Updated note from Anthony (11-4-09): This is a reprint of the original interview that Sheldon Ranz did with Nina Hartley for the Jewish left-wing journal Shmate back for their Spring 1989 issiue. It was originally posted by me first to several Nina fan groups that I was hosting during the late 1990's and early 2000's, and then to my Red Garter Club website...which, unfortunately, was wiped completely out when I replaced my computer hard drive. Fortunately, I remembered that I kept a copy over at one of my Yahoo! fan groups, and I was able to retrieve it for posterity sake. I am reproducing the entire interview here as a page of the SmackChron for the sake of posterity. It appears in its original form as appeared in the original priint form, but with annotations added by me back then. Obviously, plenty has changed in Nina's life and political philosophy since then; she has mostly abandoned hardcore Marxism in favor of more conventional liberalism; she has stretched her sexual boundaries to include BDSM, and, of course, she is no longer in a multi-polyamorous relationship, having now been married to producer/activest Ernest Greene for the past four years. And she has also developed a newly found business sense and a remergence in popularity in the porn genre playing mostly MILF/Cougar roles. But with all that, her basic sexual liberationist philosophy and her drive in sustaining her mission of spreading the gospel of safe, sane, and fun sex has flourished unabated, and as she enters her golden years and reaches the milestone of 25+ years of service in the explicit adult erotic/pornographic media, it is a good idea to look back at where Nina got her basic philosophy from. Hopefully, this reset of one of her most classic interviews will set the record straight. Once again, all props go to Sheldon Ranz for being gracious enough to send me a copy of the original article, and to Nina for....well, simply being Nina. -- Anthony] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Note: When I first posted the interview that Nina did for the Spring 1989 issue of Shmate magazine in 2002, I had added some personal annotations to the text as private commentary. For this update, however, and in the interest of possibly forwarding it to Nina's site for later posting, I have decided to redo the full linterview here...but with most of the annotations removed so that it will appear as it originally did in the print article that Sheldon sent me. I will keep some of the more pertinent annotations in, however, for clarification purposes. I will keep the first version of the interview here, however, for archival puropses. Here, now, is the original interview as it appeared in the print edition of that mag....although events in Nina's life have drastically changed since its May 1989 release, it still stands out as a testimonial to her incredible wisdom, her progressive intiution, and --most of all -- her legacy as the greatest activist for sexual pleasure that the hardcore erotica medium has had -- or, more than likely, ever will see. -- Anthony] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- INTERVIEW: NINA HARTLEY by Sheldon Ranz from: "Shmate: A Magazine of Progressive Jewish Thought", Issue #22, Spring 1989, pp. 15 - 29 Since the latter half of 1987, Nina Hartley has been the most popular female star of pornographic movies _ the porn queen. Since her debut in 1984, she has starred or has been featured in over 170 such movies -- the most X_rated films any female performer has made during the past five years and the second highest number of films for any woman who has ever appeared in this genre. Hartley is the founder of the Pink Ladies Social Club. The club started out as a rap group for female performers in X-rated films, but has recently expanded to include any woman who works in the industry -- writers, makeup artists, assistant directors, etc. The Club' s existence helps to refute the stereotype of female sex workers ( or "red collar" workers) as airheads, bimbos, or helpless pawns, coerced by men into humiliating themselves. Hartley has a regular column called Health and Hygiene Report, which appears in the Club's bimonthly newsletter. The column stresses [HIV-]AIDS prevention and the precautions women should take before the cameras roll. Hartley is indeed qualified to write the column; she is a Registered Nurse, with a degree in Nursing from San Francisco State University [Bachelor of Science, Class of 1985, magna cum laude]. Section 1: THE INTRODUCTION SHELDON RANZ: I guess the best way to begin is by reading most of a letter to the editor that you sent to the Guardian, the radical newsweekly, which was published in the April 16, 1986 edition: "....I'm a third generation socialist and feminist. I've just graduated this past June magna cum laude with a B. S. in nursing. During my senior year, I started my career as an erotic actress. I have appeared in several dozen hardcore videos and have been featured in public discussions on the subject. ...I firmly believe in the possibility of non-exploitative hardcore erotica and I work to affect the product called porn. On principle, I refuse to portray rape or coercion and fight to portray sexuality as something natural, wholesome, playful, and tender. "I'm not sure what the anti-porners mean where they say 'sexual subordination'. It's a highly subjective idea, and to me it implies coerced sexuality. However, if I'm in control of myself and voluntarily accomodating male lust, then I'm not being subordinated. I see my job as legitimating human sexual urges while educating against domination. "It's bad enough that I have to fight the Moral Majority for the right to work, but it's tragic how much some feminists misunderstand the many complex issues involved here. As a feminist, I'd much rather spend my time fighting misogyny through my job as an erotic actress. I'd rather work to organize fellow actors and actresses and raise their consciousness. I want to fight for better working conditions and for a more sensual, less alienated medium. Instead, I find I have to spend all my time and creativity defending the First Amendment against the anti-porn feminist[s]." Let's go back to the beginning of that letter. What can you tell us about the first two generations of socialists? NINA HARTLEY: The socialist side of my family is my mother's side. My maternal grandfather was born and raised in Alabama. He rejected his parent's Orthodoxy and became a non-practicing Jew at a very early age. I think he refused to be bar-mitzvahed; that was around 1912. In the late Twenties, he was a physics teacher at the college level. Then, one night, he read Stalin's book, The Foundations of Leninism, which turned him around. It made him an instant, life- long convert to the Socialist-Communist cause. He worked to protect the rights of political prisoners in the South who, at the time were, of course, mostly Blacks, and worked against the [Ku Klux] Klan for many years. He helped to organize the defense of the Scottsboro Boys. For his efforts, at one point, he was beaten up and left for dead by the Klan and carried life-long health problems due to that. One of the head thugs who beat him up was Bull Connor, who later became the sheriff of Montgomery [County], Alabama. [Side note: It was Bull Connor who ordered the fire-hosing and beating of marchers at the infamous 1963 Montgomery civil rights march led by Rev. Martin Luther King.] My family had several encounters with the Klan during the Thirties. My mother wasn't allowed to play with the neighborhood children because her daddy was a "nigger lover". The Klan burned a cross on their lawn more than once and my grandmother, ever the Southern lady, didn't think to turn on the garden hose, but ran in and out of the house with the silver ice water pitcher, trying to put it out that way. My grandfather eventually lost his job for being a "premature anti-fascist". He went to New York, did some odd jobs (politically), and then came back to Alabama, where he and my grandmother taught at the University of Alabama. My grandmother was an English teacher and my grandfather remained a physics instructor. They moved out to California toward the end of the was. My grandfather was active politically until the end. He died prematurely, unfortunately, in 1980, from heart disease. My aunt became a Communist very early, at age 16, and my mother was a late convert to it. Both she and my father (a Gentile) were socialists of the heart. They saw evil, and they wanted to do good for the world. They were among those who were very disillusioned with the Russian invasion of Hungary and left the Party at that time. My father was blacklisted in 1957. He had a successful radio show here in the San Francisco Bay area. He lost his job and went before the House Un-American Activities Committee [actual name, the House Committee on Un-American Activities] and was hailed as a hero for standing up to them. He didn't feel much like one because he lost his job. No one would hire him after that, and he never did get another job in the radio profession. I am a red diaper baby, but I never went to socialist summer camp. I never was set down on my daddy's knee and taught about socialism. I'm much more a socialist of the heart. I want everyone to have food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and education. I am not a "convert" to socialism: that is just what I am. Utopia might be communism, but in the meantime, we have to have socialism. SHELDON: When you were growing up at home, what were your parents' attitude toward sex? What did you learn about sex? NINA: I learned that they were uncomfortable talking about it. I was never taught that it was good or bad. It was Berkeley in the 1960's, so I was basically taught that it was O.K. if you really liked the person and, more importantly, took birth control precautions. I learned most of my sexual knowledge from books that I got out of the library, so very early on, I got factual, biological, physiological knowledge and very little of the so- called "street knowledge" you get from your friends. So, sex as a physical act was demystified for me very early on. Later, when I was 14, 15, 16, I read The Joy of Sex, Our Bodies, Ourselves, which I received from my cousin when I reached puberty -- a very important book. Also, The Happy Hooker [by Xaviera Hollander, another intellect turned prostitute turned madam] was a very important book for me in terms of how it dealt with sex and sex as a profession. My parents weren't really comfortable with it. They went through Reichian therapy for awhile, but it didn't really help much. I was young and didn't know what was going on at the time. Sex was sort of ambivalent in our house. My brothers had their girlfriends over to spend the night. My oldest brother lived with his fiancee in our house in the same bedroom for a couple of years before they were able to get a place of their own. By the time my sister and I were old enough to have boys over, my family had moved apart and we were no longer living together, so I don't know if my mother would have allowed her daughters to have boyfriends over the way she allowed her sons to have girlfriends over. SHELDON: Do you think that your parents' attitude toward sex was wholly their own, or was it influenced by the attitude of the Communist Party? NINA: The Communist Party is quite puritanical in a number of ways, but it was their own attitude. You have to understand about those times -- it was the curse of their generation. But certainly that attitude didn't clash with that of the Party. SHELDON: When did you first realize that you were different sexually than most women -- an exhibitionist? NINA: Probably by 13. I knew I had these desires, and I knew that socially, they were not permitted to be expressed, so I never acted them out then. They were strictly mental on my part. I went to this nudist swimming hall at one point when I was 13, and all I wanted to do was stare at people. But I knew that staring was not considered polite or proper. It was just curiosity, being the first time I had ever been around a lot of naked adults. I just wanted to stare, to look, not necessarily to touch. I didn't start feeling more exhibitionistic until my latter teens -- 18, 19 -- realizing that I liked to go naked, but also realizing as a nice, middle-class girl who had been raised to be a little fearful of men, that you just don't go do that. I had friends who were more bold that way and they'd were more sexy clothes as teenagers, and if a guy caught a glimpse of "something", they didn't mind. I was much more reserved than that for fear of harmful reprisals from men, because in Berkeley you are taught that if you are very sexual, men will harm you somehow. SHELDON: The image of Berkeley on the East Coast, and perhaps throughout the whole country, is one of a radical, experimental place: "Free Love", "Free Speech", etc. NINA: That's about 15 years out of date, unfortunately. After the Sixties died out in the early Seventies, a new wave of feminism came. It was the anti-porn feminism, the anti-sexuality feminism, the one that said that any objectification was evil, that any visual enjoyment of women's bodies by men is harmful and oppressive to women. That is very, very much the attitude prevalent in Berkeley now. While we're not all Dworkinites [referring to long time anti- porn feminist activist Andrea Dworkin], Dworkin has a strong following here. These feminists did a lot to make men feel guilty about liking to look at women, and made women feel guilty about wanting men to look at them. Somehow, it was politically incorrect to want to be attracted to the opposite sex. So, the anti-male lesbian feminism in Berkeley is very strong. SHELDON: How did you get your start in the sex industry? NINA: When I was 21, I started stripping at the Mitchell Brothers Theatre [Now known as the O'Farrell Theatre]. The Mitchell Brothers are most famous for their movie "Behind the Green Door". I found stripping there the perfect way to explore my exhibitionism in a physically safe environment. The theatre has bouncers, and the men are not allowed to make advances or touch you in any way that you don't want, so there was never any question of my being harmed physically. Once that was taken care of, I just really blossomed. For ten minutes, three times a night, as a performing artists I had complete control of my medium -- what I wore, what I danced to, how I moved, what I did. I had a very good time doing that job for two years. It was about learning how not to be scared of men, learning how to be more confident about men, helping men feel more confident about women. I gave a lot of sexual advice, a lot of relationship advice to men, most of whom are lonely and just want to talk. I had very few "weirdos". Most of the men wanted to talk to a friendly woman while having her sit on their lap. It's much easier than going to a pick-up bar, much cheaper and certainly sexually safer than going to a prostitute, since there is no sexual conduct between the two of us. I was amazed at how many men wanted that personal contact -- they did not want an impersonal object standing between their legs. They wanted to know that I was a real person. They loved the fact that I was a nursing student, that I was intelligent and doing something with my life. That just made them feel good. SHELDON: How did you come up with the stage name "Nina Hartley"? NINA: "Nina" I chose because it was easy to say, and even the Japanese tourists could say it. The Mitchell Brothers Theatre would get Japanese tourists by the busload, and I wanted a name that they could pronounce without difficulty. Plus, I have some Alsatian blood in my background, and Nina is a French name. "Hartley" is similar to my real last name, and it also fit. I like the double syllable first and last names. "Hartley" is not too uncommon a name. It sounded like a real name, rather than other cutesy porn names that don't sound like they could be anything real. So, I wanted a name that sounded like that of a real person. SHELDON: From being a stripper, you went into the sex film industry. How? NINA: I was dancing my customary Saturday night dance, and my husband, Dave, came in and said, "You'll never guess who I saw at the corner market." I said, "Who?", and he said, "Juliet Anderson," who's also known as Aunt Peg, a porn star. She was in the produce section, squeezing cantelopes. I said, "Did you get her address?" , and he said no. That got me really upset, because we had been talking about me getting into those movies for a couple of years, and the only thing holding me back was concern for my physical safety. As luck would have it, the very next week she was back again. Dave saw her again. This time, he approached her and said that his girlfriend would like to get into the movies. She gave him an address to write to, and said, "Please send some Polaroids." So we typed a letter of introduction, sent some Polaroids, and she put me right away into her first -- and as it turned out, the last -- movie that she herself wrote, directed, and produced, called, Educating Nina. More importantly than that, she introduced me to people she knew to be on the up-and-up. The physical safety issue turned out to be a false concern. Never, at any point in this business, have I seen anyone ever attempt to harm a female performer. [Side note: In a previous interview when telling this story, Nina and Dave commented that Juliet had thought that that initial approach by Dave was a "line" by some porn fan wanting to get into her panties, so to speak.] SHELDON: Are you sure she was squeezing cantelopes and not...bananas? NINA: Cantelopes, maybe avocados....but bananas, no. SHELDON: Prior to entering the sex film industry, were you ever aroused by pornographic material? NINA: Oh, certainly! Ever since I got my hands on it at age 14, I used to read "pulp" novels in this one used-book store, and I was terribly afraid that someone was going to come up to me and go, "Excuse me, lady, how old are you?" or "Aren't you a bit young to read those books?" No one ever did. I knew that I wasn't supposed to like reading them, but I also knew that I did indeed enjoy reading them -- a real contradiction there. I found that I naturally gravitated toward novels that depicted consensual exploration, and I naturally moved away from all the ones that depicted bondage, punishment, and spanking.So, in the beginning, I had a natural sensory mechanism that pornography depicting nonconsensual acts turned me off instantly. I would not allow myself to get turned on to those images because of what they implied. But the ones that did depict mutuality were fine. Now, those books may have been written by men, with a man's idea of what a woman's sexuality is; but at a certain level, having that attitude about sex is not a bad thing. Sometimes, women get horny and they want sex. It's not a bad thing to show women as being able to do that. SHELDON: When you first watched one of your movies, what was going through your mind as you saw yourself having sex? NINA: I tried not to crack up laughing! The first time you see yourself, you're so embarrassed. You wish the makeup had been different, and you say, "Oh, my God, why didn't I do this? Why didn't I do that? " Because I have a very strong memory of the situation, it is very hard for me to get turned on to myself. I can get turned on to other people in the same scene, or to other people in the same movie. Certain scenes I've had with men, but mainly with women, I can get turned on to because I 'm really turned on to the other person. But when I watch myself, I'm so critical that I can't just relax and watch it. I can not look at myself with an objective eye because I'm looking at myself. So I can rely on other people, who tell me that I do O.K. I think many people who watch themselves in these movies have the same reaction. -------------------------------------------------------------------- [..to be continued.... -- Anthony]
Emily on 
Anthony Kennerson on 
Jenny on 
