Casey Calvert: Pain Slut
As you are by now painfully aware, there two kinds of people in quarantine: the single and the partnered. I fall into the former category and as a result, find myself spending no small volume of time in the company of the very gorgeous Asa Akira.
Google teaches that her many talents include podcaster: she hosts the Pornhub Podcast. For the March 23rd edition, Akira interviews Casey Calvert.
Calvert makes a few very interesting observations. Firstly, she explains that while attending the XBIZ awards, after an unnamed actress received an award, she thanked the press and attendees and then said, ‘Don’t book me for incest, rape or kidnapping scenes – bye!’
Calvert explained that the comment ‘offended’ her. She believes there is a solid line between fantasy and reality and, just as any subject is the appropriate material for art, then any fantasy is the appropriate material for porn.
She also said that judging people’s fantasies is wrong.
I was very disturbed by this, not least of all because it struck me as entirely reasonable. Surely pedophilia fits into the same category of taboo as rape and incest. And if simply downloading and possessing child porn is a crime, why not the other three?
Especially given the link between practising something as a fantasy and eventually graduating to the reality of action?
She also went on to say that getting your ideas about sex from porn is as ridiculous getting your ideas about driving from The Fast and the Furious.
This also seems entirely reasonable.
Personally, I don’t enjoy porn like I used to. Generally speaking, most of the time I’m combing through what I watch, looking for emotional and psychological triggers connected to pretty girls. Most often, I tend to focus on girls that remind me of girls I’ve known or been with.
That’s the measure of my engagement. More and more of what’s available seems to be a kind of freak-show. I find myself wondering the same things I’d wonder if I was watching a snuff film: does that hurt? Is that person suffering – either now, or later?
My instinct is that, as a culture, we are unprepared for this. What ethical framework do we have? I am perfectly willing to accept the proposition that we have evolved socially and as a result, have to reconsider established institutions like marriage and the family, not to mention ideas like fidelity.
But then, is sex a profoundly psychological experience, the way striking the physical keys of a piano keyboard gives rise to the ephemeral music that rises from it? Or is that a sentimental notion?
I accept that we’re all having separate experiences of the same ‘reality’ – as William Blake writes, ‘The fool sees not the same tree that the wise man sees’. However, a tree remains a tree to some extent, doesn’t it? Are some influences corrosive?
And then, the ‘God is Dead’ quotation from Nietzsche rises like the ghost of a haunted house:
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?
“What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
If love and its children, empathy and respect, are no longer the cornerstones of sex, where does that leave us?
Theme Park at its Darkest 
May 6, 2026 at 10:26 pm
i know that this is an old, old post, but i just stumbled upon her podcast and agree with what you’re saying about casey calvert’s comments and also found your introspection on sex and its current state incredibly interesting. please excluse the grammar… a lot of this is just a stream of consciousness
i don’t think the xbiz actress meant anything personal by her comments. i think everyone in porn (hopefully) knows that they’re delivering a fantasy. it was just her preference to not shoot the scenes. i suspect that this is due to calvert’s projection on her part. many people in the bdsm community do face a lot of societal for their tastes.
i enjoyed your takes about sex. i personally find that people (especially with more non-mainstream interests haha) have a fairly shallow introspection about their sexual interests, but maybe its a bit delusional for me to expect people to do deep soul-searching for their sexual tastes. i also find that many porn performers also have a very one dimensional view about the impact of their professions.
in the kink community in general, i find that theres a type of pretension that lacks any critical insight that people in this community are more enlightened then people with more mainstream interests and that their tastes are more complex and nuanced than these people could ever hope to understand. theres also this contrite parroting of “don’t judge people’s kinks. everyone is entitled to their fantasy just as long as its not hurting anyone” blah blah blah.
maybe its implicitly understood in the community (i personally found that its not really discussed about so this might be myopic), but i’m 100% certain there are sexual interests that go past whips, belts, extreme simulated scenarios that would have these people balking. Zoophiles, pedophiles, necrophiliacs, those who get off on death and murder. What then? I simply think that there fantasies are not to be just welcomed with open arms as the consequences, the irreversible change of those without a voice, are much more than bruising and whip marks.
as someone with more unusual tastes in sex and somewhat in the community, i don’t make excuses for where they lie and where they stem from and perhaps any troubling implications, but i also know that they’re nothing to beat myself up over(as they don’t pertain to anything that could harm a vulnerable– animals, children or inflict actual, lasting pain on others) and also nothing i can truly control. i was shaped like this and maybe to some extent wired this way. who knows
Some food for thought: with fantasies such as rape and kidnapping, for a theorized multitude of reasons, those fantasies (commonly realistically controlled and fairly unrealistic to what a real rape and kidnapping actually are) are fairly popular amongst women. speculation includes the thrill of “sexy, rough domination” (again not actually a true rape scenario), taboo, and some sort of reclaimed agency.
i find the reasoning similar to a cuckold scenario. people don’t actually want to be cheated on, but many people engaging in the scenario “ethically” talk to their partner and plan something out.
im not someone who cares about incest, but im willing to guess that it falls upon the allure of . as porn is used a social tool and can reflect and shape society’s desires, i genuinely do find that the prevalence has disturbing and deeply uncomfortable implications. i find that a lot of porn performers fail to acknowledge this when asked about the negative impacts of porn, but perhaps it would be damaging to their careers.