Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Under My Red Umbrella

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

I was catching up with fellow phone sex operator Cameryn Moore’s (excellent) blog and came across her post for today:

As tired as I get of the looks and the questions, though, I have to remember: What I do is not illegal in Massachusetts, or indeed, in most of the United States. I am not going to have my door busted down for my work. (Although I did almost lose my room last summer over it…) I am not endangering my life every time I sit down in my easy chair for a cosy little 10-minute erotic chat.

This all puts me in a special category of sex worker: someone who can be really open about my work, but also has the option of not talking about it, of not thinking about it, of ignoring the other people in the allied sex trades who HAVE to go face to face with their clients, who are constantly harassed by law enforcement, who bear the brunt of the stigma (all those hooker and whore jokes still get laughs!), who are beaten and robbed and raped and murdered because our culture is so fucked-up about sex that selling it makes you a negligible, disposable quantity.

Today is December 17th, the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. For every dead hooker joke I’ve heard this year told to me by friends I was out as a sex worker to, for every time one of my sex work friends has had to fudge on the “what do you do?” question because s/he was afraid for their own safety if they came out, for every sex worker of every gender who screens their clients, guards their basic personal information, sets up safe calls and knows that one day it still might not be enough to stop someone from killing them because of the job they do – a job which is based on giving others pleasure – I’m telling someone outside of my little bubble what this day means, and why it means so much to me.

Today I’ll advocate for my sisters and brothers in sex work, all my far-flung colleagues across the globe. Tonight I’ll light a candle and whisper to Ishtar for all the ones it was too late for. And I’ll take phone fetish calls, and cam, and make my porn in my safe warm apartment because in a world that tries its best to snuff us out, sometimes the most powerful thing sex workers can do is exist, and keep working, and be happy.

P.S. – The uber cool Renegade Evolution and Jill Brenneman are doing a live radio show today. Listen with me. If you’re a sex worker’s client, tip your favorite a little extra today in tribute. It’ll let her (or him) know that you’re remembering, too.

Censorship: Not Just For Gonzo Anymore

Friday, December 12th, 2008

From my recent comic porn censorship post over at Full Frontal Politics:

‘The world is becoming more dangerous for fiction. No, scratch that–more dangerous for ideas.

Australia, I’m talking about you. While those in adult industry production, and those involved in protecting sexual free speech, know Australia has never been a porn haven (although they do produce an awful lot of the best), this one made even my jaded activist jaw drop:

An Australian Supreme Court judge convicted a man of possessing child pornography. The images in question were stored on his hard drive: explicit cartoon images modeled after Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, child characters from long-running cartoon The Simpsons, apparently having sex with their parents (also cartoon characters). Google “free hentai” a few times and I’m sure you’ll come across the same type of image–I know I have.

This type of image–a parody–is actually considered protected fair use under U.S. copyright law. In this case it would probably also be at risk of being found obscene.

“If the persons were real, such depictions could never be permitted,” Justice Adams said in his judgment. “Their creation would constitute crimes at the very highest end of the criminal calendar.” Let’s back that one up. “If the persons were real.” I’d say that’s an important distinction.

If the persons were real, every episode of South Park would be considered a snuff film. If the persons were real, Homer Simpson would be guilty of child abuse. If the persons were real…’

Kudos to porno superhero Renegade Evolution for the tip-off on this one.

This is What Societal Change Looks Like

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Over at my (no longer dormant) other blog Full Frontal Politics, I’ve recently been spotlighting instances of unexpected support for sex workers on both popular career blog Brazen Careerist and top webcomic Something Positive.

Ladies (and gents, and everyone in between) – if we keep talking, our words will be heard and eventually repeated. The dialogue will be re-framed. And, mind by mind, people will gradually see sex workers as humans doing a job, not as members of some untouchable caste.

Hell, it worked for the Republicans…

Last Day to Comment on .XXX

Friday, March 9th, 2007

Today, March 9, is the last day to comment on the proposed .XXX domain extension. If you’re in the adult entertainment industry and/or an adult webmaster, please email ICANN today stating “I am in the adult entertainment industry and I oppose .XXX”.

Comments received on or before March 9, 2007 will be considered at the next scheduled Special Meeting of the ICANN Board so it’s very important that they hear from us today, en masse.

(See Full Frontal Politics for the full scoop.)

The Politics of Tease and Denial

Wednesday, October 18th, 2006

Remember how I kept mentioning that relaunch of Full Frontal Politics?

Well, it’s starting off slow, but it’s happening. My first full-length sexual commentary over there in too many months is now up, and it’s on tease and denial:

Chicks don’t get a monopoly on the either foreplay or the oh-so-willing victim role. Sensual touch just plain feels good and there’s something incredible in giving another person complete control over your orgasm. It makes the eventual – okay, possible – release that much more potent.

To a smartass tease, the game of stroke-and-release has a lot of potential for mindfucking. Modern culture assumes the male orgasm. It’s almost a right in any given sexual encounter: the man will come.

In tease and denial that assumption is blown out the window. He gets what she chooses to dish out…

The Politics of Tease and Denial,” Full Frontal Politics

That’s also where my pro-erotic activism and sex news will be going. Subscribe to the feed now and stay posted on the next updates.

Pervert!

Friday, February 3rd, 2006

You might’ve noticed I have no problem whatsoever calling myself a depraved pervert.

A lot of fellow sex bloggers and sex blog readers (even some of my clients) don’t like the terminology I use sometimes, and I can understand why. It can sound harsh or negative, when you can’t see that I’m saying it with a wink and a grin. Sex and openly sexual people are disparaged in American culture; they are made disgusting and held as special in that way that also means held apart from everything and everyone else.

I like to mix dirty and sacred because, to me, dirt is pretty damn sacred. Dirty is earthy and a part of daily life and at the same time its own form of glamour. Weave the sacred and the feeling of openness to something beyond you that comes with both religion and sex in with that and you have a pretty good approximation of how I feel about sex.

Rest assured that there is absolutely no sting for me in the term depraved pervert. It was a label I chose to apply to myself long before anyone else had the chance: I chose it when I was 12 and have worn that sticky badge with pride ever since.

I had a dirty mind and a love of dirty jokes (and, behind closed doors, a slowly growing acceptance of my love of books with the “good parts” and my own left hand). That was what my friends called me with affection; we had a virginal one, a partier, a silly one, and a perverted one. I took it in the sense of something bent and twisted in a way usually considered a little wrong, to a degree that could be disturbing and/or obsessive – but to a 12 year old geek, that’s a compliment.

I realized that the sheer amount of time my brain spent thinking about sex or twisting around perfectly normal situations to imply sexual innuendo was kind of twisted, but in a good way that entertained me and made people laugh. If loving erotica and thinking about kinky sex constantly made me a pervert, then, well, yeah, I was. So what?

There was no shame attached to that label. Not for me.

And that’s the kicker. Usually words like depraved and perverted are used to imply a sick, unhealthy, or wrong like of sex seen as an obsession with sex. They’re used to smear the labeled with shame and guilt. They imply deviant sexuality and a strong need to return to the fold of sex that’s enjoyed for the love only or for procreation, if it’s enjoyed at all and not done out of duty or used as a bargaining chip.

(That’s a rant I’ll save for another time.)

At that point calling me a deviant was just a statement of fact. I was weird inside in every sense and less weird sexually than I was in the others so really calling me a pervert was letting me off easy…

Being interested in sex, even unusual sex, isn’t sick, unhealthy, or wrong and fortunately at the time I didn’t believe it was. Instead I was told during my preteen years that porn, visual or verbal, was wrong (not age-inappropriate, but wrong and unhealthy at any age).

I was told as a teenager that sex was mine to choose but not really. I could say no, but I couldn’t say yes unless certain conditions were fulfilled, and I wasn’t supposed to want to say yes, let alone try to initiate things. (I was very, very reluctantly virginal for a long time.) Which conditions I had to wait for varied by the month – or rather, they were added on to whenever one was met.

I’d decided my own conditions when I first realized at some point I’d want to have sex. They were:

  1. Feeling ready
  2. Being motivated by internal drive and feelings, not outside pressure
  3. Being with someone I loved (not necessarily forever, not necessarily my soulmate, and I wasn’t opposed to one night stands down the line)

The list I was given was of course much less longer and much more self-contradictory. It was also handed over with a certain amount of sexual shame. I was told that the things I really wanted to do (not that I mentioned them – I wasn’t that stupid) would make me pathetic, disgusting, shameful. A slut.

That was the sexual label that was used against me, and it was completely (unsatisfyingly) unjustified. I took things slowly, I was in a long-term monogamous relationship, and I didn’t do more than kiss and grope through clothing until I was 16. No good-girl chastity, but nothing really age-inappropriate, nothing kinky, nothing anywhere near as bad as a good half my classmates were doing.

Yep. For that I was a slut, and told I deserved to be called that. Yeah.

(Nowadays, if someone wants to call me a slut, they can. It doesn’t bother me. Sure, I’m a slut. I’m your bitch. They’re paying me for the privilege and it’s all in good fun. They’re also usually sending me friendly, kinky emails after the scene.)

Even knowing at the time the shame was unjustified, I felt it. Good girls don’t like sexual pleasure. They don’t ever give it because they want to, only for other reasons. They don’t ever want to receive any pleasure themselves. That would somehow be extra slutty.

It took some time but the guilt and shame wore off and were replaced by lies, my very own 24/7 submissive, and some of the most delicious bondage sex I’ve ever had. The lies were uncovered as lies almost always are: my mom saw me unpacking a brand new custom made flogger (happy birthday!) and this didn’t surprise her. After all I was never shy about being a perv. The sex work did surprise her, and she tried pushing the few shame buttons I hadn’t uninstalled.*

It didn’t really work – actually I think it backfired. Frankly I’m good at what I do.** I’ve had an almost lifelong interest in sex, kink, and sexual technique. Isn’t it every entrepreneur’s dream to make money doing something they love?

How did you unwind the feelings of shame from your sexuality?

*For the record, she’s pretty cool with things now. My family rocks.

**Shitty photography aside. I do that for entertainment, mine and yours, not for a living. This is obvious since I can still pay my rent…

Full Frontal Politics – another notch on the lipstick case

Wednesday, January 25th, 2006

Sure I just popped this blog’s cherry, but I’m already moving on to the next one. (Don’t worry little fetish blog, I’ll still respect you in the morning…)

Her name is Full Frontal Politics and she likes to keep her heels on. She talks dirty, too – if you can’t talk about it at dinner with strangers, it’ll probably be there. She’s into sex, politics, the war on porn, all that good stuff.

Go take a peek – she likes it when you watch.

Sexual Manifesto

Monday, January 23rd, 2006

I’d rather have my wrists tied together than my legs.

Anything that denies me my sexual freedom, denies me. As a thinking creature I have a right- not one guaranteed by a piece of paper, but one I’ll take without asking for permission- to decide how to live my life. I have a right to make my mistakes, to choose to live my life in the way that is best for me without waiting for someone to tell me which way I’m supposed to go. I have the capacity to enjoy every nuance of sex and flirting and the responsibility to enter the deepest, darkest parts of myself and face the impulses I’m afraid I can’t control. I have the responsibility to control them rather than deny them or blame another for tempting them. I have the joy of becoming that darkest self and seeing the look of raw, hungry bliss on the face of a willing “victim” when I take that responsibility seriously.

Sex is the rush of lifeblood in my veins, it’s a source of energy, it’s a primal drive. Hearts and minds and bodies all get involved and it gets really interesting. Sometimes the tension of sex held back is more intense and charged than any orgasm.

Why did you think I flirt so much?