Hi, this is Against Everyone with Connor Habib, a weekly podcast featuring my conversations with

countercultural figures and presenting complex, philosophical, political, and spiritual ideas

and their intersections in an engaging and accessible way. Well, friends, obviously, if you know

anything about me, pornography has been a profound and important part of my life, as a viewer, as a performer,

and as an activist for sex workers' rights, particularly the rights and quality of life for

porn performers. Seeing it from all the angles I've seen it from, and considering each

carefully, I've derived so much value in my life

from pornography. But I also know that most people feel blocked in accessing that value. And

one of the reasons why, maybe one of the main reasons why, is that porn is considered an issue to take sides on.

And generally those sides depend on, you know, whatever side you take depends on how you

analyze the content of what you see on the screen.

But very rarely is porn viewed as the way I just described it, which is a commonwealth

of value and interest in its own right, something that you can get from really paying attention

to all those different angles of it, viewer, performer, activist, etc. This especially affects the

lives of porn performers who are considered time and time again a

special class of workers who should not be subject to the rights that others have, who are

stigmatized in culture and relationships, whose perspectives as laborers are devalued even by

people who claim to be allies to the working

glass, whose voices are silenced, whose autonomy and sovereignty are met with state violence,

state regulation, and ideological oppression. And the mystification of the work we do,

which comes from taking sides instead of seeing value, doesn't help anyone

understand us at all. I always used to joke about that Pitbull song. Remember, look like a

...