This book had been languishing on my to-read pile until my partner finally chose the Leftovers from our shows-we-should-have-never-watched list, which had the scene-stealing Emily Meade in a bit part, which reminded me of the engrossing Deuce (in which Meade put an unforgettable turn as a porn star), which in turn reminded me of this book as the second unforgettable performance in the series by Maggie Gyllenhaal was as Candy, a character loosely modelled on Royalle, so I packed the book for a beach long weekend read, and yes, that is exactly how my brain works.
The first thing to note is that loose was very much the modelling for Simon and Pelecanos in writing the Deuce. Their Candy was a streetwalker who finds art through porn. Kamensky's book reveals a very different story - a New York survivor who immerses herself in the queer and alternative theatre scene in San Franscisco, and turns to porn as her theatre career falters and her heroin habit grows, Royalle brought her past to porn, and was certainly not a creation of it.
Kamensky weaves Royalle's story alongside social, economic and political analysis of the sweeping years between the 1960s and the 2010s. As a historian who lived through the "feminist sex wars"of the 1980s and 1990s and now teaches this to bewildered, arch Gen Zs, she is both invested in how ferocious these debates became and capable of seeing, in hindsight, how stupid and ultimately useless it all was. This is a perspective I could empathise with, including the wincing at how much something that mattered so much might now seem so ... quaint. 
Kamesky had great material to work with. Royalle kept a daily diary her whole life, and this archive is now safely stored in a library, providing the primary material for the book.
Royalle I was also aware of as a 1990s figure, an icon frequently held up by the sex positive feminists (of which I was one) who wanted to prove that sexuality could have feminist expression, often simplified to feminist porn was possible. This version of Royalle appears in the book, but often as a fragile shell - a lot of bravado, backed underneath by a failing business model, swept up in the general whirlwind of the end of the era of profitable pornography in the face of the internet. Many aspects of Royalle's life that Kamensky has brought out challenge the simplistic narratives. A sexually abuse, pedophiliac father, clear lifelong anguish from her abandonment as a baby by her teenage mother, fall all to neatly into stereotypes of traumatised sex workers. Royalle refused to either erase her trauma or her efforts to be more than it, nor to bow to those who then argued that it negated her capacity to choose her own life. While Kamensky at times is clearly frustrated by the ego of her subject, she draws with great respect on the enormity of what she achieved - not only a life lived on her own terms, but one that demanded to try creation of a safer space.
In leaving the mainstream porn industry, Royalle did several significant things. Firstly, she built and celebrated a community of women who demanded a space for ethical sexually explicit entertainment, and refused to sit in the boxes porn had created for them. These women, which included Annie Sprinkle, continued to meet regularly throughout Royalle's life, and organised her funeral and celebrated her life. More than any specific initiative, this community feels like a huge achievement in an industry designed to disempower and marginalise women.
Secondly, Royalle created safe sex initiatives and programs on set for her performers, setting a total ban on sex without condoms, insisting on - and paying for - regular testing of her performers and providing safe sex education resources on set, and then throughout the industry. She was the first producer to do this, and was out of step with practice for some time until others caught up. It is clear in the book that this comes through her ongoing participation in queer circles, and the devastating loss of so many of her oldest friends in the pandemic. But at time when she is financially struggling, it more than any other component, stands for her ethical centre and willingness to model a different way of doing business. It saved lives. She also made films showing safe sex techniques. (It is notable that Deuce omits entirely the community orientation of Royalle, and how much everything she did was with others in some way or another)
The book is slow and was worth savouring. There is a pathos to it, which is mirrored in Royalle's own diary as porn slips into an ever-escalating violence and mock realism, while also becoming less and less lucrative for the performers involved. Her own videos, based in couples scenarios and arthouse shots, have proven to have long lives - contrasting sharply with the novelty drive of the rest of the industry - but too late to matter. But the book also celebrates her achievements as a beacon for a different way, a woman who provides still evidence, that this was neither inevitable nor what most women wanted.