How Jet Setting Jasmine empowers womxn of color to embrace their sexual identity and desires

(Left to right) Partners King Noire and Jet Setting Jasmine of Royal Fetish Films, an award-winning multi-channel adult-entertainment business. Photo: Adaeze Njaka

With over two decades working as a licensed clinical therapist, sex educator, and adult entertainer, Jasmine Johnson has made it her mission to address the impacts of physical and cultural fetishization. Professionally known as Jet Setting Jasmine, she seeks to empower womxn of color, particularly Black and Asian womxn, through open dialogue as they discover and explore their sexual identities.

“When people with a similar background see that I am modeling a sex life that is vast, kinky, Queer, non monogamous and without shame — they see a reflection of their fantasies, desires and that more openness in their own intimate lives is possible,” Johnson said. “Representation is incredibly important — even if that model is not everything they want for themselves it serves as a model of what their own healthy sexual expression can be.”

The nature of Johnson’s practice may be unconventional, but she adheres to a standard rule of not mixing business with pleasure, even if pleasure is her business. Although her work in therapy and adult filmmaking can sometimes overlap in conversation, Johnson never intertwines the two, prioritizing full transparency and boundaries with clients between her professional roles.

“The two don’t need and are not usually shared openly because of the stigma that’s attached to a therapist doing sex work, and also the ignorance that a sex worker cannot do therapy. I don’t do sex work with my therapy clients, and I don’t do therapy with my sex work clients. But that is the work that I do,” she said.

Through her creative and clientele work, Johnson challenges conventional views of womxnhood and cultural stereotypes within the adult film industry. Focusing her practice on advocacy for BIPOC inclusivity and representation, Johnson helps people heal, understand and reclaim their identity and self sexual expression.

Pulling from her Filipino, Panamanian and African American heritage and experiences, Johnson creates a safe space for her clients by showing representation in her work as a multi-racial woman working within white-dominated mainstream industries. For her, the work is never finished, even with her own education.

“Even as a Black person, if I don’t challenge my own education, in my own institution, I am perpetuating white supremacy on my clients. When we are seeing people that look like us, we have so much to contend with when it comes to decolonizing everything from therapy to sex,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s interest in understanding people and supporting their self-discovery grew while in school, where she minored in African American Studies and Sociology. She later pursued master’s degrees in social work and gerontology to become the therapist she is today. But her work doesn’t stop there.

Johnson founded the sex education and entertainment company Jet Setting Jasmine LLC and, alongside her partner King Noire, co-owns Royal Fetish Films, an award-winning film production company that highlights sexual culture and expressions of kink fetish, while focusing on people of color, specifically in their sexual expression. Together, they travel internationally teaching workshops, sharing perspectives as adult entertainers and how they plan to decolonize the industry and cross sexual boundaries through different creative mediums.

Their love for the arts and providing a safe space when it comes to adult entertainment also translates to the way they practice sex-positive parenting.

“We’re also parents of four children, ages spanning from 21 to nine months. We share what that experience is like raising children in a sex positive household, a pleasure based household as well as the dangerous stigma that comes with being adult entertainers and having children,” Johnson said.

Johnson entered the adult industry formally to have the space to safely explore her sexuality, creatively use her body and be her own commodifier of her body.

The therapeutic care she provides and being a representative within the worlds of sexual entertainment has not only created a space for others, but for Johnson as well to embrace her whole sexual identity as a multi-racial womxn of color.

“It is incredibly important that we can see ourselves reflected in an area where we have so very little conversation about, we have so very little education about, and we have really little to no outlet to ask questions about what our sex should or can look like,” Johnson said. “I think that’s very dangerous. It’s incredibly limiting.”

Although Johnson focuses on fighting against the societal stigmas placed on the adult film industry and its lack of POC representation, she also pays close attention to the mindset of the individual and helps people challenge their own thinking when it comes to sexual pleasure and intimacy.

“A lot of people come and they say, ‘I’m having all of these issues with interpersonal and intimacy and sex. And so much of it is because I don’t know if what I’m doing is right. I don’t know if I should feel the way that I feel. I don’t know if I’m allowed,’” Johnson said. “Existing openly and transparently and living my full life is a way that I model to my clients that they can actually live their full sexual expression out without shame.”

Through her expertise, Johnson carefully discerns an individual’s physical and cultural history before working to unlock their sexual expression in an affirming, positive way.

“It’s our responsibility to create an intimate treatment plan. To find out what it is that we want to explore, what we want to experience and being really, really definitive about our pleasure,” Johnson said.

Because when it comes to pleasure, Johnson believes our bodies should work for our own satisfaction — not for othering or fetishization purposes. Through her own self-claimed self, she’s helping womxn reclaim their own sense of pleasure.

“There are providers that look like you that are sex positive, that are kink affirming, that are LGBTQIA affirming,” Johnson said. “All of these things can work with you to start separating from the way our bodies have been commodified for the pleasure of others.”