Being Amber Rhea

In some ways I wish I had gone to the Network Stars Atlanta Seminar Tuesday night. I am impressed that so many people (175!) showed up - once again, just goes to show that Atlanta isn’t some piddly little second-tier place just because we’re not New York or San Francisco. I’ve heard lots of positive reactions about the event. But reading J’s post should make it obvious why I’m glad I didn’t go.

Am I cynical? I don’t know, but it’s just that these are the perennial questions - how much do you reveal? what is “professional?” what are the risks? etc. - and I’ve been in conversations about them too many times to count over the last several years. I feel like a broken record with this stuff - how many times can I say the same thing? Is it worth it to keep saying it? I get irritated with others for not “getting it” and irritated with myself for being so repetitive.

It’s not the fact that the questions keep being raised that irritates me so much; it’s the way in which they are typically presented: very one-sided, with lots of presumptions and suppositions and pre-conceived notions that go unchallenged. As I said to Toby in an email, “I think the ways in which personal and business presence intersect online is a fascinating and relevant topic.” The dynamic during and feedback from my BlogOrlando session shows that presenting this topic as more than just the superficial clichés of “personal vs. professional” encourages some great dialogue and critical thinking. It’s the interpersonal aspect of social media that is so much more interesting to me than “how do you position yourself in the market” and “how do you install WordPress.” They call it social media for a reason, after all.

As for Geoff Livingston, one thing that really annoys me about getting into it with people like him is that we inevitably end up talking about two different things. He’s over there at J’s blog saying he’s a private business owner and he’s allowed to run his business however he wants. Well, duh! Nobody is saying he doesn’t have the right to run his business how he wants! I don’t know where anybody has ever said that. What a lot of people are saying, though, is that hey, maybe that’s not the best way to run your business, and it might be worth considering other options, because you might be shooting yourself in the foot.

Maybe I shouldn’t have left that snarky* comment toward him at J’s blog, but I just couldn’t help myself, and who cares anyway? It’s not like he’s going to consider me an “equal” in any sense of the word anyway - I have POLE DANCING PHOTOS and TALK ABOUT SEXUALITY and USE THE F-WORD, for heaven’s sake! (Shades of Dave Mastio.) Toby had graciously attempted to introduce us via email, after I inquired about who spearheaded the Tuesday night event and whether they might be interested in presenting my defunct BlogHer Atlanta panel topic. I doubt I’ll get a response or that he would be interested, so it’ s not like I’m “burning a bridge” or anything. I’m used to that kind of preemptive dismissal by now, after nearly seven years of blogging. It never ceases to dishearten me, though.

I absolutely agree with Ellie that my panel topic needs to be presented in a space that is not already coded as sex-positive. That’s how real shifts in perspective happen - getting outside the echo chamber (a term I don’t like, but I’m writing this quickly), engaging with people and presenting them with viewpoints they might not have previously considered. That’s what was so great about my BlogOrlando session.

So, I’m still looking for a space - or spaces, plural! - for that discussion. But if I don’t find it, I’ll just keep doing what I’ve always done: make my own space. One of the greatest, most transgressive powers of social media, after all, is that we can all speak our truths with our own voices and not be beholden to someone controlling, with an iron fist or a red pen, what we can and cannot say.

* Aside: did you know that “snark” is a contraction of “snide” and “remark?” I recently found that out. Makes total sense!

I’m taking a brief break from my blog hibernation (what, you hadn’t noticed?) to point out a great post by Monica at $pread Blog. She makes a very important - yet very simple - point that I think is a source of a lot of misunderstanding and frustration in discussions about sex work.

So here is another article about sex work and the economy. I hate the fact that this article exists, because I hate the fact that this bizarre cottage industry exists, this examining of sex work from the vaguely liberal viewpoint of “it’s just like any other business.” Okay, hurray for you, you don’t think sex workers are the sole agents of civil disintegration. That’s great. It’s a real pleasure to encounter an article that doesn’t make some snide remark about prostitutes being diseased and pathetic, and I mean that sincerely.

But sex work is not just like any other business. It’s not that it’s fundamentally so radically removed from other types of physical/emotional work, but it is criminalized and stigmatized, which means, no, unfortunately, it is not like being a massage therapist or a yoga instructor or an acting coach, or whatever pleasant and expendable profession to which it might be compared. “I just want to acknowledge it as regular work” is a misguided if genuine claim, and I’ve come up against it several times when dealing with journalists, and I’m getting really weary of it. This type of inquiry doesn’t allow for the reality of sex work: the arrests, the fear of being outed, the unregulated working conditions, the lack of health insurance or unemployment benefits, the extortion at the hands of club managers or pimps. We need OSHA just as much as other laborers.

I often object when anti-sex work proponents say imploringly, “The pro-porn lobby says it’s just like any other job, but it’s not!” - because this statement is so often followed by, “At other jobs, men aren’t paying for access to women’s bodies!” Which always makes me roll my eyes, take a deep breath, and try to forestall the inevitable ulcer that I will one day develop.

No, sex work is not like any other job - but that’s not because of something inherent to the work itself. Instead it’s because of the negative stereotypes that people project onto sex workers and the fact that the work is stigmatized and often criminalized. The source of the difference is external, not internal. Which is great, because external conditions can be fixed. And which is bad for abolitionists, because it means you can’t just say “it’s bad, get rid of it” and wipe your hands of the issue. It means if you treat sex workers like shit, the problem is yours.

The anti-sex work side - and, let’s be honest, most people, with the media being a cabal of top offenders - can’t get past the sex aspect of sex work, whereas the sex workers’ rights movement focuses on the work aspect. That’s why you so often hear “sex workers’ rights” hand-in-hand with “labor rights.”

I have heard the “acknowledge it as regular work” line from plenty of self-identified progressives and I always shake my head (and take another deep breath) because it’s like, hello, privilege talking! When sex workers are no longer arrested for doing their jobs or for advocating for their own rights, disbelieved because of their job when they are sexually assaulted (or the charge reduced from rape to “theft of services”), assumed to be addicted to drugs, assumed to have been sexually abused as children, expected to answer countless personal questions on demand, seen as unfit parents, fired from non-adult industry employment because of a past job in the adult industry, disallowed to speak for themselves, seen as unable to make their own decisions, excluded from discussions about policies that will directly impact their lives, equated with garbage, seen as good enough to jerk off to but not good enough to respect as a equal human beings, used as the source of cheap jokes when they are murdered, seen as easy targets by violent criminals because who cares about sex workers anyway? - then, and only then, will sex work being a job like any other job.

I have an idea: let’s make a BINGO card for media representation of sex workers!

A BINGO card has 25 squares (including on “free square” in the center that can be adapted creatively as necessary), so help me out with your suggestions. Here’s what I’ve got so far off the top of my head.

Terminology:

• The world’s oldest profession
• High-end / high-class
• Working girls
• Virtual street corner
• Ply their trade
• Sell their bodies

Other characteristics:

• Dismissive/snarky quotation marks (e.g., “work”)
• Photo of scantily-clad woman leaning into car window

Hell, we might have to make more than one card!

Note: this post was inspired by Monica at $pread Blog.

From Superlagirl:

This bothers me: “Their first sexual experiences have taught them that their primary value in life is their body and what others want to do with it. Or they learn that they are dirty little whores and they might as well live the part.” I am severely uncomfortable with putting words in survivors’ mouths. When I talk about my experience, I speak for myself. When I listen to other survivors, I respect that they are speaking for themselves, which is a hell of a lot harder to do than just making arbitrary generalizations. Yes, there are certainly common themes that arise in the telling of these stories, but there are no universal truths. I am glad that you are concerned with the needs of adult survivors of childhood abuse, but please do not attempt distill the experiences of those who suffer from abuse-related PTSD to She Was Treated Like a Whore, and Now She Acts Like One. We might be damaged, but we’re still nuanced. (Generally speaking, of course.)

And now this: “Can a truly free choice be made in response to childhood trauma? We think not.” Really? So my choice to seek therapy wasn’t a free choice? My choice to pursue positive sexual relationships wasn’t a free choice? My choice to give birth at home wasn’t a free choice? My choice to raise my daughters nonviolently wasn’t a free choice? All of these decisions stem from my experience with abuse. I don’t really like the implication that I’m just some traumabot with no capacity for self-determination.

EXACTLY.

Or, more succinctly, Lia:

I’ve decided that saying that someone goes into sex work because they have been sexually abused is like saying that someone becomes a baker because their Easy Bake Oven burned them when they were a child.

Briefly, because I have to wrap a few things up before I leave the office and head home to get ready for pole dancing class… which is particularly timely given some of the links I’m about to provide.

Yes, no surprise, shit like this and this (check the comment from “L”) downright enrages me. And even that word, I think, does not do justice to the pure RAGE I feel when I see people DENYING MY AGENCY AS A HUMAN BEING, denying my very existence, denying that I am an intelligent, capable, self-aware woman who is CONSTANTLY examining and reflecting on my own life and the choices I make. It hurts the most when it comes from other women, in particular other feminists.

I don’t know how or what to write about this shit anymore. Ren has written rounds and rounds of sense on her blog, as have many others; but Ren has been particularly prolific (and repetitive, because apparently it’s just NOT GETTING THROUGH to some people). Frankly I don’t know how she has the energy anymore. It drains me, to constantly try so hard to get people to understand the simple fact of, “This is my life, this is my truth, this is WHO I AM, and you don’t have to like it but you DO have to accept it, and accept that I have done enough ‘examining’ for the both of us, thankyouverymuch.”

It enrages me, and it makes me feel sick, and sad, and just awful about humanity, actually. Because why is it such a difficult concept to convey, that my life is mine, my choices are mine, and just because they differ from yours that does not mean I’m damaged or stupid? Why is it so hard to see that accepting the same old stereotypes of women who are openly sexual (not to mention women who work in the sex industry!) as stupid or damaged or victims or villains is nothing more than some seriously OLD-SCHOOL PATRIARCHAL BULLSHIT? It HURTS to have that same old double standard inflicted on me by other women, by other FEMINISTS.

This post gets the “hypocrisy” tag because, as I said to Elisa the other night, that’s what it is, plain and simple.

Pole dancing, for example? The smug characterizations of it as “empowerful” or “degrading” and whatever other bullshit so-called feminist bloggers (not to even mention non-feminists, especially anti-feminist men; holy shit, I can’t even go there, I would get damn near suicidal) say about it, talking OUT OF THEIR ASSES, assuming I must be doing it for my boyfriend (!!!!!!) or whatever else… holy fucking shit I cannot take it anymore. But guess what I DO know, assholes? That when I’m pole dancing, I feel joyful and whole, I feel a happiness that I rarely feel at any other time that permeates my entire being, I feel ALIVE - and the last thing on my mind is what “Teh Menz” might be thinking (especially because nine times out of ten, there AREN’T ANY MEN PRESENT anyway).

I don’t know how many times I can say this before it will get across. And maybe it never will - which is the part that hurts the most.

Juliana asked:

I’ve riffed on this before, but feel compelled in the midst of so much political activity to challenge this group again - in what way are you inciting revolution, or “change” if you must?

And I answered:

I think the biggest way in which I’m “inciting revolution” is by constantly challenging people’s assumptions and stereotypes wrt sex work, sex workers, and sex workers’ rights. Believe me, this is damn near a full-time job, as the ignorance runs rampant and unabashed. Unless there’s a real impediment to me doing so, I call out bullshit on this issue whenever I see/hear it, no matter who its from. Friends, acquaintances, superiors, family members, allies - anyone. Somehow I am brazen and steadfast on calling out BS on this issue in a way that I’m not yet (but aspire to be) on others.

Tiny revolutions, on a one-on-one level. I can do those.

What about you? Post your answer on the BfD thread!

Ren gave me kudos for engaging on this thread; and frankly, I surprised myself by having the stomach for it.

Quote of the morning goes to Ren, commenting about this particular installation of hand-wringing. (It was hard not to quote her entire post!)

MAYBE for people with kinks or rougher preferences feminist sex includes being aware enough of what they like to ASK for it, do it, enjoy it, explore it WITH other CONSENTING ADULTS! Wow! There’s a fucking thought…

I’ll tell you what, I think the woman who has the spine to tell her partner “I want you to pin me down, choke me, fuck the hell out of me and call me names” is a hell of a lot more empowered sexually than the vanilla woman who lays there and thinks of England rather than telling her partner amid sex what she really wants…no matter what that is. The woman who says “tonight, you’re going to fuck me like an animal, and tomorrow, I’m gonna fuck you like an animal” is light years ahead of the woman too ashamed or afraid to say that. The woman who tells her partner she wants to tie them up, do them with a strap on, and smack them around is better off that the woman who takes what she is given because she is ashamed to mention she’d like to do that.

And I sure as fuck want everyone to examine why they think they can tell other adult consenting people how to fuck or that they are doing it wrong and why they feel they can shame them for it.

I’ll have more to say about this later, when I get a free moment.

I’ve had this pinned in Bloglines for a while now. I quoted from it on my Tumblr, too. I guess I kept thinking I’d come back and write more lengthy commentary, but I realize there isn’t much else I could say, other than just: I relate. So I submit now without comment, a rather lengthy excerpt from Miss Syl’s post Type cast.

One thing that’s interesting about this internet world–and the written word in general–is the perception aspect. That is, the perceptions one builds of the people one reads. Much like reading a book where you create a mental image of the character, people read a blogger’s words and filter them through their own imaginations and experience. And whether deliberately or no, a picture of what the person would be like to interact with in “real life” develops–you invent an imaginary voice for the person, an imaginary height, body type…you think you “get” how that person would move or respond or act in real life.

I suppose this response is only natural. But it’s good to remember that this imagined perception is all you, not them.

…

Assumption #3: Because I talk about sex it means I want to fuck you, or that I’m an emotion-free Fembot designed specifically for your pleasure.

This one I feel really deserves no explanation–it should be an obvious fact of life. But it is shocking to me how often men themselves are shocked by a woman who will talk about sex with frankness and openly say she enjoys it. And equally shocking to me are the assumptions some of them make based on that reality. I mean, come on fellas, is it really that rare these days? When a GUY talks to you about sex, do you assume he wants to fuck you, regardless of his orientation?

So for the record: just because I talk about sex with you doesn’t mean I want to have sex with you. It means simply that I like talking about sex as one of many topics I enjoy talking about. It doesn’t mean I am trying to turn you on, even if you do get turned on. Saying that I enjoy sex doesn’t mean I’m thinking of having it with you. Necessarily. Of course, any of those conditions may be true: in some cases I might want to fuck the guy I’m talking to, or tease him to arousal, or I might be thinking about having sex with him. But this is not the rule by a long shot.

…

End point: A blog gives you very little to go on. Even when people are totally genuine, we are all of us more than we appear in the little glimpses of ourselves we give you. I myself have been surprised multiple times when I’ve met online people in real life and something about them has completely clashed with my perception of them.

And, I will end by posing to my readers the same questions Miss Syl poses to hers (the “what do I look like” one is less relevant, since I post plenty of photos).

I’m curious: Just for fun, what image of me do/did you have in your head? What do I look like, sound like, act like, dress like? I promise to debunk all misconceptions offered with the real picture (unless you ask me not to).

And for those of you who already know me off blog a bit–or for anyone else–what misperceptions do you run into most between your writing and in-the-flesh selves?

Yet another excellent Naked City column from Ren, wherein she answers the oh-so-frequently asked question, “What’s the hardest part of your job?” An excerpt:

Well, I can say this truthfully and with authority. It’s not the weird hours. It’s not the seven-inch heels. It’s not the fasting and enemas before an anal scene. It’s not the rough fucking, or the getting groped by drunk guys, or body upkeep, or getting throat-fucked. It’s not the hustle, it’s not the strangers, it’s not the getting naked, it’s not the physical work. It’s not the waxing, it’s not the tit job, it’s not the scrubbing cum out of my hair. It’s not the names, it’s not STD testing, it’s not the crawling on all fours to pick up tip money off the floor.

It’s the objectification. From normal people. With their normal lives and abnormal questions. That is the hardest part, and it’s not even a hard part that feels good. I like my job, I have bad days, but mostly I love what I do, and I take pride in my work. The hardest part is normal people not getting that, then asking me how old was I when I first took it in the ass, how many guys have I fucked, and do I know where they could score some blow? It’s being made someone’s argument against my industry. It’s being not quite human to a whole lot of people. Normal people. Who I find myself liking less and less each day.

Figleaf posts about pole dancing, and includes this footnote:

[Quick note: The post by 100% Injury Rate, the source of the version of photo I used, above, mentions that the Australian program teaches girls *and* boys, which is at least one step in a positive direction, although it sounds like it's for kids as early as age seven. --fl]

I’m just going to repost the comment I left over there:

I don’t understand why something has to be done by boys/men for it to be seen as valid.

And Figleaf, as I’m sure you will appreciate, if I see one more person dismissively refer to pole dancing as “spreading your legs around a pole” and otherwise talking out of their ass about it, my head is going to fucking explode. Seriously people. If you have never tried it? SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

I have NO patience for this. NONE.

On a side note, Figleaf, if you are reading this, I have to say… you know I value and respect your writing, but I’ve been pretty baffled by some of the things you’ve written lately, and what appears to be (in many cases) a regression to more “conservative” sexual and social views. What gives?

And no, before anybody asks, I am not going to fly off the handle about “OMG they’re teaching pole dancing to children!!!“, which is what the expected/approved reaction seems to be. Look. Perceptions never change if we don’t challenge them. Get the fuck over it. And, the meaning of something is different depending on the context! This should not be a difficult concept! (Jenny, I know you’ve written about this, but if it was on your blog, I can’t find the post right now. Or maybe it was in a comment here?) Yes, pole dancing originated in strip clubs. So what?? Jazz music has its roots in slavery… does that mean if you like jazz you’re giving the stamp of approval to slavery?

(Besides, kids climb on poles all the time, we just don’t call it “pole dancing!”)

From Chris Hall at Sex in the Public Square (be sure to read the full post). Chris is a wonderful writer.

The real tragedy of [Palfrey's] death, from where I’m standing, is not anything extraordinary about her story, but how common and familiar it is, to the point of being cliché. If the story of Deborah Jean Palfrey had been laid out in a novel or play or screenplay, I would be angry at having my time wasted by a writer who was unable or unwilling to rise above cheap hackery that was old and worn out in the days of the Victorian penny dreadfuls. But Palfrey was a real person, and it makes me sick and angry to think how often the lives of people who should live peaceful, untroubled lives are forced into old patterns.

When I heard that Palfrey had hung herself, one of the first things that I thought of was the story of Ida Craddock. Craddock was a freethinker and feminist who wrote several sexual education manuals and pamphlets in the late 19th century. She was hounded and pursued for over a decade by the moralists of the day, in particular the infamous Anthony Comstock. In 1902, she was finally convicted for sending obscene materials through the mail and sentenced to five years in prison. Craddock was 45 years old at the time of her conviction and didn’t think that she could survive her sentence; the night before she was supposed to report for incarceration, she slit her wrists. Comstock showed no signs of regretting her suicide; in fact, he commonly bragged that he had driven as many as 15 people to suicide in his crusade for public morality.

One hundred and six years later, I want Ida Craddock’s story to seem quaint and old-fashioned, like an aged relic of less enlightened times. But Deborah Jean Palfrey is dead, hung from the neck by a nylon rope; her former employee, Brandy Britton, went the same way. David Vitter is still in the Senate. So it goes.

In the eye of the media, Palfrey’s death was regarded almost without a blasé fascination, as if the urge for a woman who transgressed to hang herself in her mother’s shed was as natural and unavoidable as birds migrating. And it seems unbelievable that one hundred and six years after Ida Craddock, we have to work so hard to justify not only the course that she chose to make for her life, but that we also have to fight to make others see that her death was a stupid waste, and not the inevitable end to a badly-written melodrama.

What we do, all the blogging and writing and organizing sometimes can seem futile, especially with stories like Palfrey’s. The one thing that we can be grateful for, in a somewhat grim way, is that Palfrey had to do more than merely write about sex before she was hounded and shamed into her grave. That, at least, is something that we’ve accomplished in the one hundred years since Ida Craddock opened her veins with a straight razor. But it’s not enough.

And I’m crying, again.

Yeah, I’ve mentioned before that I can be pretty emotional, and cry at inopportune times. But this week, I think it’s appropriate.

Commenter “Could Be Your Sister” on Bound, Not Gagged:

There are a number of things that I simply do not discuss openly because of my activism for sex workers rights.

If I say I was never sexually abused or never worked the streets or never had a drug problem, then I automatically become some exception.

If I am an abuse survivor or did street-work or ever used drugs, then I instantly prove their theories.

It’s too often a no-win situation, where my truth is not welcome.

(Yes, I give them a ton of pingbacks… because they deserve ‘em! People, if you’re not reading BNG, you really need to start.)

I keep quoting people who say the stuff I struggle to put into words, but can’t get quite right. So, here we go… Melissa nails it again:

On the abuse issue, I try to reframe it around either:

1) 1 in 6 women in their lifetimes are survivors of sexual abuse or assault, and clearly not all of them become sex workers.

2) We never ask how often women in other helping/service professions do that work as part of their being survivors. The number of rape crisis counselors and educators I have worked with who are survivors is HUGE, for example. In a way, that makes sense. In another, it can be very damaging.

As a culture right now everyone’s so quick to pin adult sexual behavior (and sex work as part of that) on some childhood trauma. “What MADE you that way?” is one of the only questions people who don’t understand human sexual variation and the sex industry ask. It’s part of the discourse of sex right now, and it’s infuriating as a sex worker *and* a survivor . It’s about context, though. When it comes to something like The View, I don’t know how I’d talk about sex work and sexual abuse and not have everything I said manipulated. There can be solid reasons to be strategic about discussing abuse, but I hate feeling like we “can’t” because we’d somehow damage the movement.

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.

Elizabeth agrees with me, anyway.

My real anger, though, actually comes from Dominus’s acceptance of the term “high class.” I know that is the term that much of the press has been using to describe the escort service in question. But to accept its use and to apply it to people is appalling.

“High class” is a value judgement and a way of obscuring the real stratification of wealth, power and privilege in the United States. Why not talk about the upper class, the elite, or the working class or the middle class, which are much more meaningfully descriptive?

Read her whole post; her analysis is spot-on, as usual.

BNG keeps crankin’ out the good stuff. As such, I keep giving them a crap-ton of pingbacks.

Most recently, there’s this post from existentialhedonist, entitled The media, gender, and representation:

I think the media’s obsession with Kristen’s childhood ties directly into the prohibitionists’ habit of using the term “girls” when referring to sex workers who are between 18 and 28. It seems to be a form of infantilizing women when they exercise their sexual and economic autonomy. It reminds me of the Swedish model, and it makes me want to wretch.

How about talking about her strength in overcoming a challenging youth to grow up and land a job that paid her for one hour more than most of her critics will see in a month? How about talking about her strength in the face of this onslaught of media attention and scrutiny? How she hasn’t cowered off into some corner- how she has kept her myspace page up, and how so many of the comments there are full of love and support in the face of this?

Kristen deserves to be seen for the amazing and strong woman she is. The obsession with her childhood is simply a cheap ploy to diminish the inherent fortitude of a person who faces challenges head on and rises above and beyond to become a creative entrepreneur beholden to nobody but herself. This is the hallmark of successful sex workers everywhere, and something that must be quashed by society lest more of us become such entrepreneurs.

I think it is important for the media and people like Farley to portray us as broken and weak people. It is ironic that some of them actually do this in the name of “feminism.” The truth is that the “abused girl” thing has to be played up to create a smokescreen to hide the reality: sex workers like Kristen don’t need you or anyone else to validate them. That is power. And that is dangerous.

Check it out.

Interestingly (or not), a lot of regular “media critic” sites have been deafeningly silent on this whole thing.

Via Bound, Not Gagged

From Kerry Howley, senior editor at Reason magazine:

Everyone seems to assume that legalizing sex work will reinforce all sorts of ugly cultural phenomena women struggle against all the time. Writes one commenter at Feministing, “I’m politically liberal, openly feminist, and opposed to sex work precisely” because of “patriarchy” and “heterosexuality issues.”

I find this incoherent precisely because I share all the poster’s intuitions about problematic cultural norms. Of course sexism restricts autonomy in all sorts of ways that deserve consideration when discussing the prevalence of prostitution or the choice to enter sex work. Of course it’s deplorable that sexually adventurous young women are constantly told they are “degrading themselves” by seeking out various experiences, that every bit of enjoyment eats away at some secret store of purity. This whole tradition-the idea that women need be preserved in glass so as not to “ruin” themselves, lest they diminish their sexual value by “giving it away”-restricts the lived autonomy of women in ways I can’t even begin to articulate. None of the slut-shaming makes sense unless you assume women live to give themselves to men in their purest possible form.

If you find all of these cultural pathologies unfortunate, what is the public policy you should prefer? It seems to me that it is not the policy that deems it a crime against the American people to open your legs. Anti-prostitution laws add a layer of legal sanction to all of our worst intuitions about the treatment of sexually independent women; they strengthen and validate the idea that women who bed men with any frequency are sick, marginal, pariahs.

Scratch that; submitted with the only comment being, “Are you fucking kidding me??”

DEAR ABBY: There seems to be an awful lot of women exposing themselves on the Internet in graphic sexual fashion. My wife says that men degrade themselves by looking at them.

My question to you is, what is more degrading? Looking at them, or women exposing themselves? — WONDERING IN PUYALLUP, WASH.

DEAR WONDERING: For a woman to post graphic sexual images for people she doesn’t know to view strikes me as more degrading because it indicates that she thinks she has little else to offer.

However, for a married man to view those images could also be considered degrading — and threatening — to his wife. Many women have written to me because their husbands spend more time looking at porn on the Internet than having a sex life in their own bedroom. In other words, the practice became an addiction.

*headdesk*

Again, I ask, “Why oh WHY do so many people persist in the idiotic belief that taking nude photos of yourself means you have no self-respect??”

I do not understand.

[Via Dacia]

This is an updated video, a follow-up to the one I posted yesterday. Watch it!

[Via Pro-Porn Activism]

Most of the activism I am really passionate about is related to sexuality. That’s because I am simply unable to divorce sexuality from the rest of my being; it’s such a fundamental part of who I am, that I can’t imagine just taking it on and off like a jacket. I’m not good at compartmentalizing, and I don’t think it should be a requirement for social justice activism. “Yes, work for social justice - as long as you keep this part of you that kind of makes us uncomfortable out of it.”

I can’t do that. To be human is to be sexual; even people who identify as asexual are claiming an identity regarding their sexuality. One of the quotes in my header quote rotation is from Kochanie, and it sums up my feeling on the matter: “I am sex, I am my body, and my sex, my mind and my body have never been separate.”

There’s been a lot of talk here lately about sex work, and I know some people are wondering why I am so passionate about sex workers’ rights activism, in particular. I’ll list a few reasons:*
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Question: “Why did you decide to work in the web industry?”

Answer: “It’s fun, challenging, and there’s always something new to learn.”

If someone asked me the above question, I would reply with the above answer. That would be a satisfactory answer, and the conversation would move on. Maybe we’d talk about web development, technology, etc., or maybe we’d move to other topics. Either way, I know my answer wouldn’t be followed by prying questions like:

“But why? What do you find so fun and challenging about it?”

“Are you sure there isn’t something else you’d rather be doing? You have so much potential!”

“Why do you need to prove yourself by writing code? You’re more than just a nameless, faceless code-writing machine, you know!”

“What could you possibly learn? It’s simple HTML.”

“Come on, let’s be honest. It’s not really work. Any idiot who knows how to use Google can figure out everything you need to know for your job.”

“Wouldn’t you rather be doing something that contributes to humanity?”

“How can you be so selfish?”

“You know, a lot of people don’t have the luxury to be able to pursue a career they enjoy. So who do you think you are? And what are you going to do about that?”

“Do you have problems meeting people? I heard web nerds are socially awkward and don’t know how to interact in real life.”

“What does your boyfriend think of what you do for a living?”

If I were unwilling to answer any and all of these follow-up questions? Oh, the poor dear. I’m clearly in denial about something. Why am I so defensive?

And what if I had simply answered, to the original question: “I have to pay the bills, and web development pays better than retail.” That would be an acceptable answer, too. There might be laughter, nods of agreement, conspiratorial smiles. There most certainly would not be frowns of pity and a soliloquy about how awful that is.

But replace “web” with “sex” in the original question above, and it’s an entirely different ballgame.

If I were to end this post right here, I guarantee you someone would come along and leave a comment along the lines of, “But but but… Some sex workers do have low self-esteem! Some of them are addicted to drugs! Some of them would rather be doing something else!”

To that I say, well, some web developers are socially awkward and don’t know how to interact in real life. Some Asians are bad drivers. Some black dudes carry concealed weapons. Some feminists hate men.

There will always be some people who fit a particular stereotype. But - and I shouldn’t even have to say this, right? - that doesn’t mean stereotypes are A-okay.

Because the fact is, some white people are bad drivers and/or carry concealed weapons. It’s worth examining why the stereotype is there for one particular group and not another. We know this.

And yet it all goes out the window when the topic is sex work. Somehow, otherwise intelligent, thoughtful, open-minded people lose their shit.

I know the stereotypes about sex work are deeply embedded in society - really, really deeply embedded. But that doesn’t make it okay to simply accept them without question. In fact, it makes questioning the dominant paradigm (that’s right, I said “dominant paradigm!”) even more imperative.