Contributors « Sex Workers Built the Internet

Dr. Zahra Stardust is a queer femme writer, performer, artist, mother and scholar. She is a former Penthouse Pet, Hustler Honey, Australian Adult Star, Australian Pole Dance Champion and Feminist Porn Awards Heartthrob of the Year, and has toured internationally as a pole dance instructor, trapeze artist and sex educator. Her first book Indie Porn: Revolution, Regulation and Resistance (Duke University Press, 2024) explored the politics of online sexual content moderation, based on her PhD thesis. Her next book Sextech: A Critical Introduction (Polity Press, 2026) explores the politics of sextech design, data and governance. Zahra has published in books such as Queer Sex Work, Coming out Like a Porn Star, and the DIY Porn Handbook. She is on the Sexual Health and Wellbeing Advisory Group for the World Health Organisation and the Sexual Rights Committee of the World Association for Sexual Health. instagram linkedin

Mistress Danielle Blunt is a lifestyle and professional dominatrix with experience working since 2008. Blunt is a disabled sex worker, artist, community organizer, public health researcher, and the co-founder of Hacking//Hustling, a collective of sex workers and accomplices working at the intersection of technology and social justice to interrupt state surveillance and violence facilitated by technology. They lead community-based participatory research on sex work and equitable access to technology from a public health perspective with fellow disabled sex workers. Blunt is a former Just Tech Fellow with the Social Science Research Council and a Senior Civic Media Fellow at USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab. They organize cross-movement, sex-worker-led trainings for the abortion access movement. Blunt is a recipient of both Electronic Frontier Foundation’s annual award and Public Knowledge’s 20/20 Visionary Award for Future Tech Policy Leaders. She enjoys watching her community thrive and making men cry. twitter website Hacking//Hustling

Cléo Ouyang is an artist and professional Dominatrix based in LA. She is one of the co-founders of Veil Machine, a sex worker artist collective. website

Dr. Rachel Kuo writes, teaches, and researches on race, social movements, and digital technology. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has published two books, Movement Media: In Pursuit of Solidarity and the anthology We Are Each Other’s Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities. Her longer-term research goals and questions center and engage emergent questions and practices from grassroots social movements. Her research has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Social Science Research Council. website

Chibundo Egwuatu is a systems thinker, anthropologist, organizer, etc., interested in some human behavior (e.g., sex work, drug use, etc.), tool use (e.g., the internet, the prison, etc.), and doing something about it (i.e., organizing, policy work, thinking). also deeply interested in how humans witness, experience, articulate, and change their positioning on social terrain (e.g., race, gender, class, etc.) and how they do so. also interested in what it takes to be here and happy about it (somatics), in addition to building a world that can receive and support a happy object. lastly, always down to clown – feel free to reach out for a collaboration or a chat. website instagram linkedin

Yin Q is a writer/director/producer/sexworker rights organizer based in NYC. They are the founding member of Kink Out and a core member of Red Canary Song. More info at YinQ.net. Kink Out Red Canary Song website

Gabriella Garcia (she/her) is the co-founder of Decoding Stigma, a cross-institutional working group that calls for the inclusion of sex worker voices in all spaces that purport to be designing the future. She recently completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program (ITP), where her research focused on the co-history of commercial sex and media technology. She sits on the Community Advisory Board for Urban Justice Center’s Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP). website substack

Tina Horn is a writer, educatrix, and creative consultant. She is the author of the book Why Are People Into That?: A Cultural Investigation of Kink, based on her long running indie fetish podcast, as well as the sci-fi comic book series Safe Sex (SfSx), and the cult detective thriller Deprog. Her journalism on sexual subcultures has appeared in Rolling Stone, Playboy, Wondery’s Operator podcast, and elsewhere, along with numerous anthologies including We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival, which she also coedited. She is a LAMBDA Literary Fellow, an AVN nominee, and the recipient of two Feminist Porn Awards. website instagram

Contributors

This project gathers the words, ideas, and experiences of people whose identities encompass—but are not limited to—sex workers, artists, activists, organizers, and researchers.