I'm fast approaching the anniversary of my fifth year working in the adult industry. I've learned a lot these past couple of years, since I started making a living off of other people's sex lives. I wasn't sure how I felt about pornography or the sex business in general back then, so I read books. I read every feminist book about the adult industry I could get my hands on. I read Carol Queen, Susie Bright, Nadine Strossen, and Cherie Matrix. I began to use all of those philosophy classes I had taken in college and did some serious critical thinking about sex, porn and degradation.

I had my excuses lined up. I was armed and ready in case anyone dared to criticize what I was doing. Or in case I merely had to explain why I was working in this field to anyone who cared enough to ask me. I wrote articles, essays, rants about it. I had it all down.

It wasn't until my third job in the adult industry that I stopped reciting so much and started really listening to what I was saying. I was working at a well-known sex toy store, editing their magazine, it was my third editing job and I was getting published more and more. I was becoming high profile in the world of sex.

This place was all about sex education. They could sell dildos and vibrators and make porn and make a profit because they were educating people. They were helping people. They were the "good guys and girls."

One day, while writing some marketing copy, I stopped, feeling suddenly stupid and ashamed that I had to write a lot of this shit at all. I was working at a place that sold big purple dildos and vibrators that looked like dragons, beavers and bunnies. And I was trying to turn that into something serious. I was trying to make an excuse for why we were doing this and why it was okay. When, in reality, selling purple dildos shouldn't need an excuse. I was doing it because it was fun. Because I never wanted a so-called "normal" job, because I like having sex and I like having sex with toys.

Suddenly I began to wonder if maybe we didn't need all of this sex-positive, feminist theory any more. If maybe it was getting to be that time that we said, "you know what, I'm making porn because it's fun, I don't have to dress up, I make my own hours, I have a lot of control over my life, I make good money, and I like to fuck."

Go to any bookstore or better yet, go to Amazon.com. Type in "feminist pornography" and you'll get a whole list of books. Type in "masculine pornography" and you get nothing.

Men don't have countless books explaining why they work in porn or why they look at it or why it exists or why they enjoy it. While women have created an entire industry, not to mention college curriculum, around the fact that maybe, we just might, watch a dirty movie if we feel like it.

Is this a good thing?

I do think that it was necessary. I do believe that it was important. Women did need the reasons, the explanations, the excuses to be able to enjoy sex in each and every way that they wanted to. However, I don't really think that we need any more books on the topic. No more excuses.

I think it's getting to the point that all of these excuses might start hurting us. That it's high time for us to say, I watch porn. I make porn. I fuck. Because I want to. Because it feels good. Or to say whatever we want to say about it.

But to be able to stand up and claim what we are doing simply because we are following our bodies, our guts, our hearts and our minds. That maybe we're not making a fuck flick to make the world a better place, but that we're doing it because we want to make enough money to live comfortably without killing ourselves to do it. Because we feel more exploited when we spend forty hours a week working our asses off to make some one else money and success instead of making a name and life for ourselves. Because we like to have sex and it feels good and it's fun.

Sex positive and sex education are great things. Necessary, wonderful, culture-changing, life-saving things. But so is doing something just because you can. Without a library of books and women with doctorates telling you that it's okay.