Who has the nerve to ask you that question?
Me, your friendly award-winning porn star and psychotherapist, Jet Setting Jasmine. You read those words correctly, I am an adult entertainer and licensed mental health provider. I am the co-owner of Jet Setting Jasmine LLC and Royal Fetish Films with my partner, King Noire. We produce, direct and star in erotica as well as travel the globe offering fetish training, sex education workshops and live shows. We center pleasure in our work, advocate for the decolonization of Black and Brown bodies in sex and put in a lot of hours engaging with friends & fans alike on how to be bold in their personal expressions of sex. In my sex and therapy work, you will find a strong emphasis on the importance of intimacy, healing and correcting generational sexual trauma, as well as using kink as a cure! Porn is my livelihood, passion and also a point of contention when it comes to how it shapes our realities.
I am going to write this article straight from the heart. We place a lot of emphasis on if a product is good for our consumption, but do we ever take that mirror and ask if we are good at being a consumer. It is much easier to take content and judge it but not to reflect on what draws us to that content. It is easier to place the blame on the content creator for making smut, but not our little naughty fingers for sourcing it! When we go to the grocery store there are tons of products that aren’t compatible with our health + well-being, so there is responsibility on the consumer to select what is in their best interest.
Your sexual content diet
So, what is your sexual content diet like? What does your consumption say about your sexual wellness and your responsibility to your wellness? Have you done a scan of your porn calorie count? Are they empty? Are they nutritious? Are they in alignment with your sexual goals?
Yep—it is time that we checked in on what we are consuming from our sexual entertainment. Do you find yourself just snacking on old faithful clips? Does that content that gives you an orgasm provide you with comfort or is it taking you to a new level of wellness? Don’t get me wrong, comfort porn has its place but we should be careful that we are not just plateauing in our entertainment (and oftentimes education).
I have been fortunate enough to travel the world and learn how people both use porn and misuse porn. I’ve been thankful to have experiences where I work with couples, singles and professionals on how to select porn that is in keeping with their current value system and/or reflective of their sexual goals, fantasies and desires.
“It is easier to place the blame on the content creator for making smut, but not our little naughty fingers for sourcing it!”
Your sexual value system
The first step in answering the question: “are you good enough for porn?” is actually exploring sexual value systems. I always take some time with my clients and students to establish “a personal code of beliefs concerning your own sexuality is an essential part of assuming responsibility for yourself as a sexual being…. It’s critical to becoming a fully realized sexual being” (Fritchle, 2017). What I tend to find is that folks have just inherited sexual values and/or followed those of others. What we value will determine what and how we consume entertainment; so, it’s safe to say there is a lot of mindless consumption happening that has no connection necessarily to one’s sexual sense of self. Unfortunately, this can be limiting the full pleasure that erotica has to offer.
Your right to pleasure
So, what does accessing that full pleasure look like? Imagine if your sexual entertainment had intention and purpose. Here are some of the ways of thinking about porn and purpose that have come up once actually doing some critical thinking around it with clients:
- To escape: so, I need my porn to be really fantastical and not make me think of the day to day aspects of life.
- To see myself represented: porn needs to give me inspiration for what I want to do with my body.
- To explore: my adult entertainment needs to push my imagination beyond my lived experiences.
- To go to sleep: I need to find art that builds me up and relaxes me down or else I just find myself jumping from clip to clip until I am tired and that just feels like more social media scrolling instead of setting up for a true relaxing time with myself.
- To find new kinky things to do with my partner: learning from porn is important to me so I guess I actually need to find content that centers education as much as it does entertainment.
- To not feel ashamed about the things that I really want to do: I have learned to watch real people that I can see, at least on social media, what they do besides sex entertainment so I can normalize my sexual desires as a part of who I am not the totality of who I am.
How is this sitting with you? Are you using porn to its fullest capacity? Or are you a lover that focuses on the end and not the experience. Are you taking the time to understand how your entertainment influences your reality and/or how you’d like it to influence your reality?
“What does your consumption say about your sexual wellness and your responsibility to your wellness?”
For sure, there are so many areas of adult entertainment that need a complete overhaul. However, we can shift our approach to porn to source the material that will serve us wherever we are in our sexual actualization journey. Our paradigm shift to be a critical consumer of porn will change how we see what is already available, as well as change what we advocate for from our favorite brands, sites and performers.
So now that I’ve intellectualized and therapized your porn… what are we watching tonight lovers?
Meet the author...
Jet Setting Jasmine is a licensed clinical Psychotherapist with a strong emphasis on Intimacy Post Injury and Intimacy Post Illness. She is the owner and lead therapist of full-service therapy practice, Blue Pearl Therapy. Jasmine is an international sex educator and Master Fetish Trainer.
Jasmine co-owns, with partner King Noire, three-time award winning Royal Fetish Films and together have over 20 years of experience as an adult entertainers, directors and producers. The duo’s love of the arts, film and sex education are combined to produce erotica that stimulates and engages the audience to explore their sexual boundaries. Their work on the Decolonization of Sex & Porn and Politics has been featured in Huffington Post, Rolling Stones, Paper Magazine, VICE, Playboy, Forbes, Cosmopolitan, BBC, Psychology Today and more.
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