"What is most shocking to people is not that a man, a ridiculously rich celebrity, cheated on his wife, it's that he had at least 13 mistresses! Two of these women were porn actresses, one of whom, Joslyn James, claims to have had a 3 year love affair with Tiger and two pregnancies. Directly after the Tiger Woods press conference, she and lawyer Gloria Allred pointed out that Tiger's apology -- to wife, friends, family, business partners, and fans -- was incomplete. What about the women he used and threw to the curb? Tiger demanded that James give up her career in adult entertainment because he couldn't stand the thought of her with another man. He pursued this woman, manipulated her to give up her independent income to be solely his for three years, promising her all kinds of things, including his love. Many on the blogs are making out that this porn star, Allred, and the other women are the real exploiters. I disagree. Tiger's privilege as an elite male allows him a legitimacy that these women do not have. As sex workers and mistresses they are cast as deviants, while he just made some bad mistakes. He is able to use the proper womanhood of his married wife to further stigmatize the women he cheated with (Elin is a victim and these women were just asking for trouble), and to hide behind some ridiculous claim that he is sick -- with a sex addiction -- and therefore is a victim of his own behavior as well. We should all feel sorry. I dont."

- Mireille Miller-Young, quoted Abiola Abrams' Tiger Woods' apology statement and video: 25 Top sex and relationship writers and performers react.

I live under a rock when it comes to celebrity stuff, so this was the first full article I've read about the Tiger Woods scandal.  I hadn't been aware that sex workers were among his mistresses.  Woods is hardly alone in having pressured a woman to quit sex work for him out of jealousy, but, I suppose, is now one of the most famous to pull that old douchebag move.

2009 was good to me.  It was the year I finally started blogging, the year I stopped giving a shit about trying to be a feminist (whatever that means), the year I bought a frosting gun for decorating cupcakes, the year I actively began shooting photos of other people, the year I discovered the joy of sex with hot tubs, the year I didn't get to go on a proper vacation, and notably in my personal life, the year I engaged in a lot more sex in a submissive role.

Killing off your feminist self and nurturing your submissive self? Major upgrade, I assure you.

For 2010, I'm aiming to kick the recession's ass via my great new strapon site, get back to doing pay-per-minute web cam shows more often, read more physical books instead of so many blogs and web sites, hopefully present on how to run a porn site at the Desiree Alliance conference, and, as always, find more awesome people that give me a girl-boner. It's already been off to a good start with an epic voyage to Antarctica (a post on that coming soon), so I need to work hard to keep raising my own bar and being the militant awesome-ist I pledged to be last year.

Sex workers and sluts are catnip for those who fancy themselves amateur psychologists.  "What awful things happened to her to make her turn out like that?", they wonder, disgustedly and excitedly, scratching their heads and seeking to unravel what titillating damage has been inflicted upon the presumed victim.  Apparently, one must have been raped by their father and beaten by their partners to turn out so deeply fucked up that they would be like me and happily embrace many facets of their sexuality and body.

Well, fuck you to anyone who thinks that accusing sex workers of being rape/violence survivors is a clever zinger of a debate point.  I have seen self-proclaimed feminists do this more times than I care to count.  They paternalize up their argument a bit, but at the core is a self-satisfied, "Haha!  I bet you've been raped!  You're a victim with no power to make your own decisions, ever!  I totally win the porn debate!"

It's with this history of strangers projecting their scandalous ideas of my past upon me that I've always been hesitant to mention the bad things that have happened.  When accusations of being a rape/violence survivor get turned into a way to attack someone else's credibility and choices, (but only of that someone else is a sex worker, of course), sex workers aren't as likely to speak up about actual, non-imagined abuse.  It's giving cannon-fodder to the enemy.

Before I ever got naked on the internet, I had two partners hit me, and another choke me.  Do their violent actions, then, define me for the rest of my life?  Should "we" give abusers that power?  Must I now wear the scarlet V for "victim" around my neck so that others know to treat me delicately and make "good" decisions for me?  Am I a perfectly-packaged imaginary cliche of a helpless battered woman who "turned to porn"?

Again, fuck you to anyone who thinks so.

All things considered, I feel like I've run through the gauntlet of life thus far relatively unscathed.  But, why do some people assume, or even insist, that I must have had it worse?  Why do so many "progressive"/"feminist" outsiders have a need to believe that all sex workers have been raped and attacked?

It makes me want to go all amateur psychologist and ask, "What awful things happened to this person to make them fantasize so much about sexual women being assaulted and raped?"