Hugh Hunter recently turned three. This month marked the performer’s third year working in the adult industry.

“I shot my first scene as Hugh Hunter for TitanMen on December 8th of 2014. My first scene partner was Jesse Jackman, and the director was Jasun Mark,” Hunter explained. “And truly, I initially saw this as kind of a one-off thing… That I was going to do a couple of scenes for Titan to say that I had done it and that was going to be it.”

But Hunter, an alter ego of experienced singer, cabaret performer and #tattedmusicaltheatreman Fiore Barbini, found he really took to porn.

“I had such a good experience and found myself to be really enjoying being in front of a camera and performing that I thought it was something that I would pursue to see what my opportunities and options could be,” he shared.

Since then, Hunter has shot with nearly every major studio in the United States and throughout Europe. His work has been well received by fans and peers, earning him a number of nods from various industry award-granting organizations. Recent nominations for AVN’s 2018 GayVN Awards comeback, however, have led to some controversy.

Last month, Hunter publicly declined his nominations for the 2018 GayVN Awards, citing racism and bigotry in the adult entertainment industry.

Via a statement posted on Twitter on Nov. 25, Hunter explained: “The gay porn industry has always been a place of veiled racism and bigotry. It now appears as if the GayVN Awards have chosen to make this racism and bigotry more blatant…”

As evidence, Hunter cited the addition of GayVN’s “Best Ethnic Scene” category, which featured the works of Black, Latin and Asian performers exclusively.

“GayVN has chosen to segregate these models and create a category unto themselves,” Hunter wrote.

In response to Hunter’s statement, AVN has merged GayVN’s “Best Ethnic Scene” category with the “Best Duo” category, in addition to offering apologies and stating intentions to take feedback from the community.

YNOT spoke to Hunter about transparency and categorization in porn awards programming, as well as what we all can do to do better.

YNOT: Can you describe some issues you see with adult industry awards in general?

Hugh Hunter: I’m just gonna say it because I think it needs to be voiced… I have so many issues with porn awards in general because I don’t understand who nominates people for the awards, I don’t understand who the voting body is for awards. I know there are a few fan-voted awards in each show usually, but the majority and the big awards — “Movie of the Year,” “Director of the Year,” “Performer of the Year,” that type of thing — are all voted on by the “voting body” of the organization, and I don’t know who these people are. No one knows who these people are.

It isn’t like with the Oscars where we know who the voting body is. For porn awards, it doesn’t work that way. All too often, I find myself seeing a list of nominees and then a winner that just so happens to be an advertiser or sponsor in some way. These awards are supposed to celebrate the industry — that’s the whole purpose of any awards show, celebrating the industry — and when they’re awarding the people who are sponsoring them or advertising through them or merchandising through them, it’s hardly celebrating the entire industry because the entire industry is never recognized in any of these shows.

Are there any specific issues you see with breaking awards programming out by media types or target audience?

The fact that there are gay awards and then just the “regular” straight porn awards… If a company is only focused on gay media, I understand them only having gay porn awards. If the company is only focused on straight media, I understand them just having straight porn awards because they don’t deal in the other sections of the industry. That’s fair I’d say.

But with AVN, they deal in both sections of the industry, so to splinter off and have the GayVNs, it’s a little homophobic. Then, the fact that [that awards program] just disappeared. They didn’t have the GayVNs for seven years like that arm didn’t matter, like it didn’t bring in enough money or it wasn’t important enough for them to deal with. Meanwhile, trans people are included in the “regular” straight awards, which is great for the trans folks… but it just seems a little odd that they be separated out from the gay folks.

#NewProfilePic pic.twitter.com/X7pELSgTos

— Hugh Hunter (@theHughHunter) December 11, 2017

So in addition to all these issues, how did the GayVNs catch you off guard this year?

I started seeing all of the congratulatory tweets going around on Twitter – gents congratulating each other for their nominations. I also saw them congratulating themselves, which is mindboggling to me. That’s something that seems to happen in the porn industry that I don’t see it in other industries. Beyoncé doesn’t congratulate herself on her Grammy nominations – it’s odd.

So I’m like, “Oh I better look this up and see what’s going on with them.” And as usual there’s 15 to 20 people in every category because it’s a marketing approach from the producers of the show. The more people you nominate, the more people who are going to tweet, post, Snapchat, Instagram about your awards – so you’ll get all this free publicity because you’ve nominated 4,000 people instead of just nominating five in a category, which is standard.

So I’m breezing through the awards and — needless to say — I’m seeing a lot of the same names that I see year after year and the same studios that we see year after year. Then I get down to the “Best Sex Scene” and then immediately followed by the “Best Ethnic Scene,” and I had to read that title twice.

I go through the list of nominees [for that award] and sure enough: every nominee was a man of colour. The gents whose names I didn’t know, I googled them to see who they were and to verify that I wasn’t crazy. They were indeed all men of colour and so I had to go back to the “regular” Best Scene nominees and look through their names. Sure enough, they were all not men of colour.

That’s when you decided to decline your nominations?

It’s 2017. There’s all kinds of racial issues coming back to the surface in this country over this past year, and this is not the right time for our industry to be doing this within the LGBTQ community.

I knew immediately I wanted to decline my nominations. I’m proud of the Hugh Hunter brand. I’m proud of the work that I’ve done and I’m proud of the way I’ve represented myself, not just as a performer in this industry but as a person in the world. I didn’t want my name to be associated with anything that could be construed as being racially biased…

My intent was to write a very succinct letter. But as I began writing, I realized I had lots of feelings and questions and points to make, and so it ended up being a much more lengthy letter than anticipated. I posted it and declined my nominations. I really thought that because this was GayVN — the gay arm of the AVN — that by posting this at this moment in time with the current climate, there was a chance that some mainstream media would pick this story up and would shine some light on what’s happening in the industry. And very luckily, that happened. The conversation did start. Lots of media picked up on it and lots of people were talking, and I saw an overwhelming amount of support from the viewing public.

The @gayvn awards announce nominations including a BEST ETHNIC SCENE category for black, Latin, and Asian models. Meanwhile none are nominated as best actor or supporting actor.

My response, “…I am respectfully declining my nominations in all categories…”

Full letter here. pic.twitter.com/CQPxZFRuZ6

— Hugh Hunter (@theHughHunter) November 25, 2017

To put it somewhat indelicately, where is this problem sourced?

The award shows aren’t completely to blame, and I never said they were. The studios are to blame, the directors are to blame, the performers and models are to blame. Everyone involved in the industry is to blame.

The consumers who are buying the materials — I saw lots of cries that they want more diversity in their films and from their performers. They don’t understand the use of certain models that had really been disrespectful to the community and how they get to continue working or how some studio so blatantly disrespects certain races of models by stereotyping them into very specific roles and positions in their films. I was really encouraged by what I saw from the consumers.

However, the decision makers and people who can actually do the casting — the studios, the directors, producers, that sort of thing — all went silent and hid and even when I reached out to a few about voicing an opinion. I had people tell me they didn’t want to be tagged on anything to do with it, that they thought it was commendable I was talking about it but it would be bad for their business to do the same — just a variety of things that I found really egregious.

What’s happened since you put your statement up?

Since then, the owner of AVN has reached out to me. I told him that without the support of the studios and directors and producers and whatnot — the people who can actually influence casting and help create more diversity in the films that could be nominated — that there really was nothing more for me to say.

I have been assured by the owner of AVN that they’re going to start a roundtable discussion to really address diversity in adult entertainment — in the scenes, in the films, in the marketing, in the award shows and in general. He asked if I was interested in sitting in on that table, and I told him I would definitely consider it but only if he could bring the true stakeholders who can affect change to that table as well. Because if it’s just the models sitting around the table, nothing’s going to change.

I’ve then, I’ve also gotten some pushback from some members of the community who are men of colour and models saying that a white man shouldn’t be the voice for their fights, so I felt that it was time for me to step away too if those people weren’t willing to come to the table and talk.

In terms of moving in a more progressive direction, do you see any aspects of awards organizations who are doing things right?

In terms of AVN, I am encouraged because while I think the apology they posted was a little muddy and their reasoning for the inclusion and creation of that category — a category which had never existed prior to this year – was a little… I’m just going to go with bad. The reasoning was bad, but they did address it, they did apologize, they did take those names and those scenes and move them into the “Best Scene” category, which is where they should have been placed always.

This doesn’t change the fact that no men of colour are in the “Best Actor” or “Best Supporting Actor” categories… but I’m encouraged that GayVN and the owner of AVN really is trying to address the situation now that he and his company has been confronted by the public. It really shows that if you make enough noise, people will listen. But you have to make noise, and you have to know who to make that noise with and who to address your concerns to. We got lucky that this particular group is listening, and we’ll see how it plays out.

I do want to mention that I have supported the Grabby Awards, which are held every Memorial Day weekend in Chicago, in my adult entertainment career. I have attended twice because proceeds from that award show go to TPAN – the Test Positive Aware Network – which is a massive organization.

The Grabby Awards, I would say, has taken their platform and done something really positive for our community. I think it’s commendable because I don’t see that kind of charity work coming out of these other shows or porn events that are held, or just porn in general to be quite honest.

Find Hugh Hunter on Twitter at @theHughHunter and on YouTube here.

Editor’s Note: We reached out to the Grabbys who let us know that they have given over $250,000 to charity organizations over the years, including but not limited to TPAN.

Interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Check out “Talent Center Stage” at @DuplexNYC Wednesday December 20th 9:30 PM.

I’m performing a special “mini show” featuring a holiday classic alongside some very talented NYC singers.

Advance tix $12 ($6 for AEA/MAC)
DM me for tix. https://t.co/XHha1cBIqI pic.twitter.com/Dumdc2QXkp

— Hugh Hunter (@theHughHunter) December 16, 2017

Image via Nick Winchester.