Anarella Martínez Madrid
Anarella Martínez Madrid
Occupation: Founder, CEO and Producer of Sex School Hub
Location: Berlin, Germany
The Sex in My Business: The name really says it all: Sex School Hub. We are a web platform that brings together full-service sex workers, porn performers, filmmakers and sex educators. Our work is all about sex, but To be specific, we bring together the knowledge and experience of myriad sex professionals through the explicit sex education films we feature on our platform. Our mission is to reach out to all kinds of people—from the very shy who feel unsure about how to approach different types of sex, to the more experienced who want to deepen their knowledge. Part of our goal is to normalize sex, so we deal with a broad range of sex-related issues, such as consent, sexual health, non-normative sex practices, and many other topics related to sexuality and sexual behavior. The more you know about sex, the more enjoyable it can be—so we want to give people the knowledge they need to make their sex and relationships easier to navigate, more pleasurable, and hopefully, even a lot more fun!
A Typical Day: Depending on what our current priorities are at Sex School Hub, my days can be very different. Sometimes my days are filled with hectic film production dynamics, but many are also devoted to managing the business, or programming a website we're about to launch, or simply doing office work. Whatever I happen to be doing, my days are busy—everywhere I go, whether in public transport, at the park, or sometimes even while meeting my friends, I am always working on my phone.
The Best Part: My favorite part of all this is definitely the fact that our platform recognizes and features sex workers as competent sex educators. It’s thanks to their real-world experience and expertise that we are able to demystify so many pervasive sex myths. I also love that we bring high production values to the films we produce—we really believe in what we're doing at Sex School Hub and hope that audiences will appreciate it! Obviously, I’m very passionate about the social and educational work we hope to accomplish with Sex School Hub. Our aim is to help people who feel isolated in any aspect of their sexualities, and to facilitate more openness and creativity in all matters related to sex. This job is an idea I’ve been brewing since 2016, and it’s incredibly fulfilling.
The Worst Part: Even considering my most stressful production days, online censorship is the hardest thing I have to deal with. Education is part of the solution against ignorance and negative attitudes towards sex, yet our presence on social media and other online platforms is constantly being censored. Sometimes, I feel overwhelmed by the massive responsibility of running a project like this, especially when I think of all the people who depend upon it financially. When these feelings creep in, I usually pause and try to visualize what this project will hopefully do to help people enrich their sex lives, to think of what our being there will mean to them, and to remind myself of all the love that we, the Sex School team, have put into our work. These thoughts encourage me to continue working really hard on this project, shoot more episodes, and watch as our platform continues to evolve.
How I Got Here: My background is in cultural management, production and performance art, and my artistic work was always centered around sex, relationships, and the emotional processes that happen within them. Long before getting started with Sex School Hub, these interests led me into sex positive spaces, and the sex positive thinking I developed there eventually evolved into my vision for the platform. It started at first with the idea of creating explicit educational films, delivered by full-service sex workers and porn actors. I had always been fascinated by the work of film director Poppy Sanchez (who has also directed a number of porn films), so I asked her to join me in developing the ideas. Later, I invited a number of porn and full-service sex workers from Berlin to join, such as Sadie Lune who has over 20 years of experience as a sex worker in various capacities. Because many of us have known each other for a while and worked together previously, the evolution of the project has been quite organic.
What Society Thinks: I am always working toward the normalization of sex and diversity in society, so I’m very open about my job with my close friends and family. Fortunately, I don’t face too many problems within those close circles. In less familiar environments, unfortunately, I have to be more cautious and selective about the information that I share. Professionally, current social attitudes and stigmas have made it challenging to spread the word about our platform. However, I am convinced that these stigmas can be minimized, and hopefully erased, with adequate, unbiased, shame-free sex education. That’s why we have made it our job at Sex School Hub to challenge these attitudes.
When I’m Not At Work: In my free time, like most people, I usually like to hang out with friends—and what better way to do it than by attending sex-positive festivals and enjoying the sexy city of Berlin.
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Published in Issue IV: Activism
