Madison Young, the kinkiest feminist in porn

Submissive and feminist in the same sentence? For many, that sounds like a contradiction in terms. For Madison Young, it is a way of life, held for more than twenty years. In 2010, she described herself to Salon as “one of the world’s kinkiest feminists”, and she has never stopped proving it, on set and on stage, in her books and all the way to the cinema. No contradiction, no provocation: coherence. Shall we make the introductions?

Who is Madison Young?

Madison Young is an American director, performer, author and sex educator, a leading figure of feminist and queer porn. She prefers a livelier title herself: “sexual revolutionary” (Salon, 2010). She arrived in San Francisco in 2000, started in front of the camera in 2002 and was making her own films by 2005.

Self-taught, and proud of it. “I learned how to write by writing and how to make films by picking up a camera and making films,” she told HuffPost in 2014. No film school, no permission asked. On set, the same appetite: “Let’s play with the words that are here. See what works, see what doesn’t and then make the magic.” And the rope, in all this? She calls herself “a deep muscle person”, someone who needs a touch that holds. Timid, feather-light caresses need not apply.

She grew up in southern Ohio, a conservative setting she has never stopped revisiting. Pronouns she/they, queer in her gender as in her sexuality, and one motto for a compass: “Reveal All, Fear Nothing”. Quite a program.

From Ohio to San Francisco, how did she become a figure of feminist porn?

Madison Young made her name in feminist porn by building a place, a body of work and a community in San Francisco. In 2001, she founded the Femina Potens gallery. From 2005, she stepped behind the camera.

Before the film sets came the Lusty Lady, a San Francisco peep show where she worked. That is where, she told The Rumpus in June 2014, she “started to reclaim the word ‘slut'”. The word stings… and that is exactly the point: to strip it of its power to insult.

The Femina Potens gallery, on Market Street, ran from 2001 to 2016. Art gallery, performance space, a haven for bodies and genders that spill out of the boxes: it gave visibility to women, queer and trans artists, and made room for subjects that mainstream galleries avoid, from feminist porn to sex work. In 2010, Salon described it as a space for those “living outside the female-male gender binary”.

As a director, she notably films real couples. Her stance fits in one line: the pleasure shown should be the pleasure lived. This work earned her several awards at the Feminist Porn Awards, the ceremony created in 2006 by the Toronto store Good for Her. The awards’ criteria say it all about her approach: women or marginalized people behind the camera, real pleasure and genuine agency for every performer, images that shake up stereotypes.

What does “feminist porn” mean to Madison Young?

For Madison Young, feminist porn is not only about shooting differently: it is also about learning to love your own body. “It’s not just about changing the way in which porn is made but also advocating for love of our own bodies,” she told The Rumpus in 2014.

Other voices share this path, to be found in our selection of feminist porn directors. For her, the key word remains authenticity. She devoted an essay to it, “Authenticity and its role within feminist pornography”, published in 2014 in the very first issue of Porn Studies, an academic journal from the publisher Routledge. A performer in a scholarly journal? The gesture speaks volumes.

And submission, in all this? No contradiction in her eyes. “My submission, my relationship to BDSM, my queerness, my feminism are a part of my identity,” she sums up. Letting go of control, within a chosen and consensual frame, remains a choice. And it is that choice that matters.

The same logic applies to performers’ health. In 2010, she defended both condoms and freedom: “safer sex practices can be sexy,” she explained to Salon, while arguing that “making condoms mandatory for all adult films is just as confining and dis-empowering as eliminating condoms”. But careful: defending choice does not mean neglecting protection. It means refusing to let others decide for the people most concerned.

The Queer X Show, her European tour filmed by Émilie Jouvet

In 2010, Madison Young toured Europe with the Queer X Show, a feminist and queer performance cabaret. French director Émilie Jouvet turned it into a documentary, Too Much Pussy! Feminist Sluts in the Queer X Show.

In the troupe, from Berlin to Malmö: author Wendy Delorme, DJ Metzgerei, actress Judy Minx, singer Mad Kate, artist Sadie Lune and Madison Young. The film premiered in April 2010 at the Cinémarges festival in Bordeaux, followed in 2011 by an uncensored version, Much More Pussy!

Eight years later, French academia took it up. In the first issue of the Cahiers de Marge, in January 2018, Béatrice Alonso analyzed the show and presented Madison Young as “an American pornographic film actress, director, writer, queer activist and performer”.

This road trip is a reminder of something easily forgotten: feminist porn has never been an American affair alone. Part of its history was written in France.

From Daddy to By the Roots, how does she tell her own life story?

Madison Young tells her life story in Daddy, a memoir published in 2014 by Rare Bird Books, then in By the Roots, the feature film she adapted from it in 2026. Two forms, one common thread: father figures.

With a foreword by Annie Sprinkle, backed by thirty years of erotic film and photography, the book follows her relationships with fathers, from her biological father to her BDSM partners, up to the moment when fantasy and reality stop matching. It also exists in Spanish, under the title Papi. Her motto, “Reveal All, Fear Nothing”, even gave its title to her one-woman show.

The adaptation, announced in July 2022, reached the screen in 2026. Madison Young wrote, directed and produced it. Emily Robinson plays Madison, a young queer gallerist from San Francisco in a BDSM relationship, who returns to her conservative Ohio hometown and confronts the memories of a repressive childhood. Alongside her: Brant Daugherty, Ally Sheedy and Margaret Cho.

The film closed the Beverly Hills Film Festival on April 18, 2026, where Emily Robinson won the Best Actress award. Interviewed by Cinema Femme that month, the filmmaker summed up her intention: “If we’re able to create a safe space to have open, honest conversations about desire and pleasure, we can loosen those knots.” Knots (spoiler: with her, the rope is never far away).

What is Madison Young doing today?

Her current project is By the Roots. But passing on knowledge matters to her as much as creating.

In 2016, she published two guides: The Ultimate Guide to Sex Through Pregnancy and Motherhood, from Cleis Press, on sexuality during pregnancy and motherhood, and The DIY Porn Handbook, from Greenery Press, on learning to document your own sexuality. The same idea drives her Erotic Film School, an intensive three-day, thirty-hour course designed so that queer and feminist communities can film their own stories.

Then came Submission Possible, a documentary series on queer kink, fetish and BDSM scenes, which she has hosted, directed and produced for the Revry platform since 2020, and Wash Your Mouth Out, a podcast on feminist parenting. Because Madison Young is also a parent, and says so plainly: “Teaching agency over one’s body is a key factor in how feminism plays into my parenting.”

“All artists are essentially activists,” she told HuffPost in 2014. With her, it is no slogan.

FAQ about Madison Young

What is Madison Young’s connection to France?

Madison Young is American, from Ohio and made in San Francisco. But she has a strong link with the French queer scene, through the Queer X Show filmed by Émilie Jouvet and premiered in Bordeaux in 2010.

What books has Madison Young written?

A memoir, Daddy (Rare Bird Books, 2014), then two guides in 2016: The Ultimate Guide to Sex Through Pregnancy and Motherhood (Cleis Press) and The DIY Porn Handbook (Greenery Press).

What is the film By the Roots about?

By the Roots adapts Daddy: a queer gallerist from San Francisco, played by Emily Robinson, returns to her native Ohio to confront her childhood. Written, directed and produced by Madison Young, it closed the Beverly Hills Film Festival on April 18, 2026.