People, and social movements, cannot grow without dealing with their shortcomings, especially if those problems are uncomfortable, dramatic, or awkward to fling into the open.  This lengthy post is me throwing a molotov cocktail of things-that-have-gone-publicly-unsaid, but I wanted to start my critique only after I give some quick context of what else has been said recently.

For backstory on "this month in sex worker blog controversy", start with Amanda's post about excluding women like her who are mainstream sexy and heteronormative.  Snippets:

There is a deep prejudice permeating the sex worker rights movement in the US. Just because some of us have a mainstream appearance doesn’t mean we don’t deal with the same stigma that every other sex worker does, that we somehow work under a different set of laws. Just because we look much like the “pretty” depictions of sex workers in mainstream media doesn’t mean we’re not “real,” it means we’re making money (most sex workers are in sex work to make money).

[...]

“Inclusiveness” and “diversity” are such huge preoccupations in the movement that they often derail energy and focus on the real-world issues staring all of us in the face. In the stampede to be inclusive and make sure that all ethnic/gender/occupation/whatever boxes are ticked and that a token representative is present, a huge majority go unnoticed and unwelcome.

Then, she called out two of the biggest names in sex blogging, Susie Bright and Mistress Matisse.  Single sentence summary:

The Craigslist debacle of 2010 really separated the in-the-trenches sex workers from those quite obviously above it.

Amanda's posts are the tip of an iceberg, and it's not just her, and it's not just about any one or two famous sex bloggers saying detached or offensive things.  Overall, the big issue I've seen floating around America in the last 6 months is that there are a number of sex workers who aren't happy with the Big Name Visible People in sex worker politics, Big Names who notably couldn't even be bothered to attend this year's Desiree Alliance sex worker conference.  Many sex workers I've talked to aren't thrilled with the increasing inaccessibility and academic-esque nature of sex work dialog, don't feel like their world is being well-represented, and are privately whispering things like, "Wait, what was it that so-and-so actually did that makes them a sex worker?  And how many years ago was that?"

In sum, it feels like there's a lot of important and exciting shit brewing just under the surface in sex worker politics, and more people looking to get involved in some sort of political stuff - if they can find a way to do so.

For those of you who don't know me well: this is coming from someone who got started in sex work almost 9 years ago (full-time for 8 years), is not involved in any sex worker rights groups and has a semi-outsiders perspective on sex worker activism, but who considers herself to have a pretty good grasp of the history of social movements and activism in the United States over the last 50 years.

Here's what I see from where I'm sitting:

1.) The sex worker rights movement should be led by experienced and current sex workers.  No one should be excluded, but we sorely need more voices from folks who aren't hipster feminists with only brief involvement with sex work.

It's truly great to have part-timers and people who did/do only a small amount of sex work speak about their experiences.  I am glad that people who don't "need" to be involved in the fight for sex workers rights care to do so anyway.  It also testifies to how sex work is not a monolith and can often be something people do once in their lives, or for a few months, or a few years, or with one special patron they see twice a year.  I am not dismissing those folks and their stories or their work as activists, but for people who have flat-out spent less time sex working, they sure do comprise a whole lot of our tacit leadership and spokespersons.

The vocal sex worker scene needs more people whose primary motivation wasn't a quick bout of fun self-exploration.  That's a totally valid reason to do sex work, and I'm not saying you're bad or irrelevant if it describes you, but it's simply not representative of sex workers in this country as a whole.  (I enjoy the explorative and creative aspects of my work, but it's still my full-time job that I do for money.)  The over-representation of sex-positive dabblers also contributes to the anti camp being able to dismiss sex worker activism as something by and for a tiny minority of the most privileged and "happy hooker"-esque.  Even if we love our work, as I do, I think we do ourselves a disservice by over-selling the erotic/transgressive/feminist aspect of it in an attempt to counter false stereotypes that all sex workers are abused addicts who hate their jobs.

When I feel extra cynical, I wonder if there's some kind of unwritten rule that says the less sex work you've done, and the longer it's been since you've done it, the more aggressively you ought to shout about how you're a sex worker and thrust yourself into public conversations as such.  (Of course, this rule does not apply to typical sex workers, it applies only to the educated feminist types.)  I've been a full-time, no-"real"-job sex worker my entire adult life, and frankly, I think this buys me a bigger seat at the table than someone who appears in a few porn videos a year, or was a stripper for a semester a decade ago.  (Just as, of course, I think people who've been sex workers since before I was born deserve an even bigger seat at the table than I do.)

This doesn't mean I dislike part-time or former sex workers (I adore many of them and think they've made some amazing contributions!), nor do I think that they shouldn't be included, or that they aren't "real" sex workers.  I simply want the folks with the most at stake and the most experience to have the most say in what's going on and how their jobs are portrayed.  Radically offensive perspective, I know.

2.) The sex worker rights movement needs to make itself and its issues accessible to more supporters and sex workers, not just feminist bloggers, the kinkster/sex-positive scene, and academics.

If you were to casually surf across popular sex workers rights blogs and articles, you'll find stuff like how to reframe human trafficking through a lens of post-colonial theory, impassioned calls to stop cis-sexist language constructs, and the forced rehabilitation centers  in Cambodia.  These are all excellent and fascinating topics of discussion to me, but (sadly!) they only interest a very small amount of other people.  Sex worker discourse is dominated by people who chose to forget that most folk in America aren't familiar with the idea of being "cisgender", can't find Cambodia on a map, and all they know about "colonialism" is that pilgrims wore funny hats.

Your average person (sex worker or potential ally) does not have a graduate degree-level understanding of gender, feminism, or immigration politics.  They don't even possess the vocabulary to join the conversation we're having amongst ourselves.  Think of it this way: we're trying to implore people, "Save the whales from extinction!", except their concept of what a whale looks like is "a grey cow that can breathe under water", they don't know what save implies in this context, and they need to look up extinction in a dictionary because they've never heard the word before.  The steep learning curve is alienating.  When I see so many sex worker rights discussions going on, I wonder if some people have ever ventured outside of the intellectual pervert cliques of New York City and San Francisco.

It's not like I disagree with what most of the brainy clique is writing, or think they should stop saying it, but I'm a pragmatist who knows that deconstructing every facet of hetero-normativity is not the most pressing issue for most sex workers.  Yes, everything is connected, "let's not be single-issue", I get that - but some people are like a chef so busy trying to explain how to make impressively intricate fondant cakes that they forget that their audience hasn't even mastered Jello instant pudding yet.  I'm not anti- fondant cake, but let's start with getting everyone on board with that just-add-milk-and-stir thing, and then work our way up from there, shall we?

If you want to change the world, you have to be able to meet people where they're at, to explain things to average people using plain language.  Broad-based social change is not a competition to see who can talk the furthest over the heads of the general public.  That famous quip about how "the only thing that's ever changed the world is a small group of committed people" is complete bullshit.  You do need those core instigators, but if it starts and ends there, your cause is doomed.

Further, sex workers really need to reconsider what it means to "build bridges with other communities."  We can get every last feminist sex blogger and BDSM enthusiast to say they agree with our cause, but, well... that's not really progress. The way I see, the root thing we're working to change is public opinion and stigma before we can do anything else - like changing or repealing laws - and sex workers need to actually reach out to the general public.  I love sex bloggers and kinksters and think they have been great allies, but they are members of the choir, not the people that we most need to reach.  It seems like 99% of outreach efforts are focused on influencing less than 1% of the population.  We need to stop kidding ourselves and acting like it's a major accomplishment to convince someone who's already devoted to transgressive sexuality that they should support sex workers, too.  (I'm not dismissing our cool allies in the pervert scene, I'm stating that we need more allies.)

3.) The "working" class needs to be at the forefront of the sex workers rights movement.

In Jim Goad's polarizing book, The Redneck Manifesto, he lays things out thusly:

The working class doesn't write a lot of history books.  The working class doesn't produce many movies or radio shows.  The working class doesn't need to hire media consultations or theatrical agents.  The working class has played an itty-bitty role in fashioning its public image.

That's because the working class was too busy working.

I might not be "working class" in the sense Goad means it, but I'm "working" class within the sex work scene in that my focus has been on actual sex work, not on writing about it for liberal news sites and academic journals, debating anti-prostitution activists on TV, or promoting myself as a guest lecturer available to talk to college students about "feminist porn".  Even as I blog, consider writing a book, and start expanding into doing more political stuff, I'm still working a full-time job as a pornographer and web cam performer, which is where I devote most of my energies.

I know we're all busy, but I'd like to see more sex workers take just a bit of time to get involved in something, or speak out, or share their stories.  I don't want sex worker politics to belong only to a handful of feminist intellectuals, I want to see blogs and contributions and stories and ideas from people sprinkled all over the country, doing all sorts of different work, especially those who have no prior experience with activism and political organizing.  I want to see new faces.  I want these faces to be diverse, but without refusing to acknowledge the reality that most sex workers are able-bodied cisgender women who adhere to mainstream beauty standards.

It saddens me to see any sex worker feeling like there's no place for them because they're not a punky queer hipster (pseudo)intellectual.  It's such a bizarro-world scenario where a a teeny little minority of (ex) sex workers can make the majority feel like they are the ones who don't fit in.  I know a number of long-standing, smart, politically-minded, and/or boundary-pushing people whose work and opinions don't get mentioned in political sex work and "feminist porn" discussions because they don't fit into the established superficial mould of what a "smart sex worker" is supposed to look and act like.  Is sex worker activism a momentum-gathering social movement or a temporarily trendy subculture, like ironic mustaches?

I stated that I'm calling for a "working" class uprising, and I chose that word for a reason.  I didn't call for a coup.  I don't want to silence anyone or tell anyone to stop doing what they're doing.  I am calling for the rest of us to literally rise up, to become the dominant voices not because we take voices away from others, but because we are speaking up for ourselves.  If you don't like how things are going, or don't feel represented by the current sex worker political scene, it's up to you to make sex worker politics yours through your own participation.

4.) I live up to what I ask of others, so I'm starting a new project.  Its focus is on providing accessible information about sex work to a general audience.

I've had an idea for this independent project floating around in my head for a while, and decided that now is the time to finally get on it.  Independent as in something I can operate mostly by myself, without joining an existing group and devoting time to organization meetings, worrying about consensus processes, and frankly, having to rely on other people - who may end up flaking out on me.  While I will be asking for input, advice, and help from other people, I'm a ultimately a lone wolf, and I want something that's mostly operated by me, because then I know it will get done.

The political work (I sort of hate the word "activist" because of the subculture scene image it implies) I've been involved with off-and-on over in the last decade has been of a very different framework than general education and outreach.  My experiences are with more targeted issues where there's some clear goal and there are more definitive metrics to gage success.  Changing the big picture for sex workers is fucking hard.  This isn't "let's get this company/person to stop/start doing this specific thing."  Sluts and whores (and women falsely perceived to be so) are some of the most hated people across every human culture in the world.  Every single religion is anti-sexuality, and that affects our global psyche in ways I don't think all people realize or care to admit.  So, while this isn't little Furry Girl's first try at doing something political, it's a truly challenging construct due to its vastness and how much it's ingrained in our world.  Also, it's funny to me that I generally agitate for more "radical" positions on issues, but what most needs to be done for sex workers is providing polite, 101-level basic public education, so what's what I'm going to do.

The launch date on my project hasn't been determined yet, but some time in the spring.  I promise, it will be good, and I'll write more about this soon.  In the mean time, if you have a fancy-pants job and aren't hurting too badly from the recession, I would appreciate any early-bird donations to get the ball rolling.

I've decided on what I have the skill, time, and interest to contribute.  What will you start doing this year?

[Edit to add: this project is now launched at SWAAY.org]

This post contains things that even *I* never dared to say publicly before because of their inflammatory nature.  But with the increasing histrionics swirling around Julian Assange, I decided it's time to air a long-standing grievance that won't win me any friends.

The first person who ever made me fear for my life was an avowed pacifist.  He was my boyfriend, and he lost his temper, threw me to ground, pinned me down, and head-slammed me until his friends dragged him off me.  I later had my head smashed into the edge of a kitchen countertop by an environmentalist boyfriend, too.  I've twice experienced a panic at the hands of a "do-gooder" that my skull was going to be cracked open.  You don't need to convince me that abuse exists in even the most purportedly enlightened circles.

I have also witnessed a number of instances of people in activist and political social scenes who have use calculated accusations of rape, abuse, and assault out of spite, broken-heartedness, desire for attention, and to deflect from their own behaviors.  Why does this happen?  On the left side of the political spectrum, people are awarded unflinching acceptance of all claims of sexual misconduct.  This harm lasts forever, even if later proved false or rescinded.  I have friends who have been slandered by ex-lovers, and I've seen how the stigma scars their lives.  I've seen this happen in different countries, in different social causes/subgroups, among people with different class backgrounds, different orientations and genders, and different ages.  It's not been just a one-off thing that could be chalked up to a small and localized problem, like, "Gay animal rights people in Tuscon under 25 tend to do this."

I have no idea if WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange might have had sex with two of his fans without using a condom every time, or whether a condom broke.  I don't know whether, if true, it was coerced unprotected sex, or consented to in the moment and later regretted.  (You don't know the answers to these questions, either.)  I spent several hours reading articles from both pro-and anti-Assange camps, and the more I read, the more the stories and circumstances of his accusers sounded fishy, and the more hysterical his detractors got with cherry-picking information, flat-out lying, and using over-the-top emotionally-manipulative language.

Here's the story from what I can tell: "victim one" bragged about bagging Assange, threw a party for him the day after he "raped" her, and only decided she'd been "raped" after finding out she wasn't his only lover.  Earlier this year, her blog also promoted an article about how to exact malicious revenge on the unfaithful.  (That series of events apparently could sound suspect only to a woman-hating rape-apologist?)  Once two jilted Assange groupies discovered each other, the women who'd previously stayed friendly with Assange even after their "assaults" (while thinking they were his only girl) got upset and decided to go to the police.  And, even then, they didn't go to press rape charges at first, they went to see if they could force Assange to undergo STI testing.  After there wasn't enough evidence to charge him with anything, and then after repeat tries got the charges thrown out of court, one woman escalated her claim and said that, yes, actually, she did recall that he held her down with his bodyweight when they had sex.  The rape hysterics have been holding that part up as the new lynchpin in the case.  Obviously, only a rapist would be on top of a woman during sex!

So, are Assange's accusers victims of a powerful and horny political celebrity, or are they pissed off jealous fangirls who assumed Assange would reciprocate their adoration if they pursued and seduced him?  It's a fair question to ask about motivations and truthfulness here, but anyone who's been asking gets shouted down with screams of "YOU SUPPORT RAPE!"  It's a very offensive logical fallacy: question whether Assange is actually a rapist, and it means you must think rape is awesome.

Our post-feminist western culture celebrates women doing pointlessly spiteful things to men.  This is the "triumph" of decades of fighting real sexism: narratives where women blow up an unattractive suitor's truck (Thelma & Louise), or burn all their husband's positions when he wants a divorce (Waiting to Exhale) are chick flick classics.  Women are generally given free passes to control, abuse, and seek vengeance that they would never be allowed if they were men.  The solution to gender-based injustice is never to just reverse which gender the injustice gets brought against.

When lefties fanatically spearhead every rape/abuse allegation leveled by anyone, they are creating an environment that enables and even encourages false accusations from angry parties.  While it's a travesty that police and courts tend to not believe people claiming that they have been sexually assaulted, the solution is not to unquestioningly champion anyone who makes the claim.  Never believing and always believing allegations are both wrong.  Rape and assault are awful, fucked up things, but that doesn't mean claims shouldn't be subjected to any fact-checking or skepticism.  Murder is awful, too, and even with our badly flawed judicial system, we still generally try and sort out the facts and give the accused their day in court and a chance to defend themselves.

Hysterics will no doubt claim that I'm defending rape or don't take it seriously.  On the contrary: I consider rape and sexual assault accusations to be so serious that they deserve extra consideration and yes, even questioning when it's warranted.  I think we're obligated to turn a critical eye on potentially fraudulent allegations.  As someone who recently sung the praises of vigilante justice, I'm clearly all in favor of exacting harsh physical and social revenge upon rapists, predators, and abusers - but if you're going to do that to someone, you had better be sure.

What is the workable alternative to having some degree of caution about rape accusations?  Is the argument that rape is so terrible that it's morally justifiable to destroy innocent lives in the pursuit of ferreting out any potential rapists?  (The word for that is collateral damage.)

Julian Assange deserves a right to defend himself, have legal representation, question the lack of evidence of wrongdoing, and address lies being spread in the mainstream and liberal press.  (Example: he didn't "flee Sweden to avoid prosecution" as the feminists are claiming - he stuck around some 40 days after the accusations surfaced, trying to see if police wanted to take a statement from him.  Assange also willingly turned himself in - hardly the hallmark of a "flight risk trying to avoid going to court".)  I don't know what transpired between himself and his "victims", but I do know that thus far, I'm not convinced he did anything more discourteous than failing to tell his Swedish ladyfriends he wasn't looking to settle down and marry them.  Maybe my guess will be proved wrong, who knows.  I'll keep an open mind, and I challenge others to do the same, especially when it comes to such incendiary topics.  Google the matter for yourself, pick an array of articles to read (start with this post, perhaps), and form your own opinion based on a metric other than "anyone accused of rape is guilty, because rape is wrong."

Being around activist types for over 11 years - and witnessing how some bad apples go nuclear on former lovers - I've sadly been taught to be suspicious of accusations of sexual impropriety when they involve political people.  Don't blame me for requesting fairness to all parties - vilify the dangerous scoundrels who cry wolf just to get back at an ex, mocking real survivors and make it harder for them to be believed.  Just as much as rapists and abusers, fakers are the true villains of this topic.

I realize that I'm a couple of weeks late to the fight in publishing this rant, but I was so angry when people first starting attacking Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project, I decided I needed to let this sit on the back burner for a bit.  Rather than being rendered irrelevant by the passage of time, I'd like to think it's the opposite.  Now that the feminist whine-o-sphere has moved on to bitching about other grievous injustices, the distance actually serves to show how little the haters accomplished, and how beautiful it has been to see It Gets Better grow and touch lives.

Allow me to start with a personal story.

I grew up in a part of the country that's - how do I put it delicately? - well-represented on PeopleOfWalmart.com.  My grandmother and J's grandmother were best friends, they lived on the same street in a middle class neighborhood.  J and I spent a bunch of time hanging out as kids.  He was a gentle, kind, effeminate boy, who always seemed somewhat lonely.  We drifted, as people do.  We went to different schools and spent less time hanging out at our grandmother's homes.  All I knew, beyond our childhood friendship, were the embarrassed whispers of family gossip that he was a homo and had "problems" dealing with it.

When J was 17, he put a gun in his mouth.

One of my only serious regrets in life is that I didn't make an effort to keep hanging out, keep making a point to see him, to hopefully maybe in the best of worlds to have changed the ways things turned out for him.

In 1999, my life was no picnic, but I knew it wasn't going to be like that forever.  My best friend at that point was the most gay-bashed kid in our school, who was repeatedly assaulted by bullies, including while teachers watched without intervening.  Dropping out and fleeing flyoverland was one of the best decisions I've ever made.  Even though I had a thick skin, I saw zero reason to purposefully keep subjecting myself to an environment where people hated me, called me a slut, and threw food at me.  I wish J has still been alive when I left, wish I could have brought him with me, I wish I could have shown him what I suspected all along - that there is a whole world outside of this shithole hometown of ours.

Even though I wasn't able to be there for J, I wish someone would have told him, "It gets better".  And with the rash of queer youth suicides in the media, Dan Savage decided to step up and do just that, for all the other kids just like my childhood friend who ended his own life.

There is not a person alive today with more drive and ability than Dan Savage to tell the world - through his column, blog, podcast, and television appearances - that it's okay to be queer, or kinky, or non-monogamous, and to embrace their sexuality.  Dan Savage a powerhouse of a sex-positivity activist, frequently maximizing his widely-syndicated sex advice column and popular podcast to drum up support for important issues.  I especially appreciate that he's consistently implored straight readers that they need to pay attention to anti-queer bigots and politicians, because those types aren't just after The Gays, they're out to take rights away from straight people, too.  So, with his ability to have an impact on public discourse, Dan launched the It Gets Better Project last month, based around a video channel on YouTube, for anyone to upload messages of love and support for isolated and struggling queer kids who may be thinking of taking their own lives.

The videos I have watched are so moving and inspiring, and positively radiate care and love.  Participants get choked up over telling the world about how they'd tried to kill themselves, how glad they are to be alive today, how they have amazing partners now, how they've come to meet so many other great queer people, and how important it is to just stick it out, because it gets better.  Internet celebrities like blogger Perez Hilton and porn star Buck Angel both tell viewers that they're welcome to email them and they'll gladly offer their personal support.  (It bears emphasizing: I didn't see a single person who was attacking the It Gets Better Project put themselves out there to offer their personal support to queer kids.)

I've only watched a dozen or so of the videos, but the ones I've seen are just so damned beautiful and filled with love for lonely and bullied queer kids.  I've cried watching some of the videos I've clicked on.  It's one of the best, most direct, and most effective activist projects I've seen in ages.

So, in harsh contrast to all that support and hope, I witnessed many people in the feminist whine-o-sphere predictably became enraged at the offensiveness of it all.  The nerve of that asshole Dan Savage!  Using his fame and popularity to reach out and try to prevent queer kids from killing themselves!

The two key arguments against It Gets Better seem to boil down to a) "privileged" bullied queer kids thinking of killing themselves don't matter anyway, and b) if an activist project doesn't instantly fix all problems for everyone, it is therefor a horrible idea and shouldn't be done at all.

Dan Savage has addressed critics by blogging,

To the angry folks: I admit that IGBP doesn't do the impossible.  It doesn't solve the problem of anti-gay bullying, everywhere, all at once, forever.  The point of the videos is to give despairing kids in impossible situations a little thing called hope.  The point is to let them know that things do get better.  For some people things get better once they get out of high school, for others things get better while they're still in high school.

[...]

Nothing about letting kids know that it gets better excuses or precludes us from pressing for the Student Non-Discrimination Act, demanding anti-bullying programs, confronting the bigots who are making things worse, or supporting the Trevor Project.  But we're not going to get legislation passed this instant or get anti-bullying programs into schools in rural areas—particularly private Christian schools—before classes start tomorrow.  Doing all of that is going to take years of hard work and dedicated activism.  In the meantime, while we work on all of that, we can get these messages of hope in front of kids who are crisis right now.  And we must use the tools we have at our disposal right now—social media and YouTube and digital video—to get these messages of hope to kids who are suffering right now in schools without GSAs and kids who are trapped schools that will never have GSAs and kids whose parents who bully and reject them.

There's nothing about this project—nothing about participating in this project—that prevents people from doing more.  Indeed, I would hope that participating in this raises awareness and leaves people feeling obligated to do more.

When I saw people expending their energy attacking It Gets Better, the dynamic felt all too familiar.  Just another group of elite politically correct liberals who prefer to focus on honing and touting their perfect theories, rather than taking real tangible actions.

My childhood friend I mentioned earlier?  J was a white guy, middle class, able-bodied, and presumably cisgender.  In the eyes of the feminist whine-o-sphere, I guess it that this means his life wasn't worth saving, and he didn't deserve receiving a message of hope and support during the darkest days of his life.  After all, he was just some privileged gay kid, not a caricature of perfect oppressions, a lab-created layer cake to salivate over, like a transgender wheelchair-bound black queer kid who grew up in a slum in Rio.

J's suicide is a very personal reason I want to slap every insipid armchair pundit who devoted time to attacking Dan Savage and the It Gets Better Project.  These critics blithely dismissed the campaign because they viewed it as only reaching out to privileged queer kids, which tacitly argues that those kids don't really matter and don't really suffer. Activists in first world countries often forget - while ironically often accusing others of being "too privileged" - that there are actual lives involved in the issues they theorize and pontificate over.  Kids who get bullied to death and are physically attacked by tormentors are not abstract concepts to me, they're people I've known and cared for.  They're living, and dead, reminders of why I didn't need to read The God Delusion to form an analysis of how religion poisons everything.

Growing up as a picked on queer kid isn't easy for anyone, even if they are non-poor caucasian able-bodied cisgender boys.  If life is so gleefully "privileged" for them, why do these queer kids kill themselves?  What if my friend J had been deaf?  What if he was Hispanic?  Would his life have been worth caring about then?  What does it take to get some simple fucking human decency towards the misery of people like J, or my other "privileged" friend who dealt with assault at school on a regular basis?  When you dismiss reaching out to "privileged" kids (and I dispute the accuracy of that allegation anyway), you dismiss and belittle the pain of those kids, plain and simple.

Samuel Johnson famously quipped a delightful observation - that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.  I shall now famously quip that "activism" which centers on accusing others of being too privileged is the last refuge of the lazy.

You know what's not lazy?  The It Gets Better Project.  Go submit your own video message, support initiatives in your area that address bullying in schools or provide funding for queer youth services, and donate to organizations such as The Trevor Project or  The Ali Forney Center.

Stick it to the feminist whine-o-sphere: actually do something.

It seems like every couple of months, there's a new fear-mongering book being hawked by one of the professional feminists about the vileness of sexual commerce.  A core component of their actual Serious Face critique of the jizz biz is insinuating that we have the totally unique atrociousness of possessing a financial motivation with our jobs.  We in the sex industry work to earn a profit.  We make money.  We get paid to do stuff.  We sell things and services.  Gasp!

This line of attack would be hilarious, if it weren't also so disgusting to see that these types make their living off the backs of sex workers - meaning they are literally nothing more than the most disrespectful and exploitative of pimps.  They spread panic about us to get interviewed on TV.  They use naked photographs of us without permission (in flagrant violation of federal porn statues) during their paid speaking appearances.  They twist our words and purposefully misrepresent our stories in their books.  They draw salaries as the heads of nonprofits who exist to take away our rights.  They make up statistics out of thin air about how awful we are in in order to get donations for their projects.  They receive tenure at fancy universities by lying about us to impressionable students.

They have a financial motivation.  They are out to earn a profit.  They get paid with their book deals and public appearances.  And they're probably better at profiting off the exploitation of sex workers than any pimp or trafficker out there.

There's 10 seconds - a single line of dialog - from Wayne's World that always plays in my head whenever I see professional feminists soliciting for their latest cash-grab.  Now it can can be what plays in your head, too.  This clip is from the middle of a scene of Wayne and Garth ranting about the importance of not selling out, while engaging in product placement.

"I had but one interest in writing, and it may surprise you to know, it wasn't turning out a book.  I wanted a column.  A big, glossy, Sunday-magazine column in a reputable broadsheet.  I was going to be the girl Millington.  And possibly even start dating a German and dye my hair fuschia as well.

But, I was promptly informed, that was never going to happen.  'It won't fly at the Guardian,' one person advised me.  'Half their Saturday magazine staff threatened to walk after they offered a column to stripper.'  And that was only a stripper.

I grumbled and harrumphed, and that revelation, plus the predictably rubbish reviews from the Guardian and Observer a year later, led me to a single conclusion: it's quite alright to be a self-identified feminist, and a whore, so long as you're Valerie Solanas and want to kill the men you fuck."

-- Belle de Jour, in a July 2005 entry on belledejour-uk.blogspot.com

A little background: I grew up as the freakish nonreligious kid in a conservative part of the country.  I'm not one of those people who was raised in a big liberal city or whose parents taught them college-level concepts before the other kids could even read.  I grew up around people who told me that dinosaur bones were put in the ground by Satan to trick us.  I've always been drawn to nature and science, and have spent almost 14 years paying attention to the evolution wars - ever since the subject came up in biology class in seventh grade.  Sexuality activists can learn from the contemporary creationist movement's most successful strategy, and how to not play into it.  I've touched on this topic before, but wanted to write about it in more depth after watching not just anti-sex worker activists, but also supposedly "pro-porn" feminists, using this tactic over the course of this month's re-hashing of the porn wars.

To get a two-hour crash course in the modern creationist movement, I recommend watching Expelled, courtesy of The Pirate Bay, whose motto should be For When You Don't Want Your Money Supporting Something™.  The movie is a "documentary" narrated by conservative actor Ben Stein, aimed at "exposing" the horrifying "bias" within American schools to not teach Christian myths often enough in science classes.  (Unlike other countries with indoor plumbing and electricity, Americans already do have so much creationism in their schools and public life that most of them don't believe in evolution.)  The film clumsily pushes the idea that atheist radicals like biologist Richard Dawkins are taking over science and shutting down any "debate" about creationism.  Stein gives the topic the full loony treatment - which, of course, includes a stroll around Dachau to sensitively remind viewers that a belief in evolution and science invariably leads to Nazi death camps.  Stein never plainly states in the movie that he's a creationist who doesn't believe in evolution.  He argues that anyone who definitively supports evolution is trying to "silence debate about these important issues", playing like he's just a doe-eyed and confused Joe Everyman who thinks we the people have a right to hear "all opinions" on an unresolved matter.

Creationists might be intellectually-stunted to the point of hilarity when it comes to their interpretations of the world around them, but they are a very clever and well-funded bunch when it comes to getting their ideas wedged into American society.  Their most important and successful tactic is a propaganda campaign that they call amongst themselves "teaching the controversy": to not deny evolution outright, but to drum up "debate" and make the public think that the jury's still out about whether or not the world is 6000 years old.  In reality, no credible institution or researcher lends any believability to the idea that there's a "controversy" in the scientific community over whether or not Christian mythology negates everything we know about biology, geology, and physics - but that's just a minor unmentioned pesky detail, like there being no credible studies to suggest any harm in viewing porn or decriminalizing prostitution.

Creationist nutters aren't the only special interest group that is hell-bent on "teaching the controversy".  You see this sort of thing all the time with other areas where a person knows their own religious/moral beliefs have no factual basis, and that there's likely lots of solid evidence against their position, so their only hope is to cloud the issue to make their own position look more tenable.  Such as:

"Oh, I'm not against abortion!  But I do think young women should know that a lot of people have been asking questions about whether women who get abortions are more likely to end up with cancer later in life."

"Oh, I don't hate the gays!  But I think the public should know that there's all sorts of conflicting information about how unhealthy it is for children to be raised by homosexuals."

It's a sort of malicious argument from ignorance - someone posits, "I can't possibly make sense of this terribly confusing issue," - when, of course, they perfectly well do have a side - "so, we all really need to think more about what a grey area we're looking at and not make up our minds so hastily."

In the world of internet debates, this shoddy debate tactic is called concern trolling.  The concern troll is never for or against anything, they've just got "concerns" they need to keep raising.  No matter how many times you keep countering these people, they can keep popping up with some other "concern" that adds further confusion to the issue and makes it harder to discuss using facts.

"I think it's a classic hallmark of psuedoscience - which is that you just keep shifting the goalpost until you get to a hypothesis that's, frankly, untestable".

- Dr. Paul Offit, in Point of Inquiry's "The Costs of Vaccine Denialism" podcast

Lately, I've seen more sex-positive types adding to this problem by reminding everyone that "we" ought to be more respectful of anti-sex worker activist's arguments, and that the sex worker and pornographer community is failing to address these "concerns", such as:

"What about the women who feel insecure about themselves when they see sexy skinny women in porn?" The feminist answer to this is to sell a woman a book telling her that yes, she really ought to feel oppressed and ugly when she sees women's bodies in advertising and entertainment, and to whine a lot about such images being displayed.  My solution is to tell people to own up to their insecurities, and develop positive self-esteem that's not based on comparing themselves to idealized images in the media.  We all choose how we react to the world around us, and a large-chested size two model in a porno isn't forcing any woman to hate her own body.

"What about that study that shows sexually aggressive men look at a lot of pornography?" What about it?  Non-scientific and anti-porn minds take the study to mean looking at porn causes men to behave aggressively, even though such a conclusion is a classic logical fallacy.  I'd respond by telling people to read about the difference between causation and correlation, and to know that there are many more studies from all over the world that show a correlation between increased access to porn and a decrease in sex crimes.  If we're playing the correlation game, there's much more research to suggest that porn makes the world safer and less dangerous.  (Three I have bookmarked are Anthony D'Amato's 2006 study "Porn Up, Rape Down" about porn and rape in the United States, Dr. Milton Diamond's 1999 experience with studying porn and sex crimes in the US and Asia, and economist Todd Kendall's work, including "Pornography, Rape, and the Internet.")

"What about porn companies that don't treat their performers well?" None of us have any real statistics about what percentage of performers feel abused or unhappy with their jobs, and I'm not going to waste my time debating my guesses with other people who are also making guesses.  (My guess, though, is that the porn industry has a higher level of job satisfaction than most other occupations.)  Are some workers in the porn industry mistreated or miserable?  Of course, sadly, but that doesn't make the jiz biz especially evil.  There are exploited workers in every sector in every country in the world.  Further, it is pornographers and performers who are the most likely to know about adult companies that have had complaints from talent.  If you want the real scoop on a given porn company and how well they treat their workers, you don't email a women's studies academic on the other side of the country to ask for a referral.  You ask people in the porn industry.  Sex workers are pretty damn protective of each other and will gladly share if they've ever heard of a company engaging in bad business practices.

It annoys me to live in an age of public discourse where people are coddled and told that every idea is valid and just as likely to be correct as any other idea.  Ideas are not lottery tickets - each with an equal and random chance of winning.  When it's almost unheard of to unapologetically state that a given idea or person is flat-out wrong, the intellectually-lazy public believes that the truth always lies in the middle.  Not everything is a compromise.  Not everything is a debate.  Not everyone's opinion is a beautiful and unique snowflake - sometimes, it's just yellow piss-filled slush.

The sex-positive scene, and the world at large, needs to stop giving concern trolls and those who "teach the controversy" an equal platform with equal consideration.  Their goal is to dump impenetrable grey area paint all over everything so that the well-reasoned text beneath becomes unreadable.  It only encourages them to acknowledge and give legitimacy to their every little whimper and fuss.

As a younger person, I wasted a lot of time and energy line-by-line debating anti-sex worker loonies in front of small internet audiences, and I won't make that mistake again.  I'd rather just make good ethical porn, and occasionally blog about sex work politics to a wider audience.  One of the most powerful political slogans I've ever seen was a Bobby Sands quote on a mural in Belfast that read, "Our revenge will be the laughter of our children."  Well, my revenge in the porn wars will be the laughter of the performers I hire to make awesome smut with me - and there have been a lot of genuine smiles and laughs on my shoots.

As the dust settles a bit in the wake of all the discussion about Stop Porn Culture, many bloggers are still trickling forth with their own "and this is what all sides keep missing in their posts about the matter" posts.  It's good to see the discussion keep going, and I'll be the latest to hitch my wagon on the end of the ongoing "people are missing the real point!" train.

A running theme I saw in the conversation about Stop Porn Culture, as well as at other times, was people commenting that we need to prove to anti-porn activists that feminist porn exists.  These people's hearts are in the right place, but I don't think that tactic has any chance of swaying feminists who hate pornography.

Some sex workers and pornographers identify as feminists, some of us don't.  As I complained once in a room full of people shooting daggers out of their eyes at me, I'm sick of seeing the word "feminist" being used as the sole or primary qualifier of whether or not a given idea/product/person is good or evil.  It's sloppy, reductionist thinking.  While I'm not at all against anyone calling what they do "feminist porn", and indeed love what comes out of the feminist porn scene, it's awfully tiring to see people act as though the only ethical porn out there is the stuff being made by a handful of small producers in San Francisco.

When people fixate on the importance of spotlighting and praising feminist porn, I, and others like me, are tacitly being slighted.  Why is the label of "feminist" more important than the actual production of what's been discussed?  How about rather than squealing endlessly about feminist porn, we use the term ethical porn instead?  It makes more sense and actually explains, in simple English, what you're talking about.  It would be nice to see inclusiveness towards all the awesome and ethical non-feminist pornographers (ahem - like me), and you'll also avoid the endless semantic debates with anti-porn activists over what feminist "really" means.  Sidestep that bullshit - it's a useless distraction, and you'll never win an argument with it.  Believe me, I spent years trying.

When we get lazy and use the word "feminist" as an all-purpose stand-in for "ethical", we create a false dichotomy by inferring all porn not marketed specifically as "feminist" is not produced ethically.  This helps our enemies fracture us, and it hardly fosters productive dialog about the real politics and ethics of porn production.  If we want to have open discussions about labor and production issues - rather than endlessly rebutting baseless accusations that watching porn turns men into rapists - we need to drop the loaded terminology and use proper descriptive words.

It's also irksome to see the way in which many people in the pro-porn community rush to decry anti-porner's highlighting of BDSM porn in their materials.  While the anti-porners cherry-pick presenting the most graphic and kinky porn they can get their hands on - images of women being degraded, humiliated, and beaten - the pro-porn retorts to this emotionally-manipulative tactic annoy me just as much.  It completely plays into the divide-and-conquer efforts of anti-porners.  "Hey, most porn isn't violent and degrading!  You're just using horrible examples!  Most mass-market porn is wholesome, not abusive!"  This only serves to further enforce the sex-negative overall social norm that kinky sex is defacto unethical and nonconsensual sex.

Excuse me, but since when did either side research the porn in question and figure out if the examples used by anti-porn nutters were produced under conditions that were agreeable to the performers?  Whether the women in the images are doing artistic soft-focus implied nudes or having their faces rubbed into a puddle of piss on the floor, there's no way to tell by looking at an photo how the performers really felt about being a part of the production.  When you're only looking at and talking about images of a pre-negotiated scene, you're glossing over everything that actually matters.  It would be like asserting that a war movie is an illegal snuff film because you, as an audience member, are certain from the "evidence" you were given that you saw people get shot and bleed to death.  Or, that since you found Hollywood's latest romantic comedy to be light-hearted and fun, you're absolutely certain that everyone involved with its production was treated fairly and loved working on the movie.

Guess what?  I've met a lot of women who work in front of the camera doing "violent", "degrading", and "humiliating" porn, and they consistently gush about how amazing their work is and how happy they are with their jobs.  I actually think I hear more kinky porn performers express happiness about their work, and more often, than I see even other happy sex workers glow about their jobs.  Is that anecdotal evidence?  Sure, but it's a lot of anecdotes - more anecdotes than the anti-porners can trot out in the form of a few ex-performers who later decided they regret their jobs and felt abused by having worked in porn.

To channel my inner Christian Bale: hey, it's fucking distracting when people chase the red herrings of "feminist porn" and "violent porn".  Let's stop that, and focus on the comparatively boring issues of discussing labor politics within sex work.

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