Nina Hartley, a porn legend's view on why she still does porn in her late 50's

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"I got started in San Francisco in 1982 as a house dancer first at the Sutter Cinema, which is now defunct, and later on at the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre. I was dancing one day a week and going to nursing school five days a week. Dancing was the culmination of a longtime history of public exhibitionism. I'm a '70s feminist, and I was told I had the right to live my life sexually on my terms and the responsibility to do it in a safe manner. For me stripping was that way. That was the place for women to go to be looked at naked while remaining safe.

For two years I struggled with thinking, Could I be a feminist and want to take off my clothes? I came down the path that, yes, I could indeed be a feminist and take off my clothes because doing that was my choice. I was not being forced to or coerced to, and it was part of my sexual identity as an exhibitionist to do this.

I became interested in sex as an idea when I was 12. I didn't have the words "polyamorous," "non-monogamous," or "queer" growing up, but I did have "exhibitionist," "voyeur," "bisexual," and "swinger." I've been in two long-term relationships. One was my first marriage, which was a triad marriage with a man and a woman. I was in that threesome relationship from 1981 to 2000. They're still together. He and I were legally married in 1986, and the divorce was finalized in 2003. She was with him when we met and is with him, still. They were never married. Let's just say it was a regrettable first marriage. If I had not had the outlet of being Nina Hartley, we would have broken up much sooner, but I'm good at compartmentalizing. When I was on set, onstage, or being Nina, they didn't bother me. My personal life was quite a struggle. It was a long time before I recognized what my responsibility to my own life was. I tell women in their 20s now, "If you're unhappy, leave. You get to go now." I'm very supportive of them. The problems I have in my life now — and this is what I tell young people — a few wrong turns in your 20s and it affects you into your 50s. I try to mentor younger women as much as I can, knowing that they're going to make their own mistakes anyway and you can't stop them from doing anything.

I graduated from nursing school in 1985 magna cum laude, and I passed my licensing test on my very first try. I went to nursing school so that I could become a nurse midwife because my feminism was really tweaked in about 1972 when I read Spiritual Midwifery [a classic book about home birth]. My feminism started with wanting to help women reclaim the birth experience as a positive and empowering choice for themselves. If the sex thing in my life had not been turned up so high, I would have been a nurse midwife with a very active social life. I never did work as a nurse though. I wasn't ready for someone to die if I had a bad day.

I don't have children. My joke now is that they forgot to wind my biological clock at the factory. I'm a devoted aunt and great-aunt. I'm the only woman I know without kids who did not want her own. I'm very happy not to be a mother. Going back to why I do what I do, I do it for my own jollies, but also because in our culture, sexuality is sick and sick people need a nurse's care. People are suffering with sexuality, suffering from not being able to be at home in their bodies, at home in their skin. They're suffering from not being able to make human connections with other people on a healthy and safe and pleasurable level. Dancing in a club that allowed full nudity, full penetration, full girl-on-girl sex, for me it was awesome."

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