On YAS Podcast, host Daisy Ducati interviews Dr. Mireille Miller-Young (UC Santa Barbara), author of A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography, about researching Black women’s labor, representation, and sexual agency in adult media. Miller-Young discusses identifying in solidarity with sex workers, academic stigma and career pushback, and how sex workers cared for her during fieldwork as she sought to disrupt extractive research traditions. She explains developing a “Black feminist pornographic gaze,” critiques anti-porn feminism’s shallow analysis and alignment with criminalization, and connects policies like the Nordic model and FOSTA-SESTA to increased danger and deplatforming. The conversation also addresses racialized policing of massage parlors, censorship and surveillance in academia, and her argument that Black women navigate both exploitation and agency through “erotic sovereignty,” urging listeners to avoid stigma and center sex workers’ voices.

All the Chapters

00:00 Conference Backlash

00:39 Podcast Welcome

02:00 Pronouns Solidarity

04:34 Care From Workers

07:07 Awards And Motherhood

09:00 Research Origins

11:47 Labor Roots Story

14:48 Archive Hunt

16:31 Pornographic Gaze

20:52 Policy And Policing

23:29 FOSTA SESTA Fallout