"I'm always amazed that people have the courage to rear children, given that once you have them, anything people don't like about your offspring's sexuality becomes your fault. I heard a new twist on this lately: Foot and leg fetishes stem from men sitting on the floor as infants, tugging futilely at the skirts of their (obviously) distant, unloving mother. It's odd how no one pathologizes guys for liking boobs."

- Mistress Matisse, in Were Kinky People Abused as Children?, on thestranger.com

"People always bring up the "good old days" of body image, and talk about curvy Vargas girls and how Marilyn Monroe was a size whatever-it-was -- but the Left-wing idea of how healthy those days were is just as much a revisionist pipe-dream as the Right-wing idea of how moral they were.

First of all, the fact that the ideal was different doesn’t mean that there wasn’t an ideal at all. Yes, a very small percentage of women have the body of Calista Flockhart, but was the percentage with the body of Jayne Mansfield really any greater? It seems like roughly the same percentage of women are going to feel bad about their bodies at any given time, no matter which of the various competing ideals is having its turn in the spotlight.

[...]

Monroe’s curves may have been a positive from a feminist perspective, but what about the other ingredients in the recipe -- the affected voice, the expression of perpetual surprise, the fact that she had to act dumb, even though she wasn’t? Taken all together, the curves plus the other stuff paint a picture of Monroeism as the ideal of the girl-woman; of virgin chic, with the stuff that curves are made of seeming less like "real-woman" fat than baby fat. The curves of the mid-century pinup girl were there to make her seem like a naïve teenager -- trickable, conquerable, rapeable."

- The1585, in The Body-Image Essay to End All Body-Image Essays, on the1585.com

I didn't agree with everything in the article, but this is still one of the best pieces I've ever read on the usually abysmal topic of "body image."

I've had a lot of smut thrust at me over the years as awful examples of "women being degraded", but none of that has ever truly pissed me off quite like ForTheGirls.com.  It's with that long-standing annoyance that I was disappointed to see that the only porn site to ever really offend me with its disgusting amount of sexism is up for a Feminist Porn Award.  For The Girls (and others in the genre) takes sexuality back about 50 years, insults viewers' intellect and their libido, and tacitly says that all women are vanilla heterosexual chicks who squirm and giggle at the very thought of penises.

For The Girls and other smaller "porn for women" companies feature cheesy soft-focus images, putting forth the idea that in order for women to be aroused, a sexual situation must be framed in terms of love and cuddling.  I love snuggling, too, but it's obscenely offensive to me to suggest that women are such delicate little flowers that we can't handle sex without it being about love.  That, to me, is exactly the sort of mentality that feminism was supposed to be fighting against.  (But, I have that sentiment about a lot of matters when it comes to feminism, which is why I abandoned that sinking ship.)

I don't need saccharine romantic story lines to get wet - I want to see relatable people and fucking.  ("Porn for women" rarely features shots of penetration and other things that supposedly frighten women.)  When I look at porn, I want to see people getting sweaty, aroused, smiling and laughing, being "imperfect", and in realistic locations and situations, not a "fantasy hay loft where the muscular stable boy makes sweet gentle love to me while never ruffling my feathered hair."

For The Girls is just as bad as mainstream "male-centric" porn in the type of body images it promotes- oiled up beefcake guys with muscles, who generally look like they were photographed for some gay porn mag.  The women have flawless thin bodies, just like what you'd see on any mainstream porn production.  The sex - what little of it is shown - is of the extremely staged variety where the focus is on camera angles and keeping the performer's makeup and hair looking perfect.  (Nevermind the fact that most "porn for women" looks like it was shot in the 80s and 90s.)  Apparently, "women" like their porn tacky, contrived, and like something out of a letter to Penthouse Forum from 20 years ago where it's obvious a man is writing his fantasy from the perspective of a woman.

Why is For The Girls' content so similar to mainstream porn, you ask?  Because it is mainstream porn - and I don't mean that just as a personal judgement.  In talking with the site's owner on an industry message board several years ago, she explained how she gets the material she uses on her site.  For The Girls' owner buys cheesey mass-market heterosexual porn content, and removes all the shots of the actual sex, since women don't want to see that sort of thing.  She also buys generic softcore male content and deletes any photos that look too gay.  She then writes flowery introductory text to make the content romancey and (supposedly) appealing to women.  While the site's audience is led to believe that the content is special, "made for women", and focusing on women's pleasure and desires, it's just random porn produced under whoever-knows-what circumstances, with all the icky sex and the icky gay stuff deleted out.  Very feminist and sex-positive, don't you think?

(I've had a number of online conflicts on this topic with the owner of For The Girls, and I wish I had them screencapped for posterity.  Our fights were on a couple of different message boards for women in the porn industry, both of which are now offline.)

For The Girls and the "porn for women" niche is just dripping with the idea that women actually don't like or want sex.  It's deeply misogynistic in ways that aren't obvious on the surface.  (The whole thing reminds me of an Onion article about a woman masturbating to the thought of having a husband, a house in the suburbs, and 2.5 darling children.)  For The Girls' owner wouldn't even bother me if she peddled her product as "softcore romance porn", but don't beat your chest and make a fuss about how your conservative anti-sex "porn" is is what all women - as a blushing hivemind - want.

I've heard that For The Girls does sell well, which is sad, because it's not the only option.  There is a lot of porn out there for vanilla heterosexual women that doesn't belittle them, and is actually directed by women, focused on women's pleasure, and features performers who love their work.  (As well as amazing porn directed by men and transfolk, and porn that's not so vanilla or heterosexual.)  There is just so much kick-ass erotic material out there these days for all women, of all different tastes, and it's a shame to see one site claim a monopoly on knowing what's best for the fairer sex.  It's especially sad to see For The Girls mentioned in the same breath as Buck Angel, Jamye Waxman, Madison Young, Shine Louise Houston, Carlos Batts, Courtney Trouble, and Tristan Taormino - and all the other people who create beautiful erotic material that doesn't condescend to their audience by "protecting" them from sex.

---

I recently got some feedback on my blog that read like an auto-generated essay against porn and sex work, hitting all the key arguments that I've heard a thousand times, just rearranged in a different order.

It got me thinking, hasn't anyone made a bingo card about this yet?  Apparently not, so I made one, with my top 25 most irritating frequently addressed accusations.  (Click here to get a larger version so that you can print it out and play along at home.)

[Edit: Miss Renegade Evolution made a sex work bingo card about a year ago, which I missed.  Go see her version here.]

Today in long-standing annoyances: the left's schizophrenia about religion- namely, which beliefs are chic and which beliefs are deplorable.

As a whole, lefties/liberals love to point out that they're better than those normal people and the silly dogmas of the desert religions, but often embrace their own interpretations of eastern and indigenous religions.  Lefties picket Mormon churches for their support of Prop 8, but squeal at the chance to see The Dalai Lama live in person.  They'll look down their noses at those nutty Catholics taking the Eucharist, but love buying homeopathic tablets from Whole Foods for their subjective ailments.

Since every single religion has anti-woman, anti-queer, and anti-sex rhetoric as major core values, why are some religions slammed as "oppressive" and "sexist" and "made-up nonsense", and other religions are exempt from criticism?

I don't have anything particularly against eastern religions or white folks' selective appropriations of the beliefs of Native Americans, but it fascinates me that it's liberal blasphemy to refuse to create a special safe haven for the "cool" religious beliefs when you're talking about the absurdity religion as a whole. "Religion is patriarchal nonsense invented to control women and keep the poor oppressed through promises of an afterlife in exchange for obedience!... except for, you know, Buddhism, because it's about nonviolence, or karma, or something."

In my two and a half years on Twitter, nothing has elicited more angry replies than the few times I've pointed out that His Supreme Magicalness The Dalai Lama is a homophobe.  People react as though I'm stomping on kittens if I point out his own statements about how any form of non-procreative sexual behavior is wrong.  (For more of such kitten-stomping, see these bits from Wikipedia, Michael Parenti, SkepticBlog, and Q-Notes.)

One of my favorite things I've seen on the topic was a piece from "John Safran VS God", where the Australian comedian quizzed people on the street about whether certain statements on sexuality were said by the Pope or the Dalai Lama.

Does The Dalai Lama dictate dogma to Buddhists, like the Catholic Pope?  No.

So, what do other Buddhists think about sexuality?  It's not a religion with a Bible or a set of precise rules that one can refer back to, but the gist of the religion is that one achieves true happiness/peace/nirvana only though renouncing pleasures of the senses (sex) and ceasing desires.  That doesn't sound like a faith that's poised to look kindly on me starting my day with a vibrator- even if there is no official writ denouncing doing so.

Buddhism is a religion of vagueness, one whose non-commandment commandment to "avoid sexual misconduct" has been interpreted in a lot of different ways by different cultures.  I might not have a Buddhist "hell" to go to for engaging in my active/deviant sex life, but I also won't achieve enlightenment, and may well get knocked down the ladder in my reincarnations.  (It's a very passive-aggressive faith, don't you think?)

When I went to Thailand, one of the first things impressed upon me, as a woman tourist, was to never touch the Buddhist monks you see all over the place.  Ever. If I were to so much as accidentally bump into one on public transportation, my inherent sordidness as a woman was so powerful that I would cause serious damage to his sacred good karma.  I've never been admonished of my dangerous sinful lady-powers when I've been to areas populated by a lot of Muslims, Mormons, Catholics, or Baptists.

(Thailand also burst my bubble that Thai Buddhists were trans-friendly and incredibly accepting of transwomen/kathoey in their culture.  Looking into the topic more, I found that it wasn't so much that the culture accepted trans people so much as it felt sorry for them.  Apparently, in order to have been born trans, you must have screwed up really badly in your last incarnation to have such an unpleasant station in this life, so Buddhists should be compassionate towards those former sinners.  Pity is not exactly my vision of queer liberation.)

I won't claim to be an expert on Buddhism, and like the nice liberal Christians who gloss over the violent horrors of the Bible in favor of saying that Jesus loves everyone, some of you can no doubt counter me with a lot of cute platitudes about how the faith is about tolerance.  From what I can see from the outside, though, Buddhism's anti-pleasure core value neither appeals to me, nor approves of the life I - and most people I know - lead.

I don't understand why so few other people take issue with Buddhism.  (I guess they're too busy gushing in awe when The Dalai Lama utters another one of his third-grade-reading-level versions of "be nice to each other", like they're really unique insights.)  It's nice that Buddhists aren't trying to take over the world through violence, but I think that's a pretty lousy metric for deciding if a group is "good" or not.

I'd like to close with a snippet from the excellent "Holier Than Thou" episode of Bullshit!.  After the show talks a bit about the brutal theocratic rule of Tibet under the Dalai Lama, Penn produces scales of evil, with China on one side, and The Dalai Lama on the other.

"Since Mr. Lama has been run out of Tibet, the Chinese have introduced secular education, running water, and electricity.  So, maybe life is a bit better on the ground there.  Of course, the Chinese have also thrown thousands into labor camps and prisons, stomped on as much free speech as possible, and then there's that whole fucked up communism thing. But if you ask Tenzin Gyatso - DBA "Lama", what is it with these holy people and their alias? - his holiness will tell you that he must return to power for the good of his people.  In this case, "good" may translate into his people living in squalor and his government condoning slavery.  Remember: the lesser of two evils is still evil, and the enemy of my enemy is not my friend."

I'm often asked if I've read popular books by certain victim feminists and anti-porn activists.

"Unless you've read _____, you have no idea what you're talking about!  If only you were exposed to the correct ways of thinking, as I have been, you would understand why porn causes men to rape their children, why millions of women die from anorexia because of your industry, and why sexuality is a sacred thing not to be sold."

It's true.  I don't read those top-selling books from the liberal literati.  I spend most of my waking hours creating and promoting body-positive porn that features people of all shapes and sizes and genders.  (A cornerstone of my overall ethic is my deep loathing of people who prefer to whine about what other people are doing rather than get off their asses and actively create change.)

Sorry to break it to the antis - who have new books to sell and speaking engagements to get paid for - the arguments against sexual expression and sex work haven't changed in the last hundred years.  Sure, a lot of people make a good living convincing women of "new" and convoluted ways in which they ought to feel oppressed, but it's all the same old trope, whether it's coming from people who identify as radical feminists or the Concerned Women for America.  Same logic, same propensity to make up fake statistics, same underlying misogyny, same fear of sluts busting lose and ruining it for all the good girls.  I can pretty much guarantee that the "latest" anti-porn/sex worker thoughts from such-and-such prominent author is not going to bring up anything new we haven't heard before.  (There, I just saved you $19.99!)

Of course, I've been told that even if I disagree with an author's anti-sexuality stance, they still have a lot of other valuable insights on other areas that I could probably benefit from pondering.  It's not as though I seek to insulate myself from the opinions of anyone who disagrees with me, but it's hard to take some people seriously in spite of monumental failures in large areas of their philosophy.  When an author's whole schick is about supposedly advancing women's liberation, and they're anti-sex (worker), to me, that pretty much nullifies everything else they have to say about the topic of women (and the liberation thereof).  It's like being asked to consider the analysis of a brilliant "anti-racist" who, incidentally, just so happens to really hate Asians.  So, no, I don't have a lot of time on hand to concern myself with with philosophies of hypocrites, even if there is some facet of their unifying theory of the world that I could take genuine interest in.

It's not that I outright refuse to ever read these books, but I only have so many hours in my day.

I'm too busy adding positive contributions to the sexual landscape to read about why women should feel depressed and victimized every time they walk by an advertisement with a skinny woman on it.  I'm too busy being a woman who operates my own small business to cry about not having huge boobs like the celebrities who are supposedly my models of attractiveness.  I'm too busy making hot smut that rejects many heteronormative porn stereotypes to sit around reading about ways in which men must be nefariously shaping my definition of "sexy".  (Women can't make up our own minds!  We're secretly controlled by the Illuminati, err, I mean- The Patriarchy!)  I get so occupied trying, via my porn, to tacitly assure everyone that they are capable of great sexiness, that I just don't have any energy left to manufacture "injustices" and argue that women should feel oppressed by them.  Sometimes, I'm even so busy being excited about hiring amazing sex worker's rights activists to make porn for my company that I don't have time to read a single tome by Wendy Shalit, Naomi Wolf, or Ariel Levy.

I've been accused of being just another American anti-intellectual when I explain this to people.  And to such critics, I want to reply with of a piece of contemporary philosophy that even a stupid little twit like me can wrap my head around:

It's time to put down your books written by boring upper-class white ladies and just focus on being awesome.

"What is most shocking to people is not that a man, a ridiculously rich celebrity, cheated on his wife, it's that he had at least 13 mistresses! Two of these women were porn actresses, one of whom, Joslyn James, claims to have had a 3 year love affair with Tiger and two pregnancies. Directly after the Tiger Woods press conference, she and lawyer Gloria Allred pointed out that Tiger's apology -- to wife, friends, family, business partners, and fans -- was incomplete. What about the women he used and threw to the curb? Tiger demanded that James give up her career in adult entertainment because he couldn't stand the thought of her with another man. He pursued this woman, manipulated her to give up her independent income to be solely his for three years, promising her all kinds of things, including his love. Many on the blogs are making out that this porn star, Allred, and the other women are the real exploiters. I disagree. Tiger's privilege as an elite male allows him a legitimacy that these women do not have. As sex workers and mistresses they are cast as deviants, while he just made some bad mistakes. He is able to use the proper womanhood of his married wife to further stigmatize the women he cheated with (Elin is a victim and these women were just asking for trouble), and to hide behind some ridiculous claim that he is sick -- with a sex addiction -- and therefore is a victim of his own behavior as well. We should all feel sorry. I dont."

- Mireille Miller-Young, quoted Abiola Abrams' Tiger Woods' apology statement and video: 25 Top sex and relationship writers and performers react.

I live under a rock when it comes to celebrity stuff, so this was the first full article I've read about the Tiger Woods scandal.  I hadn't been aware that sex workers were among his mistresses.  Woods is hardly alone in having pressured a woman to quit sex work for him out of jealousy, but, I suppose, is now one of the most famous to pull that old douchebag move.

2009 was good to me.  It was the year I finally started blogging, the year I stopped giving a shit about trying to be a feminist (whatever that means), the year I bought a frosting gun for decorating cupcakes, the year I actively began shooting photos of other people, the year I discovered the joy of sex with hot tubs, the year I didn't get to go on a proper vacation, and notably in my personal life, the year I engaged in a lot more sex in a submissive role.

Killing off your feminist self and nurturing your submissive self? Major upgrade, I assure you.

For 2010, I'm aiming to kick the recession's ass via my great new strapon site, get back to doing pay-per-minute web cam shows more often, read more physical books instead of so many blogs and web sites, hopefully present on how to run a porn site at the Desiree Alliance conference, and, as always, find more awesome people that give me a girl-boner. It's already been off to a good start with an epic voyage to Antarctica (a post on that coming soon), so I need to work hard to keep raising my own bar and being the militant awesome-ist I pledged to be last year.

"Male Friendship Is Predicated On Violence and Drunkenness

There are no long-term close relationships between women on BSG, and there is only one long-term relationship between two men. [...] It is truly hard to say which gender has it worse in this situation. Is it more awful to be a woman in a world where women never have close relationships, or to be a man in a world where the only way you can express brotherly love is through violence?"

- Annalee Newitz, in The Men Who Make Battlestar Galactica Feminist, on io9.com.

I've seen so much of this dude dynamic in real life. I guess I should have posted it on Superbowl Sunday. (Warning: SPOILERS in the article, in case you still don't know who's a cylon.)

Merry Festivus, everyone!  It's time for the airing of grievances.

For those of you just joining us, there's been a storm of controversy lately over whether or not Alexa, a prolific blogger who claims to be a high class escort, is a fake.  (See posts by Monica Shores, Jenny DeMilo, Mistress Matisse one and two, Tasty Trixie, and Kat.)

Well, there isn't a really controversy at all- more like a consensus.  Every sex worker whom I've seen weigh in on the issue either blasts Alexa as a blatant fraud, or says that they are highly suspicious.  As I Twittered last night, I find it amusing that Alexa's ardent supporters are comprised almost entirely anonymous nobodies and horny men who post in her comments section.  And, with slight hesitation, I added, "It makes me laugh my ass off to see the only 'somebody' who's supporting Alexa is a woman who's practically a faux ho blogger herself."

That "somebody" is feminist blogger Amber Rhea.  (This rant has been in the back of my mind for some time, but the Alexa scandal, and Amber's reaction to it, has finally brought it out.)

I won't sugarcoat- I disliked Amber from the start.  She embodies all the useless whiney things I can't stand about feminism, with the exception that she "supports sex workers rights".  Amber inserts herself into sex worker circles whenever possible, and to a casual follower of her online presence, she can easily be mistaken for a stripper based on how she choose to describe herself.  (Indeed, Amber's blog feed was syndicated by a sex worker rights group alongside other blogs written by sex workers until I pointed out that she isn't a actually sex worker.)

At first, when I was only vaguely aware of who Amber was, I assumed she was a stripper.  With her circulating in the online sex worker scene and calling herself a pole dancer at every chance she has to describe herself, and blogging and Twittering about her latest pole tricks, is it any wonder how I could have been mistaken?  When I had the time to properly read her blog and Twitter stream, I came to learn that Amber is a white collar office worker and blogger who enjoys taking classes in pole dancing as a hobby.  Look no further than her "about me" page on her blog for how she opts to show herself to the world:

Amber is a smart woman who's obviously thought a lot about both images and language, and as such, I find it impossible to believe that it's an accident that she makes herself look like a stripper online.  Of course, Amber doesn't actually lie and say that she's a professional stripper- she's wisely left herself plenty of plausible deniability.

It's as though you had an online persona where you describe yourself as a pilot and post photos of yourself in uniform at airports, hang out in forums for pilots, and debate issues related to commercial flight, and then look innocent and surprised when people assume you're a real licensed pilot.  No, no- you simply enjoy playing a pilot in flight simulator computer games at home, and have no idea how anyone could have been confused.

I believe Amber purposefully misleads her casual readers so they will give her opinions on sex work more weight that they perhaps deserve.  As many have pointed out in the Alexa scandal, being a sex worker is quite stylish right now, and I've long seen Amber as grasping at the hipness, eager to gain status for her online presence with insinuations that she gyrates for cash.  That's pretty offensive to those of us who've taken the real social risks of being marked for life as fallen sluts.

So, as I was looking at the comments on Alexa's blog post defending herself, it was really no shock that the only recognizable supporter was, of course, Alexa's sister faux ho, Amber Rhea.  Read Amber's template-"feminist" defense of Alexa here.  Or read her Twitter posts here, such as "Really, must sex workers vilify each other?"  (Wow, what a vapid statement on peace-making for a non-sex worker to make about sex workers being rightfully angry at a fake who steals from real sex workers?)

Could it simply be sex workers' criticism of Alexa hits too close to home for Amber?

If Amber wanted to be an actual sex worker ally, rather than just riding sex worker coattails to look interesting, she would learn her place.  Amber is an outsider, and as such, that place starts, ends, and is filled with listening to sex workers.  It is telling about Amber's status as an "ally" that she picked the side of someone sex workers accuse of being an liar, a thief, and even putting us collectively at risk by misleading clients about what to expect.  Given the choice, Amber chose to side against the opinions sex workers and completely dismiss their valid and politically well-reasoned questioning of Alexa. What an friend we have in Amber!

I'm publicly bringing up my thoughts on Amber now because I hope we can learn from the Great Alexa Scandal that it's not just the obvious frauds and liars that we need to be wary of.  To me, Amber's subtle acts of fakery are far more ethically repugnant than Alexa's obvious grand-scale fictions.  Especially since they're coming from a woman who is gladly welcomed into sex worker rights circles by many whom I respect.

The take-home bit I hope people will contemplate is what it means to be a genuine sex worker ally, as well as what it means to be a "faux ho".  I've answered these questions for myself, and I've concluded that Amber Rhea and Alexa DiCarlo look pretty much the same on both issues.

I'll end now, where we began, by wishing everyone a very happy Festivus season.  Maybe my favorite fake stripper will lend us a pole?

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