Portal:21: Ashley Mathews (aka Riley Reid) - The mogul and brains behind America's Sweetheart

Historically, fighting obscenity and indecency charges has always been a central part of the free speech movement. Jim Morrison, Mae West, Lenny Bruce and George Carlin have all been arrested for exciting the public in ways that authorities have found threatening. Recently, however, the erotic and comedic arts have undergone more cryptic attacks via Operation Chokepoint, "cancellation", "no platforming", and inadequate press coverage given to cases of legal intimidation (e.g. the federal case under Miller v California standards brought against director John Stagliano).

In this episode, Eric sits down with the business woman who created the enduring character of the unlikely top pornstar Riley Reid. Continuing the theme of the DISC (Distributed Idea Suppression Complex) we discuss issues like Operation Chokepoint and obscenity law as well more subtle issues like the difficulty of finding vendors willing to cross the Rubicon to work with legal erotic businesses.

Ashley, in the role of the Riley Reid character, has defied all pornographic convention by embracing body positivity, forgoing plastic surgery and opting for natural body hair at times. Additionally she has made a social statement by doing a popular artistic scene which makes a political and business case for greater transsexual acceptance. Her main tool appears to be a palpable human decency and sweetness coupled to an uncanny ability to assess, manage and survive extreme business risk within a poorly understood industry that has confounded all expectations.

While this episode is generally not explicit, it is not for everyone given the content and so listener discretion is advised.

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Transcript
Note: This is a partial transcript; we are missing the last ~20 minutes.

Prologue

00:00

Eric: It is a very simple observation that sex is sexy, that is almost, but not quite a tautology. Yet its implications seem, at least to me, to be quite profound and easily missed given that one could argue from first principles that sex is ultimately one of the most powerful forces shaping human society, but whenever we attempt to discuss sex directly, our autonomic nervous system becomes engaged if we're not very careful. As the comedian Tom Lehrer once said, when correctly viewed, everything is lewd. If you look hard enough, you will see that nearly every sentence has a double entendre, like that last one. As a result, when we attempt to analyze and discuss sex and sexuality using our prefrontal cortex, the conversation almost reliably goes off the rails with a probability approaching one. As our lower brains become engaged, aroused, and amused, it's almost designed not to be discussable.

Yet there are two groups of people I see who do better than the rest of us in this regard. Some academics such as evolutionary theorists, physicians and sex researchers, and commercial sex workers. In this episode, I'm interviewing one of the world's most famous actresses, yet her name is all but unknown. She is Ashley Matthews, creator of Riley Reid, one of the top porn stars of our time. My goal in this conversation is to try to stop sex from becoming sexy just long enough so that we might learn a little bit more about how the pornography community and its civilian clientele are now interacting. Now, you may wish to say that you've never found pornography interesting, but that doesn't make a lot of sense when you consider that an individual's desire to avoid it doesn't stop it from affecting society as a whole. Like it or not, pornography is like dark matter forming an Einstein lens with an immense gravitational field effecting everything around it.

You don't have to watch it directly to feel it distorting us by monitoring our hypocrisies so that it can cater to our denied selves. It also presents a strange mirror to our society as if there were a Newton's law for pornography. It appears that everything we do here on earth and civilian life is mirrored on planet porn. They have a wage gap, but one that, at least naively, goes in the other direction. When I call Ashley at her office, she has to be sexy to her coworkers simply to be professional and she claims that her experience with onset harassment is near zero. Now, I'm in no position to evaluate these claims, but it takes some getting used to, and just like another planet, there may be no easy way back from a one way ticket to becoming well known as a performer. Now I should probably describe the ground rules for the conversation you're about to hear so that you can better understand the context of the episode.

I asked Ashley to humor me and that we would both try to lay off explicit language for the most part. We also agreed that we were not going to talk about sex much. Rather we were going to try to talk around it. I'm sure the ratings will suffer as a result, but if I'm honest, I'm not really that interested in interviewing the character of Riley Reid. I'm sure that would've been fun, but here I get to do something far more interesting because I'm talking to the person Ashley Matthews, who both created her and plays her. I told Ashley that I wanted to present her in a light in which she is seldom seen. She is, by nature, playful and charming, and that comes through here at times, but she's also hugely successful and courageous as a business woman who has stayed for years at the top of one of the world's most brutal occupations with her charm and her sweetness seemingly intact.

The woman is polite to a fault and humble whenever we speak. She has few, if any of the attributes we usually associate with stereotypes of erotic performers or commercial sex workers. She has also embraced her own bodily vulnerabilities as assets rather than deficits. And she has induced others to talk about such things in public. In that respect, at a bare minimum, she is a role model to us all. So the subject here is not Ashley as a performer, but instead her as an observer and analyst. I don't ask her about details of her sex life because I view everybody's personal sex life, including a porn star’s, as none of anyone else's business in a healthy society. If that is what you're looking for, you can find it in almost anyone else's interview of Ashley. Instead, in the midst of what appears to be peak shame of a new worldwide shame kink bubble fueled by social media, Ashley is one of the few free voices having long ago learned how to turn our shame and discomfort into her profitable business with recurring revenue.

As a result, we get to discuss terrifying topics like the awesome power of the state to harass and target businesses like hers working within our legal framework. This is done by trying behind the scenes to make their access to banking and commercial services far more difficult, such as happened during the Obama era’s quiet Operation Choke Point. While I find this appalling and disturbing, we also need to discuss other means for facing disturbing trends that are going under analyzed within the pornographic industry. Perhaps the most disturbing of these is the mainstreaming and promotion of so-called incest porn on the tube sites which serve up free videos to anyone with an internet connection and a willingness to get past modest access controls. This is a challenge given the obvious risks and concerns to anyone who believes in free speech absolutism. I hope you give Ashley a chance and that this gives us all food for thought. It's a tough conversation, but with a kind and wonderful subject. Without further ado, I bring you Ms. Ashley Matthews.

00:05

Eric: Hello, you found the portal. I'm your host, Eric Weinstein. I'm here in studio with a special guest today, Ashley Matthews. Ashley, thanks for coming by The Portal.

Ashley: Thank you for having me.

Eric: Now, it's an unusual episode of The Portal because, the way I see it, you are Ashley Matthews, but you've created a character who's an actress named Riley Reid who portrays a series of characters in erotic films and shorts. So you have a successful business, you're a successful business woman and I came to know about your existence through sort of a kind of an odd chain of events, which is that when I did one of my first large live shows with Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro at the Masonic in San Francisco, I believe that you were tweeting about how excited you were to attend the event. And people said, wow, Riley Reid is going to your event. And I said, who's Riley Reed? And people thought, wow, you really don't know. This is a, an incredibly famous erotic actress who is apparently very interested in rationality, psychedelics, sexuality and sort of understanding where our country is going from an unusual viewpoint. So you were at that show?

Ashley: Yes, I was.

Eric: How did that impress you?

00:06

Ashley: I, to be honest, wanted there to be more conversation about like all the things, I mean, Sam Harris talks about it all, like the free will and this and the, that type of thing. But I think it was a lot of politic type things. Kind of Ben Shapiro and him kind of talking a lot back and forth. I didn't really get to hear much from you yet.

Eric: Well, I tried to stay out of when they were trying to get into, Is there a God is there no, God, I figured that it's like the Sharks and the Jets or Bloods and the Crips. You don't want to get in the middle of it. Right.

Ashley: But nonetheless it was, I loved it. It was great.

Eric: Now, what drew you initially to that world of Sam Harris and his constellation of issues?

Ashley: The first time I listened to him, a friend of mine recommended one of his podcasts about social media and kind of the, what is it, like how it manipulates you? The manipulation in social media and social media is such a huge part of my life and my job that I thought it was really important for me to take a look and understand it deeper in a way that I've never really even visualized it or even noticed what was going on in the social media world. And so, because I work in it, we kind of all now work in it. I thought it was kind of like a duty to know exactly what we're all doing and kind of like helping influence. So when I first heard that podcast, I was really intrigued by it and thought that it was, I thought that Sam was like so well spoken and it was very interesting and I wanted to look more into his work and whatnot. I listened to a few more of his podcasts and learn about his fight against religion and his perspectives on freewill, which were things that I've never even heard of before. And I grew up religious myself, so to be able to listen to an atheist talk about all of these things that I kind of always felt within myself without ever actually expressing it. I thought it was really interesting and beautiful and I felt like I was like, Oh, here's like somewhere I can relate and things that I feel to be within me, but never actually expressed or found, I guess my following or fellow peers that I could speak to about this. So yeah, I was very, very interested in everything he had to say. And I'm an active listener on his podcasts.

00:08

Eric: Are you— would you self-describe as an atheist, if that's an appropriate question?

Ashley: I would say so. I didn't think that at the time that I was, but now kind of learning more of what it is expressed to be. I would consider myself an atheist. Yes.

Eric: Interesting. Now the way in which you sort of cropped up in my life a second time was that I started looking into the aftermath of something I had known nothing about, which was called Operation Choke Point. And this had been initiated under the Obama administration, if I understand it correctly, where the FDIC and perhaps the Justice Department came to realize that they could put a lot of pressure on the financial system not to do business with people in certain sectors of the economy or to make it very difficult for them to get any access to regular financial institutions. And I recall an article or an interview, maybe it was in a paper, I can't remember where it was, where you were talking about the fact that you couldn't get normal credit and easy access to commercial banking despite the fact that you were running a very successful and profitable business as a business woman.

00:10

Ashley: Yeah. There was a lot of adult actresses and directors and whatnot. People who have had their accounts shut down in banking institutions and things like that. I have had simple things where like email servers where you can kind of like send blast emails to your subscribers and whatnot kind of reject me in being able to be able to use them. Like MailChimp was one of the programs where I wasn't able to use it. And there's like many, many more. When I was like building my website, I was trying to like build my website from kind of like third parties, not trying to follow the standard adult website brands, because I felt like they took a large percentage of our money. So I was like, what other avenues can I attract that can work with me? And I was searching for months and months to find someone to like a simple to hold my bandwidth and whatnot. And it was really difficult. And I ended up having to speak to like specific owners and reach out directly to be able to be like, listen, this is who I am. This is what I want. Would you be willing to work with me? And now through that I've, I work with certain companies that where I'm like one of their biggest clients. And I think they work with a lot of sports networking and this and that. And still my adult website is there. I'm like their number one client. And so I feel very fortunate that they would take me on. But it took a lot of research and a lot of emails being sent out to people to be able to be like, listen, I am not a criminal. I'm not a bad guy. Like, you know, I understand that there are things that make the adult industry complicated because they have to make sure people are 18 and older and they don't want to be, you know, giving access to people who are not of the age. And how do you find that they are 18 and all of the written regulations? So I understand that there are those kinds of rules that take place that make it a little bit more tricky.

00:12

Eric: Those are the parts that you accept, that is, I mean, if I refer to you as a commercial sex worker, you're comfortable with the designation?

Ashley: Yes.

Eric: All right. So as a CSW, you accept that there are some added requirements for doing this kind of work so that it is legit and above board.

Ashley: Yes, of course. And so I think that the problem is that so many companies just don't even want to take the risk. That makes it a bit more of a struggle for us to try and find legitimate businesses that want to do business with us, even though I think that they're missing out on a huge market by not doing it. And I'm very curious as to some of the reasons why they even don't do it. It's maybe politically and religion has something to do with it, I'm sure.

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00:14

Eric: Well, that's one of the things that I'm interested in trying to reopen, which is that during the 1950s, sixties and early seventies, when obscenity was a much hotter topic, in particular because of the need to establish a standard by which something might be deemed obscene, and there were even people who said we should not have any concept of obscenity legally. It was very much on people's minds that obscenity and the erotic arts were part of free speech. So you had, you know, novels like Lady Chatterley's Lover or Tropic of Cancer that were deemed too racy to be, you know, sold. So you weren't even necessarily talking about films or, or pictures, even text was considered too hot to handle, and for whatever reason, that branch of the free speech discussion has somewhat dropped out of most people's consciousness. Do you find that as well?

00:16 Ashley: Yeah, I would say so. I definitely think that to some extent it's somewhat there and I don't know if it's just into different degrees where it's like gay rights or things like that, but definitely nothing really that is necessarily adult related in our, you know, XXX community.

Eric: So one person that you've worked with who has caught my attention on a number of occasions is this man, John Stagliano. And John Stagliano is famous for first porting the concept of Gonzo, which was originally popularized by Hunter S Thompson and journalism into porn. That is, he abstracted it away from journalism and started bringing it into pornography in the sense that he was using handheld cameras, he was making use of the switch to VHS from film, and one of the things that he was doing, if I understand correctly, and you should feel free to correct, is that he was showing females enjoying sexuality rather than being spied upon by the lens, actually actively engaged for their own pleasure. And that this was in some weird way a feminist upturning of the concept of pornography. Do I have my facts even vaguely correct?

00:17

Ashley: Yeah, yeah, I'd say so.

Eric: So then John weirdly ran afoul of federal prosecutors having to do with the 1973 standard, which needs to be more in all of our consciousness called Miller v. California. Is Miller v. California something that occupies your thoughts?

Ashley: No

Eric: Do you know about it?

Ashley: No

Eric: Oh boy. Okay. I'm not a legal expert, but this is, I think this is still the governing case law. There was originally, it's– I guess you can't check me, but see if this even plays correctly. My understanding is that in 1957, there was a decision called Roth v. United States, which introduced the idea that an average person applying contemporary community standards, whatever that means, would have to find obscene work to be in the prurient interest, that it arouses passions and maybe makes us lascivious. Right? And that was followed in the mid sixties by 1966 something called Memoirs v. Massachusetts, which was a much more liberal standard, which said that the work in question had to lack all redeeming social importance. And therefore, if you could just put one quotation from Shakespeare somewhere in your work, you were almost certainly going to be safe because anything that was redeeming, would keep something from being deemed obscene. And then the court revisits in 1973 and comes up with a three-pronged approach. And it says that somebody's applying contemporary community standards has to find the work to be in the whole and in the prurient interest of sex, that it has to run a foul of offensive standards, I think on the state books. And, lastly, it has to be seriously lacking in redeeming scientific, literary, political or social importance. So, not totally lacking; it just has to be fairly lacking. That is terrifying in the age of the internet, because what is a contemporary community standard when we have one giant community? If you make porn in the San Fernando Valley, let's say, where its traditional headquarters has been, what if it gets viewed in Ogden, Utah? How do you know you're not violating somebody else's community standard? Are you worried about this at all?

Ashley: Oh, I'm definitely, I mean the, to me it's like, it's very extreme because what one perspective is to one person is totally different to another. Your life experiences, I mean, are going to be completely different. You're even like, you know, religion has a huge play in all of these types of things and I think that a lot of people just have totally different ideas on what is okay and not okay. And I think a lot of it is even just from lack of experience or perspective or communication with different people. So I think that some people will even like, like many even of my own friends have totally different views on pornography and actors and actresses in the adult entertainment industry. And once they meet them, they're like, wow, I didn't even think that you guys would even, you know, be this type of person. I've had people who like speak to me directly where they're like, I didn't like you until I listened to a podcast where I was like, Oh, she's like a real human being. So I think that in general it's really daunting and terrifying. The fact that I, if I want to do some really intense hardcore scene that to maybe the general public will think it's, you know, you know, regular hot porno, you know, but then the, there might be, you know, 5% of the population who's like, Oh my God, what did she just do?

Eric: Well, and that's just it. There's no way that you can control where your material will be consumed. So having a pre-internet, like almost 50 years old, decision govern, in part, who can be brought up on federal charges. My understanding was that Stagliano, about 10 years ago was brought up, and was possibly facing three decades in prison for making pornography.

Ashley: Yeah.

Eric: You're like 28, if that would, that would put you at nearly 60 years old before you got out.

00:22

Ashley: Oh yeah.

Eric: So what, what are your thoughts on this? What do we do? If we, I mean, look, as you probably know, we've been talking about free speech issues in this Intellectual Dark Web group, for example, and a lot of the problems that we're finding are not exactly free speech issues. It's not really the government that's trying to shut you down, but instead, it's sort of the informal, the institutions of civil society like newspapers and universities that have suddenly come up with a new concept, which is hate speech and even simple biological reasoning is sometimes now considered hate speech. Do you see any tie in between the erotic community and potentially even the scientific community and the ways in which these amorphous standards might get invoked?

Ashley: I mean, I could hope that there is some sort of way that we can change these types of laws or perspectives and whatnot. I'm not exactly sure what it would take. I don't know if there's going to be like some sort of new television series that kind of lights people up in a different way that now people can have a perspective where they look at us as like humans and they humanize us. I think that's a huge part of it is not, we're not given the opportunity to humanize ourselves. And I would be really curious to see what it would have to be like if, you know, do we have to all become scientists so that we get the check of a seal of approval?

00:23

Eric: Well I’m claiming that even the biologists are now running afoul of concepts like hate speech. For example, what if you start talking about a study of trans issues, and you discover that trans is a giant umbrella category where some parts of trans are disorders, some parts of trans is just nature doing what nature is somehow going to do. And somebody says, well, wait a minute, that's, that's completely illegitimate because you're mis-gendering people. I don't think that biology is a way to hide out anymore. I think that in fact the biologists and the pornographers are weirdly and quite unexpectedly, somewhat in the same boat now that we have a very potent political strain that's trying to regulate what can be said and that you guys are in somewhat of a similar boat. But that because there's no, like, I mean I would never encounter you in normal life, probably, because our worlds are just very unlikely to collide.

00:24

Ashley: When it comes to like I, I know like right now I'm working on this documentary and they're following myself as an adult actress and they're also following a researcher who studies sex, and she speaks about how she gets like death threats and things like that for being this like almost highly sexual woman even though she's literally studying like how vaginal secretion happens or things like that. And I think that it is like we have this lack of free speech and we have this like, I don't know if it's also the era of where everyone is just highly offended by everything as well. I would have thought that through with social media and all of these things and even like music, the way that music has kind of like even become more hypersexual and aggressive, that our culture would be more accepting to these types of, you know, ways of life. Whereas rather than kind of see the opposite side of it, I, I think that like when it comes to being able to be free with what you can do and say in sex work and researchers, I'm not too familiar with the researchers, but I was definitely like, I thought of this book Bunk by Mary Roach when I heard about the research study of this, the researcher in the documentary where it talks about like, I think it was like in the 50s or something like that where they were all studying animals, having sex with animals because it was so taboo and you were like a pervert if you watched two humans have sex, even though that's the only way to actually study people having sex and to get real information. You're not going to get, you'll get information about monkeys if you're watching monkeys have sex. But it was like interesting to me that it was so almost pornographic for them to even be able to watch people and study them. Even though that's how we're trying to understand biology and science.

00:26

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00:27

Eric: I have to admit that I have a couple of odd theories about this and I was curious how you might find them. One of which is that, in some sense, the normal world, which I understand you call the “civilian world”, is almost hypocritical and in denial by design. That is, we aren't supposed to have an accurate picture of human sexuality, because our society is based on what I call load bearing fictions, that people are supposed to present as relatively asexual. Their default assumption that they go around with is that they are not sexual beings. And you're supposed to hide this aspect. And then there are contradictory expectations. So for example, you might be expected to wear cosmetics in a workplace environment as a sign of professionalism, but the cosmetics in fact may be sexualizing, but then you're not supposed to admit that the cosmetics may in fact be sexualizing. So in some sense the civilian world is a mess by design because we're not supposed to see ourselves accurately, and the world of sex workers is bizarrely a truth telling world, a world in which people are far more honest. And there's another one of these, which I think is the community of evolutionary theorists. And, believe me, you can’t invite those guys to parties either because they'll tell you things that the civilian world does not want to hear. What do you think about the idea that, is it possible that commercial workers are just much more honest and undistorted around issues of sexuality, and that, in fact, this is why they have to be excluded?

00:29

Ashley: I would say so. I, I believe one time when we spoke previously you mentioned to me, I could be quoting you wrong, but the real estate effect or something like that, where it was like the woman can sell you potentially a not a suitable home because of her sex appeal and where she is dressed in a nice suit. Maybe there's a little cleavage showing, she has the makeup done, and you, as a general person is kind of, you know, you're, you're in a daze because you, you see this woman almost before you see the household. And I think that with adult entertainers we kind of like are always so sexually driven and sex is everywhere. It's our whole lives. I feel like I even personally experienced less sexual tension when I'm on set because we are always naked. They are so used to seeing naked women that it's not even like, it's not even a statement or a question or anything like that.

00:30

Eric: Well, let's, let's dig into how bizarre your workplace is because very often I hear about sexuality in the workplace and I think, well, what happens when you take something like modeling or going even further commercial sex work on the set of a movie. Take us through what you think some of the major differences might be between your workplace and a typical office. But again, I should just tell the audience, I have asked Ashley to try to keep this as much above the neck as possible so that we can have the broadest possible audience. And so normally we might be making some jokes and having some more fun, but we're trying to keep this as classy as possible.

00:31

Ashley: I can even just say like even the feeling and the difference of like how I'm working on this documentary right now, when I'm onset with that documentary, it is so different than when I'm typically onset. And it's hard for my brain to almost wrap around it because it's very similar vibe. They're both sets. We have like same kind of production crews and me, I would naturally change my clothing right here in the middle of the set and all of these things, and not even think about, you know, the guy on the sound, he's doing his job, he's looking at the things, cause he doesn't care about me getting nude because that's what he always, every day there's a new girl and a guy getting nude. And when I was on the documentary they were kind of like, Oh no, like, go to your dressing room and change. And as if, and I didn't even think that I could be potentially offending them with my body and whatnot by just undressing, dressing right there. Cause I was like, Oh you want me to change so I'll, I'll just change right now. I'm like totally comfortable with myself. And it didn't even cross my mind that like, Oh maybe this guy is looking at me inappropriately and he has like a wife or this or that or they don't want any set drama or anything like that. And so for me it's very bizarre to pull myself out of my world that is so normal for us to just be like casually having sex, like when the cameras aren't rolling to just maintain the energy, maintain the flow you, we want to make sure the male talent, how you know, stays erect and everything like that. And so while they're changing lights and everything like that, it's so casual for sex to be going on. It's so casual for the male to male– there’s even like a lot of male to male, you know, gay jokes within each other where you know, they'll, they'll joke about like, you know, teasing each other off and like doing all of these fun, playful things. Whereas maybe in the regular work environment you would never male to male be flirting with your, you know, coworkers even in the slightest bit because one, you don't want to become like, I dunno, you don't want all of that. Some guys are so homophobic and whatnot, but in our industry it's so casual for everyone to kind of have this open love for one another and talk about their bodies and their sexuality, that, when I was on this documentary set, it was so bizarrely uncomfortable for me as the sex worker to remove myself from being who I naturally am, which is like just comfortable within myself and my sexuality and my body and that I could be looked at as a piece of meat on their set. So they're like, these men aren't used to seeing women like this all the time. So you have to make sure that you're not subjecting yourself in this way or making them uncomfortable or whatnot. And to me, I think that like if they were around that more, if people were just comfortable with themselves and comfortable with their bodies, then it naturally would be normal and the same, and the guy would be able to adjust the lights without staring at the girl the whole time. You know, not that these guys were, but I guess potentially maybe they would, but they weren't even really given the opportunity. And for us, I think we're just so casual with one another that there, the hypersexualness that goes on on set is just, it's just another playful, casual, normal conversation. Yeah.

00:35

Eric: So you believe, I mean, not to put words in your mouth, but I'm curious, you believe that in your workplace, bizarrely, and quite unexpectedly, maybe issues of harassment, tension, unwanted sexuality, are actually decreased?

Ashley: I personally feel that in my experiences, 100%. Like it's, to me it's close to none. I've never felt creepy vibes from a director or anything of that. I'm also very playful and comfortable with myself and jokes and you know, I'm not, I couldn't say that for every female that she doesn't feel maybe possibly offended by certain statements. But I have never felt that there was a boundary that was crossed in our casual work with one another. I've never had any creepy director offering me things that he shouldn't be or whatnot. It's always in a very playful manner and there's always like 10 other people in the room. So it's always like a casual joke or things like that where we're all just, you know, naked and, you know, I pee with the door open. It's just like, we all kind of do, like, we're all just very comfortable with ourselves.

00:36

Eric: You know, there was a story and I wish I could source it, because I've referenced it a few times, but years ago there was a naked musical called Oh, Calcutta. And I remember hearing a story that somebody had found that after being on stage naked in front of an audience night after night, because this was a relatively successful musical, that the performers could not go back to normal life because they had become habituated to the excitement of being viewed by like hundreds, if not thousands of people. And so, you know, one possibility is that in your world there is a permanent or semi-permanent brain shift that comes from experiencing a level of arousal and familiarity that the rest of us will never, ever experience.

00:37

Ashley: I would say so to some extent, but even from me personally to some extent, I feel like even quite the opposite has happened where now I like favor and desire more the more intimate one-on-one private sex life experience where it feels more emotionally involved. And I think that's also because I'm often working with people that maybe I don't know them very well or things like that. And there is always other people around, so the level of being able to drop your guard always in completely is very rare because there is a camera involved and we're creating a product in the end. And as much as like I can be enjoying myself, I still am put into literal positions that I can't always be enjoying myself because it's opening up for a camera or things like that.

00:38

Eric: Right, well, and you're a professional after all.

Ashley: Yes. Yes, exactly. And so I find even for myself that it's almost taken an opposite turn where I now desire that less and less. And when I first started, that was one of my favorite things was the viewers, the voyeur aspect of there being multiple people in the room and enjoying the fact that there is a guy with a boom stick holding it up, who's, you know, trying to not look but definitely obviously wants to.

Eric: Got it. Do you see any way in which, are the rest of the rest of us in society moving closer towards pornography with let's say self sexualization on Instagram, where you're sort of part of a mildly erotic feedback loop? If you're a young woman and you notice what, you know, suddenly a photo you've taken has, you know, 10 times the number of likes on it.

00:39

Ashley: I would say social media has a huge part into doing and kind of almost making somewhat hyper-sexualized in yourself, more casual. And I think a lot of it is this desire of engagement as well as like people becoming an Instagram model or influencer so that they sell products. I know I recently listened to like a Chris D’Elia podcast where he was joking about, yes, convenience.

Eric: He's amazing. Oh, he's hilarious. I love him.

Ashley: And in his podcasts, he's making jokes about these girls who are kind of, you know, smashing their chest together, holding a watch, and they're selling a watch. But nobody is obviously looking at the watch. And it's interesting how, you know, in every kind of advertising world and median, they use sex to sell things. And so it's very normal. But now when you're taking the regular girl who's not some Vogue supermodel or it's like a Kendall Jenner where she's obviously selling sex but not selling sex cause it's perfume these other girls are kind of doing the same thing. And I think for them that they almost recognize it more so that they are selling sex because they're not getting this Vogue ad to show that it is showcasing that they're with Vogue.

00:40

Eric: And I think this is one of the difficulties that a lot of us are having is that traditionally we've always been self-deceptive about sexuality, and that the signals, I mean even biologically, just in terms of evolutionary theory, the signals that we send which constitute the sort of language of sexuality have always been cryptic. They're not sent transparently and in the clear. Maybe that's more the case inside of the world professional pornography, but in fact being deceptive and self-deceptive is what is normal. And I think one of the things that has been very confusing is this passion, partially on behalf of like the psychological community or professional sex educators, you know, be open, be explicit, talk about everything. And that's never been how sexuality has functioned in what you call the civilian world.

Ashley: No, sometimes I wonder if it has to do with the fact that people enjoy this taboo sense of things where it's almost like if it's unspoken, then it's more enjoyable. If it's, if it's kind of subliminal, it's, it's almost like it's sneaking its way into yourself. And, if it is kind of like less open than maybe they would have, they would have. If it wasn't, if it was direct, then maybe they would have certain other guidelines that they would have to follow, if this perfume commercial was obviously transparent with the fact that they are using sexuality to sell their perfume then maybe in the real world, the civilian world, they would be like, you can't do that. That's inappropriate. Our children see these commercials. It's on aired on television at regular waking hours. And I think that probably has something to do with the part of it where if it is not, if it is subliminal and it's not direct, then it could be more acceptable to the human eye. And it could be something that, where people are like, well, no, that's, it's a lingerie company that's like classy and pretty, even though it's obviously selling sexuality at the same time.

00:43

Eric: Well I think that the issue of deniability now, I mean we were talking— I should say this is the first day we've ever met. We've talked on the phone a bunch of times. One of the people I've sort of pointed you towards is this evolutionary theorist Bob Travers. And he wrote this book. I mean, it's really, you know, one of the most prominent theorists of our time. And he wrote this book called the folly of fools that talks about the evolutionary basis of self-deception as the precursor to being able to manipulate others. And if you think about, for example, I had Bret Easton Ellis in the studio who wrote American Psycho and Less Than Zero. And we were talking about the issue of seduction. And he said that he wants to be seduced all the time. He doesn't want everything to be explicit. He doesn't want everything, you know, as a mutually agreed upon decision, that in part what is wonderful and delicious to him about life has to do with seduction, and that selection involves manipulation. But in a world where I think many more people are colliding without a common understanding of each other, not coming from the same backgrounds, there's really an increased propensity for humans to get these signals wildly wrong. It's probably always been there, but maybe there's an increased ability. So weirdly, the way I see it, the civilian world has always been based on sort of self deception, and then there have been both the problems that come from that and the really much more exciting aspects that come from that. But when it works, probably there's an extra magic to it. Any thoughts on that between like what, what translates to mystique? Do you see that when you're looking at your civilian friends, that they're kind of saying, well, I wonder if he likes me? I got a message. I don't know how to interpret it.

00:45

Ashley: Oh, well, like 100% when it comes to me. Even just like dating, I am a very transparent, open person in these aspects of where I, I don't, I don't do the whole seduction game and I kind of just am an open book and I find that a lot of times it is faulty, where, you know, a lot of people do want this type of seduction. They like these types of games or whatnot in the sense of where they, they feel like when you're, and I, I think it could be because the general public is not so honest and open with what they want, that it's like a shock value, where they're like, well, this girl is just really being completely open in general with what she enjoys. And it's often something I loop back around with my therapist where I'm like, do I need to start being like the more civilianesque type of a person, to be a more dateable person? Whereas instead of being this vulnerable self where I am just constantly myself and say what I like and what I feel in these moments and

Eric: Pretty big tradeoff.

Ashley: Yeah, it is. And I often find myself incapable of catering to the general public. I don't know how to do these all in kind of mind games on myself. But it is interesting where I do find that the most common people do enjoy this type of seduction and whatnot. They don't want things to be so blunt and almost easy to an extent. There has to be some sort of work involved and trickery. I believe that it is like a very common theme, at least even in like my dating world. It is.

Eric: So one of the things that I thought was really terrific that I first heard from you with some of your ideas about how to make sure that if people are considering entering the erotic arts professionally, that they're making good decisions, that you feel that very clearly this has been a great decision for you. It's worked out financially at a great level. You've been in the business for a long time, haven't been chewed up, you seem to have an incredibly positive attitude. But what I was talking to you about was, well, you know, how uncommon is that. You're obviously in a very unusual position, and you came up with this idea of having like a virtual reality simulator of what it would be like to enter the business. Can you say more about that?

Ashley: Yeah, I think that there are so many people, I mean you get to start the industry at age 18. And I think that there are so many people who don't necessarily start for the right reasons. Even when I first became in the industry, I was a very hypersexual adolescent. And when I began the industry, it was mostly for money. Though I started off as an extra, I wasn't partaking in these sexual acts. I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. I had no idea, the concepts of it all and whatnot. And I think that now if a young male or female can get the opportunity to really grasp the sense of what can happen when he joined the industry, it would be, I think a good filter for a lot of the youth and whatnot. So I think it'd be great to have this idea of a virtual reality that allows people to put themselves inside different types of scenarios. So maybe like one scenario is you go in and you tell your parents that you've now joined the adult industry and one of the reactions are that your parents are distraught, they humiliate you, they shame you, they disown you, things of this sort.

Eric: These are fairly common?

Ashley: Yes. Yeah. I think a lot of people have parents who are racist. There are some parents who are like, yes you can do porn but not interracial porn and like weird things like that. And so they're making their children racist by association because maybe this child wouldn't care, you know, they would love to have sex with a person of another race, but they don't want their father or mother to disown them. So by association then listening to their parental rules and guidelines, they will not partake in interracial sex and things like that. So I think that this would be an interesting factor and I think it'd be very interesting to put the parents in these simulations as well for a youthful characters or maybe even older people who get in the industry. So maybe the parents can understand what it's like to be the adult entertainer and to have their parents be so harshly judging and aggressive and whatnot. And maybe your parents are in a religious state. You know, you could maybe fill out a little questionnaire and you're like, my dad is Christian. So like how would his Christian beliefs affect us negatively and put the father in that same, you know, virtual reality. And maybe it could also help change the parents to be more accepting. But there also are obviously the parents who will just be terrible and unaccepting. And I think there are other ways to put the future stars in the virtual reality. Whereas we had a one star, rest in peace, August Ames where yeah, she had commit suicide from what I gather, some internet bullying where she did not partake in a sex scene with a crossover star, which is a star who performs both in male to male scenes and male to female scenes. And I'm sure she struggled with other mental illness issues and things like of that sort. And I think that if we were able to put these adolescents in, or these 18 year olds, or these people, future stars in the industry, they would be able to get the experience of the humiliation, the tweets and the social media hate that you're going to get the, the ongoing, you know, struggle with dating.

Eric: Ashley, but, how do you do it? I mean, it comes back, it's absolutely brutal.

Ashley: It is. But I recognize that when I, when I think about it, when I was when I was in elementary school, kids would make fun of me because I, I'm kind of like a hairy girl. I have like hairy arms and whatnot and hairy legs. So they would call me wolf woman or gorilla girl and I would just start howling like a wolf or like grunting around like a, like a monkey. And I think that I have always just personally taken criticism and made it comical. So for me, when I see someone saying some hurtful comments, I'm always like, hi, you're brilliant. Like it's, it's amazing. It's so hilarious to me. So I have a different ability into translating how negative terminology and derogatory statements towards myself that actually impacts me

00:52

Eric: Well you literally have a tattoo in another language. I don't know which one it was.

Ashley: Chinese,

Eric: It says, when life gives you lemons make lemonade. So that seems to be pretty deep.

Ashley:   Yeah, I've always been able to make things a more positive experience within myself. And I think that if we were able to help see which people could handle these types of experiences, which who could handle the shame, who could handle, you know, all of the terrible aspects that come into being an adult entertainer, then I think it would be a better filter for, you know, allowing these experiences and maybe they should have these experiences for the viewers who are saying the terrible nonsense so that they could understand. Cause I'm pretty sure—

Eric: How much pain they’re inflicting.

Ashley: Yes, Like, I think that listening to one of the Sam Harris podcasts, he was talking about to somebody where they were talking about putting men in simulations where they get cat called or you know, sexual suggestions thrown at them where they were now almost be able to think of like, wow, actually maybe I won't treat women that I don't know like this because it's actually not okay. And it made me feel uncomfortable.

Eric: Well, could I actually I wasn't planning on doing this, but can I give you a compliment? One of the things that really discouraged me from going into podcasting or doing anything on YouTube is that when I started to see, I think that the first time I was on a major YouTube podcast was Dave Rubin’s show. And I noticed that people stop the video at particular places and they say “what's going on at 15:37?” And you may not know this, but the reason that you're sitting to my right is that I have a condition called Duane syndrome. And so the guest always sits in that chair because my left eye is partially paralyzed, and it will not go out. I did not actually have this diagnosed until I was an adult. And as a result, I very frequently appeared with some amount of cross-eyedness and my YouTube comments reflect like, you know, I remember one comment was did you see that at 1821 his right eye goes in to check for information and then it comes back out because it found where it's stored in the brain. That was like, very playful and fun. But then some of them, particularly the ones having to do with the moles on my face, really started to get to me. And what I found, and here comes the compliment, I found, and I have to confess, I can't really watch your really wild stuff, but I have watched some of your discussion about your body image and you talk about being small breasted. You're very open about this, and saying, I don't want silicone and I know that I'm supposed to get silicone in order to earn the big money. And I thought, wow, she's just talking quite openly about this. And then you didn't shave your armpits for a while and then you did a YouTube video about the decision not to shave your armpits and shaving them and you confounded everybody's expectations for what you're supposed to do as a big time, a erotic performer. And I just took so much away from that. It was, it was very inspiring that you would be that courageous and it was something that, you know, personally moved me and helped me a little bit. You know, also people don't think my hair is real because they think it's a wig because I'm too old. I’m not kidding you. So, you know, that was a great image from a most unexpected corner of the world, so thank you.

00:56

Ashley: Oh, of course. Yeah. I think that like a part of that simulation I was speaking about would be about body image because there are so many young women that I've met who, like one particular model, I won't say her name, but she said that her, she had so many fans and I don't even know what, how so many are, but she had so many fans who told her that her breasts were like pointed in different directions, that she had two breast augmentations. And I could imagine that the people who complimented her greatly outweighed those who didn't. But people sit in, they think about these negative comments and it affects them greatly to the point to where they will change their body. I've, I know girls who have had complaints about their nose or their this or their that and they very openly go on their Instagram and they talk about, well, you guys complain about this on my body. So I fixed it. And, and it's very sad to me that these people who aren't mentally strong enough put themselves out there and allow the feedback from some Joe Schmoe wherever he is saying these hurtful things towards the women or and men. And it affects them greatly to the fact to where they actually will pursue action and will change their body and put silicone breasts in them, which can be very dangerous and it can be life threatening. You put yourself under this anaesthesia, which is already a risk, as well as the risk of the poisoning of the silicone. And it's really like I know quite a few girls who gotten the silicone and then have gotten it removed later. I know a girl who has gotten her her butt done and then removed afterwards and these are very extreme life threatening surgeries to put yourself through over the simple fact of you think your audience will like you more. And to me it's obscene where I've not I, when I first started the industry, I had, my first agent told me if I wanted to be a big star, I would have to dye my hair blonde and get a boob job. And I have done neither of them.

00:58

Eric: So this is the thing. She's like, you really are. You don't, you're very disagreeable. You don't take all of the standard advice and somehow it's been working out for you. You, I like, let me be a little bit more forthcoming. I don't think I'm entirely comfortable with what it is that you do for a living. But I've tried to get over that because you know, you're just been such a genuine and wonderful person to talk to about all of these things. And so in part you're, you're extremely disarming. You get people to be comfortable with the fact that they do have a sexual response to you and you get people to accept you on your own terms and you've risen to the top without any, you know, seemingly any consequence to just being yourself. How, how did you figure that out, and nobody else did in your area?

Ashley: I honestly am not sure. I, I think that's, to some extent my parents had, you know, obviously a very large part of that. My mother has always been she was never like the type of person who took her body image into consideration. My mother was like an overweight woman who kind of never really dressed nice. And I think that that kind of helped me a lot too. And she was always proud of herself and her confidence was always very high. And I think a huge part of my ability to just kind of accept myself for myself was to see that as a role model is that she still found herself to be beautiful and, and loved herself even though she may have not been in the standards of beauty. And, and sometimes I wonder if I would be more in my own head if I had this attractive hot mom who dressed the part and put on makeup and all of these things where she was not that at all. And she always was very accepting into whatever we wanted to wear. And like when I went through my goth phase—

Eric: You had a goth phase?

Ashley: I did have a goth phase.

Eric: Okay.

Ashley: And she supported and got me all of the like funky clothes and all these things. And when I did go through my like more sexually explicit phase, she was always like very, very open to everything that we wanted. When I wanted to start wearing like thong undergarments, she was like, yeah, let, we'll go get them for you.

01:00

Eric: Do you think that you're sort of set at the factory at a more hyper-sexualized level.

Ashley: I do think so. I think that like I was always around a lot of like sexual activity. My, I grew up in like a trailer with my uncles who had a lot of girlfriends. Their girlfriends were strippers and they were drug users.

Eric: So there's probably a developmental aspect. Maybe it's not set at the factory, but that the, that environment—

Ashley: Yes. And, and my, my dad does claim to be like a sex addict and things like that. So sometimes I wonder if there is some sort of, you know, biological self, something in me that is more hypersexual than others and cause I don't think that everyone is meant to be, you know, into sex. I think that some are more than others. I think like Nikola Tesla was a Virgin when he died and that makes sense. He was studying science the whole time. So like I think that there are certain people who are,

Eric: Newton was also pretty asexual.

Ashley: Yeah. And to me it makes sense, like not everyone is meant to be a hyper-sexual person. Like some of us should be studying the arts or sciences or, you know, hunting and gathering rather than procreating.

01:02 Eric: Okay. I mean, I think I mentioned to you that I had heard a podcast with a professional colleague of yours, Asa Kira, and she had said, I don't think that I'm an appropriate role model for all young women. I think that I'm an appropriate role model for hypersexual young women. And I thought that was fascinating. That hadn't occurred to me that we may be partitioned into different groups and that a hyper-sexualized young woman might need an inappropriate role model that is highly specific. Do you feel comfortable being that in your area?

Ashley: 100% yeah. I think that since very young age I had always been a very hypersexual person and I never necessarily had like a role model and, and I agree, I wouldn't say that I am a traditional type of role model, although I would like to be. I think to some extent I, I would like to think that the more average girl could admire me and look up to me for other aspects and whatnot. And cause I, like I said, I know I have a lot of girls who know who I am from like podcasts and stuff. They had no idea my work or anything like that and they just admire me for the way I speak in my opinions on things.

Eric: It's very hard for me to integrate. You know, when I've spoken to on the phone before you say, you know, it's been great talking to you, but unfortunately I have to get back to the set and I have this like, it's like somebody telling me I have to go fight the battle of Stalingrad. Some terrible, crazy things about that. But you're like, Oh no, I love my work. And it's just, it's, it's very funny to see my own discomfort and prudishness crop up.

Ashley: Yeah, it is interesting. It's very, it's a very bizarre thing for me. Even when I meet people like yourself, you know, and like other types of fans like I've, because I have these other avenues of attracting personas. I've had very young adolescents come up to me and asked me for photos for my podcasts with like Logan Paul and this is absolutely mind boggling to me and I, their parent will take the photo and I'm just like, do they even know? And I don't know what I’m supposed to say.

1:04

Eric: Well, this is the thing. I think that there's a lot of it that's not personal. When it comes to the trepidation it has to do with, I have no plan for how we are going to negotiate all of the issues that come up because in my world we're all wildly sexually hypocritical and that's normal. That's, that's the way the civilian world has always been. And presumably it's likely to be that for the foreseeable future. Whereas I see you as the sort of dangerous truth telling machine, experimenting with things that you know, that are unimaginable. Now you just went to Burning Man, and Burning Man is a very odd thing in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada because for one week, somehow the normal rules are suspended. How do you find this sort of, I didn't find it. I went once, I didn't find it incredibly hot. There was a lot of nakedness and there was a lot of play, but it wasn't a wildly erotic experience in my understanding. Did you find it otherwise?

Ashley: I also agree to not find it as a very erotic experience and it could just be because it feels kind of dirty with all the dust everywhere. To me, just hygienically I'm not really sure.

Eric: It was a very creative place. Like the art is astounding.

Ashley: Yes, it is a beautiful place and I think that it's just a, a place of be people to be able to be comfortable in their bodies. And I think that the fact that it's not hyper erotic is also why people are so comfortable with themselves because they are able to walk around naked and look at, looked at as an art piece rather than looked at as a sexual object. Whereas

1:06

Eric: Even an erotic art piece that isn't necessarily going to immediately lead to a a sense of arousal.

Ashley: Yes, exactly. They are able in that moment to embrace themselves for who they are because you'll find young, old, overweight, thin, attractive, unattractive people who are just nude running around and everyone is just so confident in themselves. And I think it's just such a beautiful environment and place for people to really be able to accept themselves. And it's kind of sad that that is the one place that they are able to let their guard down.

01:07

Eric: It was very interesting. I remember seeing a woman on a bicycle who had very clearly had a radical mastectomy and she was totally topless and she didn't, I mean aggressively, she was having the time of her life and didn't care. And there was this sort of, you know, cocoon of like acceptance and love that was clearly in the air. I don't think it's an easy thing. Now, Burning Man has this very funny thing that they refer to the civilian world as the default world. And so in the default world it's very tough to get that kind of radical acceptance. Do you find that there's some sort of similarity between that deviation from the civilian world or the default world that is burning man and the porn set?

Ashley: I would say 100%. Like a lot of my friends that I work with are a lot of my friends. I get them to end up working for me. So I've got some friends who are like mainstream editors and I somehow managed to get them to start editing my adult videos. And I have one that I ended up taking to Burning Man with me who had such a, he recently told me how he's had such an epiphany within himself to be able to be so comfortable with his own body and comfortable with other people, other people's bodies by simply editing my videos. He's not on set, he's not partaking in any of the activities or anything like that, but because he's just been editing my videos, he's found that he's able to have a different relationship with nudity and sex and all of these things, whereas in his regular world previously to meeting me, he was more, I guess, vanilla or follow the standards of these civil civilian type people where it was like, no nudity. You will never see him naked unless you are his girlfriend or partner at the time. And now he's in a totally different place where he, he said himself, he's like, by the end of Burning Man, I will be walking around naked too. And I think it, it's like this ability within himself where he is now, he's gotten to be able to put himself in the perspective in the shoes of us on set. He's, he's, he sees the delay of when before camera's cut. He sees like, you know, they start action and there's moments of us getting comfortable with each other. There's moments of us cutting and just kind of like being natural and ourselves. We're like taking a water break and everything like that. And I think that there are elements that definitely have helped people grow within themselves and be able to accept themselves as they're just natural human self.

01:09

Eric: So it seems to me that there's definitely something to learn from this weird pornographic universe. On the other hand, I can't see that these lessons will ever fully translate. So, for example do you remember this horrible number of the Oscars were, I forget who it was, somebody was singing the song, “we saw your boobs” and it was going through all of the actresses that appeared topless. And the idea being that, well, if I've seen your boobs, then in some sense I've got something on you. And I thought about John Lennon and Yoko Ono doing this album called, I think, Two Virgins. And they are appearing naked on the album, so let's get it over with. So now you've all seen us and let's now, now you don't have any power over us anymore because it's done. Do you think that there's some thing like that that at some level there's this revelation that you have your privacy up until a certain point and then when you've given up your privacy in exchange somehow you get a, a comfort with self?

01:10

Ashley: Yes, a hundred percent. I think that there was a study done that showed that women who perform an adult entertainment or as a sex worker have higher levels of confidence within themselves. Then the average woman and I, I think a hundred percent that there's something about putting yourself out there to be so vulnerable kind of forces you to kind of have to not care what other people think or say. And I think that there's also, as much as you get these negative statements, there's still so much glorification in that there's still so many people who are applauding you for doing what you do. Like I look like a normal girl, an average girl who is probably going to college or has some sort of basic job. And when I go to the store and target, I'm a very social person. I make small talk with anyone and I often will like, I just start conversations with like maybe this random 60 year old lady and we're kind of like, you know, talking, lollygagging. And she asks me, Oh, like what are you a model? What do you do? And I tell her, well, I'm actually like one of the number one porn stars in the world. And a lot of times they look at me, they like size me up and down and they're like, “you like, you don't have big silicone boobs. “You don't have all this injection in your face”, like, “You?” And I'm like, I explained to them—

Eric: You're also pathologically polite.

01:12

Ashley: Yes I am. I am a lovely lady, I think, and I'm a lot of, a lot of times when it's like an older woman, she will tell me how she regrets not being more exploring in her life and regrets not being able to or not have done things that were more adventurous sexually or erotically or maybe like, I think one woman told me she wanted to do like nude modeling, but she never did because her herself was a petite small brunette woman. And it was, it's always so interesting to me that the positive reinforcement I get from older women who are always like, “wow, like I am so happy that you do that. And like, I wish that I have been more—

Eric: I think there are a lot of post-menopausal regrets. I was friendly with a woman who I take to be maybe in her mid to late sixties, who started for some reason as I was leaving San Francisco telling me more than she might have otherwise. And she talked about how back in the day she had allowed people to eat their meals off of her naked body as a kind of performance art style. And she was just having the time of her life cackling about it. And we were like laughing and making rude jokes. And I thought about the way in which maybe the part of the problem is that men really need women in general in the civilian world to be much more simple in terms of their sexuality, that you want to imagine your mother and your grandmother typically as somehow bringing forth life with, you know, not multiple lovers and not having much of a history and that somehow I wonder whether it's male needs for an idealized concept of woman that make this, this pressure lifelong and that postmenopausally many women just say, well, what, what did I, what did I do? I gave up so much of myself.

01:14

Ashley: Yeah, I agree. I do think that a lot of men want these types of desires. And I don't know if it's biology or what it is. Sometimes I don't even think that necessarily matters. It's probably like environmental. But I know personally when I talk to a lot of guys that are my friends, they're like, I love you and I adore you, but I couldn't date you.

Eric: What do you make of that? Does that make sense to you?

Ashley: No, it doesn't make sense to me. Like, and I don't know if it's because I as a woman would, I guess biology, biologically would look for the most suitable male and would probably have multiple children. If it was a primal world, I'd be like, Oh, he's like six feet tall and big hunky man. And he's like a smart, lovely gentleman. Like I would imagine maybe I would have these desires to have these different types of children so it could explain my attraction to a variety of men. But I also feel like men would naturally be that way too. But I, I don't know really what it is. Like, I think I would like, what is it? Some one of the big cats like lions or something. We'll kill the young of another. You know,

01:15

Eric: It's even worse than that. You wanna get into it? I believe the idea is that if the head of the pride changes and there's a new line at the head, not only will he kill the young offspring of his predecessor, but that, horribly, the female lions response to this is to go into estrus, to become a receptive and aroused by the killing of their young. Right? Like, no, I mean, nature is just so busy. It's so crazy, right? And, and we can't really, except this in part. And so my belief is, is that a lot of what you're seeing is the evolutionary program that says, if I know this person to be so aroused, it's not their personality, their looks, their this, their that. One, they've got a tremendous amount of sexual knowledge. So they're going to know exactly where I am on the totem pole of sexuality, which is terrifying. I think there's another aspect that has to do with how do I know this person isn't going to pick up and take off with somebody else because they've been, they've had their norms adjusted and there's another one that says, how do I know that any child will be mine, but more than anything, my guess is how do I know that I won't be mercilessly teased? Because everyone will say, Hey, I saw your girlfriend naked. I saw her doing this, I saw her doing that. And so the assault on the male ego and you know, just to be honest about it, I think almost none of us are secure enough to deal with it.

01:17

Ashley: Oh yeah. I know that every guy that I've dated publicly faces a large amount of sliding in the DMs of very aggressive, you know, harassment. And and I'm sure that even after our breakup, they are still dealing with the harassment because we were at one time a public image together and I would see some of the comments and they are absolutely brutal and terrible. And it's even actually one of the reasons why I'm terrified to have children because I think that I'm being the best mother possible by not having children because I think that the life that they could live could be full of suffering, whereas they'll be shamed their entire life possibly. Whereas, you know, that same statement where, how do you know that's your real dad? I've seen your mom take on many partners, you know, and like all of these kinds of very hurtful, terrible things and—

Eric: Direct assaults on our construct of masculinity. And this is why, you know, I noticed the other day that Jenna Jameson who— it was obviously a person in an era slightly before yours at the top of the porn profession— was following me and tweeting about the Jeffrey Epstein situation. And she is pretty aggressive and she had her kid in her picture at the top of her Twitter profile. And that is a very aggressive mama bear who is not taking any shit from anybody. I think, you know, one of the things I've, you ever see this movie, The Martian?

01:18

Ashley: It sounds right. Is that the one with—

Eric: with Matt Damon—

Ashley: Yeah, I've heard of it. I did not actually see it.

Eric: Okay. You know how, like, it's one thing to get a human to Mars, but it's much more difficult to imagine how we're going to get a human back? So maybe it's easy to go one way? I think of planet porn as like Mars. That very often there's a portal into something where you have a lot to learn and that's part of the reason that, you know, I was eager to have you on the program, but it's not clear that there's a return ticket.

01:19

Ashley: Oh, I agree. 100% I think that it is a very, that's what I, one thing I was saying earlier is like is the seal of approval that I become a scientist, you know, like what, what do I have to do to become acceptable in the public's eye? Like do I write an amazing film? The screenplay that now is like, wow, she's more than an adult actress.

Eric: Can we talk about a couple of these? Because I think these are fun. One thing is, I dunno, do you know the story of Marie Curie on her second Nobel prize? Okay. So you know, obviously it's Polish scientist living in France. Second Nobel prize, she's told we're going to give you the prize, but you can't come to Stockholm to pick it up because we think that you're getting busy with a married man. Right. Can you imagine? I was going to write a book called Radium Slut. Because of her work with the radioactive element radium. And we were so wrapped around the axle about her extracurricular life that we couldn't bring ourselves to let her have the pleasure of a second Nobel Prize given her behavior. Some other ones in this category, which I think are kind of interesting— obviously you must know the story of Hetty Lamar? So the spread spectrum technology that allows your phone to keep a call, but to jump from frequency to frequency was apparently co-developed by her. Now she was an actress who was famous for appearing nude. She was like the most beautiful woman of her time early in German films. I think before she came to the U.S. I think it was German films, not quite sure, but again, highly sexualized female, brilliant as the day is long. And that these examples, there's another one that's I would love to have on this program. I can't remember her name exactly. Maybe Brooke Magnanti? And her pen name was Belle de Jour. She was studying for a PhD and she was turning tricks as a high class call girl in the UK because the stipends weren't high enough. She loved the work, she loved her clients, she loved science. And so these are all examples of highly sexualized, self-sexualized females who have been at a very high intellectual level. Now, one possibility is that we should desexualize the work environment and science. However, if there turned out to be a correlation between outsized performance and hypersexualization in females, we wouldn't be running the experiment to be able to see whether there was any kind of a correlation. So these are, these are topics which are weirdly too hard to talk about. And my concern is, is that we're not built, I mean, one of the things I've loved talking about these topics with you is that we've managed to keep this I, and I think I, I'm going to take credit. I can kill the sexuality and sex so that we kept it pretty much above board and above the neck. And that we need to learn how to keep sex from turning sexy in conversation because it's too important a topic, not to be able to discuss. What do you think?

01:22

Ashley: Oh, I agree 100%. I would like to think that, you know, hypersexuality and intelligence kind of go hand in hand.

Eric: Well, I think it's a suspicion, but you can't bring that up because the other major force is that the workplace should be highly desexualized. And because I think that there is such incredible denial and you know, there, there isn't a recognition of female sexuality in the workplace. There's only a sense, you know, in general, of male transgression. I think it's very unclear what the way forward is to figure out what is keeping women out of the sciences. My personal opinion is that it has to do with kinwork, that women are taking up most of the work in caring for children, caring for elder relatives, and that the burdens of kinwork are often prohibitive when it comes to a really intense career. But I think we have a very difficult road ahead because I think half the brains of, you know, half the neurons in the world ride on female shoulders, and that that should be a huge source of opportunity, but somehow there's a puzzle of sexuality. Let me ask you a different question, cause you're nodding. Are you familiar with Christina Hoff Sommers? If you're following a Sam Harris who I think is at the American Enterprise Institute, she sort of a second-wave feminist, not a third-wave feminist. She calls herself the factual feminist. She's called a lot of attention to the idea that the wage gap, where women maybe are thought to get 75 cents for every dollar that a man gets paid for equal work. You have a very unusual situation, which is that in your workplace, there is a huge wage gap.

01:24

Ashley: Oh yeah.

Eric: Talk to me about that.

Ashley: There's not only a huge wage gap. I think that there's also like a huge, maybe attention gap.