Even in the way I was attracted to people- I still idolized masculinity- the whole world, it seemed, did- and I may as well have stayed straight for all the feminist good I was doing. Masculine was good. Femininity was bad. That, I realized, was called Sexism.

(more…)

I can appreciate the irony: even as we move toward a greater appreciation of sex work, that oldest and simplest means of ascribing value to a woman, we reflexively devalue the feminine. Which is why it’s so important for those of us that perform femme to wear our femme identity with pride and strength – not because we’re afraid to be masculine, but because we’re not afraid to own that this, too, has power and worth. Ciswomen were not born second-best, and transwomen are not reaching for something lower but femmes of all walks of life – queer or otherwise, born with it or born to seek it – are making the choice to embrace this second walk, hips swaying.

Tweet This Post

I’m starting to think that we self-identified “vixens” are terribly misogynistic.

We start out feeling different from the other gals. Maybe we have a hard time relating to them. Most of our friends are guys, often from an early age.

We tend to be very independent (some might say selfish). We don’t want to live our lives by anyone else’s rulebook, least of all the gender-pink lace trimmed one people have tried to hand us. We decide this at an early age. Simultaneously we find the power that comes from flirtation and are intoxicated with it.

We don’t want white dresses or babies or hearts and flowers. We don’t want anything that will weigh us down and try to come first.

We don’t need love. We’re not weak, emotional women.

We’re not afraid to get our hands dirty. To get dirty. We’re accepted into societies of men, but in our own place, as they are very aware of what we are. And we use this.

When we’re around other women, it’s not the same. The dynamic is not the same. We forget how to relate, or we never learn.

They don’t trust us because to us flirting is friendship.

Our boyfriends will have a hard time understanding. They’ll want more than we can give. They’ll want a heart.

We’ll have a hard time opening up, or be too open, or both.

We define ourselves as not being like the other girls – perhaps defensively – and because of this we mirror the gender stereotypes we were taught, hard.

Lately for every gal I hear or read who says she doesn’t enjoy the company of other women because they’re always so much cattier than men, I hear contempt for their gender and its perceived weakness. (And a woman who hasn’t been around her male friends when they gossip and fight. Of course, since they’re men, they would use the word argue – which is an angry word but a word of strength. It’s not often used strictly to demean. Gossip is a powerless word for ineffectual people and we only apply it to women. We castrate our own gender.)

It’s one thing to rebel against being spoonfed a stereotype as an ideal. It’s another thing to have obvious disgust for your gender (and most of these offending women are primarily gendered female, even if they do sometimes feel male inside; or at least, they express their gender as female).

I caught myself at it when I realized I was emotionally neutered. I fixed that. Mostly.

But even then, I thought the problem was a fear of vulnerability, not a fear of all the mockable quirks we define as female.

I’m not saying this was any less my actual personality. I was on this path because my own inclinations led me there; it wasn’t simple rebellion. But humans need both traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine qualities within themselves to be whole people. I thought wearing lace and high heels and being into emotional honesty was expressing my feminine side.

There’s more to being a woman than dressing the part (although that’s a reward I savor).

A fear of committment commitment – I can’t even spell the word – is unanticipated when a woman wears it but that doesn’t make it any less a weakness of character than it is in a man.

Not all traditionally masculine qualities are positive. We weave them into ourselves because they represent power and we love power any way we can get it. Taken from us (ooh!), wielded by us (mmm…), exchanged and rearranged in the kinkiest permutations… We use our bodies, our voices, our feminine wiles, just as we use our masculine traits. To disarm men and confuse them when they trail after us like lost puppies.

It’s one thing to be independent, and favor few attachments, and not be very interested in relationships but that is sometimes a stage, not a permanent trait, and even when it is a permanent trait, it’s neither a positive nor a negative. It’s just a way of being.

We don’t need to throw poison darts at women who didn’t spit on their gender-pink, lace trimmed role book.

Tweet This Post

So, I suppose the question should be asked: Because I take my clothing off for a living, am I worthy of being respected? Am I allowed that much? Or is it right for me to be disrespected because I show myself in provocative photos?

I suppose I’m a little stunned. I take off my clothing for a living, and because of that, I’m not worthy of respect. I knew that I had to pay for my profession with my privacy, but I didn’t know it would also cost me respect.

I mean, I’m not saying that you have to take me seriously 100% of the time. I’m not saying you can’t even view me as sexy – I’m flattered that anyone does. But I do think that I’m entitled to at least a trace amount of respect here. My opinions and views shouldn’t be any less valuable just because I have a website where I take my top off.

-In Theory: The Dissection of the Allowance of Respect and Whether Erotica Models are Deserving of Such, DamnJezebel.com

And I left a comment that turned into a post:

It’s just the old Madonna/Whore thing again. We’re told that anyone who’s publicly sexual or in any other way pushes sexual boundaries not only isn’t worthy of respect, and isn’t even a real person, but doesn’t respect theirself. Usually herself. I guess that comes from the “loose women sleep around due to low self esteem and aren’t picky about who they boink” theory but what that has to do with making smut, I don’t know…

I say, if you can’t respect me naked, you can’t respect me clothed and probably never respected me to begin with. My opinions and character don’t change depending on what I’m wearing and whether or not it shows too much cleavage.

I’m tempted to blow it off and say some people are just paleolithic backwards dicks, the kind of people who are so retro they’re also racist and homophobic… but plenty of guys and girls keep on perpetuating this idea, that a woman’s value is in the (perceived, in this case) scarcity of her crotch, not in her mind or as a whole person.

That’s probably one of the least feminist sentiments I can hear someone express, right up there with “Why are you wearing shoes and what are you doing out of the kitchen?” (And that one’s usually a joke.)

This is some of the especially fun stuff sex workers get to deal with when we date. We have to wonder if we’re still good enough to take home to Mom. We have to lie about what we do – or tell a very slanted version of the truth. We have to deal with not only his or her conflicting feelings about whether or not it’s okay for a girlfriend to do this, but our own conflicting feelings about the same. On top of all that whenever you start having sex with somebody or get into any kind of romantic relationship, your mental and emotional boundaries get nudged, and this can affect your sex work boundaries or even interests. (This was true for me: I started off as a sub, got into fetish stuff when I was single, and now that I’m in a relationship again, I’m craving mostly fetish and domme sessions to balance out the bottoming I do “at home.”)

Dating’s easier because you’re coming in as you are, expecting to a degree to be taken as you are. When things get more serious you start to wonder how what you do is going to affect his work, his life, your sex, whether or not you’ve got a future…

If he has some of those old attitutes regarding respect and publicly sexual women you worry he thinks of you as lesser because of what you do – or because you love to do it. I don’t want to change my job. I love my job, even when it’s slow and I’m having to ponder hawking stuff on eBay. I wouldn’t change it for anything.

Not even a professional sales job with millionaire potential. Not even something respectable that I could brag to somebody’s mom about.

I couldn’t brag to myself about it. I’d know it was a compromise. Not a compromise between two people; a compromise of myself. And that, to me, would show a lack of self-respect.

It’s impractical but I know no way in hell am I going to go in there and work my ass off doing something I hate just for money. If I’m going to work my ass off it’s going to be figuring out how to be comfortable doing what I love. If that means working part time temporarily at something I’m not crazy about, so be it. But I believe in following your passions.

I might not be the girl you take home to Mom because you’re afraid that I might get excited and talk about whatever X-rated business venture I’ve got up my sleeve. I’ll be the girl sitting there in my pretty lacy panties counting the money I earned with my creativity, my perseverance, and my dirty mind knowing that the little girl who used to dream of owning her own business and living with passion and integrity, even if that meant living alone, would be proud of me.

And yeah – anyone worth having me would be proud of me too.

(They’d get bonus points for helping me brainstorm on marketing.)

That’s the kind of self-respect sex workers supposedly don’t have, isn’t it? The kind that means not compromising who you are and your values for every Tom, Dick, and Mary that come around.

Real friends don’t care if you show your tits on the internet.

Tweet This Post