This year saw the biggest queer porn posse to date in Vegas for the AVN Awards!

Press release courtesy of QueerPorn.tv:

2012 AVN AWARDS: HISTORIC AND GROUNDBREAKING WEEKEND FOR QUEER PORN: QUEER AND TRANS VISIBILITY ON THE RED CARPET, NOMINATIONS, AND VERY EXPENSIVE HOTEL ROOMS.

As most of you know, this weekend was the 2012 Annual AVN Awards.  In celebration, the QueerPorn.TV cast and crew rented out an enormous two bedroom suit at Planet Hollywood in Vegas to host the largest group of Queer Porn Stars in AVN history! James Darling and Charlie Spats became the first trans men to walk the AVN Awards red carpet in 5 years, preceded only by Buck Angel in 2007. Although we got no wins, Queer Porn as a genre also got tons of recognition through nominations this year, including QueerPorn.TV’s monumental Best Alternative Website nod, making it one of the best weekends in Queer Porn History.
Since QueerPorn.TV was nominated for Best Alternative Website, we made sure to take on the red carpet in style. Babes in our red carpet crew included Sophia St James, James Darling, Maxine Holloway, Tina Horn, Charlie Spats, and Quinn Valentine. Wolf Hudson walked with cutie pie Presley Hart, while Arabelle Raphael and Akira Raine walked with the Burning Angel crew.

We also met a lot of amazing trans women working in the adult industry in Vegas, including BBW transsexual porn star Michelle Austin and porn performer and producer Tobi Hill-Meyer, who spoke alongside Nina Hartley, Sophia St James, and Dylan Ryan at the Smitten Kitten “Future of Sex Ed” Porn Panel.

While AVN as a whole may be focused on the marketability and popularity of heterosexual, cisgendered pornography – the trans men and women in the porn industry are becoming more and more popular and were to be found everywhere at the AVN Awards. It was thrilling to be surrounded by so many expressions of gender and sexuality. The mainstream porn world is the last place you’d look for it, but it’s there just under the surface. And it’s about to explode.

In line with these leaps and bounds in gender expression in the industry, we were super jazzed about James Darling and Charlie Spats being able to follow Buck Angel’s footsteps on the red carpet as the first, second and third trans men and so was Buck, who said “I’m excited to see more trans men in the industry and would encourage other guys who are interested in participating in this field to go for it! Congrats to James and Charlie.”

James told us about his honor as well and the huge leaps made in Queer Porn, “This was my first trip to Vegas and my first time attending a porn awards ceremony. Two films and two websites I’d been a part of had been nominated this year. Buck Angel’s “Sexing the Transman” for best Transsexual and Educational release, Crashpadseries.com “Volume 6: Wide Open” for Best Specialty Release as well as GoodDykePorn.com and QueerPorn.TV for Best Alternative Website. This was a great year for queer porn. While none of these incredible productions took home any awards that night, I was gifted a very special opportunity. I was able to walk the red carpet at AVN alongside friends and many industry professionals I have long respected, lusted after and admired. I would never in a million years have dreamt that this would be my life!

Vegas was a blast and such a great stride forward for the faces and names in queer porn. As Tina Horn said on QueerPorn.TV’s blog, “We stood together as a community, as a unified front of strong-willed, open-minded, sex positive people going against the grain of the industry.”  That in itself is an awesome win, and we truly had a blast.

While the trip to Vegas proved to be an excellent bonding experience and networking opportunity across our own queer porn industry, there were few opportunities to integrate our work and experiences into the massive mainstream porn culture. It seemed that the overwhelming selection of awards show categories in fact only fall under two columns:
A) Awards That Will Give Credit To AVN’s Sponsors & Top Mainstream Figures
B) Awards That No One Cares About

Unfortunately, the category for Best Alternative Website – which both QueerPorn.tv and Good Dyke Porn were nominated for – fell under Column B. It’s no secret which column you end up on, either; at the end of the AVN Awards Show, the leftover categories are announced only by a scrolling list of winners, played as people are leaving. Transsexual performer Brittany St. Jordan spoke out about her experience as a “second class” performer, which I think majority of the queer porn team could relate to:

The fiasco started earlier that day when we went to pick up our tickets. Steve Javors, from AVN, was handing out the tickets for the talent who were going to attend the awards. I was with Jesse, who was also a nominee, and we asked for our red carpet passes. Steve said to find him at the show when we got there and he would have them. We grabbed our tickets and went off to get ready for the evening’s event.

 When we arrived there was a huge line waiting for the red carpet. As the line slowly inched along, the larger studios started arriving with their folks and were being escorted to the front of the line. This is expected and was not a surprise at all. However, there was someone behind us who asked why these people were going to the front. Steve’s reply was, “They are presenters and nominees.” That was when I informed him that Jesse and I were nominees for TS Performer of the Year and he then told us to 
wait and we would get our turn.

[...] Even though we had informed them of who we were we waited for three hours before making it to the red carpet as straight girl after straight girl was escorted to the front of the line. Once we were finished on the red carpet the handlers for AVN told us go around another line of folks and to go out into the hallway where other media were present. That line which we were told to avoid was the line for people doing interviews for Showtime and the hallway was devoid of anything except people taking 
personal photos with one another.

The rest of Brittany St. Jordan’s interview is available on Luke Is Back.

That being said, the queer porn industry is not one to be held back! With enough bar-trained pushing and shoving, we made our way onto the carpet, and when the media failed us, we were our own press. (That photo of me and James Darling on the red carpet was taken by Quinn Valentine, on my phone.)

Courtney Trouble is a pro on the red carpet. This photo with Ron Jeremy was taken as she was introducing herself to him.

So here’s the big question: Is it worth it for Queer Porn to attend the AVN Awards Show? Sure, it’s exciting that our presence grows with each year, but are we only impressing ourselves with our numbers?

As an attendee of this year’s Vegas trip and a Canadian pornographer, I can definitely say that the trip was worth it for me. I may not have sold Dave Navarro on Good Dyke Porn, but I got to solidify relationships with the community I love!