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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[After months of this blog post being out there, I'm sick of getting comments from random people who've never read my blog before and are looking for some place to fight about why they think their religion is awesome.  Go whine about it in your LiveJournal.  I will not be publishing any more comments from people who's "contribution" is to try and have the same cliche debate with me about why they love religion and/or the Dalai Lama.  I've more than addressed everything I'm going to address, but if you want to keep debating religion with me, you can pay me $180 an hour to do so on iFriends, since that's what gets you off.  It's not that I can't rip your tired old arguments to shreds, it's that it bores me to do so.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.)

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