Leo Vice is as smart as he is sexy, and we got the chance to pick his brain for this edition of Model Citizens. Besides being the hottest new thing in the industry, the Lion Emperor is also a political junky, sharing with us his great takes on culture, representation, and dismantling negative stereotypes.
Is Leo Vice a character you play or are you one in the same? How are you similar/different?
The Leo Vice persona is very much an optimized and exaggerated version of myself. He is pretty much a more serious version of me with my confidence cranked up and my insecurities turned down. I just don't know how much the audience would appreciate me making knock knock jokes and encouraging jazz hands during sex. Off camera I am a lot more silly, goofy and don't take myself all too seriously. Let's put it like this, I've had sex dreams before where I cock block myself and say things like “I think we should just stay friends”. Leo Vice would never cock block himself in his own sex dreams.
What did you find difficult in the beginning? Was there anything you found surprisingly easy?
This is going to be a weird one since the answer to both questions is the same. As a single male talent going into this industry, the most difficult part in getting started was finding talent that was willing to give me a chance and shoot with me. But what was also surprisingly easy was that once I had some content out there, people wanted to shoot with me and suddenly I was getting reached out to by other talents and it's now surprisingly easier to get people to collaborate with me. It's still not like I can just reach out to any random performer and they'll agree to work with me, but it's not nearly as difficult as it was when I was trying to get started.
Your bio reads “Just trying to do what I can to bring more Asian male representation into the porn world” – tell us more about this and why it’s important to you. How do you want to change the perception of Asian men in porn?
I think representation is important for so many different reasons. A lot of our culture is learned and internalized through our media consumption. I'm going to try my best to not turn this into a college essay about the continued effects of the rise of “Yellow Peril” that has been ongoing since the 1890s, but there has been a lack of comprehensive Asian male representation in western media and society. More often than not, Asian men have lacked any real sort of representation in western media and when we are represented, it is usually in a non sexual, stereotypical manner. We are either portrayed as nerdy, effeminate, weak, submissive, or when we are represented in a masculine way, it's typically as an asexual exotic foreign martial arts master. We are perpetually seen as the “others” through our depiction in western media.
I believe this lack of positive sexual representation and 'othering' of Asian males in western media is largely why negative stereotypes of Asian men continue to be so prevalent in western culture. The idea that Asian men are just genetically shorter, weaker and less endowed than western men continues on to this day due to the lack of representation in media that challenges these negative and hateful stereotypes. Even when I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area and hooking up through Tinder, there has been a time when a woman that wanted to have a hook up with me requested that I send a dick pic first so she can make sure that she would be satisfied if we did hook up, since she had never been with an Asian man before. She had heard of the stereotype that we are just naturally less endowed and since there was nothing out there to disprove that stereotype, she believed it. And if this happened to me in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the most culturally diverse and home of one of the largest Asian populations in the US, then I can only imagine what other Asian men who live in less culturally diverse areas are dealing with. And that's not the only time I met someone who fully believed the “Asian men are less endowed” stereotype.
So my hopes are that by me, coming into this industry and doing what I can to portray what I believe is a positive representation of Asian masculinity and sexuality, we can slowly chip away at these negative and false assumptions about Asian men and hopefully end a lot of the negative stigma that surrounds us. It would just be nice to finally stop being treated as the “other” or the “perpetual foreigner” in both the country and culture that I belong to and just be seen as a normal human being.
courtesy of Leo Vice
Has your perception of the industry changed since joining?
My perception of the industry hasn't changed too much since my entry into this industry was much more of a slow burn situation than many others. I was able to learn a lot about how the industry worked before fully jumping in. But I will say that now that I am here, the industry is a lot less organized and coordinated than most people on the outside think. We are a collective of hundreds, maybe thousands, of independent contractors who are all doing their own thing and occasionally have team ups and collaborations.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about the industry you wish you could change?
There are so many misconceptions that I see about the industry all the time and I wish I had the time to dismantle all of them but the main ones I see and I think causes the most damage to our industry is the idea that “Porn is just filmed prostitution” and that the industry is reliant on trafficked victims. These are such shallow and offensive views of what we do and it very much takes away our agency as human beings and honestly, is just a very childish and immature way to view a nuanced topic.
Porn is not prostitution. Porn is Art. That is just a fact. You can say it's bad art or even offensive art...but you can't say it's not art. We have long established that film and photography are both artistic mediums and that doesn't magically negate just because the subject captured on those mediums is erotic and sexual in nature. If a couple decides to film themselves having sex, did they make porn? Yes, of course. But did they commit prostitution? Also a lot of times when we shoot content with each other, money is never even exchanged and we do it for split ownership of the content that was created. We have the ability to simply not shoot with people we don't want to shoot with, and we can say no to performing acts that we don't want to perform. As performers, we have agency over our own lives and choices.
The other misconception about how the industry is reliant on trafficked victims is just idiotic if you really think about it. It literally makes no sense for the industry to engage in human trafficking, rape, sexual assault and then film such crimes and put the evidence of the crimes on video publicly for the world to watch. It's both being bad at business and bad at being a criminal. And again, this misconception takes away all agency from us performers and negates the entire concept of consent among adult performers. As I mentioned earlier, we as an industry are really just a collective of individuals, and while occasionally someone might do something horrific, that's not the norm and shouldn't be reflective of the industry as a whole.
Tell us something about yourself your fans would be surprised to learn.
Maybe that I have my bachelors degree in Political Science? Or that one day I would like to run for US senate? I can't run for President since I wasn't born in the US and my parents weren't US citizens when I was born.
What’s something you wish you knew before or earlier on in your career?
I wish I would have known that Twitter is THE social media platform for porn performers. I just tried to avoid twitter for so long and I really should have just embraced it from the very beginning since that's where the industry is at.
courtesy of Leo Vice
Do you have advice for other new Models who have just joined or are thinking of joining the industry?
Find a tax person who is cool with sex work and pay your taxes. Also, save your money. You never know when the next attack on the industry will come and how it will disrupt your income flow. Always put money away for a rainy day.
What’s your next goal career wise? What is something specific you want to achieve?
I guess career wise my goal is to start shooting a lot more with mainstream companies. Hopefully next award season I can at least be up for consideration. I also hope that I can produce my own feature films sometime soon, for my East Meats West production company. Either a porn film about spies, or like a mockumentary about being a K-pop star? I have a couple ideas floating around in my head.
Would you say you’re shy or outgoing in your personal life? Who was Leo before becoming the Lion Emperor?
I am a very shy and introverted person. But oddly enough I am still pretty outgoing. I tend to like smaller crowds and I actually have no problem going to places and doing things by myself.
I like to think I lived a fairly normal life and was a pretty normal person, but the more I share my life story with people the more I realize how not normal my life was. Back when I was just a little Lion Prince, I was a graphic designer working a corporate job in the marketing department of a major video game publisher. I was just some guy who became disillusioned with the corporate world, found an opportunity to transition into the Adult Entertainment Industry and did it in hopes to gain financial independence and hopefully make a positive impact on the world. I would really like to elaborate more on who I actually am one day, cause people seem to want to know more about me, but it's just so hard to explain in a short and simple way.
When you’re not working, what can we find you listening to/ binge watching/ reading?
When I'm not working and actually trying to unwind, you can find me watching lots of cartoons and anime. I'm also playing Call of Duty with my friends online quite regularly on my down time. I'm usually listening to hip-hop when I'm at the gym, and reading up on politics and current affairs when I'm at home.
Keep up with Leo Vice on social media!
Twitter: @TheLionEmperor
Instagram: @the_lion_emperor
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