LOS ANGELES — Last week, Jahan Yousaf from the popular music group Krewella submitted an op-ed to Billboard discussing how Deadmau5 "kept her from doing porn."
“When my sister Yasmine and I got sued by our former bandmate, Kris Trindl, for allegedly ‘forcing’ him out of the group for being ‘sober,’ some of you told us to pursue a career in porn as we had failed at Krewella,” she writes. “Despite my penis being a little camera-shy, I was about to consider it. But then superstar DJ deadmau5 seemed to take an interest in us, and now I think a career in music will work out. Thank you, deadmau5, for saving me from doing porn.”
Yousaf’s piece evolves from a click-baity intro to a serious consideration of sexism and aggression that particularly dominates our online interactions. As proof (though we’ve all browsed YouTube comments, much to our traumatic surprise), she includes screenshots of highly derogatory comments aimed at her and her sister following deadmau5’s own defamatory Twitter statements about her and her sister.
“Fuck the sisters, you kicked out the talent, now all you are are two Paris Hiltons with no sextapes (yet) sluts [sic],” someone tweeted at Krewella.
Carter Cruise, porn sensation and aspiring DJ, wrote a response to Yousaf’s piece, injecting her unique narrative — as a talented woman that chose porn rather than accepting it as an end-of-the-line option.
While Cruise acknowledges that Yousaf’s reference to porn is sarcastic — a joke to draw readers in — she emphasizes that to a porn star who regularly experiences the hateful online attacks Yousaf eschews, simply because of her lifestyle, the joke falls flat.
Cruise writes, “I do my job because I love it, not because I’m incapable of doing anything else. Just like a dedicated athlete will run until he collapses, or a DJ will play a different city every night with little to no sleep, I do this because I want to and enjoy it. The difference, though, is that in music, women do have the ability to be taken seriously and respected by the mainstream, although it may be more difficult to achieve than for men. As a porn star, it is nearly (if not certainly) impossible to expect any type of respect from the media or Internet.
“I am subjected, daily, to the same type of hate Yousef is now experiencing; not because of a highly publicized lawsuit, but simply because of who I am and what I do for a living. The media might only pretend that sexism is a thing of the past, but it doesn’t even attempt to do the same with sex work. There is an obvious stigma attached to sex work that rivals even the ones Yousef discusses such as gender, sexual orientation, and alternative lifestyles.”
To read Cruise’s piece in full, click here.
