On January 16, Stockroom University will be proud to welcome jessica drake, one of the biggest names in adult entertainment today. With over 300 performances and three AVN Awards for best actress to her credit, she’s one of the most prolific and acclaimed talents in the industry. But when making appearances to promote her videos at adult boutiques and events, she found that many of her fans craved not just entertainment, but answers to the questions about sexuality that schools and parents regularly ignore. People of all genders grow into adults trying to parse out those answers for themselves, and often the first place they turn to do that is porn, which drake feels is an inappropriate source of education.
So she decided to begin filling that gap with jessica drake’s Guide to Wicked Sex, a series of instructional videos that now covers fourteen volumes on topics ranging from fellatio to plus-size sex. She talked to us about why she was inspired to start working on sexual education and why porn might a great source of fantasy, it’s not a good source of education.
Can you quickly describe the workshop that you’ll be giving at Stockroom?
All of the workshops that I’ve done in conjunction with my line of instructionals are all different. I’ve given workshops on bondage and specific sex acts, but I thought that for a place like the Stockroom, I’d give a more general workshop and talk about some of the more relevant popular topics that I’m being asked about right now. I’ve been fielding a lot of questions about the role of porn in sex education and how I feel about that, because someone who’s still a performer, I kind of have a foot in both those areas. Not only am I a porn performer, but I’m also a sex educator. So in the workshop, I’m going to talk about how those two things are very different yet how they also intersect and kind of help the audience explore what they can take from porn and what they should never take away from porn.
Well, let’s cover a little bit of that really briefly. What do you think the role of porn should be and should not be in education?
Without giving away too much of what we’ll be talking about, I would say that my concern is that a lot of the time peoples’ first exposure to sex happens to be watching porn, and I think that when that’s the only impression you have of sex, it’s not very realistic. I don’t particularly like to differentiate between porn sex vs. “Real” sex. I don’t like using that term because the sex that I’m having on camera is very real.
But at the same time, I think that we have to help people navigate — especially younger people — we have to help them navigate what it is they’re seeing. And I think that some people have inadvertently assigned the role of sex education to porn in general. I think that’s a very incorrect designation. I don’t think it’s porn’s responsibility to educate people, because porn is for fantasy.
You’ve had an impressive career doing adult movies. What made you decide to start doing sex education videos?
It was sort of a process. About five years ago, I was doing appearances for Wicked Pictures. I was just doing a basic appearance at an adult store, selling DVDs and Fleshlights and signing autographs and taking pictures, and I really noticed that there had been a shift in the demographic of people that were coming to these appearances. Suddenly, women were more comfortable in the boutique environment like the newer stores have to offer, and couples were coming, and everybody was a lot more free about seeking information and openly talking about stuff, and picking out toys, and watching porn, and they started to ask me sex advice.
Two questions in particular were very pivotal for me. I ran into a woman who wasn’t having orgasms, and I helped her out; I’ll expand on that story during my workshop. And I also ran into a couple who thought that there was something wrong with one or both of them because they couldn’t have anal sex the way they saw in movies. When I talked to people like this — that were strictly coming to see me because they wanted to meet the porn star — then I was really able to exchange some opinions with them and give them some information, and I felt like I was really helping them. It became very obvious to me very quickly — because I love helping people and also because I have this built-in fan base — I have such a broad audience of people just from being “Wicked Pictures contract star jessica drake.” I don’t want to say “transitioned” because I still have a foot in both worlds — but it just lends itself to everything else that I started doing. So I started doing workshops and classes first, and then about a year, six months maybe, after that I began to create my line of instructional movies called jessica drake’s Guide to Wicked Sex. To date there are fourteen of them, and I’ve covered a pretty wide variety of topics. As my education has grown over these past few years, as I’ve grown, so has the line of instructionals.
In the beginning, I just started out with some really basic topics: I did fellatio, I did positions, I did anal sex, because that’s what people were talking to me the most about. But then the more experience I got, the more familiar I became with my audience and the information they were looking for, the more I continued to expand the line, and the more I will continue to expand the line as well.
Where are you looking to expand the line? What topics will you be taking on from here?
I’ve released BDSM for Beginners, and I of course was latching on to the Fifty Shades wave. But in doing that, I realized that there were a lot of people out there that wanted to take that further. So I would like to take that a lot further. I would like to get more into separate niches within the BDSM genre. I’m looking for people to collaborate with as well, as with Plus Size Sex, which I co-created with Kelly Shibari. I always knew that I wanted to create an instructional product that catered to people of size, but I didn’t have the context to do that, and I didn’t have the first-hand knowledge to do that, so I partnered with Kelly Shibari. We really came up with a great product that’s been really well-received. Also, Anal Play for Men. I thought that that was a really important topic to have within the line, because inevitably whenever I do anal seminars, I am always asked either — when I’m talking to hetero couples — they’re always very shyly asking me about prostate play. So I knew that had to be a part of the line as well. And the next few I have in the works. The first one is sensual massage and then after that, I’m going to do some advanced versions of some of the other ones.
jessica drake and Kelly Shibari in “Guide to Wicked Sex: Plus Size”
[Wicked Guide to Sex: Plus Size] went over very well. It went over really, really well. I think that I got to a point where I wanted to provide the education that was maybe more necessary, the things that they were needing to talk about, but that nobody was really talking about. I ended up taking a good hard look at my audience and their concerns and their likes and their dislikes and their insecurities, and just everything about it. It became a very obvious topic to talk about.
Also, I’ve been approached by many people for a volume on sex as we get older. So, I’m brainstorming that one. I expect that it’s going to be a collaboration with someone that I think very, very highly of. I don’t want to name her just yet before it’s official.
Then I’ve also been approached by some people about doing one for sex with disabilities, whether that’s different positions, different things to take into consideration, so during the next year, that’s going to be something that I’m going to be learning a lot more about myself. The great thing about this series is the personal growth that I’ve experienced since I first started doing it. Like I look at the first one that’s on blowjobs. And it’s pretty basic — I’m still happy with it, but it’s pretty basic and when I watch it, it’s like “Wow, I’ve really learned a lot since then.”
How would you describe your style of sex education?
I’m a bit candid, a bit quirky, tongue-in-cheek, I’m really down to earth and accessible — I just put myself out there. It’s my passion, so you see a lot of my heart in it when I do it.
What do you think is lacking in sex ed the most?
Everything. [Laughter] It depends on how far back you want to go. I think that we have a huge disconnect between parents and children that has been made even bigger by technology. So, I think that it doesn’t matter what information [parents] are giving their kids, chances are the kids are already ten steps ahead and are in over their heads and don’t really know how to navigate the information they’re getting from other sources. So, I think that parents need to accept the fact that porn is very accessible. It should not be accessible, but the reality is that it is accessible. Kids are getting smartphones younger and younger every day.
I think that parents need to lose the attitude of “Oh, no, not my kid,” to having more open conversations. I see it on both sides. First of all, I don’t have children, so I am not an expert in this area. But I have two close friends who do not know each other, so they live in completely different areas of the United States. They both have small children, they’re both raising them very differently. I have one friend that is super-progressive and who is raising a child that she believes is a trans child, and that’s what we think is emerging from their relationship as parent and child. Then my other friend is barely teaching her kids the birds and the bees because she just can’t stomach the fact that they are sexual beings.
jessica drake
So, I think I’ve seen a gamut of experiences that parents have had raising kids, and I know when I go into a university, and I speak to a class on human sexuality, everybody’s raising their hands when I say, “Have you seen porn?” Hardly anyone’s raising their hand when I ask if they feel like they’ve had good sex ed from their parents. It’s just astonishing. When I speak at universities, I’m talking about stuff like consent and I’m talking about stuff like date rape and sexual assault and the feeling of different gender, because at that point, they’re just so unsure about everything. It’s a great opportunity, but in my opinion, I think if we could talk to them so much earlier it would be so much better.
And I think consent education is at the forefront now, but a few years ago when I started talking to kids that were in colleges, it wasn’t. And the reason that it was so important to me was because I watched Steubenville unfold on TV like most everyone else did and it resonated within me. I started thinking about experiences that I had had when I was in junior high and high school. Fortunately, nothing to that degree was anything that I had experienced. But when you step back and you look at the situation when you’re a bit older, and you realize how horribly awry things could have gone, you realize we need more education.
What would you like to see change in sex education or in porn?
I don’t know how much I would like to see porn in and of itself change, because the industry itself is so big and so diverse. There are absolutely people who are portraying a more realistic, sex-positive sexuality experience in porn. There are people who are doing that. There is pretty much something for everyone within the industry, no matter what your tastes are. No matter what you want to see to get off, there is something for you within porn.
Within sex education, I would like to see everyone becoming much more comfortable talking about it and I think sometimes I take it for granted because I live in California and we are really progressive. But the reality is it’s not that way everywhere. So, I would like to see a lot more progress where that’s concerned.
I would love to see the day where I am able to speak to people that are under 18 — not about how to have sex with a porn star, but about how to navigate some of the things that they’re encountering and experiencing better. As it is right now, I as “jessica drake, Wicked Pictures contract star,” cannot speak to people that are under 18 because they think that I’m going to recruit them. They think I’m going to turn it into a job fair or something like that. Just by me being a porn performer, that takes all my knowledge and experience and all this wealth of information that I have, it kind of takes that out of the equation and I think that my information would be very helpful to people who are just struggling with their sexuality.
Saturday, Jan. 16
SeXXX Ed with jessica drake
2-4 PM
Stockroom Hall
2811 W. Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026
$20 online or at the door
