Being Amber Rhea

So by now you’ve probably heard about seemingly everyone in the freakin’ world getting canned (or voluntarily leaving due to “circumstances”).

Dacia wrote about it the other day and included a master list of sorts. Let us also not forget Regina Lynn leaving Wired, and Playboy Radio putting the kibosh on her Sex in the News segment. And you could really say it all started nearly two years ago, when the Village Voice killed Rachel Kramer Bussel’s “Lusty Lady” column.

In particular, it was really bizarre to hear about Melissa being laid off from Valleywag, because just a day or two before that, I’d heard about Tristan’s Village Voice column being axed, and as Rusty and I were walking from the MARTA station to work, I said something like, “It seems like the only one who still has a job is Melissa, at Valleywag.” Then Rusty said something about all of us starting a site together and how awesome that would be.

Ahem.

Dacia isn’t so worked up about the idea of starting a new site - and neither am I, honestly. Admittedly, after hearing about all the latest news, I did say this on Twitter (tweets listed in reverse chronological order, for those not on the bandwagon):

Regina Lynn replied:

and, too, in response to Match:

But Tristan’s tweet wins:

*sigh* Too true.

Realistically I don’t think we should all rush off and start our own site together. I’m wary of creating even more work for no pay.

What Regina said really nails the conundrum of it, I think. On the one hand I feel very strongly that people deserve to be paid for their hard work, their time, and their thoughtful writing. I’ve said it before, I’m not an anti-capitalist - largely because I’ve had too many experiences with people who call themselves anti-capitalists but what it really means is that they want to take advantage of you. Or, as I said in an email recently:

These are the kinds of people who always want - nay, *expect* - me to do “pro bono” web development work for their cause, organization, whatever. And you know what, I find THAT dehumanizing and degrading. To me it says they don’t value my time and work. It says that their pet project is more important and valuable than my time. It says they don’t appreciate the hard work I do.

On the other hand, with sex writing/blogging (and many other types of writing), it’s tough because the fact is there will be people who “do it for free.” People blog for lots of different reasons; speaking for myself, I blog as a way to get my thoughts out there in my own words, to stay connected with myself, to examine my own experiences and feelings, and - here’s the hopeful part, the part that people who scoff at blogging will write off as “delusions of grandeur” but what I call just good old-fashioned human connection - maybe just maybe to help someone else who’s experiencing something similar feel not so alone. And I will blog regardless of whether anyone else is trying to make a paid career out of writing about the same things I happen to write about. My writing style is not the same as the style of a formal publication; but then, if content is truly king, then maybe it’s the substance not the form that matters, and maybe people appreciate/trust, rightly or wrongly, reading someone’s unedited thoughts (or at least, a place where the only editing is self-imposed) more than a column with a strict word-count in a mainstream publication?

I think this cuts to the heart of the ongoing discussion of what is personal, what is professional, what it means to be a journalist or “just” a citizen journalist, and what the hell will the media industry look like as this stuff continues to shake out? All the arbitrary barriers are breaking down, which is cool, but somebody’s going to have to figure out what to do with all this - and in the meantime, people aren’t going to stop blogging, and so things might be ugly for a while. Which definitely sucks, because it’s important to have sex-positive messaging and thoughtful content about sexuality more and more available to the mainstream.

Basically it’s a rough time for anyone trying to make a career in media - and that includes new media, and perhaps in particular new media, because not many people have figured out a way to make it really profitable. Budgets - and thus, staff - are getting cut all over the place. So it’s no surprise that writing that covers sexuality will be cut, since it’s seen as non-essential (which is, of course, representative of how our culture views sexuality on a larger scale: great for a cheap adolescent-esque laugh or a titillating headline, but not worth discussing in a thoughtful manner with any depth or nuance). And even though I hate the way sexuality is always relegated to a second-tier position in practically every area of society, I can appreciate this sentiment with regard to news media: the core competency is the news, right? -Actually, let me rephrase that. I’d be more likely to appreciate that sentiment, if the mainstream media actually held any convincing evidence that the news is their core competency or main focus. (Hint: that means, not a bunch of headlines about Britney Spears).

Gracie Passette a.k.a. The Marketing Whore wrote a post about all of this, as well. Parts of it agree with, such as:

Like myself, Audacia says she sees herself as an activist, an advocate; and that writing is the medium for her message. In that sense we have to accept that there will not be paid writing gigs ~ in fact, there really are no paid activist positions.

No, not because getting paid is becoming “a sell-out to da man,” but because no one pays a person directly for their activism. (Unless you count lobbyists; but so far, I’ve found no one willing to back sex as an issue. Let me know if you have any leads and I’ll give you my packet.)

You could start a non-profit; but in order to become paid you’ll need to be the executive director (at the beginning, you’ll be lucky if you can afford to pay for even that position). But then, because staff members are usually not allowed to be on the organization’s board, you will lose ability to control the organization. (After several years in the nonprofit sector, I’ve seen how the, “Oh, but I’ve selected the board to maintain my vision,” works out. That varies between “poorly” and “horrific,” by the way.)

And there are also parts I disagree with, such as this:

Do I think sex writers were likely viewed as the first to go in these economic cuts? You bet I do. In fact, if I were sitting there, making the decisions, I’d likely have done the same thing. A) Sex is not representational of the companies’ core missions, and 2) having sex on pages can will deter advertisers.

If these companies had committed more to the issue sexuality as a right and therefore an integral part of their publications, rather than posing as sex positive hipsters exploiting sex columnists & titillating titular to garner some eyeballs and a wink-wink-nudge-nudge mentality, then my call ~ and likely the publishers’ ~ would have been different.

On one hand I am frustrated by a world which refuses to have sexuality be a part of legitimate conversation; I’d love to see sex included as an important, fundamental human issue for grown-ups period.

On the other hand, these places were only using sex as a loss-leader and they could no longer absorb the loss.

That was their bottom line talking.

And they had no sex positive mission to adhere to, remember?

I have no doubt that she’s right about why the publications were running sex content and why they cut that content. But I’m not willing to just say, “That’s the way it is” and accept it. And (obviously) I share her frustration with “a world which refuses to have sexuality be a part of legitimate conversation;” perhaps I’m being starry-eyed and naïve to think that we can put pressure on established media outlets and slowly change this state of affairs?

Also in Gracie’s post, there’s this:

The fact is that these publications which were paying sex columnists were not in the business of sex education nor with a mission of sex positivity.

Be honest, dear readers, if you weren’t following the authors involved here because you knew them, would you ever turn to Valleywag or Wired for your sex info?

I think this is asking entirely the wrong question. It’s important to not keep smart sex content sequestered only to publications that explicitly advertise themselves as being “in the business of sex education.” To do so only furthers the pink ghetto we’re all supposedly fighting against. I’m reminded of two things:

(1) What Melissa said about her gig at Valleywag:

My tactic has been to go ahead and take my stories where they dare not go, breaking with this whole “pink ghetto” nonsense as a game — I want to see what happens when I refuse to believe that there’s a certain way to be authentic and there’s a certain “right” audience for my work.

(2) What Dacia said about the “Testing the female condom” podcast Rusty and I did almost two years ago:

[O]ne of the things that I think is supercool about them is that they do a good amount of sex-related stuff, though the site isn’t specifically about sex at all. I love how they weave podcasts with interviews about sexuality into the fabric of the site as if sexuality is a normal part of life - oh wait, it is. In some respects, I think that in some respects (sic) this gives them a better chance of getting their sex-positive message out to the people who need to hear it than I have, because people who come to their site aren’t already looking for info on sexuality.

Now, as for the “activist” aspect of this big complex equation, to which Dacia and Gracie both referred: I know it might sound bad (but, as usual, too bad if it does), but stuff like this really makes me appreciate, yet again, the fact that I have a Monday-Friday 9ish-to-5ish office job - you know, the kind of thing a lot of those aforementioned anti-capitalists refer to as “soul-sucking” and related nonsense. Well, I know what it’s like to live without the certainty of a regular paycheck - I grew up that way - and there’s nothing romantic or idealistic about it; frankly it just sucks. I realized at an early age that it was going to be very important for me to have a sense of stability once the time came for me to make my own way financially; and I fought very hard to get where I am, and no it is not “soul-sucking” nor “drudgery.” My regular paycheck and other benefits ensure that I am more able to contribute to causes that I support - maybe I can’t take a day off in the middle of the week to go to a protest march, but I can open my checkbook and send money to a non-profit supporting reproductive justice in the Southeast. And when I have the time, yeah, I put in some pretty significant volunteer hours, too - and my mind is clearer and more focused because I’m not fretting over how to pay the rent that month.

Well, that was kind of a tangent. Anyway the point is, I feel annoyed and angry for my friends and colleagues who have lost these writing gigs, because this was some of the only smart sex content out there, and now there’s even less. I have no doubt they’ll find something else, but I wonder what this means for the discourse on sexuality in a larger sense. My hope is that blogs - yes, the “doing it for free” kind - will continue to fill that gap and infiltrate the mainstream, and that eventually the people in charge of (formerly?) traditional publications will realize the value of such writing and start paying for it once again.

ETA: Pasted in the missing mystery blockquote from Gracie’s post. Thanks for catching that, Gracie! See, this is what happens when I don’t proofread.