"Still, it does exist, and it's going to be a very... interesting experience socially when my voice drops to some extent and I'm consistently read by strangers as male. As it is now, if I'm walking down the street near a woman who's alone, she will read me as a male and act cautious, but when I say something, I'm immediately non-threatening and everything is okay. I'm predicting that I will have to adjust to suddenly becoming a threatening person for women, to being interacted with differently and expected to conform to a slew of 'male' stereotypes, so on and so forth. And it's sad that a lot of these stereotypes are based in truth."

-- Mel, in Frakking Gender! on humancomplaints.com

I like reading personal stories from trans folk.  I found this thought from Mel (yay - a fellow vegan!) on how women read him to be particularly interesting to contemplate.  (Pst - he's seeking help to pay for his top surgery, so read his blog and consider a donation.)

I've re-worked this a few times, trying to not come across bitchy and divisive, but I suspect that some will interpret it that way no matter how many times I rearrange sentences, so I've given up on fussing at it.

Audacia Ray recently posted a noteworthy piece, Sex Worker Storytelling, Activism, and Dominant Narratives.  Short on time?  Here's (what I consider to be) the meat of the post:

Especially because I run a monthly event in which sex workers are exposing their stories in public, I’ve become hyperaware of the fact that the public performance of sex worker experiences in the United States is very much about the personal adventures of middle class, white, cis women.

I myself am someone who is, in most ways, the stereotype of a sex worker who speaks out.  I'm white, cisgender, and middle class.  But, there's another crucial element to the typical portrait of an Out-And-Proud Teller of Sex Work Tales that I think Dacia missed, the fourth elephant in the room.

In terms of dominant narratives, a lot of them are from people unlike me in that they did sex work for a short period of time as a means to a specific end, most notably women paying for college.  It can feel like there's an overall message of sex work being something a person only does while they're waiting for their real lives to begin.

I started thinking about sex work when I was 17, and mulled over the options in my head until porn seemed like a good fit.  At 18, I tried the mainstream porn world once, didn't care for it, and started my own company.  It's been almost 8 years since I crossed over into the world of sex work, and I have no exit strategy.  I plan to still be taking my clothes off for money a decade from now.  This is where I want to be.  This is my real life and my real job.

I don't say that as any sort of judgement against sex workers who were in the business for a short period of time, as plenty of friends and people I admire fit that description, nor do I think that they don't have worthwhile things to say.  I genuinely don't want to discount their histories and their experiences, but I think it deserves mention that much of the public face of sex worker experience is in the form of a history, a memoir, a past-tense tale of a person's more experimental youth.

Of course, there are vocal exceptions to this - Mistress Matisse being the first to spring to mind.  Tasty Trixie and Seska are politically-inclined pornographers who have both been writing about their lives in the business for some time.  There are an increasing number of blogs written by sex workers, but when I mentally take stock of a Who's Who of people blogging/talking/touring the country with their book about sex work, many/most of the people on the list are retired.

It's hard to think of another profession or hobby where its culture's public face is so strongly defined by people who are no longer engaging in it.  (Sports commentary from former athletes, perhaps?)

Why is this?  I'm not sure.

Is the popularity of the voices of the retired just an accurate representation - do few people do sex work for more than a couple of years?  Are career or long-term sex workers that rare?  Is it easier for people to talk about something once they've gotten some distance from it?  Are the educated folk who used sex work as a means to obtain a degree more likely to be compelled to write about it all?  Is it an overblown fear of prosecution that makes some people not want to talk about sex work while they're still engaged in it?  Is it because there are fewer available options in the sex industry as one gets older, so people are limited - or opt out over self-consciousness - to stints in the business while young-ish?  Is it because these are the voices the general public and mainstream media most wants - stories with titillating adventures that still tacitly assure them, "but don't worry, I'm not a bad girl any more"?

Last week, I asked the universe for book suggestions as I sought out secular feminist critique/anti-feminist writings.  Since then, I've spent too many hours poking around on Amazon, searching for keywords, and clicking over to more and more recommended products.  I've added some new books to my wishlist that I hadn't heard of before, as well as some classics that we're all supposed to read.

The Smart People Books I haven't read could fill a swimming pool, frankly, but I don't lose any sleep over it.  I actually like that my opinions and analyses are largely from my own little head, and not ideas I simply lifted from the reading list of a Women's Studies 101 course.  I'm not saying it's a bad thing to read up landmark works on any topic - I should do more of it myself - but I think we've all been in debates with people where it's obvious they don't have an original idea of their own and are only capable of quoting/paraphrasing what someone famous has said on the subject.

In my effort to expand my fancy book-learnin' horizons, I've been looking at the popular feminist classics I have not read.  I think that I'll enjoy a few of them, while others will probably feel like I'm being waterboarded with stupidity.  As I went searching for these various texts, bracing myself for solid servings of man-hating and conservative views of sexuality, one made me stop in my tracks.  I realized that maybe I'm wrong about feminist theory.

Immediately upon finding it, Susan Faludi's most renowned work, Backlash, seems pretty fucking rad:

(If I win the lottery, I will devote my life to making low-budget action flicks starring scantily-clad gun-toting hot chicks, with titles such as The Second Sex, Female Chauvinist Pigs, and The Beauty Myth.  You know you already want to watch these movies.)

The term "eco-sexpert" has escaped into the wild, and it makes me fear for the future of civilization.

Things have been changing in the last year or two.  All the decent sex shops now have a section of "earth-friendly" products - which may or may not actually be any more "natural" than their other items.  There have been tons of articles on "eco-sexuality", appearing everywhere from the New York Times to tiny sex blogs, trotting out the same non-insightful suggestions on how to "green your sex life".  Plus, there's the press releases from large adult novelty companies boasting to the world how great they are because they did some barely-consequential thing they should have been doing in the first place, like recycling at their office, or making sure their China-made "jelly" products do not contain arsenic.

With all the "eco-sex" flying around everywhere, I can't help but notice that, like the rest of the greenwashing movement, it's mostly one big push for why you need to buy more stuff.

Now, before we go any further, I should tell you a bit about me.  I'm not some kind of silly leftist who refuses to shower and thinks you have to re-use everything until it disintegrates, and I'm not here to lecture you with elitist greener-than-thou dogma.  I'm a pragmatist - stuck between the mainstream world that thinks I'm a weird hippie for being vegan and not owning a car, and the hardcore greenies who recoil in horror that I take several long-distance flights a year and own electronic things made of toxic components.

In 2004, I started two pretty unique projects, which are rarely mentioned in the endless ocean of articles about "eco-sexuality".  It's my own fault for not working harder at self-promotion over the years, but I've always been better at actually putting my nose to the grindstone and doing things than hyping up publicity for myself.

VegPorn.com is a small indie porn site devoted to cute vegetarian and vegan models, and from the start, was inclusive of a variety of body types and gender identities.  Not only do I operate the only porn site aimed at herbivores, but I was also producing queer-friendly alt porn years before it grew to be the hip genre that it is today.  (As a side, before the term "vegansexual" hit the internet, I was trying to invent a good term.  The best I came up with was herbivoramorous, which is only slightly more awkward and silly-sounding than vegansexual.)

After getting that off the ground, I began work on its offshot, what would become TheSensualVegan.com.  I sell a collection of vegan and natural products, almost all of which are made by other small businesses.  (Supporting other DIY sexual entrepreneurs is important to me)  Rather than having a "staff picks" or "recommended" section, everything in my store is awesome - it's not padded out with a bunch of filler stuff that isn't very good.  I try to provide my customers with as much product information as I can get, so they can make choices based on their own values, such as letting them know if a company is owned by a woman, or where the product is made.  My best-selling lube is Hathor Aprodisia, made by a mother-and-daughter team in Vancouver.  Most of the sex toys I stock are from Tantus Silicone, a small, woman-owned company in Southern California.

I do my best to investigate products.  I ask manufacturers questions.  I wouldn't carry Glyde's vegan condoms until the company sent me signed letters from both itself and its latex processor in Malaysia assuring me no animal products were being used.  (Latex companies are tight-lipped about their production process and whether they utilize milk-derived proteins.)  There's another brand of condoms out there that I'd like to carry as soon as they meet my personal fussy assurances - I don't want to sell anything to vegans that might not be vegan.  I've publicly criticized a lube company called Good Clean Love, which is plugged regularly in "eco-sex" articles and incorrectly sold in many quality sex shops as vegan.  When I inquired with Good Clean Love about carrying it, the owner admitted that the product isn't actually vegan as the label stated, and contains a milk-derived ingredient, but she lied on the packaging.  (I've heard that the labels have now been changed to reflect the real ingredients.  Too little, too late - I think this company should be blacklisted for using outright lies to profit off conscientious buyers.)

I know what you're thinking- such a capitalistic brat I am, telling you why my company is great and why other companies practice greenwashing and only care about money.  I'm not saying that I am the only business owner who genuinely cares about social and environmental issues, but I do think an increasing number are just scrambling to cash in on a market, and not even offering very good products.  People like myself built this "eco-sex" world because we wanted to make and sell products for buyers like us.  (And I know that this is nothing new - I can imagine for how natural foods stores started in the 1970s must feel about Whole Foods.)

In my 6 years of pioneering the niche, I've read dozens of articles about "greening" sex, which are lists of vaguely sex-related things you should buy, such as organic sheets and fair-trade chocolate, interspersed with suggestions like feeding fruit to your naked lover or having sex outdoors.  There's only one real "eco sex" tip I want to give you this Earth Day - because you don't need another shopping list of food and housewares.

Buy high-quality.  Junk breaks and goes to landfills.

I understand that not everyone has much money to spend on sex products, but I promise you that a nice $80 sex toy will last you more than twice as long as a $40 knockoff made of some weird chemical "jelly" from a factory in China.  When I was younger, I had a bunch of "jelly" toys, and they simply don't last.  They chemically melted into each other, picked up stains, smelled weird, and leaked strange oily substances.  With sex toys, buy medical-grade silicone, metal, or glass.  Buy products you can sterilize and keep and enjoy for decades, and share amongst partners without fear of passing cooties.  Buy less stuff, spend less money in the long run, and decrease your carbon footprint, by buying better stuff. Purchasing a new low-end jelly toy every year, which leaks chemicals into your body, and then into a landfill, is not where you should be putting your money.  Whatever other gear you use to enhance your sex life, buy the good stuff.  Hopefully, you'll also support independent businesses who care about their work, rather than giving your money to multinational conglomerates riding the wave of a popular gimmick.

I was lolling about in bed the other day with a naked man, and we got to talking about my long-standing lukewarm interest in escorting.  (I don't want to change careers and become an escort, I don't have the time to devote to marketing a new business, but I'd be keen on dipping my toes into that pool under the right conditions.)  I was saying to him that I wish I could just magically have one or two regular, stable, polite clients, men I could see maybe once or twice a month.  He sort of laughed at me and said everyone would love something like that.

I often feel very removed from "normal people".  This got me wondering, would everyone really cross the big scary line into escorting, given the right set of circumstances?  I'm not talking about fantasy hypotheticals like, "Would you fuck a stranger for a million dollars?"  I mean down-to-earth circumstances, with realistic compensation, and, most importantly, a certain degree of safety.  If I walked into a room of people with a screened client, with good referrals from other providers, and the compensation appropriate for a mid-range escort in their location, how many people in that room would really jump at the chance?

Personally, I think most people would not, but I could be wrong.

I have a number in my head for what I would want to be compensated for an evening with me.  It is, I now realize, the same rate that an established friend of mine charges for an evening.  I asked my naked boy what his rate would be, and it was more than mine.  (Understandably, of course - he is a fantastic top, and he puts oh-so-much energy into things.  Much obliged, Sir.)

So, what say you, non-escorts?  Given the right circumstances of a polite, screened client, and a fair mid-range hourly rate ($300-500), would you go for it?

[Edited to emphasize: Someone on Twitter replied to me and said they might if the client had an "excellent bod" and paid "tons o' money".  NO, NO, NO.  That is not what I'm asking.  It's hardly an interesting social survey to quiz people if they'd like to become rich by having sex with someone gorgeous that they're horny for anyway.  Duh.]

I guess that's what everyone wants in a book, right?

For most people, that's not hard to find.  Take any average computer programmer, carpenter, pastry chef, archeologist, or soldier, and there will be books from authors more skilled in their field, ready to offer philosophical insights and practical information.  I don't think there's anything like that out there for me, unfortunately.

What I want is thoughtful, aggressive, non-misogynistic, and secular critique of feminism.  It doesn't really seem to exist.

Today, I went browsing around on Amazon - with its wonderful recommendation engine - in search of any anti-feminist sorts of books that I'd actually want to buy and read.  What I get are piles of books written by overgrown frat boys, religious people, and hardcore conservatives who think women should have never been allowed out of the kitchen in the first place.  I'm in earnest search of The More Awesomely Eloquent Me, and all I'm getting is stuff about Jesus, abortion, the homosexual agenda, the dangers of communism, and an out-of-date collection of essays by Phyllis Schlafly.  (Whose work I suppose I should read anyway, just for a historical perspective from someone who fought second wave feminism.)

Although I didn't find anything that was exactly what I'm looking for (criticism of feminism), I'm considering these three books:

* Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture by Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young.

* Venus: The Dark Side by Roy Sheppard and Mary T Cleary.

* A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce by Alec Baldwin and Mark Tabb.

Already in my collection, but as of yet unread, are these other two that I hope will be interesting.  Both of these authors have a bunch of books out, and I bought one of each to test the waters, and the Jesus-ness of their politics:

* The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom by Phyllis Chesler.

* Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women by Christina Hoff-Sommers.

Edited to add: I also have in my existing collection The Myth of Male Powerby Warren Farrell.  I should have included this book in my original post, but my "to read" stack is embarrassingly tall, and I forgot about it until a commenter reminder me of him.  I've only read the introduction so far.  I was bracing myself, from the title, for an angry douchebag rant, but instead, I got a well-thought-out "this is what I've learned after being a professional feminist" from a former board member of the National Organization for Women.

So, what else is out there?  Where's the secular non-conservative criticism of feminism that I want to read?  I asked this on Twitter, but what I suppose I didn't make clear is that I'm not looking for feminist-identified authors criticizing other factions of feminism, or feminist-identified people who acknowledge issues they have with parts of feminism.  I am looking for something outside the echo chamber, outside of pots calling kettles black.  Things not written by feminists.  I realize that, on the left/liberal side of the political spectrum, if you fail to identify as a feminist, you're treated as though you enjoy microwaving baby kittens for amusement.  But come on, there have to be plenty of other assholes like me, right?

"You know where your kids should be?  They should not be at a church youth group retreat.  They should not be in the company of anybody with a clerical collar.  Ever.  [...]  There are millions of sharks in the ocean.  Three shark attacks in Florida, and no one will go in the water.  Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of children raped in churches, and people still send their kids to church.  It's crazy.  You should be sending your kids to gay bars.  There, they will be safe."

-- Dan Savage, in Savage Love Episode 180, on thestranger.com

Two asides:

The documentary Sharkwater taught me that more people are killed every year by vending machines than sharks.

Twitter user DoctorD71 pointed me to an interesting article from down under, "Aussies safer in a strip club than a church, figures show".

DJ Grothe: "Yes, maybe Christianity was used to support the institutions of slavery, but wasn't it also really beneficial to slaves?  Or after slavery, [to] the black community in general?"

Norm Allen: "Well, the way I look at it is that you can get a positive out of a negative, but that doesn't justify the negative. For example, if I burned down your home, I don't expect you to thank me for calling the firemen."

-- From a podcast interview, Science, Humanism, and the Black Community, on pointofinquiry.org.

I recently had someone reply to my anti-religion stance with "Surely we can learn to take the good and ignore the bad?"  With any other topic besides religion, this would be an offensive position to take.  It's like arguing, "Never mind the horrors of the mass genocide in Rwanda, the important part to remember is that lots of people were given free machetes.  You have to focus on the good parts!"

Back to Norm's analogy: Don't forget what's been burning down the proverbial homes of sex workers, women, queers, and sexual outsiders for a long time - religion.  Please stop thanking them for calling the firemen.

Some people assume nothing but the worst about "the kind of men" who look at porn or go to strip clubs or see escorts.  (As though it's just a rare and dangerous "type", and not actually almost every breathing guy on earth.)  There's a caricature of a seedy, unwashed man* in a trenchcoat who is so pathetic and ugly and fucked up that no "real woman" would want him.  A profound loser, and a serious misogynist who acts out his hatred of women by paying them for sex or watching them get naked for his amusement.  He's probably a rapist and a child molester, or on the brink of becoming one.  He is all that is wrong with the world.  As much as I could say that sex workers are historically the most reviled people in the world, I think that title really has to go to our customers.

In my 7+ years of being naked online, I've interacted with a whole lot of men.  Tens of thousands?  I don't know the number.  The men who subscribe to my web sites and buy cam show time with me are almost invariably polite.  (And, if not polite in the most traditional sense, they are blessedly blunt and to the point - typing "finger pussy" in my chat window, or emailing simply "more butt pics".)  I am usually treated as they would treat any other person they seek to have positive interactions with, rather than unleashing the spew of anti-woman vitriol that prudery activists assume.  Sure, I do get some assholes here and there - almost all of them angry at me for not providing them a service I never said I'd provide, like lots of facial videos and anal sex on my softcore porn site, or cam customers who didn't bother to read my description and get all grossed out that I'm not shaved.

When someone is overtly a douchebag to me, I can either berate them back, or most commonly, ignore them, content in knowing at least they're paying for the privilege of being rude to me, which is better than I get from, say, people who step on my feet or spill their drinks on me in bars.

You know who does unload on me and embody woman-hating stereotypes, though?  The dudes who refuse to pay for what I'm selling.  Nope, it's not those horrible misogynist men who pay cash for sexual entertainment, it's the upstanding wholesome men who think they're too good to do so.

Web cam networks are a hotbed of this.  A guy pops into my chat room, says he has a 10 inch dick, tries to butter me up with cliche "flattery", and demands a free show on account of his own sexiness.  When I politely refuse, he immediately types a barrage of insults about how I'm a fat ugly stupid whore, and lets me know he wouldn't even touch my diseased cunt if I paid him.  I adore these flowcharts - as soon as I reject him, his fragile ego gets bruised, and he makes a stink about how he's actually the one rejecting me.  (This is why I tell anyone considering web cam work to never, ever do free chat in hopes of getting a customer.  Free chat is pretty much entirely a bunch of semi-literate dudes trying to talk a free show out of you, and then insulting you for not giving them what they want.)  It's the men who refuse to buy my time that are most likely to act like they own me.

It's amazing how many emails I get from dudes who have the nerve to plainly state that they would never pay for porn, and wear it like a badge of honor, like a pick-up line, like it's something I'll praise them for.  These men seem totally unaware that I might find it insulting that they've virtually walked into my business and told me they're too good to buy my crummy wares, but want to know where the restroom is so they can do their laundry in my sink.  Or perhaps, these clueless men are assuming that I'll reply, "Oh cool, you're better than those icky guys who want to pay me to take my clothes off.  You want to get to know The Real Me without this money thing getting in our way.  Why don't you come over and let me suck your dick this weekend, seeing as how I now know you're not one of those creeps who buy porn."

Anti-sex work activists argue that it's malice against women that motivates a man to patronize sex workers or watch porn.  Why is paying for a service or product proof that someone pathologically hates the person they're buying it from?  Do the moralizers think that about any other occupations?  Do all paying customers intrinsically revile the workers who prepare their meals, teach their children, paint their houses, fly their airplanes, pick up their recycling bins, or fill their prescriptions?

The men who get my blood boiling are the ones who demand that it's their "right" to have women sexually entertain them for free, not the customers who appreciate my time and energy by compensating me for it.  Funny how the anti-sex feminists are so busy demonizing sexual commerce that they end up tacitly on the side of the real misogynists.

* My customers are almost invariably men.  And, since feminists/anti-sex activists exclusively take issue with heterosexual men who pay for women sexual entertainment, I write about men-as-consumers in this post.  No disrespect meant to the wonderful ladies and transfolk who buy porn and patronize sex workers!