The notification came through while I was having dinner in the backyard with some friends. Someone had donated to my fundraiser. Every donation gives me a little jolt, but this one was for more than $700.
I didn’t recognise the name of the donor. It was a woman, and she hadn’t left a note. No “love your work”, no “for the animals”, nothing to tell me why. Just the money. I stared at my phone while the conversation carried on around me, and I couldn’t stop wondering where she’d found me – and which version of me she’d found.
There are two of me online. One is Dr Charlie Forde, a veterinarian with a background in emergency medicine who is raising money to help a farm animal sanctuary.
The other is Charlie Forde, adult film performer. Same face, same person. Depending on who’s looking, I’m either someone you’d trust with your dog’s life or someone you’d rather your kids didn’t Google.
Veterinarians are some of the most trusted people in society. When I tell someone at a party I’m a vet, their face softens. They tell me about their childhood cat. They ask whether they should be worried about the lump on their Labrador. People assume I’m kind, patient and good.
Courtesy of Charlie Forde
When I tell someone I’m an adult performer, the reaction can be very different. When I was on a dating show for a vertical video app and came out about my job, the man I was with jumped off the bed and backed away to the farthest wall. He held his hands up in front of him like a cross and told me over and over that I was disgusting, as if saying it enough times would exorcise the whore out of me.
I was the same woman I’d been five minutes earlier. The same woman who has sat on a clinic floor, more times than I can count, with a dying pet and its owner. Nothing about me had changed except what that man knew.
I spent four years in emergency veterinary medicine. One case I still think about was an old dog who came in with a tumour on his spleen. The prognosis was poor, and his family had made the heartbreaking decision to put him to sleep. Everything was ready. Then, at the last minute, one of our vet nurses adopted him. She had the tumour removed, and the dog beat the odds, and he went home with her and lived for a few more years.
I’ve thought about that dog a lot. Everyone in that room had looked at him and decided what his story was. One person looked again.
That work taught me how to stay calm when everyone else is panicking, how to be completely present with a stranger on the worst night of their life, and how much of the job comes down to trust.
Those skills didn’t disappear when I started performing. Adult work, done well, takes consent, boundaries, professionalism and real care for the people you work with. But most people don’t see the overlap. They see a clash of worlds – one respectable and one not.
Courtesy of Charlie Forde
Which brings me to the part that makes some people uncomfortable: The money I make from adult work is what lets me run my international volunteer vet series.
The series started because I missed being a vet. I missed the work, the animals and the feeling that what I did each day mattered. But I wasn’t ready to sign up for full-time night shifts again. I’m also in a kind of professional limbo right now, waiting to take my licensing exam so I can practice in America. I didn’t want my skills sitting on a shelf while I waited. I wanted to make a difference now.
So, the premise is simple. I find an organisation that is making a difference to the world of animals. I give them my undivided attention for a month in order to raise money and garner PR opportunities for them. I visit them and volunteer my skills in whatever way I can, while documenting what we do together the entire way. And through this, we collectively educate the public.
Volunteering gives me what I’ve dearly missed, but everything involved – travel, time away from paid work, equipment, dog sitters, filming – costs a lot of money. Adult work gives me income that’s flexible enough to let me say yes when an organisation needs a vet.
I’m not ashamed of that money. My career in adult work grew out of need, and I became very good at it. Right now it’s helping me support The Happy Herd Farm Sanctuary in Aldergrove, British Columbia. It’s a registered charity that has been giving rescued cows, pigs, goats, sheep, turkeys and chickens a forever home since 2012. I’m attempting to raise $15,000 to cover the herd’s feed.
The people helping me get there aren’t always who you’d expect. My fans have been some of my most generous supporters. That surprises some people, as if someone can’t enjoy adult content and also care about animals. People contain more than one thing. I’m proof of that.
Courtesy of Charlie Forde
The woman who gave $700 might not have been one of those fans. She didn’t say, and I’ve never found out. Maybe she found me through the animal side of what I do. Maybe she knew exactly who I was and gave anyway. Maybe she gave because of it.
Sitting at that table in the backyard, I realised it didn’t matter. The world is very invested in sorting people like me, and the people who support us, into respectable and not. Her $700 turns into hay and feed for rescued animals either way.
I’ve come to believe respectability isn’t really about what you do. It’s about who’s watching and what they’ve already decided about you. As a vet, I’ve watched a golden retriever bleed out in front of me from a snakebite and fought for animals I couldn’t save. People see that as noble. As a performer, I do something consensual and legal, and a man on a dating show treated me like something he needed to be protected from.
I’ve stopped trying to keep my two lives in separate boxes. It’s exhausting, and honestly, it’s dishonest. The version of me who treats animals and the version of me who performs are the same woman. One makes the other’s work possible.
Later this month, on Oct. 21 and 22, I’ll be at The Happy Herd, volunteering and filming the first episode of the series. I’m travelling to Ukraine in the near future to volunteer on the front line as a trauma vet. It’s the kind of work my emergency training prepared me for and the kind of trip my other career makes possible.
Beyond November, you will see me deep in India doing snow leopard conservation, rescuing injured turtles in Costa Rica and raising money to fund a new service dog for someone in need. These trips are locked in, not someday plans.
Courtesy of Charlie Forde
I don’t know yet which animal will steal my heart at the Canadian sanctuary, but I know one will. I know the feed we raise will be there for them whether it comes from a vet’s salary, a porn fan or a woman who found me somehow and never said why.
If you’ve ever judged someone by how they earn their money, I’d ask you to look at what they’re doing with it instead. And if you ever find yourself sorting people into respectable and not, remember that the answer usually depends on who’s doing the sorting.
Charlie Forde has had a career path few could predict. A physiotherapist turned emergency veterinarian turned adult film star, she now uses her platform to fund volunteer veterinary work around the world through her World Vet Volunteer Series, from animal sanctuaries to disaster and conflict zones. Her fans, it turns out, are some of animals’ biggest champions. When she’s not on set or in the field, she’s at home in Los Angeles with her two senior beagles.
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