Some people assume nothing but the worst about "the kind of men" who look at porn or go to strip clubs or see escorts.  (As though it's just a rare and dangerous "type", and not actually almost every breathing guy on earth.)  There's a caricature of a seedy, unwashed man* in a trenchcoat who is so pathetic and ugly and fucked up that no "real woman" would want him.  A profound loser, and a serious misogynist who acts out his hatred of women by paying them for sex or watching them get naked for his amusement.  He's probably a rapist and a child molester, or on the brink of becoming one.  He is all that is wrong with the world.  As much as I could say that sex workers are historically the most reviled people in the world, I think that title really has to go to our customers.

In my 7+ years of being naked online, I've interacted with a whole lot of men.  Tens of thousands?  I don't know the number.  The men who subscribe to my web sites and buy cam show time with me are almost invariably polite.  (And, if not polite in the most traditional sense, they are blessedly blunt and to the point - typing "finger pussy" in my chat window, or emailing simply "more butt pics".)  I am usually treated as they would treat any other person they seek to have positive interactions with, rather than unleashing the spew of anti-woman vitriol that prudery activists assume.  Sure, I do get some assholes here and there - almost all of them angry at me for not providing them a service I never said I'd provide, like lots of facial videos and anal sex on my softcore porn site, or cam customers who didn't bother to read my description and get all grossed out that I'm not shaved.

When someone is overtly a douchebag to me, I can either berate them back, or most commonly, ignore them, content in knowing at least they're paying for the privilege of being rude to me, which is better than I get from, say, people who step on my feet or spill their drinks on me in bars.

You know who does unload on me and embody woman-hating stereotypes, though?  The dudes who refuse to pay for what I'm selling.  Nope, it's not those horrible misogynist men who pay cash for sexual entertainment, it's the upstanding wholesome men who think they're too good to do so.

Web cam networks are a hotbed of this.  A guy pops into my chat room, says he has a 10 inch dick, tries to butter me up with cliche "flattery", and demands a free show on account of his own sexiness.  When I politely refuse, he immediately types a barrage of insults about how I'm a fat ugly stupid whore, and lets me know he wouldn't even touch my diseased cunt if I paid him.  I adore these flowcharts - as soon as I reject him, his fragile ego gets bruised, and he makes a stink about how he's actually the one rejecting me.  (This is why I tell anyone considering web cam work to never, ever do free chat in hopes of getting a customer.  Free chat is pretty much entirely a bunch of semi-literate dudes trying to talk a free show out of you, and then insulting you for not giving them what they want.)  It's the men who refuse to buy my time that are most likely to act like they own me.

It's amazing how many emails I get from dudes who have the nerve to plainly state that they would never pay for porn, and wear it like a badge of honor, like a pick-up line, like it's something I'll praise them for.  These men seem totally unaware that I might find it insulting that they've virtually walked into my business and told me they're too good to buy my crummy wares, but want to know where the restroom is so they can do their laundry in my sink.  Or perhaps, these clueless men are assuming that I'll reply, "Oh cool, you're better than those icky guys who want to pay me to take my clothes off.  You want to get to know The Real Me without this money thing getting in our way.  Why don't you come over and let me suck your dick this weekend, seeing as how I now know you're not one of those creeps who buy porn."

Anti-sex work activists argue that it's malice against women that motivates a man to patronize sex workers or watch porn.  Why is paying for a service or product proof that someone pathologically hates the person they're buying it from?  Do the moralizers think that about any other occupations?  Do all paying customers intrinsically revile the workers who prepare their meals, teach their children, paint their houses, fly their airplanes, pick up their recycling bins, or fill their prescriptions?

The men who get my blood boiling are the ones who demand that it's their "right" to have women sexually entertain them for free, not the customers who appreciate my time and energy by compensating me for it.  Funny how the anti-sex feminists are so busy demonizing sexual commerce that they end up tacitly on the side of the real misogynists.

* My customers are almost invariably men.  And, since feminists/anti-sex activists exclusively take issue with heterosexual men who pay for women sexual entertainment, I write about men-as-consumers in this post.  No disrespect meant to the wonderful ladies and transfolk who buy porn and patronize sex workers!

"People always bring up the "good old days" of body image, and talk about curvy Vargas girls and how Marilyn Monroe was a size whatever-it-was -- but the Left-wing idea of how healthy those days were is just as much a revisionist pipe-dream as the Right-wing idea of how moral they were.

First of all, the fact that the ideal was different doesn’t mean that there wasn’t an ideal at all. Yes, a very small percentage of women have the body of Calista Flockhart, but was the percentage with the body of Jayne Mansfield really any greater? It seems like roughly the same percentage of women are going to feel bad about their bodies at any given time, no matter which of the various competing ideals is having its turn in the spotlight.

[...]

Monroe’s curves may have been a positive from a feminist perspective, but what about the other ingredients in the recipe -- the affected voice, the expression of perpetual surprise, the fact that she had to act dumb, even though she wasn’t? Taken all together, the curves plus the other stuff paint a picture of Monroeism as the ideal of the girl-woman; of virgin chic, with the stuff that curves are made of seeming less like "real-woman" fat than baby fat. The curves of the mid-century pinup girl were there to make her seem like a naïve teenager -- trickable, conquerable, rapeable."

-- The1585, in The Body-Image Essay to End All Body-Image Essays, on the1585.com

I didn't agree with everything in the article, but this is still one of the best pieces I've ever read on the usually abysmal topic of "body image."

---

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 $240 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.

Merry Festivus, everyone!  It's time for the airing of grievances.

For those of you just joining us, there's been a storm of controversy lately over whether or not Alexa, a prolific blogger who claims to be a high class escort, is a fake.  (See posts by Monica Shores, Jenny DeMilo, Mistress Matisse one and two, Tasty Trixie, and Kat.)

Well, there isn't a really controversy at all- more like a consensus.  Every sex worker whom I've seen weigh in on the issue either blasts Alexa as a blatant fraud, or says that they are highly suspicious.  As I Twittered last night, I find it amusing that Alexa's ardent supporters are comprised almost entirely anonymous nobodies and horny men who post in her comments section.  And, with slight hesitation, I added, "It makes me laugh my ass off to see the only 'somebody' who's supporting Alexa is a woman who's practically a faux ho blogger herself."

That "somebody" is feminist blogger Amber Rhea.  (This rant has been in the back of my mind for some time, but the Alexa scandal, and Amber's reaction to it, has finally brought it out.)

I won't sugarcoat- I disliked Amber from the start.  She embodies all the useless whiney things I can't stand about feminism, with the exception that she "supports sex workers rights".  Amber inserts herself into sex worker circles whenever possible, and to a casual follower of her online presence, she can easily be mistaken for a stripper based on how she choose to describe herself.  (Indeed, Amber's blog feed was syndicated by a sex worker rights group alongside other blogs written by sex workers until I pointed out that she isn't a actually sex worker.)

At first, when I was only vaguely aware of who Amber was, I assumed she was a stripper.  With her circulating in the online sex worker scene and calling herself a pole dancer at every chance she has to describe herself, and blogging and Twittering about her latest pole tricks, is it any wonder how I could have been mistaken?  When I had the time to properly read her blog and Twitter stream, I came to learn that Amber is a white collar office worker and blogger who enjoys taking classes in pole dancing as a hobby.  Look no further than her "about me" page on her blog for how she opts to show herself to the world:

Amber is a smart woman who's obviously thought a lot about both images and language, and as such, I find it impossible to believe that it's an accident that she makes herself look like a stripper online.  Of course, Amber doesn't actually lie and say that she's a professional stripper- she's wisely left herself plenty of plausible deniability.

It's as though you had an online persona where you describe yourself as a pilot and post photos of yourself in uniform at airports, hang out in forums for pilots, and debate issues related to commercial flight, and then look innocent and surprised when people assume you're a real licensed pilot.  No, no- you simply enjoy playing a pilot in flight simulator computer games at home, and have no idea how anyone could have been confused.

I believe Amber purposefully misleads her casual readers so they will give her opinions on sex work more weight that they perhaps deserve.  As many have pointed out in the Alexa scandal, being a sex worker is quite stylish right now, and I've long seen Amber as grasping at the hipness, eager to gain status for her online presence with insinuations that she gyrates for cash.  That's pretty offensive to those of us who've taken the real social risks of being marked for life as fallen sluts.

So, as I was looking at the comments on Alexa's blog post defending herself, it was really no shock that the only recognizable supporter was, of course, Alexa's sister faux ho, Amber Rhea.  Read Amber's template-"feminist" defense of Alexa here.  Or read her Twitter posts here, such as "Really, must sex workers vilify each other?"  (Wow, what a vapid statement on peace-making for a non-sex worker to make about sex workers being rightfully angry at a fake who steals from real sex workers?)

Could it simply be sex workers' criticism of Alexa hits too close to home for Amber?

If Amber wanted to be an actual sex worker ally, rather than just riding sex worker coattails to look interesting, she would learn her place.  Amber is an outsider, and as such, that place starts, ends, and is filled with listening to sex workers.  It is telling about Amber's status as an "ally" that she picked the side of someone sex workers accuse of being an liar, a thief, and even putting us collectively at risk by misleading clients about what to expect.  Given the choice, Amber chose to side against the opinions sex workers and completely dismiss their valid and politically well-reasoned questioning of Alexa. What an friend we have in Amber!

I'm publicly bringing up my thoughts on Amber now because I hope we can learn from the Great Alexa Scandal that it's not just the obvious frauds and liars that we need to be wary of.  To me, Amber's subtle acts of fakery are far more ethically repugnant than Alexa's obvious grand-scale fictions.  Especially since they're coming from a woman who is gladly welcomed into sex worker rights circles by many whom I respect.

The take-home bit I hope people will contemplate is what it means to be a genuine sex worker ally, as well as what it means to be a "faux ho".  I've answered these questions for myself, and I've concluded that Amber Rhea and Alexa DiCarlo look pretty much the same on both issues.

I'll end now, where we began, by wishing everyone a very happy Festivus season.  Maybe my favorite fake stripper will lend us a pole?

Sex workers are one of the world's most spoken-on-behalf-of groups, which goes hand-in-hand with us being among the most reviled groups. So many people feel the right to speak on behalf of me and my experiences- generally the people furthest removed from my life and the least inclined to actually ask my opinion on the matter.  Without hesitation, these folks think that it's their right/duty to proclaim to the world that I am exploited and degraded by taking my clothes off for cash, and propose their own moral solution for my "problem".

And, as much as it makes me blood boil to watch these people in action, I'm glad that, from them, I've learned to always check myself on my own occasional paternalistic urges.  I know to never presume to speak on behalf of other people or, as an outsider, assume to know their needs- including the needs of other sex workers in different branches of the industry.

It's a valuable lesson worth repeating: don't act like a paternalistic douchebag who thinks it's your job to speak or act "on behalf of" communities with whom you have little-to-no contact or experience. It seems like common sense, but I wish more people had that understanding, especially people on the left with a tendency to rush in to "help" first, and ask questions later.

This week, I've been thinking about how the many of best parts of me are things I've taken from watching horrible examples of human behavior in others and resolving to do the opposite.  There are times when we just don't have positive role models, or as many positive examples as we'd like, but that doesn't mean we can't still grow by learning from the failings of others.  Like living well, it can be the best "revenge".

In the next few, I plan to visit New York for Audacia Ray and David Henry Sterry's new reading series, Sex Worker Literati.  In her blog post after the event, Audacia wrote,

The evening also made me reflect on an annoying phrase that gets thrown at sex worker activists: “the happy hooker lobby.”

In the sex work versus trafficking debates, one of the things that happens is that people who focus on trafficking (and specifically on the idea that all people in prostitution are “prostituted” and essentially being raped every day at their jobs) try to derail and discount the perspective of people who identify as sex workers by calling us the “happy hooker lobby.” But here’s the thing: most of the people who use the phrase “sex work” and address the issues in the sex industry from a labor and human rights perspective haven’t had a straight forward “empowering” or uncomplicated experience of the sex work that they’ve done. This much was certainly reflected in the stories told on Thursday night.

It's always been interesting to me - as a part of the "happy hooker lobby", I suppose - how we lobbyists seem to be the ones with the longest lists of grievances about our industries and how things could be improved.  This is because we live it, rather than putting on airs after reading an article on the internet, or having gotten offended/titillated when our crabby women's studies professor told us how degrading she imagines sex work must be.

But, informed critique requires more than theory and self-righteous outrage to even know to complain about things like strip clubs charging stage fees, or escort services taking too large a chunk for too little client screening, or a porn company spitefully reselling a model's images to sites on which she didn't want to appear.  That sort of stuff requires, you know- listening to sex workers.  And learning about how the industries really work.

The people with no stake in a given issue tend to be the ones most prone to moral absolutism.  The less they're invested - the less they're truly interested, even - the more people can project their perfect black-and-white-isms onto the lives of others.  ("Pornography is always exploitative," "no prostitute genuinely consents to the work," etc.)

So, for the ambiguous and fascinating good stuff, I encourage folk to attend (or watch videos from) Sex Worker Literati, the first Thursday of every month in Manhattan.

I recently popped my sex worker blogger cherry when I came across a feminist blog post attacking me.  Since the author of the post didn't feel the need to link to me - or even mention my pseudonym - so that her readers might be able to see what I actually do believe, I see no reason to link to her, either.  Besides, if you've read one pissy feminist screed, you've read them all.  (How frustrating it must be to be so banal.)

The feminist in question didn't offer a rebuttal of my arguments, of course, or an answer to the questions I've posed for feminists.  She mocked "me" for being dumb by inserting ditzy Valleygirl-speak into her paraphrase of something I've said, and argued against me (and Ann Coulter, with whom I am apparently interchangeable) as though I am opposed to all advancements in women's rights ever, included Roe v Wade and laws that protect rape victims.  Because, as we all know, anyone who does not identify as a feminist is obviously devoted to cheering on rapists and forcing women to undergo rusty coat hanger abortions.

She's not the first to use that kind of red herring against me - anyone who doesn't call themselves a feminist is a misogynist - and she won't be the last.

It's times like this that make me wonder: do first world feminists do much of anything apart from angrily whining on the internet about how much they despise other women?  For every one awesome feminist out there pushing for medically-accurate sex education or volunteering at a domestic violence shelter, there are a thousand itching-to-be-upset-about-anything women who's only apparent contribution to their beloved feminism is writing tirades on blogs and forums about how sluts like me are ruining everything for good girls like them.

To these feminists, I say: if you hate women who do things with their bodies that you think they shouldn't be allowed to do, don't couch it in some kind of hypocritical "sisterhood" crap.  Just admit that your problem with The Evil Patriarchy isn't really the issue of men telling women what's best for them, but that you think you are the one who ought to be deciding how women are permitted to live.

Some people seek to quash controlling hierarchies altogether; other people just want to claw their way to the top of the heap so they can get their turn at imposing their will on others.  Don't be the latter.

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 physically assault me (one repeatedly, another just once), and another choke me once.  Do the actions of these men 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?"

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