Original subtitles

Good evening, everyone.

It's such a pleasure to see so many of you here tonight.

And we're very, very honoured and pleased to welcome Mir Khalifa.

Oh shit, you can hear me on the mic.

Hello,

how are you? Wow, it is an honor to be here.

Is the Oxford comma in the room with us?

Huge fan.

Wow, this is very nerve-wracking, extremely intimidating. This is a room

full of...

young, intelligent people. And I'm here to talk about boundaries to people who

have amazing heads on their shoulders. So it's a little intimidating.

I feel like you will never be in a position to make bad choices simply

because you are here. You've done incredible things in your life to start

out with.

Thank you so much for coming here to hear me speak. I'm shocked there's more

than my friends here right now in the audience.

This is very cool.

Thank you for inviting me. You're very, very welcome.

Yeah, I think that you guys know who I am because at one point in my life, I

severely lacked boundaries.

But I would like to reintroduce myself. My name is Sarah.

You know me as Mia Khalifa.

And yeah, I'm very excited about this.

Absolutely.

So Sarah, so you moved to America around the time of 9-11.

Did that have an impact on settling in and your experience at school, and if

so, how?

It had a huge impact.

I grew up in Washington, D.C., and it was really close to the Pentagon. There

was a lot of children in my school and in my class whose parents worked there.

So school had been going on for maybe two weeks at the time, and it was my

first school year in America, so I had a very heavy accent. I was in a program

called ESOL, which was basically where you only did one or two classes

the normal students and then the rest was just learning English.

Yeah, it was very difficult to navigate social life after that.

Everyone was very on edge and on high alert and there was just

hysteria everywhere, especially towards Arabs and Middle Eastern people.

From an early background, did you feel that your identity and your visual

appearance had an impact on how people treated you?

Yeah, yeah, which was a little confusing, especially since I was so

young and I couldn't pinpoint why I was being treated differently.

I was also just as scared as everybody else.

I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know what a terror attack was. I

didn't know what was happening.

And feeling ostracized like that,

didn't help with those feelings.

Yeah, I think it made me develop a lot of internalized racism because I just,

I couldn't get it. I didn't know why.

Yeah. And how did you cope with feeling so alone and sort of confused at that

early age?

Did you think you knew how to cope or did you feel very out of your depth and

was it only later that were you able to sort of deal with those sort of

emotions?

I think that I turned into a people pleaser when anyone showed me a little

bit of attention because I didn't have very many friends growing up. It wasn't

until I was about 24, 25 when I started my journey in therapy that I actually

started to delve deeper into and pinpoint those things and call it

internalized racism. I had anxiety. I felt ostracized. I was able to label all

of these feelings that...

just cultivated into confusion.

Yeah, absolutely. And even just the term internalized racism is probably not one

that really would have been kind of widely available when you were growing

up. And that's one of the lucky things about the world we live in now is the

sort of openness and availability of that sort of thing, particularly

therapy. Oh, it's incredible.

I'm really happy with how mainstream and how socially accepted or the way it's

headed. going to therapy is. No, absolutely. Even just meeting you so

far, it's been really lovely and seeing how down to earth you are.

For everyone who's not aware, we went up to my office and Sarah found my crown,

which I wear when I'm feeling upset.

So even that's beginning my journey. I was nervous, so I put it on. I thought

it would help me.

No, no, it was great.

And so in the few months that you did work in the porn industry, Did you feel

at times that your identity was being coerced in order to fulfill a particular

fetish? Absolutely. As soon as I let slip somehow that I spoke Arabic, it was

like a light switch went off and I did not know how

to say no at the time, to say the least.

But when it was presented in front of me what the scene would be involving the

hijab, the first thing I said was, you're going to get me killed. This is

insane. This is so bad.

But I got pushback from a room full of middle-aged white men in suits and

didn't say anything more.

And, you know, having also after leaving mainstream porn done some webcam work

and now being involved in OnlyFans with regards to just non-nude images, but

having exposure to lots of girls who are using that platform, do you think that

the sort of new age of pornography with regards to OnlyFans and webcamming and

that sort of thing is one whereby it isn't, you know, it's...

these things aren't just dictated by straight white men in suits, and that

women who choose to pursue sex work as a career have more autonomy, or do you

think that the same sort of problems masquerade in a slightly subtler form?

It's a slightly biased question, or not biased, but one of the first speeches I

did at the union was on the motion, This House.

welcomes the new era of porn.

And Megan Bond Hanson came, who was an OnlyFans star in it. So it's something

I'm very interested in. I was wondering what your thoughts on that question

were. My thoughts on it are it's definitely the lesser of the evils.

Everything in the industry has its downsides. And I don't condone the

rhetoric of women entering the sex work industry. I don't think that should be

encouraged or promoted or glamorized.

anything that makes it seem anything other than what it is, which is signing

your life away. Your digital footprint is so important.

I think that sites like OnlyFans are incredible outlets for women who have

already entered the sex work industry and want to do it in a safer way and in

a more ethical way.

But I would never recommend a woman to enter the industry by going to one site

over another because I would never recommend for her to do it.

Full stop. Absolutely. And just on that, on the harms that still exist, if you

had the power to change any single law about anything to do with the production

of pornography or sex work, what would it be? What do you think would have the

biggest impact?

I think it would be two things. To change the age of consent

for signing a porn contract from 18 to 21.

And number two would be to take out...

the words in perpetuity from anything involving a naked woman or a naked man

or an individual's body there is no need on earth for a corporation to

have that much control in perpetuity over someone's image like that

especially when 95 of the people who are entering this industry that they're

holding this over are 18 year olds whose frontal cortex is not fully formed who

are making rash decisions who don't know what they're doing who will

Nine times out of ten, grow up to regret it.

Is there a moment when you first felt that regret for yourself and decided

that you wanted to walk away despite all of the pressure and all of the factors

that prevent people from doing that?

I think as soon as it happened, as soon as it really became public, it was very

much a wake-up call. The entire time I was doing it, I felt like I was walking

through.

a daydream. I was very lost. I was making decisions that weren't rooted in

who I am as a person because I didn't know who I was as a person yet.

So when I decided to leave is really when I decided what I had done and the

gravity of it. And it was very daunting and scary because in that moment I also

understood this can never be undone.

And when you did make that decision, did you have...

any support network?

Did you have a plan or did you just sort of make a blind leap of faith that

anything can be better than this?

Oh, anything can be better. I went into, I worked at an office for a little bit.

I worked as a paralegal and then I worked as a bookkeeper for a

construction firm.

Both jobs, I felt like I was a burden in the office just because anyone who would

come in would recognize me and it would be a distraction and there would be

whispers and

All that stuff. And in that time period, I went off Instagram.

I reopened my Instagram and restarted a new one in 2016. So I was really trying

to just be Sarah and live a normal life. And it was impossible.

And it wasn't just impossible.

It was affecting the people around me and the people who took a chance on me

and hiring me and stuff. So yeah, I took a leap of faith and said, anything is

better than this.

and and what would you i think so many young people myself included sort of

look up to you and sort of how open you've been about, you know, the mental

issues you dealt with during this part of your life, what advice would you give

to a young person who feels that they're in a negative place, whether that's a

relationship, whether that's a, you know, role, whether that's, you know,

their connection to their family or their job, what advice would you give

them in order to sort of have the courage to, you know, to step away from

that, even if that's all they know and that's all that is there to support

them?

It's really scary, but when you feel that way, when you feel those daunting

emotions, you know that you've kind of let yourself down and you've done

something that's outside of your comfort zone.

And that's a learning lesson for where you need to draw a hard boundary in your

life. And sometimes it feels good to feel that low because

once you know you've gotten there, you know...

Number one, you know the decisions you made to get there. Number two, you know

that there is something you can do to change it.

Yeah. And so you've mentioned how you, you know, worked as a paralegal and as a

bookkeeper and I guess sort of traditional jobs in a non-public facing

way.

After that, I think you went on to a role in Out of Bounds and subsequently,

obviously, you're a huge social media influencer with over 37 million

followers on TikTok.

Did you feel that, you know, you described feeling that everyone knew

things about you and felt feeling very uncomfortable. Did you feel that it was

better to just lean into the sort of notoriety and fame that you'd

unexpectedly and sort of perhaps unwillingly gained?

No, I was actually, even, even when I started an Instagram again and thought

I'm going to try and be an influencer, I still had so much shame harbored inside

of me that anytime I would even hear the name Mia Khalifa, it would cause a

visceral reaction in my stomach.

Mia was my dog's name. So I named myself after her and it got to the point where

I couldn't even say her name. And I'm so happy that I was driven into therapy and

started to work on that because it wasn't until

maybe 2019, 2020, that I actually started to embrace Mia Khalifa because I

realized I had so much more control than I thought I did.

It wasn't a death sentence.

There was still so much that I could do with my life and with my image. And it

has taken so long, but you invited me to speak here. Yeah, absolutely.

And it's, you know, it's saying, you know, obviously I've met you and know

you as Sarah. And it is something that I thought it's very striking that you've

chosen to at least publicly use that name on social media.

Do you think that that's a sort of a self-affirmation and a kind of

reconciliation of yourself, who you are, with also the persona that people

perceive you to be?

Is that an act of self-affirmation that you see it as?

Absolutely. I think it's also an act of exercising autonomy.

You can't take it away from me.

I created it just because I dusted it up a little bit with some dirt. It doesn't

mean I can't clean it off. It doesn't mean I can't change it. It doesn't

mean... It's still something that's mine.

I have considered going by Sarah so many times. So many times. But at the end of

the day, why?

Why? Because some people are mad that I don't...

that i'm not proud of my past but it's the reason that that i have a platform

well it's not the reason i'm still relevant yeah i've worked my ass off for

that so i'm gonna keep the name yeah absolutely and was there ever a moment

that you didn't feel that way and did want to sort of dissociate even more

recently or or has it sort of been a a steady upward trajectory of gaining self

-confidence and a sense of ownership and autonomy.

Yeah, I think it's happened in tandem. I think that the more that I've grown into

my confidence, the more I've been comfortable with owning all of it, with

owning my past and talking about it and being okay with the contradictory aspect

of sitting here today and going by Mia Khalifa while also saying,

that's not something I'm proud of, that's not something I want to talk

about, that's not something I want perpetuated.

Both things can be true at the same time. Absolutely.

And I think it's very powerful to accept and reconcile those multiple truths.

I think everyone gets in trouble when identity is too limited to one thing and

everything's subjective really.

I'm certainly saying I've experienced even just on the very small scale of

Oxford.

things get presented in a certain way. Yeah, like you can be president and be

fun.

Absolutely. I think only one of those is true, I'm afraid. He has a tutu in his

office.

Well, that's very kind of you to say.

I've got to throw you under the bus to win them over.

Yeah, it's okay. You can rinse me.

It happens enough. Ask them. It's okay.

I think often we talk about social media in a kind of, particularly in this age,

in a sort of detrimental way.

I think you sort of spoken before about meeting one of your best friends over

Twitter. And I was wondering if you could tell us a bit about that and how

social media went from something which I presume at one point in your life was a

really awful thing to something which became so empowering in the sense that

it facilitated a brilliant friendship.

Yeah. I still feel that way about social media. I met...

one of my closest friends and my business partner over social media. I

met my best friend over Twitter.

I very much grew up in that millennial era where social media was coming out

and it very much shaped our lives. So I still look at social media like a social

network. The apps that I use the most are the ones that my friends are on. I

enjoy that banter. I enjoy keeping up with them. So my relationship with

social media was never hindered because of I was still muting subject and muting

accounts and scrolling through Twitter like nothing existed.

Being delusional is the best form of therapy.

Well, I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg will be on the phone with the social network

thing offering you a contract after that.

No, we don't fuck with Facebook.

Yeah, no, that's good.

And going beyond, I guess, just the personal network of friends you already

had, you've spoken about you're hugely successful on TikTok and people find you

incredibly relatable.

And you've spoken before, I think previously, about how that's a majority

female audience is really important for you. And a speaker who came a few months

ago, Malala, I think, commented on one of your posts.

And how much...

How much joy does that give you when you see the impact you're able to have on an

everyday level on people's lives and the sort of community, tens of millions of

people which are around you in a positive way? It was insane. It was

surreal when she actually followed me that day too. And I was like, fucking

Malala knows I exist.

What the fuck?

Like, what?

And it's so embarrassing because my TikTok bio has always been not Malala or

Mindy Kaling.

So, yeah.

Not Malala, but... Yeah, well, she's very lovely.

She's so incredible. She's very lovely? That's the least you can say about

Malala.

She's obviously an inspirational world leader.

But no, I met her once. I met her very briefly when she came, but I doubt she

knows that I exist.

I'm sure she does. She seems like an incredible person. She seems like one of

those people who, you'll probably get a Christmas card from her.

I hope so. If Malala, if you're watching this, that'd be great.

Yeah, and she's got a really lovely husband as well.

Oh my God, her wedding photos. I'm so happy for her.

No, I had a great chat with him about the Pakistani cricket team.

Cricket's very big there.

No, it's very big.

And so how did social media and TikTok for you also help you to overcome your

boundaries that you've had in life? You said you wanted to talk a bit about

boundaries, personal... and to the professional and has TikTok been, you

know, therapy as well as one you've mentioned is one of the huge things. Has

TikTok been kind of another which has really helped you in that sense?

Absolutely, especially after I kind of accidentally stumbled upon the audience

that I always thought was out of my reach.

I got vulnerable once and it hit an audience that I did not even know

existed, which was women who related to me and that...

opened up so many mental doors for me about my life and my future and what my

options were.

Finding that on TikTok completely changed the trajectory of everything,

including my goals and what I thought was possible. It was really incredible.

It also gave me the confidence to seeing the other women in that kind of

demographic because you know how the algorithm works once you find something.

The rest of it finds you.

So seeing all of the videos on my For You page of other women who are in

similar situations as me, similar mindsets as me, contemplating similar

things as me, it was so validating to see them going through it and see them

just learn from them, learn from them, see what their opinions were, see

how they weren't afraid.

to number one, talk about it online, and number two, be open, be open to kind

of talking about it in a community.

Like the comments section is my favorite. It's the best, especially when

it hits the right audience.

It's truly just like support and encouragement and advice being thrown

back and forth and nothing but just, just like all of us holding hands around

a tree.

And why do you think it is that there are so many people who feel so connected

to you? Do you think it's a sort of reflection of a lot of the misogyny that

still exists today, that so many women feel that they themselves have been put

in a similar circumstance of being, you know, labelled as certain things or

stereotyped or fetishised?

And so I guess to follow up on that, but very rudely before you even answer that

question, how do you envisage we move beyond that?

Is this the two questions at a time where I can skip one? Yeah, you can skip

one of them if it's bad.

No, sorry, say it again.

So firstly, do you think that because so many women find all of your media

outputs so relatable that that's a statement about the huge misogyny that

exists? Oh, absolutely. I think that seeing the overwhelming reaction of how

many people can relate to me was also very jarring for me because I hope no

one can ever relate to me.

That makes me so sad. That makes me so scared for the human race and for

mankind in general.

That's exactly what it is. I think that it's not a very niche story when you

look at the big picture. The big picture is being insecure, feeling ashamed,

feeling inadequate and struggling with personal boundaries.

And how do you think as a society we can overcome

Obviously, those are all individual battles people go with, but they result

from societal problems which inflict those mental states on us. So how would

you suggest, as a society, what kind of attitudes would you like to see promoted

more for us growing up?

More acceptance, more empathy, more patience, more understanding, more

talking about it. Talking about it in general just makes it

less of something that happens behind closed doors, like locker room talk

and feelings of inadequacy. Women should talk to each other.

Women should support each other.

Men should ask us questions. You should be curious about how...

you can make us feel comfortable and what makes us uncomfortable and having

those conversations and opening those doors is, is the most important thing.

Absolutely. And, you know, on that, we'll move very shortly onto the Q and

a, and we hope to have, you know, encourage everyone to engage, engage in

the conversation, but a few final questions.

I was, I think you.

donated a huge amount of money to Lebanon.

And I just wondered, and I think initially there was a negative reaction

to that.

And I just wanted you to tell us a bit about that and how your relationship

with your home country has changed over your life and how you feel about Lebanon

now.

I mean, that's home. I feel very disconnected from it, but at the same

time, I feel a strong urge to be as connected as I possibly can at all times

to it.

The initial reaction was, we don't want your dirty money, which the Red Cross

didn't agree with. Thank God. They were like, actually, we'll take your money.

We don't care where it came from.

So that was a little, I actually did not expect that when it happened. And

usually I'm pretty good at looking 10 steps ahead and understanding what's

about to come my way.

Nothing ever really shocks me anymore. But that jolted me a little bit.

Didn't shock me, but I was a little surprised.

But the reaction following that was overwhelmingly supportive.

And a lot of people in Lebanon came to my defense and very much shut it down,

which gave me a lot of hope.

In the last few years, I feel like my relationship with the people in Lebanon

has gotten stronger.

I've been actually talking to people instead of just...

seeing the things that I see online. I've been going on podcasts that are

based in Beirut and speaking to journalists over there and just speaking

to people who I respect and admire and whose thoughts I think are actually

going to be impactful over there and make change.

And they are not of the mindset of people who are

saying that they don't need my money.

Yeah, absolutely.

And finally,

What's next for you? What are you excited about in the coming months,

years? And where do you see the rest of your life going?

Well, I'm launching a jewelry line, so I'm really excited about that.

It's really, really scary to be a first-time business owner. I've been an

LLC for a while, which in America is like when you yourself are a

corporation, but actually launching a tangible business is really scary.

What I see myself doing for the rest of my life is that.

And I'm so excited to have created something that I can put my hands on and

give to my future children one day. And what bits of that, what's sort of the

ethos behind that brand?

And how does it speak to you as a person?

Well, it's called Shaytan, which means devil in Arabic. And it's very much just

a big middle finger to...

most men in the Middle East.

On that note, I think we should all give you a round of applause.

And we'll now look to questions from the audience. Because we've got such an

amazingly packed house tonight, we're going to do these conference style.

So we're going to get the microphone over to one person and then to another,

and then Mia will answer both at once, and then we'll go back just to speed

things up. At what?

Well, one at a time.

We'll see how it goes. That's the plan.

Do you want to just do them one at a time?

No, no. Okay, let's go.

We're testing this.

But the member in the red on the front row.

Well, hi. Firstly, I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming here and

speaking today.

I think you're genuinely the epitome of modern-day progressive feminism.

You are really an inspiration. The fact you've been able to turn away from the

exploitation of the industry and expose it for what it is and just kind of come

out of your shell and inspire others.

who have just been struggling in the same line of work.

But I just wanted to ask, how do you think that the fetishization in the porn

industry can be dealt with? Because that is one of the main issues that face sex

workers today. And I know you yourself experienced it by being forced to wear a

hijab during your line of work. So how do you think that that can be dealt with

and just handled today?

First of all, thank you. I love your dress. You look so beautiful. Thank you.

But that is up to us.

It's about consumption. It's about choosing.

There's nothing wrong with porn.

There's a choice you make when you go to consume it. Do you want to consume it

ethically or do you want to support corporations that fetishize cultures

and women and all of these things? And it's not just fetishization. It's

actually, it's so much deeper than that because the verbiage that they use when

they're even writing the descriptions of these things is,

is so racist and perpetuates violence against these

groups. And it very much starts with us, how we consume it, what we decide to

promote, what we decide to give our money to, what we decide to give clicks

to. Because even if you're not paying for it, there are ads that run on the

sides of these websites. So they are getting paid for it. So it's just

about...

Consciously shopping.

The member right at the back, just on the... No, by the door.

Thank you.

First of all, I want to say, welcome to Oxford.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Thank you so much. Thank you for all the videos about Palestine.

As someone who is... I'm a Palestinian.

Secondly, I want to ask, you spoke about going to the US, you know, when you were

young and the perception of your, like, nationality as an Arab.

And obviously it did, like, I'm sure it made it really difficult for you.

So I want to ask about how, like, your kind of connection with that identity

changed over time.

But also a lot of young people right now, for example, I came to the UK when

I was, like, 16 on my own.

And same thing with like the rest of my family, with my young sister, sorry.

So yeah, so how do you kind of, what do you advise the young people who are like

coming to a new kind of country with new culture and kind of trying to adjust

without kind of feeling insecure about missing that kind of cultural knowledge

and kind of their identity as an Arab, really.

Thanks. No, thank you. I hope that everyone who comes to this country from

the Middle East never goes through that period where they suppress their

identity and their culture and that internalized racism that they feel from

being different and from wanting to assimilate too much. There's nothing

wrong with wanting to fit in, but one of my biggest regrets is not

embracing

who I am and where I come from and what I am until my mid to late 20s.

I'm very regretful of that because I feel like I wasted so much time in my

younger years hating who I was because I wasn't the same and the older you get,

the more you realize that's you, that's your lineage, it's your blood.

It's so nice to feel connected to that and to and to maintain that and to

nurture it and be able to pass it down to your future children.

To the member just here, in the third row.

Thank you so much for being here. And by the way, your outfit is so cool. Can I

just say that? You look amazing.

You spoke earlier about therapy and starting it and how you helped. And even

though therapy is a lot more mainstream nowadays, there's still a lot of

societal taboo, cultural taboo that comes with that. So what advice would

you give to someone who wants to start out in therapy and maybe is scared

because their family or their friends or the community doesn't approve of that?

And what sort of advice do you have for them? Thank you. Don't fucking tell

them.

What? Don't tell them. Go to therapy.

If you feel like someone around you or your family member is going to judge you

for going to therapy, they need therapy.

Yeah,

that's

my advice. No, anyone who will judge you for going to therapy has things that...

they do not want to face about themselves and probably don't want you

to find out about them.

Thank you. Thank you.

To the member on the front row, just that.

Now there is more and more content on OnlyFans is generated by AI, artificial

intelligence, and also sex dolls are getting better.

Do you think it can...

come to a point where real sex workers will become marginalized because of

technology?

God, I fucking hope not. There's nothing scarier than AI and where it's headed.

I'm really, really scared that it's going to be similar to cryptocurrency,

where the technology is going to advance faster than the legislation surrounding

it. And once things like that happen, it's very hard to put it back in the

box. So my answer is no.

And I don't think that real people are going to be marginalized from AI, but I

do think that where AI is headed can be very dangerous.

But no, I don't think there's ever not going to be a demand for like a real

human person.

Thank you.

The member just back there in the orange shirt. Yes.

Thank you for coming here.

It's a pleasure to meet you.

You said you felt like you couldn't say no about the hijab in the industry.

I just wanted for you to expand on that and kind of touch on the basis of how do

you feel about your impact coming from Lebanon, which is a multi-religious

society with many Muslim women especially, and what have you done to

rectify these mistakes which have been done originally?

What have I done to rectify the act?

Yeah, so what have you done to rectify what has happened?

And how do you feel about the impact on Lebanon, which is where you're from, and

the multiracial society in it, which is made of Muslim women, like 40%, I think

it is.

I do feel guilty that women who look like me...

are instantly sexualized just because they have dark hair and glasses and are

brown. So I do harbor a lot of guilt around that because

it really

breaks my heart.

But I don't think that I've done much to rectify it because I don't feel like

there's much to apologize for. I do feel bad for the inherent effect that it has.

But I do feel bad for the women that it has inherently affected from that

ripple. And the first part of the question was, you said you couldn't say

no to the hijab thing because you were 21, young.

I just wanted for you to kind of expand a little bit on that point.

Well, it wasn't so much that it was forced on me. It's more so that there's

different levels to coercion.

There's coercion, there's force, and then there's also pressure.

And when you're young, you don't have that confidence to stand in your ground

and say something, even though you feel it. There's also a lot of intimidation

that comes along with being a woman in a room of just men and not knowing what a

reaction would be. Like, I was in a situation not very long ago, and I'm a

30-year-old woman.

Did not want my friend to leave me alone in a room with somebody because I knew I

was going to be asked something and I knew my answer would be no. And as a

woman, you never know how a man is going to react when he is faced with

rejection. And it's a very scary feeling.

So I think that's what I mean when I say I didn't want to do it. Because I didn't

want to do it. I knew what the general reaction would be, but I also did not...

feel in my power enough to number one walk away or number two say no at the

very least so perhaps the fame that might like at the time what you saw as

might have been a fame from kind of this industry do you would you say that kind

of clouded your judgment a little bit or no because it was before that yeah it

was long before that and as soon as that switch happened where it started to gain

traction and it was in the media is instantly when I left. Reality really

hit right away.

Okay, thank you. And on that, do you think it's a problem that, you know, an

18-year-old girl can sign something in a room full of men where there is no

support, there is no explanation?

You talked about impetuity.

I wouldn't have known what that meant when I was 18. Oh, I absolutely didn't

know what that meant.

Yeah, I think it's extremely predatory.

the verbiage in the contract, the contracts, and the way they're placed in

front of the young women.

It's unethical at minimum and predatory, just baseline.

Yeah, we can take questions from the gallery.

So the member just there in that window. Yes, absolutely. Just speak quite loudly

as we have no microphone.

I really hope so. I know that there's a good amount of women who are starting

their own production companies that are female-centered, female producers,

females on set, sensitivity training on anyone who's on set. So it is happening.

There are things and people and corporations that you can support, and

it's growing more and more each day.

paying for it is probably the best way to do it because all of the tube sites

and all of the free sites, they're owned by a conglomerate that is just

feeding into the sex trafficking industry.

Thank you.

Yes, the member just there.

Oh, sorry, there's a microphone coming.

Thank you.

First, I'd like to say I don't think anyone here is under the illusion that

you retain any kind of culpability for the marginalisation of women and, you

know, women of colour. Firstly, I'd just like to say that.

But obviously the internet and the internet in general exacerbates that

marginalisation and exploitation.

And you've already spoken to how that extends to people of color. But I'd like

to know what you think in relation to queer people and how the internet

potentially exploits queer people also.

I mean, social, Twitter especially.

Twitter is probably the pits of it.

It's, I think meme culture has a lot to do with that.

formatting something as a joke just perpetuates the fact that it's okay to

talk about those things and to speak like that and to make comments like that

and I think that allowing these things to happen on social media and

not cracking down on it but instead cracking down on a nipple or a curse

word and not actual abuse and exploitation and

things that are dangerous and just being spread like nothing,

that's on the social networks, but it's also on us and how we consume it and

what we allow.

Thank you.

Yes, just...

Hi, I think you're really cool.

So I really resonated with the idea of like going into like therapy and the

idea of I guess internalised racism because obviously like I kind of grew up

with that like being like from the UK and stuff and the idea of like sort of

adopting a new name and embracing it because like I go by different names to

what I was born with just because of like my identity and stuff like that.

So I really resonated with that. It's a real feeling.

So thank you for being able to platform that in a way that many people won't

really empathise with because they never go through it.

But my question is, how do you manage to stand your ground

in a situation where you...

like most like don't necessarily feel like the most confident stuff like that

because when people ask me that question I come across as like really confident

really extroverted like everyone thinks that I am but like I'm always like

faking it until I make it and I kind of want to grow out of that because like I

don't want to just keep thinking that like I've got to fight for my life every

day like it would just be nice to genuinely just feel confident within my

own judgment as opposed to appearing as so so I guess how have you like grown to

be that sort of person that is able to do that or at least appear to do so

better than like I would.

I don't know. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. But you're doing it right. You do have to

fake it till you make it. Like when I'm standing my ground and exercising my

boundaries and where they are, I'm like this.

No.

You gotta fake it till you make it. As soon as you're behind closed doors, you

can let that out and like really, really experience how terrifying that was.

The real confidence comes from knowing that you just went out of your comfort

zone to say no and it was fucking terrifying.

But knowing you did that is where the confidence will grow. And then it's just

like a vicious cycle that gets easier and easier as it goes of this getting

just a little bit more calm each time. But it is scary every single time.

That's my answer. Make it till you fucking make it.

Thank you.

One issue currently with the industry is that young children are exposed to

pornography at quite a young age, 10, 12.

What more do you think can be done to prevent this happening and do you think

enough is currently being done?

Stop giving these two-year-olds iPads.

Cut off the access.

Exercise parental controls in your settings, like parent.

Yes,

just in the front row here.

Alex, you just walked. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Hello, thank you.

So I have two questions. First one is about the porn industry as a market,

because there's always going to be demand, and so there has to be supply

somehow. I mean, there will be supply somehow.

And there are these movements that kind of try to destigmatize the porn industry

and sex workers.

And I was wondering what are your thoughts about this and about kind of

how, if you are not advocating for people to go into the porn industry,

How would you think this market is going to work? And what are your thoughts

about this movement of de-stigmatizing the porn industry?

And my second question is about male sex workers and male porn

stars. And what are your thoughts about that? Do you think that male porn stars

are also being fetishized and objectified? Yeah.

My ADHD is so bad, I'm going to start with the second one because I remember

it the most. I can't repeat it.

Oh, the destigmatization.

I think that we can destigmatize it without also encouraging it.

We don't need to villainize and punish the people who are in the industry

simply because they're in it.

We also don't need to encourage people that it's all rainbows and glamour and

fun and empowerment and feminism. Like, that's really...

dangerous. Young women are very tired of working minimum wage jobs.

And when they hear these things on the internet and see these TikToks of like,

I'm a sugar baby. My life is so good. You should be doing this too.

That's grooming.

That is grooming, period.

It should not be encouraged.

It's not like that. What I say by you shouldn't enter it, what I mean by that

is if you have already

If you've already entered the sex work industry and you want to find a safer

way to do it that's not in a strip club or on the streets or something like

that, then OnlyFans and things like that are a great option for you.

You've already been in the industry and you want to find a safer way to do it,

that's when it's a good option.

And the second question, I'm so sorry? Male porn stars and male sex workers in

general. Male porn stars.

They already have a leg up. They're male. We can move on from that one.

I think we have time for two more questions.

The member in the third row back with the blue shirt on the right, you've had

your hand up for a while.

Thank

you

for the talk.

I'm curious in...

what you said about the comments you've received about people who can relate to

you, and I'm wondering if there are any other industries or parts of society

that you've learned that people have faced similar experiences that might not

be known to the audience and people in general that also have ethical

considerations that people might not be aware of?

Very much so.

I think that the...

Contracts in the music industry are also predatory.

And we see artists going to court against their record labels all the

time. Taylor Swift was suing her... Yes, yes. And the more I started to talk

about it, the more people saw that the parallels are very similar to so many

things. And it's not just an issue in the porn industry.

I think that we need to look at contract law as a whole.

And the final question, the front row of the press bench.

Hi Mia, we met earlier.

So when we met we talked about, well you told me about growing up as a young

Lebanese girl and how your childhood or your background affected your view on

feminism. I did want to ask, but we didn't have time, but I did want to ask,

how has your view on feminism or how has it changed since you were a child?

become more positive or like how's it changed due to your experiences?

Absolutely I think that growing up I was encouraged to be small and not take up

space and do as I'm told and as I've gotten older my view of feminism kind of

moved away from from what it what it is for me what it was for my culture to

what I believe it to be which is an ever-evolving relationship with yourself

and with women around you I'm constantly learning from people around me and I'm

constantly learning more about myself so that that's feminism to me keeping an

open mind constantly and and speaking with as many women as I can and hearing

their stories and yeah and I think I speak for all women everywhere when we

say we are really proud of you thank you

Finally, one final question from me. We try to ask everyone here.

What is one piece of advice that you would leave us, that you want to leave

us with today that you would have loved to have known if you were in our

position sitting here?

I would have loved to know that

That everything that you're looking for is inside of you.

Confidence is really just listening to you and what your morals are and what

your values are and what you want out of your life and implementing that.

That's literally what confidence is. It's not having a good hair day. It's

not having a good skin day. It's not wearing a good outfit. It's truly just

being secure in the choices you've made that day or that week or that year and

knowing that no matter what, that can't be taken away from you.

Thank you very much. It's been an absolute pleasure, Noel.