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As for this week’s episode? Amarna Miller is here and we talk all about ethical porn and why it’s different from feminist porn, why she feels so committed to doing mainstream pornography, polyamory, and Iceland.
Amarna also shares why she’d rather talk to a group of sexist men than to a group of like-minded feminists and what it’s like to travel to places like Columbia and her home of Spain to talk about feminism and porn.
It’s a fun, charming episode and I can’t wait for you to hear it!
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
In this episode, Amarna and I talk about:
- How Amarna got started in porn. She was turned off by the responses she received when she first decided to go into sex work, and so she studied photography in college and then started her own production company at 19 years old.
- Amarna’s YouTube channel. Her video on ethical porn is fantastic. See it here.
- Ethical porn – what it is, why it’s important, and why it needs to come before feminist porn. It’s about performers feeling valued and what happens behind the cameras.
- How fair trade food is similar to ethical porn, and why porn performers need more of us to listen rather than victimize or blame.
- What feminism means to Amarna and why it’s such an important part of her life.
- Why porn is a form of activism for Amarna and how it’s changing the political conversation around women’s bodies, while also recognizing that much of porn is still very sexist and problematic.
- Amarna’s awareness of how critical it is to confront sexism and problematic practices in mainstream porn from within the beast.
- What makes for a great day on set when Amarna is shooting porn.
- Sex and cannabis. Amarna is giving a talk in Spain about it this fall and there is still a huge stigma about cannabis in Spain, so she shares some thoughts on the topic.
- The things Amarna still wants to explore. She feels like she’s explored everything she’s interested in sexually, and is now exploring intimacy, love, and polyamory.
- Confronting jealousy and insecurity because feeling those things didn’t make her happy.
- The worst part of being a porn actress. It’s probably not what you think.
Resources discussed in this episode
Erika Lust’s films can all be found on EroticFilms.com where you can see Amarna, too!
About Amarna Miller
Amarna Miller is a 26 year old porn actress, pro-sex activist and writer from Spain. She has a Youtube channel where she talks about pornography, ecology and traveling, among others. Her first book was published two years ago and she is currently working on the second one. Faithful defender of feminism and polyamory, Amarna is graduated in Fine Arts and loves antiques, cats and everything related to the 60s. She considers herself an adrenaline junkie, obsessed with being outside of her comfort zone. She lives in her van and saves time to conquer the world.
You can stay in touch with Amarna on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @AmarnaMiller.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: You’re listening to (You’re listening) (You’re listening) You’re listening to Sex Gets Real (Sex Get Real) (Sex Gets Real) Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra (with Dawn Serra). Thanks, bye!
Hi, you. Welcome to a new episode of Sex Gets Real. It is the weekend of both Canada Day and July 4 in the States. So lots of celebrations happening. Of course, I made it a point to post about on Facebook that all of this comes with celebrating colonialism and the horrible ways that we’ve treated indigenous and First Nations people. So trying to keep that in mind as I celebrate my very first Canada Day where I had my first rotato, which is a spiralized potato that’s deep fried on a stick. It was amazing. So that was awesome and delicious and greasy. But I am super excited about this week’s episode.
Dawn Serra: I first saw Amarna Miller when I was enjoying some Erika Lust Xconfessions videos. Amarna is in many of Erika’s videos. Something about her energy just absolutely captivated me, and then I saw a video that she did on her YouTube channel all about ethical porn. I knew immediately I wanted to have her on the show. So we’ve been going back and forth, and finally it happened. So you are about to hear me chatting with Amarna. She’s originally from Spain. She does amazing, speaking English and trying to have these really deep conversations with me about patriarchy and feminism, and ethical porn. I am in awe of folks who are bi and trilingual. So I hope you enjoy the chat.
I also wanted to let you know that the very first Sex is A Social Skill group call is going to be on July 7, at 2:30pm, Pacific 5:30pm Eastern in the States. Of course, all the group calls are recorded. So if you want to join in these group calls, this call on the seventh, is going to be all about feeling cherished. What does that feel like? How do you like to be cherished? How can we ask for more of what’s cherishing in relationship? I think it’s gonna be a really juicy, fun chat where we roll around and some of these big ideas. Future calls will be on different days at different times – the group will be voting. But if you want to participate, I will be there live on screen and we will be having this fantastic chat. We will be doing this every other week. So it’s just another way for all of us to level up, and to practice, and to ask scary questions together and to get support from like-minded folks. So I would love to see you there. You can get all of the details in the show notes or if you pop over to sexgetsreal.com/ep168 for this episode. There’s also a link right at the top of the page.
Dawn Serra: So let’s dive into this chat with Amarna. Amarna Miller is a 26 year old porn actress, pro-sex activist, and writer from Spain. She has a YouTube channel that you should totally check out. Probably about two-thirds of the videos are in Spanish, but the ones that are in English, if your English speaking, are fantastic. Definitely check out also day in the life of a porn actress videos that she’s doing, where she talks about pornography, ecology, traveling, among other things. Her first book was published two years ago and she’s currently working on her second one. She’s a faithful defender of feminism and polyamory. Amarna graduated in fine arts and loves antiques, cats and everything related to the 60s. She considers herself an adrenaline junkie, obsessed with being outside of her comfort zone, which you will definitely hear on this interview. She lives in her van and saves time to conquer the world.
One other quick note, there are a few points towards the end of the interview, especially where our connection got a little bit garble-y. So I did my best to clean it up, but you will hear a couple of small hiccups. So please forgive me for that. So here is my chat with Amarna. Hopefully I will see you on the group call that is on Friday, July 7, and on future calls, because this is going to be ongoing forever – a chance for all of us to connect. Don’t forget Patreon supporters at $20 and above get free access to these calls. So here is Amarna.
Dawn Serra: Welcome to Sex Gets Real, Amarna. I’m so excited to have you here.
Amarna Miller: Hello, Dawn. I’m more excited than you. I’m super happy that you contacted me for this.
Dawn Serra: Yes. So, for listeners who aren’t familiar with your work, I found you via Erika Lust because you’ve done a number of her Xconfessions videos. You’ve also worked with Four Chambers, which I have raved about to listeners as a place to go for beautiful erotic content. I would love it if you could tell us a little bit about how you got started as a performer.
Amarna Miller: Oh, that’s a big story. So I started in the business about almost eight years now which is a lot. I have always been a person with a very high libido. I always wanted to experiment with my sexuality and find new horizons inside of my sexuality. So when I was about 18 years old, more or less, I thought about sex work as a way of living. I sent a lot of messages to a ton of Spanish companies. I am from Spain, by the way. So a lot of companies from my country. When I received the answers, I didn’t like them at all and I decided that porn wasn’t for me. I started university, I did fine arts. In the second year of my career, I discovered photography, which was, in the end, my specialization and one of the biggest passions of my life.
So through photography, I started taking pictures of girls, my friends, basically, and because I had this nascent interest towards sexuality, the pictures were becoming more and more explicit, more and more erotic. And it reached a point in which when I was looking at the pictures, I was thinking that that was the kind of content that I wanted to appear in. But it didn’t exist. I was looking for it one year before and I didn’t find it. So maybe I felt that there was a niche in the market for me as an actress, but especially for the viewers who wanted to see something that was kind of different.
Amarna Miller: So with this idea in mind, I created my own production company that I directed for about five years – four or five years. Through my company, I started posing also as a model working as an actress. That’s how I started. After one year, more or less, shooting only for my company. An Australian company contacted me telling me that they wanted to appear on their shoots, and when I checked their content, I really really liked it. So I said yes. And since then, I mean, I worked as an actress. Some years later, I closed my company, and since then, I have been working full time as a porn actress.
Dawn Serra: Wow. I love that you knew what you wanted, you were disappointed with what you saw. And after giving yourself a chance to go into art and develop your photography, you thought, “Well, I don’t see this anywhere. So I’m just going to create it myself.” That’s amazing.
Amarna Miller: I have this kind of personality that is very productive about things. My father used to tell me when I was younger that you don’t work talking, you work working. And that’s some kind of base – some kind of pilot that I have tried to implement in every aspect of my life outside my work. I mean, if what I want to do doesn’t exist, let’s create it. Sounds very easy, right?
Dawn Serra: I love that. I love, too, how you have started partnering with people who are creating beautiful, ethical content. One of the things that What got me so excited to have you on the show was I saw your ethical porn video that you created for your YouTube channel, which for anyone who’s interested in learning more about you and the work you do; you’ve got this fantastic YouTube channel, which of course, a link to on Sex Gets Real. But ethical porn is something that’s really important to you. I’d love to know what do you want more people to know when it comes to ethical porn?
Amarna Miller: Wow, that’s an amazing question. I feel like during the last years, people talk a lot about feminist porn. For me, before achieving feminist porn that is kind of becoming a marketing label. I really want to talk about ethical porn, because that’s the first step to think about any kind of feminism inside of this industry. Majority, it’s mainly very sexist. So when I talk about ethical porn, I like to give a definition that, it’s not even mine, it’s from a sexologist and educator from North America called Tristan Taormino. What she says is that in ethical porn, the performers feel valued, they are receiving an amount of money for their work that, in a sense, is related to what they are doing on the screen. They are in conditions that are fair and in which they feel valued. As you can see, nothing there I’m talking about has to be with what happens on the screen. It has to be with what happens behind the screen, what happens behind the cameras.
I think for talking about feminist porn, way before that, we need to think about the conditions in which we are shooting, and the reality is porn industry – it’s an industry that it’s very demeaned. It has a huge stigma. It has a huge taboo. People who are working in it are, a lot of times, not happy about the conditions in which they are shooting – we are shooting. So I like to do a comparison with the Fairtrade label – In the food industry where we buy something that has the Fairtrade label, that means that the people who have worked to create that product have been in very fair conditions. Their work has been valued and they have earned an amount of money that they think is fair. So, if we take this same comparison and we bring it to the porn industry, ethical porn would be some kind of Fairtrade label to know that the people who have worked in that product – in that video has been treated in equal fair conditions.
Dawn Serra: I do sex coaching and relationship coaching, in addition to the podcast, and I have my business listed on the AAPC website for adult performers. So I just recently talked to a performer, a male performer, who does mainstream porn. He’s feeling a lot of challenging feelings around what it’s like to work in conditions that are often very unfair. So I think it’s so important, you’re right, that we talk about fair working conditions for people in any industry, but especially in porn, because it’s something that’s so vilified. And because people like to say really nasty things about it. So having these conversations is so important.
Amarna Miller: Absolutely. Oh my gosh, you express it so well. Sometimes it’s complicated to express myself in English because it’s not my language. So yeah, I absolutely agree with what you say. I think because the porn industry still has this huge stigma. People often don’t realize that what we need is to be listened to, not to be victimized. What we need is people to understand the terms in which we are working and the ways to improve them, instead of pointing at us with their hand and telling us that what we are doing is wrong. We just need better conditions. We need to be listened to and to have wings – not to be put down, bring down.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. So I, of course, watched as many of the videos as I could on your channel that were in English. Because I wish I was bilingual. But my brain doesn’t work that way yet. So you have a video all about the cats that you’ve had in your life, which I love because I have cats too. You also did this really charming video all about your backpack.
Amarna Miller: Yes, that’s true.
Dawn Serra: Yes. And there were so many things on your backpack that I wanted to talk to you about. The first is, I’ve been in Iceland three times and I got married there, and I loved seeing that you want an adventure to Iceland. So yay, Iceland.
Amarna Miller: Oh my god that makes me so happy. Iceland has been one of the biggest and more awesome trips I have ever done. It was a huge adventure. I have my backpack just in front of me while we are talking and I am seeing like all the crazy patches.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I love how one of the themes on your backpack is really all about exploring and going on these adventures, and learning and reading, books that influenced you. And of course, feminism and how that’s such an important part of your life. I’d love to know for you, what is important to you about feminism?
Amarna Miller: Oh, wow, that’s such a good question. I think for years, for hundreds, for centuries – hundreds of years. Society has told us, as women, how we have to live our lives. How do we have to connect with other people? How we need to have sex, how we need to confront our own bodies and our own image. For the first time in hundreds of years, we are privileged, we have the choice. We have the choice to question the world we live in. And the world we live in is a patriarchy in which men, most of the time, have a position of power in which men are usually oppressing women. Not because they want to, but because there’s a huge structure that teaches us to do that since we are very, very tiny. So after all these ills that we have suffered for so much time, we have the choice to confront it. We have the choice to question why it happens and how can we change it towards a better society?
So, for me, porn has a lot to do with this. Because porn for me is to be empowered over my own body, my own sexuality, and what I do with it. Since I am very young, people, society, my parents, my friends – everybody has told me the way I have to interact with the world in sexual terms. For me porn is a way to confront that – that politically correct way of understanding my sexuality, and show it to the world, to express that we as women also are sexual subjects. We are not objects, we also have feelings, and we also want to do things. I don’t know, I think it’s so important. I think it’s a kind of activism in a way to, yes, show the world that we also desire and we also like sex, and that’s something absolutely cool. I’m fine. We don’t need to be ashamed of being who we are.
Dawn Serra: Oh my gosh, there’s so much about what you just said that I’m in love with. I just want to roll around. I mean, I love using porn to express the power that you have over your own body and to explore your own sexuality. It’s so huge. I also love how for you doing porn is an act of activism, of actually putting on display the female body in a place of power and desire and pleasure and showing like, “I have a right to be in this position, to be exploring my body, and to be sharing it with the world. And saying, “We get to celebrate our bodies in pleasure.”
Amarna Miller: I see it as a way to conquer– I don’t know how to pronounce it.
Dawn Serra: Conquer?
Amarna Miller: Yeah, that’s it. Thank you. I see porn as a way to conquer a space that, historically, hasn’t had a place for women, which is sexuality and pleasure – until very few years ago, women who had pleasure during sex was someone who was broken. It was forbidden to us. We only had sex for reproduction, for having kids. We had sex as a way of control. And that’s awful, that’s absolutely awful for me. It’s kind of complicated because as I say these. I also understand that a big part of the porn industry and a big chunk of the movies I have participated in are pretty sexist, but I think, for me at least or how I see it personally, the way of portraying– Just the fact to be showing my sex, and the fact of putting outside in the world that fact that I’m a sexual subject is empowering. Even if their representation, I do with, it is not as good as I would like it to be. Am I– Oh, gosh. Talking in English is so complicated. I promise, I try and try.
Dawn Serra: No, you’re making beautiful sense. I think you’re right. We can have these complicated experiences and feelings about porn of understanding that it has a very problematic history, that it’s very malegaze driven, that has problems with racism and representation. And we can also recognize that there is power in people claiming their sexuality and choosing to allow others to see it. We can talk about ethical porn, and then feminist porn on top of that, and how there’s ways to change these conversations if we can get more people consuming ethical porn and feminist porn, then we can start changing the industry in a much bigger way. You’re so right, it’s complicated and there’s lots of big questions, but to still find your activism and your art and your voice inside of that is incredible.
Amarna Miller: Oh my gosh, you expressed it so right. I totally agree with you. For me, as a feminist, I’m always in this dichotomy in which, of course, I want to represent on my videos, on my scenes, all the time, the principles I believe in – the feminist principles. But being a mainstream performer, sometimes I confront situations that are not fair at all, and they come from situations that are pretty sexist. I see scenes and I appear in the scenes with which I don’t agree with, and that’s a pretty intense dichotomy inside of my own ideology, because sometimes I do things that I don’t fully agree with in the concept. But I think just the fact that I am a mainstream performer inside of a very hegemonic industry, having this speech or talking out loud about the things that must change is powerful and it’s worth it.
I believe that power must be confronted from power. To question some practices that are a hegemonic, you must be inside of the hegemonic – periphery, it’s interesting, of course, in the periphery, you can do a lot of things. But they didn’t have the same speaker – you don’t reach the same amount of people. So I think it’s very important, and I also miss this as a porn consumer too. I miss more figures, more women, especially in some of the mainstream porn industry, complaining about the mainstream porn industry. So I tried to be that person as much as I can.
Dawn Serra: Yes. I think that’s so important. You’re right. There’s so many different ways that we can make change happen. For people listening, a lot of that change can happen with where people spend money. So if you spend money on ethically produced content, then we can make more ethically produced content. And for you as a performer to be inside of the system and actually speaking up, and having conversations with other performers and saying, “I don’t completely agree with this,” and still be in your power. I mean, that’s radical.
Amarna Miller: I think that’s – I don’t know, I feel there’s a position of power in that. Even if sometimes I have to appear in things that I don’t agree fully with, the fact that I am there questioning them, it’s super important. I love feminist porn, but if I only shoot feminist porn, I will never question the mainstream pornography. I always say this when I’m in Spain, I give a lot of talks about feminist, ethical porn. And I always say that I prefer to give a talk to a group of super sexist men, than to a group of feminists, because the ones I have to convince, the ones I want my speech to be heard is to the sexist people, not the feminist one. The feminists, I already know that they agree with me. So I already know that the people who are going to watch the feminist movie are going to agree with it, but to have a position of power inside of the non-feminist part of the industry, that’s very interesting, that changes mentalities. That’s the point of it, I guess.
Dawn Serra: Do you think that’s one of the things that’s so special about your YouTube channel of mainstream fans finding you there, and then hearing you have these conversations in a really personal way?
Amarna Miller: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Actually that’s one of the things that I try to be very focused on – to bring my speech or my ideologies, to the people that follow me for my super mainstream porn productions. The people who follow me in super mainstream porn movies and suddenly reach, for example, my twitter or my Instagram or my YouTube channel; and they realize that I am not that sexy nymphomaniac that they have on their heads, that I am actually a person and I actually have thoughts about what I’m doing, and there’s a speech behind it. It’s not only the pretty face and the super sexy attitude. There’s something behind
Dawn Serra Yeah, it was actually really interesting because I got very angry on your behalf on Twitter a couple of months ago when you posted your ethical porn video, and a guy on Twitter decided that he should tell you what he didn’t like about your appearance. I was like, “You don’t get to tell her what to do with her body!” But I think that’s part of the beauty of you sharing yourself on YouTube and making it so personal of confronting the fantasy versus the reality of being this really empowered human being with all of these big ideas around oppression and feminism, and making people who consume mainstream porn have a little bit of that discomfort of like, “Maybe I should ask some questions.”
Amarna Miller: Absolutely. I love that word – discomfort. I love to make people have discomfort about my own work, because it’s true. In pornography, we do something that is pretty fucked up. When we watch a porn movie, we think that everything that we’re watching is real. I mean, when I go to the cinema and I see Batman, I will never think that what is going on on the screen is something that is happening for real. But the porn consumer does that all the time. They think that women, and also men, but especially women portrayed on the screen are really that way. I mean, they are always willing, always wanting sex, always desirable and sexy. They don’t understand that we have – we go in our pajamas to buy something on the supermarket, and we have cars, and we have boyfriends and girlfriends, and we have a life. We are people, which sounds pretty obvious, but people don’t think about that. They think about the sexy, hard, nymphomaniac. They don’t think about the person who wakes up in the morning and has a shower and has some breakfast and has a normal life.
So I think it’s very, very important for us as porn performers to create that sensation that we are also people. I mean, not sensation, that reality. I have a series on my YouTube channel that are being – they are being kind of… They are having a bunch of visits and that makes me happy. It’s called A Day in The Life of A Porn Star.
Dawn Serra: Oh, they’re so good.
Amarna Miller: Oh, thank you. Basically it’s me recording my life since I wake up until I go to sleep, the days I have shootings. And what I try to show to the viewer is that everything that happens in between a shoot is totally professional and totally normal. This is our job as any other job, just we have sex on the screen. But we have to go to our make up in the mornings and we take an Uber to go to the shoots. The shoots are – they are planned and we have a script, and not everybody is wanting to have sex all the time. We are just performing because that’s our job to perform on the screen.
Dawn Serra: So I’m wondering for you, you’ve had a chance to work with mainstream porn production companies and then, of course, you’ve worked with ethical and feminist porn companies like Vex and Erika. For you, what makes a shoot really great? When you show up and the day unfolds, and at the end of the day you think, “Wow, that was such a great day.” What, for you, makes a day on set great?
Amarna Miller: I really value when the director has engaged with me before the actual day of the shoot. When they ask me, “What would you like to do?” Or for example, asking the performers with who they want to shoot with, what people on your area attract you so we can book the two of you together, if it’s possible. For example that kind of questions are always pretty welcome. When I arrived at the shoot, I think, to create a good chemistry with my partner or my partners – For me, the best days of shooting are the ones in which my partner or partners have worked on to engage with me, to create some kind of link. There’s nothing that I hate most in a shoot than when the other person looks like they want to go home, when they are looking at the clock, because that makes me feel not valued. That makes me feel like a total normal average job. I’m in porn is because I like it, not because I want to earn as much money in the minimum time as possible. So for me, that’s the main part that the other person is engaged and wants to do what they are doing.
Dawn Serra: I think that’s so important. I also would guess that when everyone involved is there and feeling connected, that that translates on the screen even more powerfully.
Amarna Miller: Absolutely, absolutely. When you are shooting with someone that is engaged with you, that’s amazing. It’s like you can see the sparkles? How do you say that in English?
Dawn Serra: Oh, like the spark?
Amarna Miller: Yes, like a spark. You can see the connection. That’s why, for example, you were mentioning back a couple of times. That’s why I like so much to shoot with her like, she’s one of my favorite porn performers ever. Because every time we are on the screen together, you can absolutely see how much we like each other, and how much we want each other. And that creates a magical scene, and also an amazing time for the both of us to be working together.
Dawn Serra: Okay, so I saw that you tweeted that in October, you’re going to be speaking on a round table about sex and cannabis.
Amarna Miller: Yeah, that’s true.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. That’s a topic that I haven’t covered very much on the show. So I’d love to know, for you, what are some things you love talking about when it comes to sex and cannabis, or myths or what do you want the world to know about sex and cannabis?
Amarna Miller: That’s a very good point. Because here in California people are very open minded about cannabis. But in my country, oh my gosh, it’s crazy. There’s so many stereotypes and there’s so much of a stigma. Cannabis is not fully legal, neither recreational or medical. So when me, as a public character, talks about, “Hey, cannabis can be a very nice way to do a lot of things, I mean, to have sex or also to feel creative, also to beat on anxiety.” So all these things that here, in California, seem kind of logic and obvious, in Spain are still a battle – a revolution. So what I try to do in my talks about sex and cannabis, to put on the table that if you consume in a responsible way, and if you are over 18 years old, and if you are a person who are happy to try new experiences – let’s go for it. I mean, there’s nothing utterly wrong in it apart from what society has told us to do.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. A couple of weeks ago, I had the founder of Good Clean Love on the show and her company makes organic lubes and oils and things like that. And they’ve just recently come out with a cannabis-infused lube. She said they’re doing studies on it and it’s showing really, really wonderful benefits for people who have vaginismus or vaginal pain, and that it’s helping to create relaxation and pain reduction. So I think even things like that are such a powerful thing for us to be exploring
Amarna Miller: Exactly. Do not be scared of trying new things and to be willing to experiment with our sexuality. I think that’s the point number one about fighting the taboo, of fighting the stigma, and also fighting your own fears. Because for how we have learned over our lives, there’s a huge stigma regarding our sexuality.
Dawn Serra: So I know that a big part of your belief system, and one of the reasons why feminism is so important to you, is having this opportunity to explore your body and to explore your sexuality, and to ask big questions and push against limits and stereotypes. I’m wondering, for you, is there anything that you haven’t yet explored that you know you want to try at some point or a fantasy that you’ve always been curious about, but haven’t yet lived into?
Amarna Miller: I think in a sexual way, I am very happy with the amount of things I have explored. At the moment, I am more focused in exploring new ways to understand my emotional links. I’m in a polyamorous relationship, and I am very, very happy about it. And I’m exploring more about how to create meaningful healthy links with other people. Explore intimacy, explore love. It sounds so new age, but it’s true.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, it’s really interesting. I get so many questions from listeners who are interested in learning about polyamory, or maybe they’re questioning whether it’s something they want to try. So I think a lot of people are opening themselves up to, at least, learning about it, even if they end up deciding it’s not something for them. But there’s definitely a lot of questions in the air right now around love and what makes a healthy connected relationship, even if we’ve got other types of friendships in our lives. So I think that’s a really interesting thing.
Amarna Miller: Yeah, it has to do with what we were talking before about questioning what we have learned. Since we are young, society teaches that the only way to have a relationship is by having a monogamous one, and only love and desire one person for the rest of your life. The time passes and people start questioning this statement, because you can love more than one people and that doesn’t make you broken. That doesn’t make you a worse human being. So I think it’s just a matter of questioning the things that we would take for granted, just because someone has teached us that that’s the right way to do that.
Dawn Serra: Since you’re in a poly situation now, what’s been the best part about that and what’s been the most challenging part of that?
Amarna Miller: Definitely the most challenging has been to construct my jealousy. I used to be a very jealous person. At the same time, it was something that was making me very, very unhappy. I didn’t like it, I didn’t even want to be like that. But you know how these kind of feelings are, they come and they stay on your belly, and it kind of burns so you don’t really know what to do to confront it. So for me that has been my biggest battle – to confront my own insecurities or my own fears, because in the end, jealousy is exactly that – insecurities and fears. The best thing has been to learn that love is something absolutely amazing. It’s huge. It’s bigger than all of us. And to explore it with more than one person at a time is just an incredible feeling. I feel I feel very empowered and I feel very proud of myself. Also the fact that you have to confront a lot of stigmas also in this area makes me feel very proud of taking this decision. Because it’s a way to question also what I have taken for granted during all my life.
Dawn Serra: I’m noticing a theme that you really enjoy questioning the stories we’ve been told and you kind of saying, “Is this true?” Then poking at that. I love that rebel in you, of “I’m not sure everything we’re being told is true. So I’m going to try it on and see.”
Amarna Miller: Absolutely, you said it. Absolutely. I am a person that questions everything a lot. I think a lot about the things I do. I don’t know. I feel that most people live their lives just by what happens to them, without being proactive looking for the things they want to do. For me, all this is peachy – all my works. So these things that I say can be summarized into my hunger for freedom.
Dawn Serra: Over the next couple of months, do you have any projects or challenges that you’re getting ready to do that you’re really excited about?
Amarna Miller: Actually, yeah. I’m super excited with my YouTube channel that’s being my main – the thing that I’m focusing the most. I upload videos every Tuesday, which means every single week, I upload a video and that’s a big task. At the moment, while I am a person very, very into ecology, sustainability. I tried to reduce my footprint in this planet as much as I want. So I’m really into at the moment is to transition from being omnivorous to be vegan, basically. And I am recording all the experience for my YouTube channel. So I can tell, not only my ideas regarding the matter, but all eating meat to suddenly not eating, not only not meat, but putting away all the things that create suffering for animals in my life. Wow, that’s a big deal.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I have to ask, so you did a 30-day challenge of not producing any trash. I’m wondering, what was your number one takeaway from that? Because I was my husband and I were actually talking about that video. We were like, “Oh, my gosh, that must take so much planning.”
Amarna Miller: Yeah, wow. It was kind of crazy. I mean, at the moment, I am not as strict as then, but I am still doing a bunch of the things that I learned from that challenge. For me, the most complicated thing was to learn about my consumer habits. A lot of times we are consuming plastic without even realizing that we are consuming plastic. A good example is bubble gums. Oh my gosh I use it to eat bubble gum almost every day and when I suddenly started– It’s a tiny thing but it’s a good example, because when I started this challenge- Thursday, I took a bubble gum and just when I took it, I’m like, “This is such a waste. It’s so awful.” I’m sorry bubble gum companies.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I think you’re so right – buying locally, going to the farmers market. Also, buying in bulk and bringing your own containers. That’s so helpful.
Amarna Miller: For example, stop using paper tissues. Since then, I used fabric tissues. It’s such an awesome thing because you just clean them and that’s it. You are not producing this amount of paper waste, especially when you are sick.
Dawn Serra: Yes, yes. You don’t have that big pile of tissues next to you. I’m wondering, I know you’re talking about sex and cannabis in October and do you have any other big talks coming up later this year that you’re excited about?
Amarna Miller: Well, I’m going to give – I don’t know how much of this can I say, but in August, I am going to go to Colombia to Medina and also to Bogota – two of the main cities in the in the country, to talk about feminism and to talk about ethical pornography. So that is going to be a big thing. It’s like two very big talks. Then at the end of the year, about October and also on November, I will be in Spain in my country giving talks about the same – especially feminism. So if any of you are in Colombia in August or in Spain in October, November, I will see you there because they are going to be very interesting.
Dawn Serra: So I have a quick question for you about that. I talked to lots of people who are mostly in sex positive sex worker circles. I’m wondering for you, what’s the response that you get from audiences when you’re in countries like Spain or Colombia, who aren’t part of the industry and you start talking about feminism in porn. What kind of a response do you usually get?
Amarna Miller: Wow. I have an amount of followers that really support my work, I really do. But I also have a lot of people that are against me. At the moment, for example, if you get into my Twitter page, there’s been a very big battle against me. Because I said in an interview, a couple of weeks ago, that sometimes when you’re a sex worker, you’re not always feeling super sexy, and you don’t always want to have sex. And sometimes the sex you have is mechanical. Just because you have a bad morning or just because you had a discussion with your boyfriend, whatever. Sex is not always an amazing thing. And that’s fine because it’s our jobs, and that’s it.
So I say this and half of my country are exploding at this moment, complaining about me. Because people still don’t see sex work as normal work. They think that if you do this, you must enjoy it all the time. But this is a requirement that no one asks for in other jobs. When you are frying chicken wings in a McDonald’s, no one is asking you that you enjoy to fry fries. When you work painting the nails of other people, no one is asking you to really enjoy nail polish. So why we do this kind of statements with sex workers? It’s because people still put a moral value inside of our jobs.
Dawn Serra: Yep, yeah. Oh, I’m so sorry that you’re experiencing that. That’s so frustrating.
Amarna Miller: I mean… When you’re sex worker, you must learn to have a very good emotional intelligence because you are going to confront a lot of issues and a lot of stigmas. For me, I always say this, the worst part of being a porn actress doesn’t have to be with the porn industry. It has to be with how people treat me when I say I’m a porn actress. My biggest problem with porn is society, it’s not porn.
Dawn Serra: Yes. I’m so glad you said that. I had a conversation with Kitty Stryker about a year ago on the show, and she was talking about how the hardest thing for her as a porn performer was always the way she got treated outside of porn and how difficult it can be to find a job because people don’t want to hire porn performers; and how that’s hypocritical. If you you’re against porn, then you should be eager to be hiring former porn performers, but that’s not how it is because we like to shame porn and sex in our society. So instead it’s mistreating performers and trying to pass these judgments on what kind of people they are, which is ridiculous. But, we have so much work to do.
Amarna Miller: Absolutely. People like to treat us as victims because they still think that what we do is wrong, from a moral point of view, that we shouldn’t be selling our bodies when there’s nobody to sell. We don’t sell our bodies, we sell a service that we do with our bodies. But in their minds, we are doing something that they don’t agree with, and therefore we should repent. We should feel bad about it. “Who is going to enjoy having sex for money? That’s impossible.” “I’m sure you were raped. I’m sure you had a super complicated childhood, and that has made you take decisions that are obviously wrong in your life.” All this judgment is full of a moral perception of what sexuality means.
In the moment, what we understand is that sexuality is just another way of interaction with another human being. And it can be cool and awesome. But it can also be pretty fucked up since work is just another kind of work, and we should be respected.
Dawn Serra: Yes. Oh, I’m so glad you said that. I’m so excited that you agreed to come on the show and share all of your amazing ideas and thoughts, and stories. I was wondering, for people who want to learn more and check out your YouTube channel, how can they stay in touch? How can they find you online?
Amarna Miller: Oh, that’s awesome. So, I am in every social media. I am in Instagram, in Twitter or YouTube. Those are the three ones that I use the most. My name is Amarna Miller – AMARNA. Miller like Henry Miller. That’s the way you should look for me.
Dawn Serra: I will link to, of course, all of your social media and to your website on sexgetsreal.com/ep168 for this episode, so everyone can follow you and check out your awesome videos that you’re posting. Of course, if anybody has any questions about today’s episode, please do write in and share this episode liberally. Amarna, I want to thank you so much for coming on and being so passionate about everything that you’re doing.
Amarna Miller: Thank you very much for bringing me here. I’m sorry. Sometimes I feel that my English is not good enough to have this kind of meaningful, deep conversations. So I am sorry, sometimes I feel frustrated about it.
Dawn Serra: Well, I thought your ideas and your feelings came across beautifully. So thank you for being so brave and in speaking a language other than your native tongue. I could never do that, and your brain is amazing that you can. So thank you so much for being here. To all of the listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you had a blast listening to our chat. I will talk to you next week. Bye.
Amarna Miller: Bye bye.