Those of you who’ve seen Steven Soderbergh’s “The Girlfriend Experience” will know a little bit about Sasha Grey, who plays the main character. Those of you who are porn enthusiasts will know a hell of a lot more, seeing as Grey has been in more than 160 porn flicks over the past three years. From “Teenage Whores 3″ to “Anal Cavity Search 6,” Sasha’s done it all. (Or at least most of it.)

But while Grey’s been a porn world bad ass for a while, starring in a Soderbergh film has, uh, exposed her to a more mainstream and art house audience. It’s also opened her up to a s**t storm of criticism for participating in what many consider to be an exploitative industry.But while it’s easy to call Grey deluded for thinking that she’s liberating women instead of promoting oppression, you’d have to ignore a hell of a lot of what she’s saying in order to make the claim. During her 2007 appearance on “The Tyra Banks Show,” an 18-year-old Grey kept it together while a wide-eyed, semi-psychotic looking Tyra essentially implied that Grey must have been abused as a child, even if she didn’t, you know, realize it. There is, after all, no other reason a young lady would ever, ever get into porn.

Sasha waxed poetic on how she represents herself, on appreciating porn, and her willingness to do most anything experimental as a means of exploring her sexuality. Meanwhile, Tyra stared, mouth agape, throwing in patronizing one liners and refusing to believe that Sasha could possibly have any idea what she’s talking about.

We’re not quite ready to call Grey a feminist liberator, as some have suggested, but the outright condemnation, too, seems a bit rash. Sasha’s 20 now and sticking by her original claim: porn allows her to explore her sexuality and no one has ever forced her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. Is it really impossible to be a porn star without being exploited? What do you think?

Original by Lily Q