While checking out a friend's Flickr uploads, I came across a photo that instantly took me back almost 9 years.  It was the smiling face of a girl who had once looked down her nose at me for being such a slut.  She was a technical virgin back in those days, bouncing from guy to guy faster than I did, doing everything except letting them put their penises in her vagina.  A holier-than-thou cocktease.

If you're like me, you will always remember the teen girls who were catty bitches to you, even if they've grown up, perhaps matured, and through some holy-shit-it's-a-small-world twist, gone on to become friends with someone you know.

This is one of many examples of why I'll never, ever get the "sisterhood" bullshit espoused by feminism.  Most of my experiences with women prior to sex work were them picking on me - for being a tomboy, for being the chubby girl, for being a slut.  The feminists would like to dismiss this sort of bad behavior by saying it's all just because of the evil patriarchy conspiracy, but I happen to know first-hand that women are capable of doling out plenty of oppression and emotional violence all by themselves.  When people refuse to acknowledge that, it makes me assume they must have grown up skinny, popular, chaste, and otherwise entirely conforming to the unwritten laws of the tribe of teengirldom.

Seeing the photo today made me think of a segment from "Fast Girls" by Emily White, a book I recommend.  The author interviews different women who were labeled sluts in high school.

She was out on the town in Seattle, at a new martini bar.  "Me and my friend Meg were out with these guys from a really cool band.  We were dressed to the nines, so people were looking at us and we felt totally hot.  All of a sudden this girl comes up and she is being real nice, probably 'cuz she wants to get with the guys in the band, and she is like, 'You're Madeline, right?  Remember me?  We went to high school together.'  I was drunk but then all of a sudden I remember who she was, this really popular girl who was one of the worst offenders.  Telling lies about me all the time.  Yelling names at me from her car when she was driving away from school."

The popular girl came up to Madeline that night in the bar offering an apology for the crimes of the past.  According to Madeline, the girl said, "I am really sorry.  I think the reason we did it has something to do with how, when something is beautiful, you want to destroy it."  Madeline rolls her eyes when she tells me that the girl went on and on, an alcohol-fueled confession, a monologue.

Madeline didn't buy it.  The forgiveness this girl was asking for seemed to puny, so late.  Madeline stared at the girl for a moment.  Then she punched her in the face.

[Edited to add: As an addendum- I pestered my friend about the girl in his social circle, and he told me he's gotten in arguments with her for being anti- sex worker. Ah, I guess some mean teenage girls never grow up- they just re-channel their sexual insecurities at new targets.]

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.

Years ago, I was eating with a friend and a few of his enlightened lefty activist buddies.

I was aware that a number of his self-righteous feminist pals had a problem with what I do, so I generally stayed away from them, choosing to socialize with my friend one-on-one, when we'd make vegan cookies and watch scifi.  (An associate of his once tried to pick a fight with me inside an upscale restaurant, loudly accusing me in public that I "think it's a good thing to rape children".)

On this particular awkward occasion, I don't recall a certain woman at our table saying anything to me during the meal, nor had she and I ever met before.  I ordered something small, like an appetizer or a milkshake.  When the bill came, I tipped the waitress something like 50% of the cost of what I ate.

The previously-quiet woman gave me the stink eye and snottily said, "You know, for the kind of money you make, you really should be tipping more.  These woman actually have to work for their money."

Remind me that part again about how the left is sexually liberated at right-wingers are my enemy?  I prefer my old-school Republican father who supports my right to sell sexuality over these "enlightened" feminist asses any day of the week.

One of the most commonly asked questions of sex workers is, "But do your parents know?!", generally spoken in a mock-concerned, barely-containing-their-excitement voice, ready to hear about my inner turmoil of how I want nothing more than to be able to make my parents proud of me, yet am burdened with the shame of being a fallen woman.

When I started out, I wasn't sure how my father would react when he eventually found out about the porn thing, and I had no immediate plans to tell him.  He has post-it notes on his coffee table to help him figure out how to work his television remote control, so I wasn't worried that my luddite dad was going to stumble across my web site.

A year or two in, a teenaged cousin found my web site.  I'm not sure how this worked in his head, but he apparently decided that there was more satisfaction to be had in tattling on me to the family than there was in not telling the family a story that started out, "I was looking at porn, and..."

So, I got The Call from my father.

"Is this true- that you're naked on some kind of internet sites?"

He sounded a touch angry, but not ragingly so.  I considered whether I should just lie.  I could get away with lying because he had no means of disproving me.

"Yes, it's true."

There was a pause on his end.  Sure, my father always had Playboys not-so-well-hidden around the house, but the idea of men jerking off to his own daughter might be a very different issue.

(It's an interesting test of how screwed people are about sex- the way they react to the idea that I get naked for money.  In general, something I find fascinating about being a sex worker is the way so many people project all their fears, insecurities, and neuroses on me and criticize me for their own issues.  If a person tells me how degrading and disgusting my job is, it's because they view their own sexuality with revulsion.  And this goes for misogynist men as well as the liberal feminists whose eyes - and mouths - shoot jealous hate-daggers at any woman more attractive than them.)

My father posed his next question: "Are you making money doing this?"

"Yes.  People pay a subscription fee every month to see new photos."

He exhaled a massive sigh of relief into the phone. "Oh, THANK GOD, I thought you were doing it for FREE!  Never do that for free."

We both sort of awkwardly laughed about the whole thing.

Later, he let me shoot porn in his beautifully-decorated living room.  Here's a favorite photo of myself from that day, and the one I use on my business card:

(I was prompted to put this story in writing by the Coming Out post on $pread's blog.)

It's a real shame that Diablo Cody hasn't kept her old blog online.  I realize she's a famous Oscar-winner now and has important celebrity encounters and movie openings to blog about, but her earlier work was among my favorite stuff to read when I was new to the adult industry.  I recently sought out one of her posts via Archive.org, and I wanted to re-post it here as a little piece of sex worker history the web has almost forgotten.

This was written November 16th, 2003.

Under glass.

Saturday night is the cruelest shift at the peep show, and not just because I'd rather be abusing alcohol at my favorite bowling alley. No, Saturday nights suck because S-Mart attracts throngs of drunken curiousity seekers and couples who think it might be "fun" to go to that giant sex shop downtown.

Now, as you know, I do the dirty stuff in a private booth, away from prying eyes. But when I'm not doing a show, I have to sit in the "den," which is basically a big glass display case in the middle of the fucking store. I'm basically a doll. Anyone who walks in can ogle me in my underwear, tap on the glass, hurl insults, cluck with disapproval at how "exploited" I am, compare me to an animal in a zoo, etc. And they do.

Most nights, this isn't a problem. The usual gang of perverts who frequent the store are used to seeing us in there, and they don't even approach the glass unless they want to buy a show. But on Saturdays, that's when we get the kind of people who aren't used to seeing peep show girls in the flesh.

Worse yet, we get women.

Women shopping for bachelorette parties. Women on "girls' night out," who have had one too many Flirtinis and are feeling self-righteous, hilarious and/or bitter. Women who are with their husbands, and suddenly turn sour when hubby approaches the glass. I stiffen whenever I see a woman coming. They never have anything nice to say, even though I've mastered my sheepish "It's a living, sister" smile.

What made last night especially agonizing was that I was working alone. I brought a book on Buddhism and zoned out on the sofa (so much for mindfulness.) Everytime I slipped out of my book-induced reverie and looked up, there was a group of people standing at the glass. "Hey, she's real!" someone inevitably said. Or (with disgust) "They pay her to sit in there and read?"

I came home at 1:00 a.m. and had nightmares.

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