“How to Come Out Like a Porn Star”: A sex-industry veteran shares advice on the risks and rewards — salon.com

When most of us think of coming out, we think sexual orientation. But for 34-year-old genderqueer porn star Jiz Lee, who’s been starring mainly in queer, independent porn for a decade, it’s about more than that. Hence they (Lee’s preferred pronoun) are editing “How to Come Out Like a Porn Star,” an anthology of essays exploring exactly that, to be released in November by ThreeL Media. The book is not a how-to manual, but in more than 50 essays, readers will find various approaches to coming out that, while specific to porn, will likely be appreciated by those struggling to reveal other kinds of sex-related secrets to loved ones. It is also, in its way, a manifesto, a reclamation by Lee of the role of porn as a positive artistic form. “It is actually the stigma from having performed that proves to do the greatest damage, and is our largest obstacle,” Lee writes, a stigma this book clearly seeks to minimize.

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