Sex Activist Stoya Is the Leader Porn Needs Now

Co-founder of the genre-defying porn site TrenchcoatX, activist and sex star Stoya talks to Playboy about love, beauty and dealing with the haters

- By Molly Crabapple. Photography by Ryan Lowry

It’s hard to capture an old friend in one anecdote, but I’ll try. The time is two a.m., and Stoya and I are smoking outside an East Village bar. A mink hangs from her shoulders. The streetlights catch her feline cheekbones like a kiss. Stoya tells me about the mid–19th century prima ballerina Emma Livry. In an era when dancers routinely caught fire from stage lights, Livry refused to destroy the ethereality of her art by soaking her tutu in flame retardant. When she died of burns, she had no regrets. Stoya notes that panic about safety often focuses on the bodies, and the choices, of young women. She wonders why no one thought to move the lights.

This moment hints at Stoya’s ferocious mix of glamour, toughness and nerdery. A classically trained ballerina until an injury in her mid-teens ruined her prospects, Stoya became a porn star—and I use the word star in the sense that applies to Garbo. She has written for The New York Times, starred in a Serbian sci-fi film (the upcoming Ederlezi Rising) and trained as an aerialist in Moscow. She has also moved into entrepreneurship, co-founding the genredefying porn site TrenchcoatX.

When one of the biggest porn studios in the country treated her with disrespect, she chose to work as a waitress rather than kowtow. No matter what she does, Stoya exudes a fierce, hard-won sense of freedom.

PLAYBOY: What challenges do you face every day in the course of your work?