Videos from Jiz Lee and Shawn feature feminist, sex-positive images of queer couples, a rarity in the adult industry.

The first time I came across Jiz Lee and Shawn, they were having sex. They were the stars of "The Crash Pad"— the first porn video by Pink and White Productions, a San Francisco feminist, queer porn company where Shawn is a producer. The real life couple had sex just the way they like it, with a lot of sucking, rimming, fisting and squirting. I was amazed. Besides the sex being hot and authentic, it was the first time on film that I’d seen two androgynous, Asian hapas get it on and enjoy it. They looked like people I could identify with — hardly like mainstream (i.e. heterosexual) Asian porn, where I’d typically see two feminine Asian women fake it for some guy’s attention. That Lee and Shawn couldn’t take their eyes off of each other made it clear that the chemistry they shared was not just for the cameras.

Images of sex-positive, queer, people of color are a rare find in the mainstream porn industry, but Lee and Shawn are committed to changing this. Whether it’s exploring identity through eroticism in art or porn, the hapa couple has had a long history of battling misconceptions about their race, sexuality and gender expression.

“If we don’t take the power of creating images that represent us, we will continually be held subject to the assumptions and stereotypes that others create on our behalf,” Shawn says.

Aside from starring in porn videos, Shawn and Lee have recreated images of the queer hapa body through art. Shawn, a multi-media digital artist, and Lee, a trained dancer, explore the tensions between art and porn in their work, individually and collaboratively. “Fine art is the rich man’s porn. Larry Flint once said that newspaper stands [that sell porn] are the poor man’s art gallery. I consider my work hybrid because I aim to bridge art and pornography. I don’t distinguish between the two,” Shawn says.

Before teaming up with Pink and White, the genderqueer couple performed together on stage, calling themselves Twincest to play up on the sexual and sometimes taboo aspects of their relationship. According to Lee, “Twincest coincides with our identities and infatuation. Shawn and I feel like siblings in our experience of the world. Nothing is black and white, and this fact is even clearer when you’re gray.”

Inspired by manga references to brotherly sexual love, the name Twincest resonated with them because of their similar backgrounds and shared love for eccentric performance and challenging the status quo. “My gender, race and ethnicity are fluid, sometimes performative, which I feel is a quintessential attribute of my hapaness. I think Jiz and I have a lot in common on this level,” Shawn says.

The couple met in 2004 when Shawn exhibited her work at Slit, an Asian American art show on eroticism at The Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco. After exchanging numbers at the exhibit, the two collaborated on a show for Asian American Dance Performances, where Lee was the executive director. “We definitely bonded over art,” Lee says.

From the time they first met to star in Pink and White’s most recent porn film "Superfreak," which was successfully released in 2007, Lee and Shawn have encountered many obstacles in art, porn and real life. Negotiating boundaries isn’t new to this couple, who started dating while Shawn was — and still is — in an open relationship with her partner Kara. Although Shawn enjoys a domestic life living with Kara and their two cats, she shares a social and artistic world with Lee. “A common question that I was asked was ‘If you had to choose one, who would you choose?’ I couldn’t choose between Jiz and Kara, so I chose what I wanted: dating them both. Jiz and I are a public couple, but I live with Kara,” Shawn says.

Despite near breakups and disagreements, all three have grown to respect their relationships with each other. “We have great communication and we understand each other well,” Shawn insists. On her second date with Lee, Shawn suggested that Kara join them. The night ended with Kara videotaping Shawn and Lee having sex. “Kara doesn’t like being in front of the camera, but she likes to participate,” Tamaribuchi says.

The arrangement has suited Lee and Shawn just fine. Finding their niche with Pink and White Productions has allowed them to further explore boundaries in their identities and relationship. “Although I’d been doing porn prior to Pink and White [through kink.com], I’d never done it with a partner before until now,” Shawn says.

For the past four years, Pink and White has featured people of diverse racial, sexual and gender persuasions with a focus on “authentic representations of sexual desire.” Shawn first got involved with Pink and White when she met its director and founder, Shine Louise Houston, in 2003 when they worked together at Good Vibrations. “I immediately wanted to be involved,” Shawn says. “Queer woman of color-owned porn company? I thought ‘Sign me up!’”

It wasn’t until they’d been dating for six months that Shawn had approached Lee to get involved with Pink and White. “I had danced nude in front of audiences with Dandelion Dancetheater and was comfortable with myself sexually,” Lee says.

With their intent to diversify and revolutionize mainstream porn, Shawn and Lee have succeeded in getting positive feedback from viewers, who are turned on by the duo’s blurred gender and racial fluidity. But the question of being fetishized does come up. Although some viewers have labeled the couple exotic and oriental, Lee insists that there’s a larger system at work when viewers buy porn based on their sexual and racial preferences. “I feel that almost everything is fetishized. Do a search for Asian porn and you’ll get nothing but fetishized female Asian porn stars. I have yet to be asked to participate in those films, probably because I’m not Asian and female enough,” Lee says.

Lee and Shawn say that the problem lies with the media’s power to reinforce stereotypes. However, the couple believes that becoming porn stars has allowed them to reclaim their identities as sources of empowerment. “I wanted to make hot images that I could identify with and that I felt accurately represented my desires and sexuality,” Shawn says.

The couple plans to continue working in the porn business, seeing it as “less of a career and more of a way of life.” They envision Pink and White Productions making more of a significant impact on the mainstream porn industry. “I’d love to be the next Jenna Jameson, only hapa and genderqueer,” Lee says. While she does enjoy the spotlight, Shawn plans to continue working behind the scenes. “Being a producer pretty much has married me to Pink and White. Married in a 1950s, live long or die trying way, not like a Britney Spears married one night in Vegas way.”

Note: After this article was published on the web and at their request over privacy concerns, Jiz's real name was replaced with her stage name, and Shawn's last name was deleted.

Patricia Justine Tumang is a freelance writer and co-editor of Homelands: Women’s Journeys Across Race, Place, and Time. Find out more about her work at www.patriciatumang.com.