Sex Positive

Rubbing our parts in robotic electronics, no matter how supple, no matter how able to respond in terms of coos and ooohs, no matter what level of "special order" creation status to match our individual personalities and needs, will not satiate our hunger for real companionship.

Humans appear to have a very pronounced attachment to companionship, so much so that we are most driven by desire and longing. We want, crave, unconditional love and acceptance.

This is the full text of the interview with feminist genderqueer sex worker @MxLaudanum, which was quoted in this article on the rescue industry I wrote for Cliterati (published 1/02/14). The interview itself makes a very powerful post in its own right. Written in just a couple of hours, it’s a stunning critique of contemporary feminism and how all of us on this planet tend to view the world in black and white.

I deeply respect Gloria Steinem. But I am terribly disappointed by remarks she's made regarding sex work during her recent tour of India. This publicity tour promotes her latest book, The Essential...

At AVN, a mainstream director said feminist porn made her uncomfortable. The industry is taking notice of feminism and they don't like being criticized...

The discrimination I face, both because of my work and as an activist, are compounded in complex ways by the fact that I am both queer and a sex worker. Yet each is distinctly different and cannot be compared. Queer and sex work communities are diverse and no-one should attempt to speak to collective experience – I speak to my lived experience only.

Has sex-positive feminism, despite its victories, forgotten that sex work is actually work, and often quite brutal?

...Despite the acceptance of “sluts,” the “prostitute” remains a deeply embedded symbolic marker between decency and disrespect. The “ethical slut” engages in sex of her or his own “free” will, while the “dirty whore” insists on getting paid for sex. Sex-positive feminists and other “sluts” believe there is nothing morally wrong with consensual sex between two (or more) people in private, or for adults, in a semi-public setting such as a sex club, dungeon or swingers’ retreat. But money changes everything.

I wanted to write something about the human body in all its naked and diverse glory. I wanted to share the unexpected gift that sex work gave me; forgiveness for all my physical imperfections.

Working as a sex worker for many years I have seen naked bodies belonging to my clients, my co workers and myself in all sorts of positions, settings and lighting. Over the years I have become incredibly comfortable with human bodies and getting naked but that wasn’t always the case.

Taking my clothes off and showing my naked body to someone I just met, AND  having the nerve to expect them to pay me for it, was my first and most persistent fear about starting sex work. Before sex work my experience of being naked in front of people had largely been in the dark, after foreplay and with lots of anxiety. Each time i let my mind wander  what it would be like to do sex work, I would get stuck at the bit where I had to take off my clothes.

And it wasn’t just a concern for the first booking

The implication is that with the insufficient “supply” of women, tempting men with a hint of sexuality is too dangerous. This is almost a textbook example of victim-blaming, in which victims of sexual assault or aggression are construed to have been asking for it based on non-verbal cues, such as clothing, demeanor or profession. This sort of rhetoric flares up in large-scale rape cases. While covering the alleged rape of 14-year-old Daisy Coleman, known in the media as the Maryville case, an expert witness on Fox Newssaid, “What did she expect to happen at 1am in the morning after sneaking out?” The example in the New York Times article is a variation on the same concept; the woman is cautioned that she should adjust her behavior because this will either tempt or invite sexual aggression from men. It is not the man’s responsibility to not rape women; it is the woman’s responsibility to not ‘ask for it’.

It may seem redundant to point out the commodification of female flesh in the industry of sex work. However, the issue at hand is specifically the rationalization that it is a simple function of the influx of men that creates conditions fertile for exploitation and predation. Critically absent from this discourse is a question as to why the men in Williston engage in this behavior. Ara Wilson, an associate professor of women’s studies at Duke University, points out that the definition of capitalist markets as “benign vehicles” that merely channel “wants, needs, and desires” overlooks the fact that “desires can be fostered and created.” Anybody can see how a sense of necessity did not precede the existence of consumer goods like smart phones, jewelry, or the millions of toys produced each year. However, with sex work, it’s taken as a given that desire precedes the market, and Wilson notes that a discussion of the creation of desire for sex work “remain[s] surprisingly unexamined”.

I know many of you who read here are, or have been, sex workers. Myself included, of course. We consider ourselves to be sex positive feminists who want sex work to be recognized and respected as work. Most of us believe it should be decriminalized, if not completely legal, even if  we often disagree about how best to achieve those things. But often in our conversions on the subject of (and issues surrounding) sex work, it is clear that many hold onto their own experiences at the expense of seeing the larger picture. Just like those who were harmed come out swinging “against” sex work, we let our feelings color and even cloud our willingness to hear from others.

The existence of courtesans is a glaring refutation of neofeminist dogma about objectification, the eternal victimhood of whores, etc; the fact that the most celebrated, successful and highly-paid harlots of all time were often those who were educated and could match or surpass men in intellectual pursuits throws a huge spanner into the catechism that prostitution is a manifestation of male dominance over women, that our clients hate us, and so on.  Whenever possible, neofeminist historians deny that courtesans were prostitutes, pretend that accomplished women were not really courtesans, or describe them with circumlocutions like, “she chose to cohabit with several men who supported her financially.”  And when all else fails, they simply ignore them.  Fortunately neither male historians nor female ones with less parochial views feel the need to dissemble about such women, and among them Tullia d’Aragona is rightfully viewed as worthy of respect and study.

Still, there’s something thrilling to going from feeling utterly alone and unlovable to realizing that all these women with all these pictures in all these ads, you can be with any one of them, at least for one hour, and pretend. And all you need is money. It’s not a replacement for love— it pales in comparison to a real loving relationship with somebody who you are sexually compatible with, but it sure as fuck beats being alone and feeling untouchable.

Adult performers who get work elsewhere can be fired if their past comes out -- and there's no legal recourse

[M]ostly, sex workers look like any ordinary joe, cellulite, disproportionate bodies, a range of colour, caste, social background, political intent. A range of reasons. A range of experiences.

Our society turns a blind eye to the murder of sex workers, deeming them less than human. Why is that?

...Twenty years ago I first asked two questions that continue to unsettle me today. The first is answerable: What does a woman who sells sex accomplish that leads to her being treated as fallen, beyond the pale, incapable of speaking for herself, discountable if she does speak, invisible as a member of society? The answer is she carries a stigma. The second question is a corollary: Why do most public conversations focus on laws and regulations aimed at controlling these stigmatized women rather than recognizing their agency? To that the answer is not so straightforward.

In 1983, the Big Ten Conference established a women's Athlete of the Year award and later named it after Suzy Favor Hamilton, a University of Wisconsin middle distance runner and alumna who followed her illustrious college career with three appearances in the Olympic Games. She was more than qualified to have her name attached to such a prestigious award. Unfortunately, the conference announced on Tuesday that her name would be removed from the award after it was revealed in December that Favor Hamilton had worked as an escort since 2011.

"I do not expect people to understand," she wrote on Twitter, "but the reasons for doing this made sense to me at the time and were very much related to depression." She added that her husband knew about her work and didn't approve of it.

But something that the Big Ten needs to realize — along with the rest of the country — is that sex work is one of the most stigmatized professions in the world.

It hasn’t drawn as much attention as targeted killing, warrantless wiretapping, the ill treatment of Guantanamo prisoners, or White House meddling with the drug approval process. But the Obama administration’s dogged defense of the so-called “anti-prostitution pledge” has puzzled progressives as much as any policy in this president’s Bush-like second term.

The pledge law, adopted in 2003 to appease religious conservatives, bars U.S. support for any international health group that fails to speak out against prostitution—even if its clients are sex workers. Organizations as varied as UNAIDS,  the World Bank and the World Health Organization have condemned the rule for undermining the fight against HIV/AIDS, but Obama’s Justice Department hasn’t budged.

Now, thanks to a new Supreme Court decision, the pledge will finally be scrubbed from the books. In a Thursday morning decision, the court declared that the anti-prostitution pledge violates the constitution’s First Amendment. As Chief Justice John Roberts helpfully pointed out, that’s the one that “prohibits the government from telling people what they must say.”

Porn star Chanel Preston says that when she attempted to make a deposit into her new account, she learned it had been closed because of “compliance issues.”

She says that the manager who had helped her set up the account explained that the bank was worried about the live cam shows on her website and had decided to close the business account.

...Meanwhile, a former softcore porn producer in California is suing JPMorgan Chase after the bank refused to underwrite a loan for “moral reasons.”

The plaintiff — who actually sold his company several years ago — says it was the bank that had originally approached him about refinancing the loan, but after the refi got bogged down in months of delays, he eventually learned the truth.

In the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, the plaintiff states that Chase VP “finally informed plaintiff during a telephone conversation that plaintiff’s loan application was refused due to ‘moral reasons,’ because of JPMorgan’s disapproval of plaintiff’s former source of income and occupation as an owner of a television production company that produced television programs that dealt with the subject of human sexuality.”

He says the bank told him that Chase would be taking a “reputational risk” by going through with the loan.

“JPMorgan purports to be so ashamed of nudity and human sexuality that it cannot process a refinance of a home loan of plaintiff, secured by plaintiff’s house, because plaintiff’s source of income six years ago included production of television programs that contained nudity and human sexuality,” reads the complaint.

It’s important to note that the horrors of the Cleveland abductions had nothing to do with sex trafficking; Ariel Castro’s atrocities were his, the acts of single criminal male.

[This is also something folks would be equally wise to remember when it comes to the use of the word "sadist" in description of his acts; this has nothing to do with BDSM, neither in porn nor practice. Just as whatever religion Castro professes to prescribe to has nothing to do with that faith's real practice, any other associations, assumed or claimed, should not be accepted. Castro's inhumanity is his; to lay it at the feet of some other group, to misrepresent its origins or associations, to pretend it came from some "other" or otherwise purport false dangers, these things create panic and other actions which do not serve public safety or justice. Castro, and those like him, should be held accountable for their actions.]