The Trans Erotica Awards began as an online competition run by Grooby and grew, over the years, into a highly anticipated wild weekend in Hollywood, and we love that this show has honored so many amazing unique alternative performers and productions.
Pre-nominations opened Nov. 6 and are scheduled to close soon, on Nov. 15. Executive producer Kristel Penn says the categories are being retooled “to fit the current state of the industry,” and Steven Grooby is due to publish a blog post explaining what was added and changed. Clips4Sale returns as presenting sponsor and again backs a creator award category of its own. The pre-party is set for March 12 at Bardot, with the ceremony set for March 14 at the Avalon in Hollywood.
I’m very interested to see Grooby’s thoughts on how the Awards shows are adapting to the changing content and delivery landscape. I know it’s a challenge with our own AltStar Awards show that so many of the best productions hide behind fan-site walls these days, rather than hitting the market shelves as glossy DVD products. The published eligibility rule for Best Performer, Best Scene and Best DVD still asks for “a major website, DVD, or VOD release” between Nov. 1, 2025 and Oct. 31, 2026. These requirements can exclude some amazing modern productions. Grooby itself released the horror-anthology directorial debut of Bakari, with Amy Nosferatu on the call sheet. Nosferatu also ran through horror and comedy leads for Pegas and TransAngels. Robin Coffins and Sarina Havok opened AltTransXXX in October. Creator-built sites, genre-forward studio work, and performer-run projects made up much of what the alt end of this talent pool actually did and they deserve recognition, so the task is tooling the current award categorization.
AltStar Awards were early to many of these categories, particularly in the clips, themed content sets, and niche cams categories, and now all the awards shows across the industry have been working to adjust, with AVN and XBIZ adding more creator and clip categories along the way. The TEAs are now doing it transparently in public, and the category list Grooby publishes will show whether a clip, a fan-site series or a performer-run feature carries the same weight as a studio release.
Get over there and nominate your favorite alternative stars and producers! These award shows count on fan nomination support more than ever,
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