Lux Alptraum profiles James Darling, who “isn’t like most up-and-coming porn performers”:
As it happens, he’s a trans man (meaning he’s a man who was born in a female body), and that greatly limits the amount of work he can get. Trans women looking to perform sex work have numerous options, but for trans men, it’s a different story. Unlike “t-girls” and “shemales,” who’ve long been pornographic staples, trans men didn’t enter the porn world’s awareness until the early 2000s, when pioneering porn performer Buck Angel debuted as “the man with a pussy.” To this date, Buck is the only trans man to ever have been recognized by any of the major porn awards shows.
More than six years after Buck took home the award for Transsexual Performer of the Year, the number of porn studios willing to work with trans men is still in the single digits. Major porn studios don’t know how to market transmale content, which appeals to an audience not targeted by more traditional genres of porn. The filmmakers who pick up the slack tend to be members of the queer community who are looking to create the content they’re personally interested in seeing. Most, if not all, of those studios are indie ventures with small budgets and infrequent shoots, making it hard for Darling to pick up regular work. If he shoots once a year for the handful of companies that are trans man-friendly, that’s about four or five scenes—enough to establish a porn presence, but not nearly enough to make a living.In the meantime, Darling’s day job? Pizza delivery man.
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