As it says in the header of my blog, my political philosophy is informed primarily by Patrick Swayze's character in Roadhouse: "I want you to be nice until it's time to not be nice."

There are two types of "politically-engaged" people: those who are concerned with reality, and those who are concerned with theory, and rarely the twain shall meet.  There are those who work hard, with what they have, in the here and now, to make the world a slightly less shitty place.  Then there's the theory camp, which likes to hem and haw about "what ifs", focusing on keeping their educated analyses in a consistent and tidy spreadsheet.  They criticize and dismiss the works of the reality camp as not being perfect enough, while they themselves contribute nothing but armchair commentary about how things should be done.  I despise the theory class with every fiber of my being.  Always have, always will.

I've been sitting back and waiting to post about the final nails in the coffin of "Alexa di Carlo".  While I doubt the saga is complete, I've decided it's time to write something about the whole thing before the sex blogging community forgets and goes back to busying themselves with writing sex toy reviews.  Plenty of other people have written pieces rehashing what's happened, so check out these select bits of commentary by Expose A Bro (the kick-off post that details all the information of the outing), Charlie Glickman, Belle de Jour, The Sexademic, Miss Maggie Mayhem.

The dirty laundry in a nutshell: "Alexa" was the name of a fake escort who gave bad/dangerous sex advice on "her" blog, The Real Princess Diaries.  "Alexa" pretended to be an academic, stole photos from real sex workers and passed them off as herself, mocked and harassed sexuality activists, and was generally know for churning out poor-quality erotica about her adventures, which read like the cliche and misinformed fantasies of a man who wished he was a sexy woman.  "Alexa" also had another online persona, "Caitlain", that hit on underage teenagers, tried to get them to tell her in graphic detail about their sex lives, and even solicited and received nude photos from these minors.  But the infodump doesn't stop there - when "Alexa" was outed as being a frumpy dude in Delaware named Pat Bohannan, another secret scam was revealed his photo began to circulate.  "Alexa" was privately coaching newbie sex workers and other women to try out her favorite and most trusted client client, Pat Bohannan.  Collecting underage porn and convincing women to enter prostitution are both prosecutable crimes, and apparently, the guy has been reported to law enforcement.

As a community, many people came forward and offered their little puzzle pieces of information on the guy, and the picture formed was that of a devoted sexual predator - whose online web of deception and law-breaking was halted by the transparent collaboration of many sex bloggers, sex educators, sex workers, academics, and youth.  I can't think of a better example of what sex workers are always telling the world - it is those within sex worker communities who are in the best place to identify the truly dangerous criminals.

What I want to draw your attention to is not the "Alexa"/"Caitlain"/Pat clusterfuck itself, but the reactions to it, and how it reinforces all the things that I loathe about political discussions and how we react to anger, especially when it's coming from women.

As this all unraveled, the internet was quick to explode in commentary.  While many noted people wrote smart things about the messy, awful situation, every two-bit sex blogger from here to Kansas was also chomping at the bit to get their own post online to offer some contrarian counter-point in a desperate attempt to get traffic.  Many such commenters have been pushing a nonsensical slippery slope angle.  There's been a lot of babble about the horrors of "vigilant justice", and comparisons have been made to "witch hunts", "lynchings", and "unthinking angry mobs."

I'm an antiauthoritarian, and so as far as I'm concerned, "the justice system" and "the police" are simply vigilante justice implemented and accepted by majority rule.  I'll assign my opinion on acts of either "law enforcement" or "vigilantism" on a case-by-case basis.  "Vigilantism" is an accusation I've seen commonly used by a majority to dismiss efforts on behalf of the marginalized (or those who perceive themselves to be marginalized) to actualize their own immediate self-defense and self-offense, often after being failed by official systems.

Vigilantism (and by extension, all controversial methods of creating change or redressing grievances) is neither ethical nor unethical as a whole - is it a tactic, not a philosophy. For example, would I consider it an ethical response to break someone's legs for cutting in line at the grocery store?  Of course not, but that is not because I believe that violence is always wrong.  When a friend of mine once happened upon a gay-bashing and intervened by assaulting the attackers, I thought that was awesome.  This doesn't mean I think that breaking people's noses is always the best solution to every problem, but violent bigots are rarely compelled to stop through means other than a violent response.  Politically-engaged people seem to have the darnedest time wrestling with these issues of tactical dogmatism.

Outing and publicly shaming someone is a tactic, and one that I personally think was ethically correct in the "Alexa" situation, because it was a case of a persistent sexual predator who was causing harm to people - most obviously, the women he tricked into having sex with him, and teens who felt violated by sending him nude photos of themselves.  Various people have tried other methods of ridding the community of "Alexa"/"Caitlain" for years.  He was able to persist because of shame and silence, and his complete public outing shattered his power.  I remain in agreement with Dan Savage's take on similar matters.  To paraphrase: outings are brutal, and must be reserved only for brutes.

There's this idea floated by people are who not terribly mentally sophisticated that if the sexuality community supports a "vigilante" outing of this one man, no matter how vile or illegal they admit his behavior to be, then the community surely has opened itself up to being obligated to support all outings of all people in all instances.  This is the sort of junk you get from the theory class - they're too busy working on keeping their theories perfectly consistent.  They might as well be arguing, "I am against putting people in jail for murder, because once we start jailing anyone for anything, we will have to jail everybody."  There is no slippery slope.  It's lazy thinking, pure and simple, from people who don't care enough to determine ethics on an individualized basis, and prefer to make sweeping decrees without paying any attention to circumstance.  It's morality as an auto-reply form letter.

Throughout this latest (and hopefully final) bout of "Alexa"-induced drama, there's been a strong undercurrent of some people smugly clucking their tongues at women who are angry, dispassionately reminding us to not get bees in our dainty bonnets.  The nerve of us ill-mannered floozies for losing our cool!  How dare we act up in such a crude and extreme manner as to cuss and use all caps?

It's highly impolitic of women to ever be hateful, no matter if what we're screaming about is something as cut-and-dry as anger directed at a sexual predator.  Even when this attitude is coming from people who consider themselves progressives or radicals, it still feels like someone trying to drag women - kicking and screaming, of course - into a past where women were not allowed to be upset, and it was their job to keep up decorum and suffer injustices quietly.

I've long felt like the most uncouth person in the world, because I readily admit my capacity for great scorn.  I genuinely do hate oppressive people and groups, and unlike silly hippies, I absolutely do identify certain people and groups not as lost souls in need of saving, but distinctly as enemies.  I hate, and I love.  I smile at things like the creep behind "Alexa" losing his job, and I take care of my friends and my community with great affection.  I cheered aloud and clapped my hands when Andrea Dworkin died, and I feel real pain and sadness when I see people in my communities suffer tragedies.  I don't hide my so-called "ugly" feelings, I don't play Stepford Activist.  You might catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but when your underlying goal is to kill flies, why not just use a flyswatter and save your sweet stuff for those who deserve it?  I express anger on a regular basis, and as such, I'm violating an unspoken social rule of most progressive scenes: there's this idea that the first person to get angry loses the battle, as though ours is a race to see who can be nicest to predators, criminals, and abusers as they work to destroy us.  Anger, spite, hatred, and a desire for revenge are supposedly never an acceptable response to injustice - least of all, from women.

After the release of the Afghan War Logs, WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange commented to the media, "I love crushing bastards."  I'm a WikiLeaks fan and supporter, and that line is one of my favorite things I've seen come out of Assange.  It's so perfect in its simplicity - taking satisfaction in exposing war crimes.  Later, at a more informal conversation with the British press, a journalist said something to him like, "A while ago, you made this tongue-in-cheek statement about how you love crushing bastards...", and Assange corrected him with his standard calm fierceness.  No, he wasn't joking.  He loved crushing bastards.

I wish more people stood up and admitted their love of crushing the bastards in their lives, and of the need for more bastards to be crushed.  You are not a monster because you hate bad people and bad social constructs.  I happen to think there's something dead inside you if nothing stirs hatred within you.  Hatred and anger are passions, like love and joy, and I've found that people either have deep passions or they don't, but no one is truly comprised of all hatred or all love.  Some of us are just more intense and open about all of our feelings.

I imagine that The Obtuseness Brigade will process this post as "Furry Girl says that violence and hatred are the only way to achieve social change, and that everyone should carry out acts of vigilante justice against anyone who annoys them."  Oh well.  Those types always need something to whine about.

Seeing as how quotes from movies starring Patrick Swayze are the final arbiters of all matters, I'll close with another - this time, Red Dawn.

"All that hate is gonna burn you up kid."
"It keeps me warm."

[Note: I will not be publishing any comments from people who want to debate or defend the actions of "Alexa"/Pat Bohannan.  That's not the point of this post, so you'll have to take it elsewhere.]

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.

Oh, violent forced sex trafficking - how you give liberals a raging concern boner!  Since nothing excites a do-gooder quite like the chance to blare their uninformed "down with bad stuff!" opinion on a topic as exciting as forced sex trafficking, the latest Craigslist restrictions have prompted a month-long circle jerk for the self-righteous.

I haven't read all of what's been in the press in the last few weeks, but it's the same script that gets dusted off every few months when there's a "new" sex trafficking panic.  And, because anti-sex worker activists aim to turn all issues into a sex trafficking panic, those types are lined up to regurgitate their morbid sound bites about how all exchanges of sexual energy for cash are basicallythesamething as raping trafficked underage sex slaves.  (And, my side is plenty practiced with our less-heard replies, such as, "Do you have any evidence of any of your claims and statistics?", or "How is it that imprisoning/deporting abused sex workers makes their lives magically all better?", or "Have you ever actually asked these communities of people you claim to be saving what they want?")

Whether it's a conservative news source or a feminist/lefty one, the same cliches and hysteria get repeated without fact-check.  In a year when people on my end of the political spectrum are talking a whole lot about the importance of citing primary source materials in journalism, where's the outcry when the media just completely makes shit up about sex work?

I haven't really written about trafficking and "rescue", and it's not because I'm lazy or trying to avoid unpleasant subjects.  I have the sense to know that if something isn't my area of expertise, I ought to hush and listen to people who are in the know.  I know a bit on the subject, but other people are better teachers.

If you would like to educate yourself about trafficking, I have two homework assignments for you, which can be completed in a weekend.

First, read Laura Agustín's Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets, and the Rescue Industry.  We all have our golden books about a given topic that we recommend on a regular basis, and there's nothing that cuts through the bullshit with a sober, researched, post-colonialist mentality like Sex at the Margins.  I'll let the book's back cover summarize its contents:

This groundbreaking book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims, and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest.

Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' disempowers them.  Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radical analysis.  Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry.  Although they are treated as a marginalised group, they form part of the dynamic of the global economy.

Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire of social justice.

You can read this book over the course of one day - it's weighty subject material, but it's not a huge volume at 194 pages (plus citations/sources/index).  It's worth buying, as you'll probably want to lend it out to your friends.

Secondly, the people impacted by the rescue industry are not lawn chairs - they actually can and do speak out for themselves.  A fair bit of video material has been produced by the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (primarily about sex workers in Cambodia), and is available for free on the Sex Workers Present Blip.tv station.  Spend a day watching those videos.  Most are not specifically about trafficking, but they will give you a dose of reality with the struggles faced by aggrieved sex workers in the developing world, including protesting being "rescued" and sent to what are tacitly prisons where they may face violence and rape at the hands of those who are supposedly rehabilitating them.  Most of these videos are not light watching, but it's material worth seeing.

If anyone has links to independent accounts (not quotes from anti-sex worker/anti-trafficking groups' own donation-soliciting literature) from people "rescued" while working in the United States, please post them.  I'd appreciate hearing their experiences and learning about what happens when migrant sex workers get "saved" in my country.

Agustín's academic work gives you a good foundation of research and informed theory, and the videos in the Sex Workers Present collection give you real first hand accounts directly from sex workers from developing countries who've faced the brutal end of "rescue" and meddling from outside organizations who claim to be "helping" them.  I consider this to be the your homework if you'd like to have a decent grasp of the issue.

One of the gems I've taken from Mistress Matisse's blog over the years has been her repeated admonishment (though not said in the context of politics) to be wary of how often the word help is just a nice way of saying control.  I think there's no more applicable place than in the world of anti-sex worker activists.  Sure, the line is, "We want to help women escape the sex industry", but what's really being said (and done) is, "We want to control other people's choices about their own bodies and dictate politically correct employment options to people whose complex situations we don't care to understand."

We already have too many do-gooders who presume to know what's best for sex workers, especially poor sex workers, migrant sex workers, and those in developing countries. What sex workers need are allies capable of listening.  So, go read up on the research, and then listen to what sex workers are actually agitating for on their own behalf.  I assure you, it's not that they wish more liberals, NGOs, and celebrities would barge into their lives and dictate how they ought to live.

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.

Last weekend, a conference took place in Boston for an organization called Stop Porn Culture.  Homely academics and anti-sex worker activists gathered to express their latest justifications to one another about why they're afraid of kinky sex and jealous of women who attract the male gaze - er, I mean, why they're against pornography.

Three sex bloggers also went to the conference of (by one estimate) about 150 attendees.  Violet Blue put up a counter-Stop Porn Culture blog, Our Porn, Ourselves, to raise awareness of the fact that lots of women love porn.  (Anti-porn activists struggle to always frame their argument in terms of men versus women and porn versus women, which is an false dichotomy.  They insist that your only choices are that you support women's rights, or you support the sex industry.  They get major constipation-face if you point out the massive plot holes in this gender-segregation story, such as gay porn, dyke/queer porn, and women who are consumers/clients - let alone the issue of women sex workers themselves who are happy with their work.)  Over on Twitter, a group of people were back-and-forthing about the conference, but it was a discussion that mostly left me shocked as to how obtuse and paternalistic some "allies" can be.

At the outset of the discussion, I was reprimanded by several people and told I'm mustn't even joke about porn being evil since I'll surely get quoted out of context and harm the cause.  I wonder what it's like to feel like to be so smugly self-important that you refrain from all use of sarcasm, finely honing every tweet to make sure that no one could ever misquote you or take offense at what you typed, because surely, your 140 character tweets hold within them the future of discourse on sexuality?  I'm always ruining things for the proper upstanding folks - this time, I was guilty of debasing Twitter to a mere vehicle of amusement and brief exchanges, rather than the erudite academic journal for which everyone else uses it.

The core concern from most sex blogger types commenting on the topic, though, is that apparently, "we" need to respect anti-sex worker activists, "be kind" to them, and seek to engage them politely and find common ground - not be angry or sarcastic like me.  Easy for you to say, folks - they aren't trying to put you in prison or take your business away from you.  How big of you to be cordial to those who are not seeking to make your life more dangerous or difficult.  It's no real skin off your enlightened backs to tut-tut philosophically at people about how they should react to their oppression when you're not the one being oppressed.  It's armchair politics at its most offensive.

This isn't just an annoyance of mine with sexuality issues, it's a problem amongst liberals/lefties and how they discuss all sorts of political issues.  I think the underlying problem is that these sorts of people just can't stand the jarring, ego-deflating idea that their opinion as an Very Concerned Outsider isn't as important or valid as the opinion of an insider.  It isn't.  (As a white chick, I would never harangue a person of color about why my opinion of how to handle racism is better than theirs.)

I absolutely do not aim to build bridges with extremists who hate sex workers and want us penniless and in prison, any more than I aim to do so with people who commit anti-queer hate crimes.  I wouldn't really even want to debate them directly, unless I felt the particular forum was large and neutral enough.  People who have devoted their lives to taking away freedoms from other people are not seeking compromises and rational conversation - they are devout ideologues, not misguided random citizens that just need the real facts.

Ours is an info war of changing attitudes, and then laws, to grant us rights, respect, and dignity.  I'm not going to use my energy trying to cozy up with the group of people who are the least likely to ever change their outlook on the issue.  It's simple strategic thinking - when you waste your limited resources fighting impossible battles, you're neglecting a lot of perfectly winnable battles.  For example, if your goal is to get people to become atheists, you don't have to be terribly bright to realize that an effective way of doing so is not by flying to Saudi Arabia and pestering fanatics who have made a pilgrimage to Mecca.  It's not engaging in a "public debate" that could convince a larger audience of your logically-superior argument, it's ramming your head into a wall in a place where the dialog is controlled and utterly dominated by the most hardcore of your opposition.  (I do, however, fully support spying on your enemies in their native environments so you can understand their agenda better.)

One of the women urging "us" to respect people who put sex workers at risk complained that I was "devaluing other opinions".  Twitter being so succinct, I'm not sure if she meant that I shouldn't devalue the opinions of anti-sex worker activists, or that I shouldn't devalue her opinion that we need to work with them and engage them at their own conference.  As I thought about how to parse it, though, I realized it didn't matter.  Why, yes, actually - I do devalue the opinions of people who aren't sex workers that feed a need to tell me what to do.  Whether you're an anti-porn feminist or a pro-porn feminist.

Oppressing sex workers isn't an opinion.  It's an action.  I could care less if these nutters sat in their cat-filled spinster apartments and didn't like porn - that's an opinion.  But they're not content to just not watch porn themselves, they try to force their world view on the rest of us.  Anti-porn and anti-sex worker activists are political organizations that take actions by lobbying governments to restrict sex workers' access to safe working conditions and to imprison them for being indecent and sinful.  Since we're getting technical here, I do "respect their right to have an opinion", but these people stopped having merely "an opinion" a long time ago.  It makes me think of those who were defending the Mormon church for "just having an opinion about gays" in 2008 when they illegally financed the massive propaganda campaign that took civil rights away from queer couples in California.

Being more "kind" or "respectful" towards people who've built profitable careers creating panic, purposefully lying to the public, pressuring governments to pass bad laws, and bashing sex workers isn't going to make them switch teams.  These are not people who can be engaged with in a reasonable debate using facts, calm voices, and warm handshakes.  Being a smart activist means knowing the difference between those who are distinctly and unabashedly your enemy, and those who are on the fence and could benefit from hearing from you.  Being a smart sex worker ally, I would further contend, includes not spending your time patronizing me about why I ought to respect people who seek to drive me out of business and into jail.

(PS: After I wrote this post, I did more catching up on blogs and found that Audacia Ray had already written something on the chatter and counter-organizing around the Stop Porn Culture conference. Here's her post that also discusses the pointlessness of debating anti-porn radicals.)

Throughout my life, I have repeatedly had my beliefs and politics put to the test, which tends to end in me doing this thing that terrifies most people: bridge-burning.  Here are three of those stories - most notably, why I refused to speak at last weekend's Sex 2.0 conference due of the involvement of Carnal Nation, and why their presence made event an unsafe spaces for sex workers.  Bear with me - I know this is a frighteningly long post, and it's about my personal experiences as well as just the main controversial issue.

Years ago, I stood in a friend's kitchen on my cell phone, staring intently at his spice rack in disbelief.  I'd just found out that someone I'd considered a trusted friend committed a horrible violation against another person. Later, I burst into tears outside on the street, feeling so sick and pissed off.  Most of this man's friends stood by him.  They made excuses.  They told outright lies.  They came up with explanations about why what he did wasn't actually that bad - if he had done it at all - and why him being such a "good person" basically negated what he might have done anyway.  A man who was very popular in his social circle victimized a lesser-known person, and I was one of the only voices publicly standing up against him.  One of his defenders was perplexed by my anger.  It didn't happen to me.  Someone else continued to live in fear and torment, so why did I care so much?  I was given the choice between many personal friendships, and the political/ethical beliefs I have espoused for years about standing up against those who take advantage of others.  It was theory versus reality.  I made the right choices.  And I lost friends over it.

Last year, a guy in the San Francisco nerd scene posted a "humorous" guide on his blog about how to drug and date rape women.  I Twittered angrily about it.  I asked people to confront him in person at the monthly event he organizes.  I hoped he'd be kicked out of his scene for being such a blatant misogynist.  Nothing happened.  Months later, I brought it up again, and some people who are friends with both myself and Mr. Rapejokes stopped following me on Twitter immediately.  So, given the choice, a sect of the San Francisco nerd world stood by someone who thinks the idea of raping drugged women is hilarious.  I bluntly forced a mutual friend to pick between us, and she picked Mr. Rapejokes and dismissed the topic as "drama".  I was the one who lost friends over what he blogged, not him.  Theory versus reality, and again, I made the right choice and I'm glad I spoke out.

Last week, as my Twitter followers and many others are already aware of, I boycotted the third Sex 2.0 Conference.  I'd attended the first two Sex 2.0 conferences, loved them, and spoke on two panels at the previous one.  I was scheduled to be a speaker this year on a panel about sex work, and I pulled out days before the conference because I refuse to participate in an event that is not a safe space for sex workers.  I've been a sex worker for 8 years, and in case it needs mentioning, I'm big on the idea of places where we can chill out and talk about our lives and our work without dealing with verbal or even physical attacks from those who don't look kindly on us. Real safe spaces for sex workers matter to me.  Sex 2.0 used to be one of those spaces.

Sex 2.0 stopped being a safe space for sex workers when it welcomed in Carnal Nation, an online media company that caters to the sex-positive community.  You see, a while ago, a stalker popped up offering cash rewards for anyone to out/stalk/harass sex workers at their homes.  Carnal Nation defended endangering the lives of sex workers as important "free speech", giving promotion to the stalker and belittling and mocking the women being stalked.  Because of this stalker, people were, and still are, genuinely scared for their safety.

Whatever that official or unofficial connection was, Carnal Nation was allowed by Sex 2.0 organizers to be present at the conference in spite of the criticism of many people.  They could have picked the concerns of sex workers and our allies over a bit of publicity for the conference - barring Carnal Nation from covering the conference - but the organizers picked publicity.  The consolation prize was that if anyone wanted to talk about why they resent Carnal Nation for endangering the lives of sex workers, they were allowed to be interviewed about it. Yeah, I'd love to give Carnal Nation free content for their web site, that's exactly the aim of my boycott.

One of the defenses of Carnal Nation's presence at Sex 2.0 is that no one had to be interviewed - it was just a media outlet that you could talk to.  I've never said I was opposed to Carnal Nation's involvement because I thought they'd force all attendees at gunpoint to give interviews, the point is that Carnal Nation was allowed in the door at all.

What if Carnal Nation was a company known for mocking gay-bashing and dismissing groups that advocate violence against queers as "important freedom of speech"? I have no doubt that such a media outlet would have been barred from Sex 2.0.  Sex workers, however, are apparently not a vulnerable minority that deserves to come together in a space free of media companies that think our safety makes for nothing more than an amusing libertarian argument.  Well, sorry, Carnal Nation, but the women being stalked are not abstract philosophical constructs.  Two of them are my friends - not debate fodder about the importance of yelling fire in a crowded theater.

As a scheduled speaker, I felt as though refusing to attend was the biggest stink I could make as just one person.  (I got a refund for my Sex 2.0 ticket and donated that money to the Desiree Alliance conference - a sex worker event going on this July in Las Vegas.)  This did get people talking: online, on the Sex 2.0 email discussion list, and at the conference itself - both in sessions and unofficially.  I wish I had something prepared for public dissemination last week, however, I've been mulling over exactly what to blog and gathering input from others.  I hope this full explanation makes more sense of the issue to those of you not already familiar with what happened.

I won't be linking to the exact article because of its menacing content, and I ask that if you comment about this issue, you don't link the article, either.  I ask that you not name or link to the web site offering cash for people to out/harass sex workers.  I ask that you do not state the names of the women who are targeted by the stalker's web site without their permission.  Basically, be the opposite of Carnal Nation - be respectful and responsible.  When and if Carnal Nation posts a defense of itself on its own web site, I hope you will ignore it, rather than pouring your energy into their comments section and giving them traffic.

John Pettitt, owner of Carnal Nation, wrote in his short article about the controversy,

While we regard [stalker] as repugnant CarnalNation believes in the right to free expression, if Larry Flynt can offer a bounty for cheating Republican politicians it's equally defensible for somebody to pay for information on sex workers. Neither is a morally defensible position but morals are personal and free speech transcends personal morals. It comes down to a simple truth It's the unpopular speech that needs protection.

In the spring of 2010 CarnalNation will begin letting our users publish their own content in personal blogs. One of the reasons we decided to provide this service is the fact that a well orchestrated mob can cause a service like blogger to remove content they don't like by flagging it for terms of service violation. We won't do that. In fact if it's legal (that is a court hasn't told us to remove it) it will stay up no matter how much we disagree with it. That doesn't mean we won't be critical but it does mean we can only disagree with attempts to silence [stalker].

So, according to Carnal Nation, the most important thing in this situation was that stalkers need "protection" to harass sex workers, because a stalker's "free speech" rights trump safety concerns from a highly vulnerable population that is regularly attacked, raped, and murdered?  Further, that the stalker is the real victim in the situation because people had been trying to get the stalker's blog taken offline?  Of course, John Pettitt tried to cover his ass by saying the site is "repugnant", but he still still gave it tons of free publicity and defended how important it is that we stand up for "unpopular speech", aka, harassing/outing sex workers.  Having the stalker promoted and legitimized on a well-known "sex-positive" web site was done, in my opinion, simply to get a lot of comments and traffic.

And comments there were!  In a section a mile long condemning and debating John Pettitt, sex-positivity super-heroes and sex workers including Monica Shores of $pread Magazine, Heather Corinna, Tasty Trixie, Kat of Kat's Stories, Mistress Matisse, Melissa Gira, Sarah Sloane, Annie Sprinkle, Jill Brenneman of SWOP East, and Sadie Lune spoke out against this irresponsible and dangerous behavior from Carnal Nation - and that's just on Carnal Nation's own web site.  Much more has been said elsewhere.

Carnal Nation has proven that they are happy to cover sex workers as titillating new items, but will quickly kick us in the teeth when we're down.  (Hey, that sounds exactly like the hostile mainstream media!)

Speaking of using sex workers to make a profit, former writer for Carnal Nation, and $pread Magazine editor, Monica Shores, has been involved in a multi-month battle trying to get paid for articles she'd written for the company in the past.  She believes Carnal Nation is refusing to pay her because she's criticized the company, and as of now, has still not be paid for work she did months ago.  Whether or not she ever will ever be paid still remains to be seen. [Update on 6/15: Monica has finally been paid.  But, I've heard from another sex worker and former Carnal Nation writer who is owed money by the company.  It's an interesting trend.  Are there any more people out there who've worked for Carnal Nation and not been paid as promised?]

In speaking out on the issue of Carnal Nation at Sex 2.0, I lost friends.  I made sure I'll never be welcome in the Seattle kink community.  I even received a not-too-thinly-veiled threat against myself if I continue to speak out against Carnal Nation. But you know what really fails to motivate me to shut up about my concern for creating safe spaces for sex workers?  It's threats to my personal safety.

I hope that this whole mess will allow more people to take a moment to think about what it really means to create safe spaces for sex workers.  You would think it wouldn't be that hard for supposed allies to grasp the basics like, "Don't allow in companies that defend violence against us", but apparently, it is.  This was an instance where I felt the need to point at one conference as the perfect example of how not to make an event safe and welcoming for sex workers.  This is a bigger fight than just Carnal Nation, so while I do hate to give them so much attention, and will no doubt be called a hypocrite for doing so, I also want my community to know their true face, and to be on the lookout for more wolves in sheep's clothing.

I feel like an activist cliche to write profusely about a problem, but offer no concrete solution.  I hope all sex-positive people can talk about ways to make more spaces welcoming and safe for sex workers, because it's not just about one offensive web site or one stalker.  It's about living in a culture that has no regard for our safety, our human rights, our dignity, and our lives - and trying to change that culture, bit by bit.  My little bit to add right now is publicly calling out Carnal Nation and hoping that in the future, they will be banned from spaces that are supposedly safe for sex workers.

Conferences are about like-minded people getting together, talking about common interests, meeting old friends, making new ones, and that buzzword that's everywhere now: networking.  In an age where people treat "networking" like it's the only currency that will ever matter, we get nervous about speaking out on controversial issues, even when we know something is wrong.  We don't want to lose a friend, a blogroll link, an ability to use a connection to ascend social or career ladders.  So, what does "networking" mean to you?  Does it include overlooking things people do that are dangerous or abusive, or allowing people to defend those who are dangerous and abusive?  Will you keep your mouth shut so as to not come across too angry, oversensitive, and socially ungraceful?

I'm not afraid to do battle about the issues that matter to me - and every time I do so, I know I'll lose friends and burn bridges.  I do it anyway.

I don't even know what a fucking bridge looks like any more and how easy it must be to have a world filled with them.  But after a lifetime of being a loud-mouthed cunt, I'm a damn strong swimmer.

* * *

(You can read Sequoia Redd's blog post for her perspective on this issue.)

Last week, I asked the universe for book suggestions as I sought out secular feminist critique/anti-feminist writings.  Since then, I've spent too many hours poking around on Amazon, searching for keywords, and clicking over to more and more recommended products.  I've added some new books to my wishlist that I hadn't heard of before, as well as some classics that we're all supposed to read.

The Smart People Books I haven't read could fill a swimming pool, frankly, but I don't lose any sleep over it.  I actually like that my opinions and analyses are largely from my own little head, and not ideas I simply lifted from the reading list of a Women's Studies 101 course.  I'm not saying it's a bad thing to read up landmark works on any topic - I should do more of it myself - but I think we've all been in debates with people where it's obvious they don't have an original idea of their own and are only capable of quoting/paraphrasing what someone famous has said on the subject.

In my effort to expand my fancy book-learnin' horizons, I've been looking at the popular feminist classics I have not read.  I think that I'll enjoy a few of them, while others will probably feel like I'm being waterboarded with stupidity.  As I went searching for these various texts, bracing myself for solid servings of man-hating and conservative views of sexuality, one made me stop in my tracks.  I realized that maybe I'm wrong about feminist theory.

Immediately upon finding it, Susan Faludi's most renowned work, Backlash, seems pretty fucking rad:

(If I win the lottery, I will devote my life to making low-budget action flicks starring scantily-clad gun-toting hot chicks, with titles such as The Second Sex, Female Chauvinist Pigs, and The Beauty Myth.  You know you already want to watch these movies.)

I guess that's what everyone wants in a book, right?

For most people, that's not hard to find.  Take any average computer programmer, carpenter, pastry chef, archeologist, or soldier, and there will be books from authors more skilled in their field, ready to offer philosophical insights and practical information.  I don't think there's anything like that out there for me, unfortunately.

What I want is thoughtful, aggressive, non-misogynistic, and secular critique of feminism.  It doesn't really seem to exist.

Today, I went browsing around on Amazon - with its wonderful recommendation engine - in search of any anti-feminist sorts of books that I'd actually want to buy and read.  What I get are piles of books written by overgrown frat boys, religious people, and hardcore conservatives who think women should have never been allowed out of the kitchen in the first place.  I'm in earnest search of The More Awesomely Eloquent Me, and all I'm getting is stuff about Jesus, abortion, the homosexual agenda, the dangers of communism, and an out-of-date collection of essays by Phyllis Schlafly.  (Whose work I suppose I should read anyway, just for a historical perspective from someone who fought second wave feminism.)

Although I didn't find anything that was exactly what I'm looking for (criticism of feminism), I'm considering these three books:

* Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture by Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young.

* Venus: The Dark Side by Roy Sheppard and Mary T Cleary.

* A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce by Alec Baldwin and Mark Tabb.

Already in my collection, but as of yet unread, are these other two that I hope will be interesting.  Both of these authors have a bunch of books out, and I bought one of each to test the waters, and the Jesus-ness of their politics:

* The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom by Phyllis Chesler.

* Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women by Christina Hoff-Sommers.

Edited to add: I also have in my existing collection The Myth of Male Powerby Warren Farrell.  I should have included this book in my original post, but my "to read" stack is embarrassingly tall, and I forgot about it until a commenter reminder me of him.  I've only read the introduction so far.  I was bracing myself, from the title, for an angry douchebag rant, but instead, I got a well-thought-out "this is what I've learned after being a professional feminist" from a former board member of the National Organization for Women.

So, what else is out there?  Where's the secular non-conservative criticism of feminism that I want to read?  I asked this on Twitter, but what I suppose I didn't make clear is that I'm not looking for feminist-identified authors criticizing other factions of feminism, or feminist-identified people who acknowledge issues they have with parts of feminism.  I am looking for something outside the echo chamber, outside of pots calling kettles black.  Things not written by feminists.  I realize that, on the left/liberal side of the political spectrum, if you fail to identify as a feminist, you're treated as though you enjoy microwaving baby kittens for amusement.  But come on, there have to be plenty of other assholes like me, right?

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