Being Amber Rhea

The media (and hell, society in general) just doesn’t get it.

Audacia Ray, former sex worker and editor of the sex worker magazine $pread, has pointed out that the public doesn’t even seem to understand what exploitation really means. The woman who did sex work for Spitzer has had her picture and personal history splattered all over the media in an incredibly insulting way. Nobody seems to realize she’s being degraded far more now than she ever was when Spitzer was her client. And she’s not getting any retirement savings out of it, either.

And, funnily enough, I haven’t noticed a whole lot of “media critics” talking about this point. It’s been mostly… *crickets*.

Guess what, the definition of exploitation is not “a type of sex that makes me uncomfortable.”

I have more to say about the Alternet article (which, interestingly, had its title changed sometime between last night and this morning) because there are a few points where I disagree with Annalee, and a few points I just want to expand on. But I’ll get to that later.

Ren is awesome. She nails it:

“I wear Nike shoes and love to cook, but do not practice BDSM because BDSM is a perverse play on patriarchal roles, and no one was harmed in the making of my shoes (or so I hope) and my cooking has no gender role attached to it at all… but mostly I just don’t get or like BDSM, so it MUST be bad… but I do like my shoes and cooking… and oh yeah, sometimes, those people are fucking.”

“I smoke weed and drink from time to time, but I don’t dress sleazy or go for casual fucking because dressing sleazy can get you physically harmed and casual fucking can be bad for you, physically, mentally and emotionally and might make people think you are something that you aren’t…. but mostly I just don’t like dressing sleazy and casual fucking… but I like weed and booze, so… and oh yeah, sometimes those people are fucking…”

“I love professional sports or watching the Olympics or ballet, but I hate stripping, because strippers are being paid for their bodies, not their minds, and they often starve or abuse themselves or have surgery to look the way they look…. but mostly I just like sports or ballet, and oh yeah, those girls look like they might fuck…”

“I like action/horror/historical/sci-fi/romantic/kung fu movies and video games, but I hate porn, because porn puts an unrealistic view of life, sex and women out there, plus it is violent and degrading and racist and stuff I would never do in MY own sex life, but mostly I just don’t like porn and I do like action/horror/historical/sci-fi/romatic/kung fu movies and video games… besides, those people are fucking!!”

“I love my laptop, my i-pod, all my clothes, my tech gadgets, my car, the food on my table, my expensive jewelry… all things which use sex and stereotypes as marketing tools and have parts most probably built, manufactured or procured via the use of slave labor, sweat shop labor, child labor, or labor by those under duress and no other choice but to do that for a living, but it’s different, because I like those things… necessary or not… and those people aren’t fucking. So I sleep well at night, because my hobbies and recreations are not yours.”

Read her whole post (even though I already quoted most of it here!).

Choose your issues, but don’t pretend they’re the only ones.