In the last month or so, I've done some none-too-subtle waving and pointing at my Amazon wishlist.  Hey, if I had any sense of shame, do you think I'd be where I am today?  I am a defective human being in that I seem to lack both the "fear of 'authority'" and "shame" centers of my brain, which seem to be the driving forces behind all-too-many people's decisions.

So, I wanted to give a public thanks to the several lovely people who sent me some cool books.  It's nice to feel appreciated for the energy I put into my writing and being a naked chick on the internet.  I've received:

* The History of Sexuality Volume One by Michel Foucault

* A Woman Speaks: The Lectures, Seminars and Interviews of Anais Nin

* Dada and Surrealism: A Very Short Introduction by David Hopkins

* The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia by Elizabeth A Wood.  (This came without contact info from the gifter, sorry I can't email you personally to say thanks!)

* Planet Ice: A Climate for Change by James Martin

* Rebel Lives: Albert Einstein edited by Jim Green. (This also came without contact info from the gifter.)

I was christened into the jizz biz in May of 2002, at 18, with a day of shooting softcore porn in LA.  (I wish I could remember the exact date.)  I opened the doors of my first porn venture in January of 2003, at 19, and over the next few years years, gradually moved away from socializing in forums for amateur pornographers, and towards more politicized and woman-friendly spaces.  So, while I didn't start my own blog until last year, I lurked, I read, I occasionally commented where The Smart People were.  These bloggers I followed were "my people".  At last!

The amateur porn scene contains a lot of conservative swingers - a subset of which I once heard candidly (or drunkenly?) described as a bunch of ignorant hicks who "very accidentally got rich" by profiting off their wives.  Not all of them, of course - I admire many of the pioneering porn amateurs like Jen N Dave for seizing the day and starting the very first adult sites 15 years ago while the big porn companies were still mailing out wank material on VHS tapes.  (And, as far as I know, Kat Vixen was the first porn site with a leading lady who declared herself a feminist in her bio page, probably before most of today's renowned feminist pornographers could even legally appear in a porn.)

So, to hell with fighting with Fox News-loving people on adult webmaster boards, and desperately trying to connect with like-minded people - I was going to start a blog!

One of the things I knew about getting into blogging was that it would mean I would undoubtably have falling outs with other bloggers.  It's hard-coded into the sex blogger community to have epic public drama with one another - drama that can dangerously bubble over into the offline world.  After having circulated a bit in the sex worker and sex blogger scene, both online and offline at a few events, I felt reasonably liked by pretty much everyone, or at least tolerated.  I liked most of the people I met, too.  I was aware that I had some significant ideological/political clashes with some of them, but they weren't aware they had those clashes with me, so we could all share a meal together in peace.  I knew that peace would end if I started blogging my thoughts about things - most specifically, about feminism - and was sad to acknowledge that some of these people I'd happily guzzled pitchers of booze with would some day be people with whom I'd have dramatic clashes.

Such is the price you pay for telling the world what you really think about everything.  I've been accused by many of having "no filter" and needing to learn how to be fake-polite in the interest of facilitating smooth social interactions with assholes I want nothing to do with.  (Why I would want to do that is beyond me.)  I'm happy to have a career where I can pretty much disregard such advice, resting soundly in knowing that while my real self drives some people away, it also attracts more genuine friendships with the people I actually like.

So, it's with my caustic, cunty self in mind, that I introduce my ten most popular/controversial/commented-upon blog posts from the last year.  (Topping the list with the most divisive thing I'll probably ever utter in the American sex worker scene.  I don't regret a thing I said, but I don't want to keep re-hashing it either, so I'm listing it for completeness rather than a desire to re-open the fight.)

* Speaking of faux ho bloggers, what about Amber Rhea? [December 2009]

* I want to read a book written by someone like me, except smarter and better at writing [April 2010]

* Want to play BINGO with the antis? [February 2010]

* Three out of four ain't bad: my thoughts on Audacia Ray's post on the dominant narratives of sex work [April 2010]

* Does everyone actually want to be an escort, given the right circumstances? [April 2010]

* What's so "feminist" about being anti-sex? The 2010 Feminist Porn Award nominees and the "porn for women" niche [March 2010]

* Religions on sexuality: same-same, but different (the Dalai Lama and Buddhism edition) [February 2010]

* Biography of a pornographic polemic [May 2009]

* Daddy's little capitalist [October 2009]

* Somewhat disjointed grievances on porno pay rates, transparency, and a pinch of boring labor politics [September 2009]

Some of these don't develop fully unless you read all the comments.  If you have something to say about any of these past topics, please comment in those post's own comments area, not here on this post.

As for what's coming next, I'm currently interviewing a bunch of my favorite indie pornographers for what I think is an important piece about the realities of queer/feminist/"different" porn.  It's been floating around in my head for a while, but I want to devote a big blog post to screaming at a certain elephant in the room.

I've kept up the habit of posting around something once a week, which I hope to stick with as I enter year two.  We'll see how things go.  Writing, for me, is a time-consuming project with almost no financial rewards.  It would be nice to be able to change that, because it is something I enjoy.

As always, if you want to properly congratulate me on how awesome my blog is and how brilliant I am, I will continue to shamelessly solicit gifts from my Amazon wishlist.  (Sort the list by priority to see what I want most.)  If you hate me and all that I stand for, you should apologize for such insolence by donating money to my favorite charity, San Francisco's St. James Infirmary, a clinic that serves sex workers.  Either way, I win!  Mwahaha!

For a long time, I resisted starting a blog. I don't want to be another node in the pink ghetto who writes my take on the story of the week in between tales of getting fucked and the latest free photo galleries from porn sites I jack off to. It's not that I think there's anything wrong with those things, it's just that other people already have it covered.

However, I think there still exists plenty of room for blogs about sexual politics written by sex workers themselves. We're a group of people who are ignored and excluded from all sorts of dialogues, and hated fiercely by people on the right and the left, so I have more of a motive to write in defense of sexual autonomy than I do to write a review of how I attempted to get off using the latest high-tech strangely-shaped sex toy.

After working on the outskirts of the porno industry since 2002, I have steadily been moving from wanting to modernize and re-define the concept of feminism to wanting to stop beating that dead horse entirely. Many of my friends and favorite people consider themselves feminists. A lot of my enemies consider themselves feminists, too, and they exist in larger numbers, with better funding, and with better brand recognition as the face of feminism. (Why fight like mad to have your awesome new organic fairtrade beverage be recognized as "Coca Cola", when there already is a firmly established Coca Cola company that sucks? Why not just focus on being great under your own power, with your own title?) I spent way too much of my own time trying to shoehorn myself into feminism, and I look back on that as an embarrassing waste of my energy.

Feminism as a word/identity is used to describe so much of everything that it has ceased to mean anything at all. Is fucking people for money feminist? Is climbing the corporate ladder feminist? Is wearing an abaya feminist? Is shaving your pussy feminist? Is being a stay-at-home mom feminist? Is BSDM feminist? Are sewing and crafting feminist? Is makeup feminist? Is being a woman in the military feminist? Is broccoli soup feminist?!?! You have people lined up, ready to fight to the death over their absolute certainty over whether or not such things are truly feminist. (What the word "feminism" stands in for, of course, is deemed permissible by the "right" kind of people.)

In general, I'm tired of "feminist" being used as a blanket qualifier to mean "awesome", especially when it comes to the concept of feminist porn. I think "awesome" works just fine as a qualifier for awesome.

I seek to advance the idea the first person in any debate to propose that their position is correct because it's the most "feminist" has hereby lost the argument. I have been guilty of this one plenty of times in the past, but I can learn from my mistakes.

I feel like I've taken back something, like friends have taken back "fag", "fatty", or "cripple". I've taken back "not a feminist" and claimed it for myself, and in doing so, have disarmed a lot of people who've hurled it at me as an insult in debates. I wasted a lot of my time and energy arguing over whether or not I'm a real feminist and if my work - and the work of other sex workers - can be construed as feminist acts. So now, rather than get all upset when an asshat says I'm not a feminist, I can shrug it off and say, "yeah, so what?" I feel like this dismissal "empowers" and "liberates" me more than anything else that modern feminism could ever hope to provide me.

One of the things that's been batting itself around in my head over the years is, "What purpose does 'feminism' serve, today, in industrialized nations? Why the need to identify as a 'feminist'?" I've never seen a satisfactory answer. Much like quizzing someone on their religion, the answers are some defensive permutation of "it just is!" For some folks, that's sufficient, and I won't try to wrest their important identity label from them, but I need tangible reasons to do and believe things.

Writer Jorge Luis Borges famously described the Falklands War as "two bald men fighting over a comb", and that image perfectly describes the war for the title of "feminist", too. Why are we supposed to want what it is that we're fighting for?

I've pumped a lot of quarters into this here claw machine, but sheer stubbornness kept me from realizing that I didn't even want a small stuffed animal.