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Vadala called her alternative vision for porn “positive sexual role modeling.” It employed ideas developed by members of Club 90, a sex workers collective founded in 1983 that met regularly to discuss the industry. Vadala decided that her sets would be clean, respectful, and put women in control of their own images. Her films would include performers of color, dramatically underrepresented in the industry, and older actresses. Most importantly, she was inspired to change how women were represented in pornographic films: “These movies are sold based on the women,” Vadala told German feminist erotic filmmaker Petra Joy in 2008, “but our sexuality was completely ignored in them.” I LOVE ALL OF THIS!

"By contrast, Vadala’s stories led the viewer through lush, sensual settings depicting women’s pleasure in seduction and foreplay as well as intercourse. Rites of Passion (1988), for example, features men and women discovering mutual pleasure through Tantric sex. In Three Daughters (1986), sisters explore their sexuality; their middle-aged parents also rediscover their own erotic relationship. The Femme Chocolat series (2007) puts black women at the center of the action in settings that range from vacation beaches to the music business. As important, Vadala also introduced new workplace ethics that protected female performers’ physical safety, gave them the power and status to make their own creative decisions on the set, and eventually, provided the opportunity to direct their own films.

By 2006 so many producers and directors had followed Vadala’s lead that Toronto’s Good for Her adult store established the annual Feminist Porn Awards (FPAs), which set criteria for what constituted feminist pornography. To qualify for an award, a film had to use erotic narratives to challenge stereotypes. In porn, this includes featuring performers of color, trans*, fat, older, or disabled performers, who are typically stereotyped or relegated to the fetish market in mainstream porn. To qualify as feminist pornography, the director had to put the actor’s pleasure and agency at the center of the story, ask for actors’ consent for any sexual act, permit actors to revoke consent, and provide clean and safe working conditions.

Before she died of ovarian cancer in September 2015, Vadala had become a pornography legend. She had produced eighteen films, directing and writing most of them. An almost unexplored figure in the histories of sexuality and feminism, Vadala led the way for today’s feminist porn entrepreneurs, women and queers who view themselves not just as pornographers, but as educators, writers, activists, artists, and intellectuals. Most of all, Vadala set a precedent: she responded to feminist critiques of porn by making feminist porn of her own. Her movies were “more about the quality of the sex rather than how outrageous and violating it can be,” she wrote on her website. “Women tend to thank me for creating movies that are sensitive to what they want to see, that encompass class and taste, and make them feel good about themselves and their sexuality. Men thank me for creating movies that they can share with their woman.” I LOVE ALL OF THIS TOO!

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