelation.

“This was straight from a mainstream performer’s mouth,” she said. “Someone who is a real favorite. But clearly there’s an audience for it! Clearly. That’s all over now. When we all started coming back and shooting again, [cisgender] girls started saying, ‘I want to work with her’ — trans girls. It sounds weird to say it, but it’s because of the pandemic. We all just started having the kind of sex we wanted to have and there’s no coming back from that.”

Bree Mills (Adult Time)

Mills shared a similar anecdote. She recalled penning an email to a top industry agent and explaining that she would make room for any cisgender performers on the agent’s roster who wanted to shoot trans content. The answer arrived swiftly and succinctly: “Don’t ask me this again.”

“This wasn’t that long ago,” recalled Mills. “This was three years ago, just before the pandemic. And now I have a waiting list six months long of top, top female [cis] performers who want to shoot for Transfixed. I don’t have enough shooting dates for them all.”

Kisses recently broke barriers with “Casey: A Love Story,” a biopic packed with A-list stars and top-of-the-line production value. It was released by Adult Time as an original feature-length film, not on a trans-specific label, and Kisses commends her colleagues at the streaming service for treating her film just like any other top-of-the-line product.

She also notes that fan sites have changed the game forever.

“We don’t need [studios]. They need us,” she said. “If I’m not given the freedom to do the things I need to do, I don’t need to do it. I can jump on Chaturbate, you know? This all happened because of the pandemic. It’s weird to think about how something so negative like the pandemic could end up having such a positive benefit on the entire community.”

A Brazzers rep credited the increased visibility and validation of trans people by mainstream media over the past decade for helping porn viewers of all backgrounds become more comfortable exploring their interest in trans content.

The studio’s breakthrough pairing in April 2021 of A-list male performer Xander Corvus with rising trans starlet Daisy Taylor was cited by a number of performers as a watershed moment for the community, leading to such additional duos as Corvus with Natassia Dreams, Dante Colle with Korra Del Rio, Jane Wilde with Jessy Dubai and rising star Emma Rose with none other than Angela White herself. None of the company’s trans-led content has drawn less than a 96% approval rating from its members.

“If Brazzers can in some small way help to facilitate that acceptance through our site, we are grateful to have the opportunity to do so,” noted the rep.

But at the same time, the company is cognizant of ensuring that “scenes featuring trans performers are presented as typical Brazzers updates no different than any other scene,” the rep said. “It has been encouraging to see the overwhelmingly positive response to this content, both on the site and on social media.”

Mills described a similar decision when seeking to integrate trans performers and content across all of her company’s brands.

Adult Time recently released a pilot episode of its comic original series “Accidental Gang-Bang” in three formats: lesbian, B/G and trans. The series explores “the unintentional consequences of being in the right place at the right time,” explained Mills.

“Why wouldn’t you take a shot with a concept like that?” she said with a laugh.

The debut of Adult Time’s “Transfixed” provided fuel for the rapid mainstreaming of trans-led content in mainstream adult. Mills credits Cherie DeVille, who co-starred alongside trans legend Venus Lux in the very first Transfixed vignette, for being the kind of cisgender ally who refused to take “no” for an answer when she declared a desire to start filming with trans women.

“Cherie said to me, ‘This has always been a fantasy of mine. I respect Venus as a performer and as a woman, we have great chemistry. But we’ve never had the space to do a scene,’” Mills recalled. “We were able to put Transfixed on the map because of these pioneers, on both sides of the coin, who wanted to come out and participate in this project.”

Mills described the rapturous response to Transfixed as “a transformative experience” for her.

She and her team landed on a then-risky decision to heavily market the pairing as a lesbian fantasy, not simply as a trans-led experience in the conventional sense.

“By normalizing the content and the performers, we were able to build an audience very quickly that had never watched trans content before,” she recalled. “But they were fans of the [cis] performers that appeared in those first episodes. And they really liked it.”

Mills noted her entire team experienced an object lesson on “the importance of being inclusive — and also the importance of getting away from these really rigid islands in the first place.”

Casey Kisses (courtesy of Kisses)

Adult Time in 2019 made the decision to remove all tags throughout their brands that are now considered transphobic or simply outdated. The streaming service also looked across all of their brands for opportunities to be all-inclusive, from All-Girl Massage to Girlsway to Pure Taboo and beyond.

“We decided that we would build our platform to be all-inclusive for every type of sexuality and gender preference and then give the freedom to our users to toggle between what they want to watch, rather than dictating what we think they want to watch based on how they got in the door.”

The initiative has been critical to the growth of Adult Time’s audience.

“We can see, month after month, an increase in people that are tuning into scenes with trans women that didn’t come from one of our trans-focused products. But they’re checking it out and they’re liking it.”

Similarly, they’ve noted a decrease in the number of people who click out of scenes with trans performers.

Natassia Dreams wants to “do away with separation.”

She still glows with pride over her 2020 XBIZ Europa Awards win for Best Lesbian Sex Scene, shared with Estella Bathory and Luna Corazon, for “Super Femmes” from Erika Lust’s XConfessions. She is the first trans female performer to win an XBIZ Award for a non-trans-specific scene,

“[The win] had nothing to do with my transness, and I love that. Nominate me for my performance, not my anatomy,” she asserted. “The industry needs to follow that lead.”

She isn’t yet quite prepared, however, to celebrate the apparent mainstreaming of her colleagues and friends, noting they have always been seen as a commodity.

“These are the ones being called out now, the ones who never voiced any support for us until we began making real money. So, I want to say that I celebrate this development. I know it’s taking us one step ahead. But I also don’t feel that it’s genuine and I prefer it to be genuine rather than perform it.”

Dreams further urged companies that are removing content tags that are now considered derogatory to go even further.

“Let [consumers] see trans women as simply the beautiful women we are. We don’t need to be separated all the way down at the end where they’ll never find it if they don’t look for it. Men are men and they like beautiful women,” Dreams said. “Let them see us.”

Wendy Williams is celebrating her 20th anniversary in adult as a pioneering performer, producer, publicist and entrepreneur. She won the very first XBIZ Award in 2010 for top trans performer when the category was known as “Transsexual Performer of Year.”

As a publicist, Williams has been on the front lines of the culture wars and has a more complicated relationship with how mainstream culture’s interest in the trans community waxes and wanes.

The interest in trans performers and content has always been there.

“I just think it’s become more socially acceptable for people to share their interests,” she explained. “It’s not as taboo. Of course, companies are going to do what helps them make a profit and if that means finally providing an equal playing field — though I think we’re far from that — then that’s why we’re seeing more inclusion for trans women.”

Filmmaker and performer Adam Christopher joined his colleagues in grappling with the broader ramifications of maintaining “trans” as a separate genre.

“I position my content in a way that is natural, accepting, and beautiful. My brand Transglamour is all about showcasing beautiful trans women how they want to be presented and not fetishized,” he said.

Christopher agrees that the adult industry is seeing an increased interest in trans content because the world is becoming more accepting of the LGBTQ+ community and therefore fans and companies are becoming more accepting. He doesn’t necessarily see the “trans” content tag as archaic, but notes that the unintended consequence of “othering” trans performers is damaging.

“I can’t personally speak for my trans male and female and nonbinary models, but I know they just want to be accepted for who they are and identify with. It’s the fetishization of trans that I have a problem with,” he said.

Producer Dan Hogue notes that his PornStarPlatinum learned many years ago that pairing so-called “Tgirls” with mainstream cisgender female and male performers was a clear success for the brand, and it remains their bestselling series.

Natassia Dreams (Adult Time/Evil Angel)

Lately, however, Hogue says, PornStarPlatinum and sister brand TransErotica have been “commingling” due to high demand from their straight male customers, a development that carries a personal resonance for the producer. “I have always looked at transgender performers as women, which may explain why as a straight male I often find myself trans-attracted,” he said.

With the blurring of genres, they are now focused on the quality of the content and scenarios as opposed to the gender [identity] or pronouns of the performers.

Hogue has also identified increased interest in the content from cis female consumers, and praises the upswing in opportunities for more trans performers to make a living.

There is a small group of directors cited for their work in straight, lesbian, gay and trans genres. Bree Mills noted with delight that the recent XBIZ Awards win for Gay Movie of the Year by “The Last Course,” which she directed for nascent all-male label Disruptive Films, finally allowed her to join this select club.

Ricky Greenwood has also joined, and expressed amazement at a rapidly expanding talent pool over the past few years that allows him to design storylines for Mile High Media’s TransSensual with more thoughtfulness, now that he has been freed from figuring out to showcase the same 10 performers over and over.

He has also observed that more and more trans female performers have been able to prep and finance their transition at an earlier age than in the past, and document it all via social media.

Just as a new generation of gay men have been able to come out and experience the ups and downs of growing up in a “normal” way alongside their straight peers, the presence of younger trans men and women has rapidly normalized trans issues and contributed to the popularity of trans adult as mainstream entertainment.

“They are super trans-positive,” Greenwood said. “These younger generations don’t see trans as a niche. What was considered [acceptable] five or six years ago is not acceptable now. I will have someone on Twitter say to me, ‘When will you shoot that person with a tranny?’ and I will say, ‘When you stop using that word, maybe I will listen to what you have to say.’ And he likes that type of content, he just didn’t know that was an offensive word.”

A False Narrative

Independent content creator and Femtop.xxx producer Roxxie Moth is ambivalent about the notion of trans performers and content reaching new mainstream heights.

“I’d like to think one day there could be a world where ‘trans’ doesn’t have to be a content tag, but I don’t think we’re there yet,” she said. “Having our own production companies and categories is still necessary since there are so few opportunities for trans performers on mainstream adult sites.”

Nevertheless, she admits “extreme” frustration over scenarios on some sites that imply trans women are not actually women or require their viewers check a ‘show trans’ box just for their content to be visible on the site. She wants trans performers to have the same opportunities that cis models have and to be able to compete on equal footing.

Steven Grooby, founder of trans powerhouse Grooby Productions, is blunt in his assessment of the mainstreaming of trans content. He is happy to celebrate the “phenomenal production value” of such labels as Transfixed, TransAngels and TransSensual, and credits Evil Angel for its consistently high budgets and glamorous aesthetic.

But overall, he has perceived “a false narrative.”

“There has been a lot of virtue signaling in the last few years, with trans persons becoming more visible in mainstream media, however within adult still only a small handful of trans scenes are being produced,” he observed. “While there certainly is some crossover, it’s not that widespread.”

He is concerned that some companies are taking note of “a lot of rhetoric about trans in mainstream media and attempting to piggyback.”

If there were an increased interest, the industry would see a lot more production, Grooby noted, across a much wider segment of trans models.

Indeed, any discussion of trans performers in adult in 2022 comes with an asterisk, for it only applies to trans women. Trans men remain on the margins.

Bree Mills admitted she is “painfully aware” that trans men haven’t benefited from the renaissance experienced by their female counterparts, while Grooby noted the studio’s recent launch of Transnificent.com was born out of the frustration of seeing new, young trans male performers on social media but no platform to present them other than their own fan pages.

Roxxie Moth (courtesy of Moth)

Transnificent joins only a scant handful of currently operating paysites led by trans men, among them JockPussy and FTMMen, both created by filmmaker and performer Jason Sparks in collaboration with Carnal Media for the Carnal+ streaming service.

“I was in Wichita, Kansas about [six] years ago and I met this guy on Grindr,” he recalled to XBIZ as FTMMen was about to launch earlier this year. “We hung out a little bit and I really enjoyed his company. He wanted to do porn and I tried to figure out a place where he could thrive. That’s how we came up with JockPussy and this guy became the star — Luke Hudson.”

Today, Hudson is a popular and notable FTM performer. But until JockPussy was created, there was no other place for him to be featured as virtually all other FTM sites had shut down or weren’t updating frequently. Jump-cut a few years later to a span of three weeks when Sparks scouted three promising FTM newcomers — Beaux James, Chance Hart and Jesse Diamond, who Sparks said is one of the only FTM performers with both a penis and a vagina — and he knew the ascendancy of Hudson and the success of JockPussy had managed to crack open the market for FTM content.

For the better part of several decades, the entire FTM genre was quite literally just one person: the filmmaker, activist, educator and entrepreneur Buck Angel, and Grooby began honoring FTM performers with their own category at the Trans Erotica Awards in 2014. Performer-filmmaker Eddie Wood and a scant handful of others further expanded the burgeoning market.

But it was the emergence of Hudson as a pinup that prompted a lightbulb moment for Sparks.

“When I decided to launch JockPussy five years ago, I asked people in the business for their advice. Every single one said it was the worst decision I could make and that I was throwing my money away,” he states. “They said there isn’t enough of a market. And I decided to push back against that attitude; mostly, it was because of Luke because I really like him and I thought he was pretty special. There are more than one or two flavors in the world.”

Buck Angel has also adopted a wary mindset regarding the current vogue for trans content and performers.

“Trans will always be its own category,” he said. “It’s important that we say this and keep it. We are different and that is what I have always celebrated with my porn. I am not a biological man and never will be. But I live as a man. Showing my vagina in a sexual space was very difficult 20 years ago. I got lots of hate from everyone. Today, the newer performers do not have to deal with this as much, so I think they might not see the value in the ‘trans’ label. I think it would be detrimental to our category if we just become one with all. That’s not special and we are a special kind of performer.”

As an example of the critical importance of affirming one’s own distinct identity, Angel cited the blowback he continues to receive by reclaiming the term “transsexual.”

“Many find ‘transsexual’ offensive, but… ‘transsexual’ is important just like ‘transgender.’ They are two different things,” he said. “I am not sure if mainstreaming is a bad thing; it just means more people are being less transphobic around their desires, that we are okay to be sexualized and that more and more people see us as sexy. That’s what ‘mainstreaming’ says to me. It was a big fight to get FTM porn on the map but here we are 20 years after I began. It’s a beautiful thing to see.”

Wendy Williams asserted she is happy to market herself as “transsexual” or as a “trans MILF” or any term a consumer might use to find her and her fellow performers.

“I’m sure the younger generation will see it from another viewpoint but as a mature trans woman spanning across two decades in this industry, I am happy using tags to reach the demographic that will buy or support my type of porn,” she said.

Kimber Haven (Bad Girl Mafia)

Indie content creators and polymaths Kimber Haven and Raven Roxx of Bad Girl Mafia fervently believe fans should use any type content tag or descriptive they wish.

They also agree with Williams, Grooby and others that mainstream interest in trans women has bubbled under the surface for a long, long time and only burst forth in recent years when it was patently clear there was money to be made.

“Yeah, I think that the rest of the world is finally catching up to us,” she said. “We in the trans industry have always known that we are major players and moneymakers. We’ve always been one of the most-searched categories in the world. What’s happening now with it becoming more mainstream and more accepted is the rest of the world is catching up to the business potential. They’re finally figuring out there is extreme profit to be made. We’re not a niche market anymore, like we were in the old days, and there’s extreme money to be made. They didn’t see our value, but now it’s undisputed.”

Haven noted that she comes from a period of popular culture when fans with an interest in trans content were forced to “sneak into the very back of an adult bookstore with two shelves and just a few videos of us. You’d have to hide it between two vanilla videos. There was that stigma.”

Flash forward to the pandemic when millions went online seeking exactly what they wanted.

“Now everyone has options and there is no stigma attached to it,” Haven observed. “The studios and award shows are all becoming more trans-inclusive. They’re finally catching up.”

But neither Haven nor Roxx foresees a time when “trans” as a specific label would prove to be irrelevant, even as Bad Girl Mafia charts a mainstream course for itself with documentaries and a TV pilot for a comedy series.

“We’re selling fantasy. It doesn’t have to be politically correct,” Haven asserted. “If you think one term or another is too fucked up, then it wasn’t meant for you and someone else is going to love it.”

Roxx noted, “We are not girls and never will be girls. We are transsexual. Kimber and I are both well aware of this fact. We’ve accepted it and we’re happy with it.”

“I try to tell these girls that what makes you a transsexual is what makes you special and unique,” she continued. “It’s what makes you marketable and in demand.”

Haven echoed that sentiment. She recalls raucous debates with younger performers about the use of one term or another.

“I say to these young girls, ‘Would I rather have been female? Hell, yeah, I would have. But the big cosmic joke is that I wasn’t, so I’m just here making the best with what I was given.’ All this new verbiage that we’re supposed to understand pisses me off. The more convoluted you make it for someone to talk to us, the more fearful they’ll be of starting a conversation because they will be so afraid of saying the wrong thing or that we’ll flip out and call them a bigot. So they won’t talk to us at all.”

Buck Angel (courtesy of Angel)

Both women admire Buck Angel for sticking to his guns about his preferred terminology and about how those descriptives are used in the adult industry.

“He’s just saying things [others] don’t want to hear. He’s been saying this stuff since before they were in diapers. He knows what he’s talking about,” Haven said. “All of these demands are pushing us further away from acceptance. Let people meet us where they’re comfortable.”

Although Steven Grooby is intrigued by the notion of “trans” as a separate content tag being rendered obsolete, the notion is “wishful thinking” without seeing the wider business consequences. The producer noted that consumers will always search out their specific preferences — what turns them on — and if that’s a certain ethnicity, body type, nationality, gender or hair color then the business will find a way to reach that consumer as rapidly and directly as possible. The only way he sees to do that is by categorizing and tagging scenes and performers.

“I don’t see ‘trans’ disappearing as a genre, although I do expect to see some lines continuing to blur a little further,” he noted, especially as more nonbinary performers rise in popularity.

Casey Kisses describes herself as “a middle-ground person” on the issue. She’s happy to see trans women featured by notable studios like Brazzers and more broadly across all brands by diverse companies like Adult Time.

“I feel like we’re almost there,” she said. But trans is not a fetish or a kink and positioning trans content as anything other than normal and natural, particularly when choosing certain content tags, works against the notion of inclusivity.”

She notes how many of her fans simply have no access to comprehensive sexual education where they can learn about trans people and their bodies. And so they turn to porn.

“I have so many fans who say to me, ‘Does this make me gay for watching this?’ And I’ll tell them, ‘Do you want to feel gay about it? It doesn’t make you gay to jerk off to trans porn.’ I feel like we are the teachers about this,” said Kisses. “It’s our responsibility to lead on this.”

They’re Just Going to Be Themselves

If she could take the reins of trans adult in her hands, Grooby’s longtime creative and editorial director Kristel Penn would foster even more diversity for trans content, including wider diversity when it comes to ethnicity, body type, gender presentation and identity.

Penn would also extend the boundaries to include more diversity in narrative theme, style, desire and cinematic genre.

She fervently believes trans content should evolve in a way that feels like it doesn’t have to rely on old porn tropes and storylines to resonate with viewers. There is room within the genre, she said, for more nuanced storytelling and representations of trans experiences, but it involves pushing the boundaries of the status quo so it continues to evolve over time.

If anything, Penn believes the rising popularity of independent content creators represents a desire that values authenticity and creativity. Some production companies may feel like platforms where performers can create and upload their own content threaten their livelihood, “but in truth, there are opportunities for everyone to work together in a way that is mutually beneficial,” she said. “For us, we value and rely on input from our performers to improve our content and likewise encourage performers to utilize our platform for collaboration and expanding their reach.”

Writer, director and producer Adam Christopher would command mainstream adult to treat trans models and content as equals to their cisgender counterparts and to create more opportunities for up-and-coming talent.

“There’s thousands of beautiful and talented [trans] models who should be recognized and featured just as much as the big stars,” he said. “I hope that the industry awards and events can create more opportunities for our trans brothers and sisters to be featured, and I personally would like to see trans models be included in every category.”

Casey Kisses would truly level up with more companies opened to trans performers and more opportunities in all genres on a regular basis rather than as a specialty item; she would also immediately broaden opportunities for cisgender male talent to film as they see fit, citing performers like Christian XXX, Ruckus and Dante Colle as breaking barriers, though others have been slow to follow.

Indie performer and producer Roxxie Moth would add more accelerant to changes already underway.

Jessy Dubai (courtesy of Dubai)

“Many sites still won’t shoot us, and there are still agents convincing cisgender talent that working with us is a career mistake,” she said. “The mainstream sites that are branching out into trans porn are only shooting the same handful of top performers, and so it’s really only that half-dozen or so models that are having real breakthrough success. I’d like to see more trans girls able to break that barrier, and for the porn we make to reach the same quality and recognition given to cis women performers.”

Along those lines, producer Dan Hogue would “clean up the industry first.”

His immediate hope is for mainstream representation of trans among the core talent agencies, which he sees as a good first step towards overall inclusiveness of performers. Given the genre’s growth, it is in everyone’s best interest to be inclusive.

In the same context, [cisgender] male performers should not live in fear and be subjugated by the industry, agents and even fellow performers just because they are attracted to someone others may not be.

“We are not in the 1980s anymore,” he said.

Hogue is also seeing “less and less gender dysphoria” and would support increased funding and support for performers who elect to transition. He would seek to increase the growing understanding among the general population that some people are born into bodies that do not fit their gender identity.

“In the end what I would like to see is a ‘live and let live’ society,” he added.

Wendy Williams would order DVD companies, toy manufacturers and fan platforms to make available to trans stars all the resources that they give to male and female stars.

“It’s 2022 and there is no reason not to have trans women on the front pages of your sites, magazines and events,” said Williams. “Providing those resources will help trans women continue to produce content with creators who won’t have to feel they will lose fans or support by working with us.”

Allowing trans content to cross into other spaces, with tags, can also provide more opportunities for trans performers.

Like many of her colleagues, Williams would work to expand the [cisgender] male talent pool and she would banish creaky, outmoded stereotypes male performers face for deciding to work with trans talent.

“Maybe just seeing us as women having sex would help change those conversations,” she said. “Many genres are having these conversations and I think that is healthy for our industry.”

In looking ahead to the future, Kimber Haven and Raven Roxx would revisit porn’s Golden Age. “Go with stories,” Haven said. “Tell people stories; so few studios do it. If you have something to say, this is a great venue to do it. I want someone to entertain me. I want the full entertainment experience. I’m an adult. I’ve seen the spank-bank videos. I want to be entertained.”

Roxx advocated for more comedy instead of anonymous hotel rooms.

“We have things to say and issues we want to cover,” she said. “We’ll work them into our story in a funny way because you can always open people’s eyes through comedy. If we can make a guy laugh and cum in the same video, that’s a win-win for us.”

Natassia Dreams also works as a mainstream fashion model and if she were given control of trans adult content, she would inject the industry with more glamour.

“I’m a supermodel and I’m a porn star, and I want to blend those two worlds together because both of them are built on sex,” she noted. “A little glamour, a little classiness — a little seduction to cater to a different market instead of just getting bent over the sink.”

Bree Mills is already hard at work on ideas to expand the stories being told by Transfixed and Transgressive Films and “broaden its universe.”

Transfixed, from the beginning, has been about inclusivity. Mills and her team have set into motion stories that also include nonbinary performers and talent like Jean Hollywood, someone who has identified as trans female in the past and now identifies as he/him/they.

They have a huge fan base, Mills observed; why can’t they just be who they are?

An upcoming scene pairs Hollywood with Cam Damage, who is nonbinary but performs as trans male, and an A-list starlet. All of them are “just going to be themselves,” said Mills. “And you know, most of our audience won’t even [perceive] it. But for those that do, they’ll see the inclusion.”

She believes such inclusion will cause a ripple effect that will continue to broaden.

“Do we have to classify everybody’s gender so rigidly in our scenarios and in our casting? I don’t know if it will work. But it’s where my Spidey-sense is taking me. We celebrate trans people at the heart of this studio, but around them are every shade and every pairing. What a beautiful product that would be.”

Kristel Penn (courtesy of Penn)

The evolution Buck Angel would command is already underway with FTM performers who have no desire to pass as male and have had no surgeries.

“This is totally opposite of what I did and do,” he said. “This is the distinction of ‘transgender’ and ‘transsexual.’ The evolution should be natural and should make us all feel included, meaning that the FTM community is very diverse now and that shows in pornography as well. It looks like diversity.”

If she could take control of the future of trans adult, Jessy Dubai would bring about the return of “Skinemax” — sensuous, softcore and often cheesy flicks that ran overnight on cable networks like Cinemax — for several decades.

“I remember that was the only channel that had porn back in the day, you know, before my family was able to afford a computer or stuff. They were actual, full movies with a beginning, a twist and an end, a whole story. And there were sex parts with oral sex and simulated penetration. If I could control it, I would be one of those actresses in one of those movies,” she said.

The scenario dovetails with Dubai’s hopes for her trans sisters in adult. She sees real value in labels, whether used in real life or in adult entertainment.

“I do not want to be seen as just a woman because I’m not; I am proud to be a trans woman,” she said. “And if someone takes that away from me and puts me on an island with everyone else, it would be disrespectful to me, and to them.”

We all know butterflies were a bug in the dirt at one point and once they transition into butterflies we don’t forget that they were caterpillars “dragging their bodies around,” she explained.

“We trans people go through the same thing. When butterflies are flying, they shine – but not because they’re flying,” Dubai said. “This beautiful thing was once a bug — and that’s what makes it a butterfly.”