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Archive for the ‘rants’ Category

Guess what gets the most play on our satellite? It’s the XM channel called Audio Visions playing new age music. We have it on almost all of the time; our dog LOVES it, curls up right next to the speakers and trances out. During the day they sometimes play annoying cheesy crap, but at night they start up with “Night Visions” and this creepy woman with a vampire accent practically whispers interjections like, “in the TOETull dahknessss of nighyyt you sseeeee nahthing but ah beeelliyawn starssss . . . NAHthing but peeeeeeeeace, sweeet peeeeeeeeeissssssse. This is oddyo veezhuns, and you haf nighyyt veezhuns.”

So yeah, we totally love it and daily mimic her pronunciation of Audio Visions, like when we see the longing look in the dog’s eyes and ask, “awwww, do you want your awwjoveezhuns?”

Audio Visions rocks at night when they play spookier, spacier new age music, including delicious programs from Hearts of Space (note: only new age nerds would be oblivious enough to the world to waste an excellent three-letter domain like hos.com on music that once had such a limited audience it could only find space on public radio, but I digress). I’ve bought a lot of new age mp3’s based on play they’ve gotten on Audio Visions that I never would have heard otherwise.

Because Audio Visions, Night Visions and Hearts of Space have been cheap auditory therapy for our household I’m pretty fucking attached to the channel which is why I’m freaking out today upon seeing the channel name has changed to read, “Spa (replaces Audio Visions)”. Does this mean no more Hearts of Space? No more vampires reading poetry accompanied by the sounds of trickling streams, heartbeats and twittering birds?

Of course, it’s possible that it won’t change, or that if it DOES change it will be for the better, though I doubt it if their recent broadcast of a muzak-styled saccharine rendition of a sickly sweet piano tinkling the precious Beatles’ melody “In My Life” layered over ocean waves is any indication of what’s to come. Apparently there’s some kind of Sirius / XM merger going on which I haven’t taken the time to read about but is fucking up almost all of the music we’ve been enjoying via Directv.

Note added Aug. 8th 2010: I just found this interesting post on the Hearts of Space website with more information about XM, Sirius (who recently dropped HOS), Audio Visions and Spa.

This is even more upsetting to me than when Court TV changed their channel name to the criminally deceptive “TruTV” and amped up their programming with even more super-dramatized crime and disaster “documentaries” with titles like, “Most Shocking” cops and robbers high speed chases with fake sound effects dubbed in. I pray for media literacy to be taught in this country, but I don’t hold my breath. Don’t get me wrong, I love watching all of that shit, but it pisses me off when mainstream media gets away with passing skewed misrepresentations of real events as “truth” without disclosing how they’ve distorted it with artifice, bias, and added “production value”.

“TRU” my ass! Maybe they think the stupid spelling is enough to act as a disclaimer: TRU! Not true in any boring conventional sense of the word. TRU! Because you don’t have time to squeeze in all of those letters, much less all the pesky facts! TRU! As much truth as we can squeeze in between ads from our sponsors! TRU! For people who don’t believe in accuracy of reporting OR spelling! I know, I shouldn’t take the misuse of words like “reality” so seriously. I guess I’m just old-fashioned that way, especially when I suffer from the double standards that allow television giants to distort and shit all over essential words in our vocabulary while I am threatened with federal obscenity prosecution and having my payment processing taken away if I dare to tell the TRUTH about my body (that blood comes out of my pussy and that’s totally healthy and I can and should be able to have sex with myself and others while that’s happening). Instead I am forced to misrepresent myself, women’s bodies and sexuality by hiding my period on my porn sites.

Seriously, is my bloody cunt more dangerous than using words like “truth” so loosely?
How irresponsible is it to degrade the meaning of words that are supposed to be the cornerstones of civilized ethics? I do not trust that all people will intuitively recognize the difference between “TRU” and “true”, “reality show” and “reality”, or porn pussy and real pussy.

How did this post arrive here? This is why most of my blog entries wallow in draft mode. I’m going to have to start advertising myself as The Naked Non Sequitur. Except it’s not really true that I’m naked right now or even most of the time just because I’m a webwhore, but I guess it’s TRU enough.

Last month when Delia was on her way to her laser appointment she encountered a road block situation by the Hood Canal Bridge: border patrol. We were mystified by it since THAT IS NOT THE BORDER and we’ve never seen anything like that before and I’ve lived in Washington state my whole entire life. So maybe there was a terrorist threat to smuggle weapons from Canada and blow up a submarine or something as it passed under the bridge? Far-fetched, but it was the only legit reason I could think of for the border patrol to be fucking around in these parts.

I know I’ll probably regret posting this because it’s loaded with keywords that might bring people from our town and sparsely-populated region to this blog; that’s why I haven’t linked to our local papers’ coverage of it, because I totally do NOT need a trail leading from my porn site to our local paper and back again. But here’s a story on what they’re doing and how totally fucked up it is. Because we live within 100 miles of the CANADIAN border, they’re using 9/11 to justify slowing everyone down to pick out and harass anyone who looks Latino in a line of cars. We don’t live by the Mexican border, and in my whole life here I’ve never heard of migrant farm workers committing acts of terrorism whether they were here legally or not. So WHAT THE FUCK?!?

I cannot believe this is fucking AMERICA in this new century. It’s almost like traveling in time and space to some hideous place where all black people have a curfew and are detained by the strong arm of the law to show their paperwork, etc. “What are you doing on the highway without your papers?” And then the border patrol brags in the paper about how they “netted” however-many “illegals” they caught in their shitty little traps. And the white folk in the line of cars gawk as the men with guns chase the brown-skinned people who leap from moving vehicles to RUN into the woods to try to get away.

Where the fuck am I living? What the fuck is going on? I seriously cannot believe this shit and the people who have the pink balls to defend it. And they gleefully tell us to expect MORE of it. They’re ramping up! Their funding has been increased!

It boggles my mind the way these fuckers act so proud of their horrid, invasive, pathetic jobs. The way they won’t acknowledge for a second that what they’re doing is a violation of civil liberties and pretty much defeats the purpose of living in what we like to call a “free” country. Nothing personal against those who are just following orders and need their crappy job with the border patrol, but it makes me mad when I as a whore am shamed and vilified for my job but these guys? Get to walk around with their chests puffed out for stopping people without cause and wreaking havoc on people’s lives. For reminding all of us how weak this country really is and scaring us all into seeing the horrifyingly distinct possibility that freedom is something that too many Americans are happy to see flushed down the shitter if it means maintaining some semblance of white supremacy.

I can’t even imagine how angry I would be if I were an American Indian stopped and harassed at one of these checkpoints. I think I would lose my fucking marbles at the sickness of it, the US border patrol trying to keep brown-skinned people OFF land they stole FROM brown-skinned people. Where do they fucking get off?

I’m totally confused (and possibly deeply offended) by this post a Seattle guy made on Twitter so here I am, befuddled, bothered and bewildered:

MP3 File

What does this picture have to do with losing one’s lunch?

Seriously — I don’t get it. I mean, I *hope* I don’t get it. BECAUSE I HATE ASSHOLES! If you’re following over a thousand people to get exposure for your site, try not to be a dick (or try to be clear).

I suppose I haven’t got any room to talk about how whorey tweeters should represent themselves since I frequently post about pooping. But pooping doesn’t hurt anyone’s feelings. Though maybe it could make someone lose his lunch. Still, I don’t think I want to follow people who have such weak stomachs.

FYI: I may have misrepresented the guy’s site in my phone post. And everything else about him. Because I don’t know him or what he was trying to communicate. Obviously.

Today I spotted a really good deal for webmasters on a huge stash of hot Russian fetish porn so I bought it and decided to use it to start building a bonus site for our members. Tonight I’ll post a gallery of fifty of my favorites; the following are samples from that gallery:

I bought this package not only because it was cheap, but because it contains so many things I love: gloves, inflatables, peeing, smiling natural-looking girls, outdoor nudity, white panties & socks, and a host of other naughty things. It’s hard to believe the content broker advertised it as his “ugly girls package”. Snort. There’s some insight into the porn industry mentality (in case you need any, which I doubt).

My hope is to make this bonus site to house bought content (non-exclusive stuff I like, but we didn’t shoot ourselves) and be more of a story site with my own little fantasy narrative to accompany my favorite images from each set. I know! WHY am I starting another project? It’s not really a big thing to do, though, and not something I need to crank out or “complete” any time soon; it’s more like adding another feature to our sites and inspiration for me to write more porno stories which are conspicuously small in number on our sites as it stands. I like riffing off of strangers in content other people have shot. It’s fun/hot, plus I feel the need to bulk up on the stories because a) the types of people who dig our sites also seem to dig stories, b) it offers insight into my own turn-ons which is part of the personality people expect from me, and c) to offer a little more of the type of content women gravitate towards (IN GENERAL; of course not all women like their porn in story form, but a whole lot DO rely upon the written word for masturbation fodder and think huge sets of 200 pics are totally fucking boring). Stories are pretty cool because they don’t require a bunch of money or extra people to produce outrageous scenarios; you just need time (which IS money, I know) and a pervy imagination.

Speaking of stories, here’s the latest on the “Red Rose”/Karen Fletcher case in which a woman was prosecuted by the federal government for OBSCENITY. She was convicted of a thought crime right here in AMERICA! I don’t know how to explain this if you don’t already know it, but it should not be acceptable to any of us that the government thinks WRITING about criminal behavior and publishing it IS a crime in itself, no matter how unsavory the subject matter. Even if people are jacking off to it. Especially when there are shows on television like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit which is big corporate porn of exactly the same stripe as Karen Fletcher’s, only maybe it’s worse because people delude themselves into thinking they’re watching those fictions not out of “prurient interest” (which is the language the law uses to say certain media is used as jack-off material rather than some more socially-acceptable form of entertainment – I call it the pornography of abuse and it’s how Oprah MADE her fortune) but because it’s somehow good for society. What a crock of shit. You cannot flip past that show for ten seconds without some Daddy creeping into a family bedroom he shouldn’t be in or seeing a child shivering naked in a bathtub or hearing the word RAPE. People obviously get off on that shit in many different ways. Let me clarify, I’m not condemning human nature here (most of us are drawn in one way or another to the horrifyingly sick, scary and macabre), I’m condemning the double standards that criminalize speech that SHOULD be protected by the First Amendment while giving the entertainment industry fucking Golden Globe awards for the same shit wrapped in a different package and set of excuses.

If Karen Fletcher was DOING the things she wrote about or printing the stories up on fliers and distributing them at elementary schools, well OF COURSE she should be not just prosecuted, but locked up for life. But she wasn’t. That’s not what the Department of Justice went after her for. They went after her for sitting at home in complete isolation, putting words on a computer and then onto the internet. WORDS. She thought about bad things and shared those bad thoughts with a whopping audience of twenty-nine people who sought out and chose to read them. Would I want to be her friend or have her over to babysit? Of course fucking not. What I want is for us all to prosecute and put people in prison WHO ACTUALLY COMMIT CRIMES. Not just imagine crimes in their heads.

I’ve had this poll buried in my sidebar for a few weeks where those of you using feedreaders probably haven’t seen it, so I’m giving it a post of its own for fun and greater visibility:

CLICK HERE if you can’t see the poll.

I can’t say for sure whether it will really make a difference in what I post here, but I’m always curious about people’s . . . desires. Feel free to leave comments to elaborate if you want.

*****

THE FOLLOWING IS BORING & BITCHY: READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL:

Today’s been one of those where every little annoying task has been much more difficult than it should have. Even posting this poll, for example, took five failed attempts, edits, logging into other sites for help, etc. before it worked. This whole post-poll part of the entry? Didn’t exist until that happened and I lost it and now just need to vent.

We received our three new 500 GB hard drives because we’re totally MAXED OUT on storage space, especially with our new camera and the huge pictures in two different sizes we’re posting for members. Tried to install one in just one of our Dells only to discover that their funny little proprietary blue mounting bracket/bay rails aren’t in two of our machines. And are apparently impossible to order. Very cute. This discovered after much googling and a long annoying chat with a very slow customer service person.

I tell you these things not because I imagine you want to hear me bitching, but just to shed light on some of the less glamorous aspects of webwhoring and to explain why sometimes I don’t have time to do nice things like reply to emails or, you know, create new content or get exercise so I won’t be a fucking lard ass.

I also tried to do a couple of the bootstraps method of site promotion via webmaster boards where you make posts to try to get some attention to your “program” so you can get people to sign up and promote your sites, and submitting to lists and directories. Because somehow we need to be able to pay for the new camera and hard drives and computers that I speak of and the realistic way to do that is to get more traffic to our sites so we can get more sales. I have to say that really put me in a bad mood today because it is such a joyless, inefficient, uncreative use of my time, especially when I know how much easier and more effective it would be to have money to pay for advertising. That whole “it takes money to make money” adage is so so so true, and the American Dream / pull yourself up by your bootstraps mirage is such a tired old joke. You run up against forums that require you to make 10, 25 or even 100 inane worthless posts on “would you hit it” threads and other more brutally misogynistic topics (or worse, the ones where the people actually are TRYING to be thoughtful professionals but can’t bare to restrain themselves from telling me my girlfriend and I shouldn’t be allowed to have children or that I’m a legal threat to them because I dare to masturbate when I menstruate) or just really BORING stuff before you can make a post with a link to your site or even a fucking picture. TIME SUCK.

Or you submit one of your sites to a directory and only AFTER adding a reciprocal link to them and studying their directory to determine what wording & subdirectory, etc. would fit in and also garner attention do you hit “submit” and get a totally nonsensical error. These are the parts of my job that I would love to have the money to never ever have to do again, either by being able to pay other people to do it for me or to avoid it completely by paying for advertising the normal and efficient way: WITH MONEY.

And these are the reasons why no matter what anybody says in the poll? My options are limited simply because my time is (simply because my MONEY is). This is not a feel sorry for me post, it’s just part of a record that includes contrast against the ways people who already HAVE money can run a business and/or produce lovely things like porn, art, or other pleasures. When you don’t have a rich daddy or collateral you have small, tiny, torturous steps to make that really do seem like schemes by rich people to insure you never. Do. Get ahead. At least not ahead of THEM, and certainly not without damaging yourself in the process or being a completely manic workaholic on stimulants (and even then you’d shoot holes in your computer out of frustration at having to work so slowly through all the obstacles that a moneyed person could soar over without a hitch).

I think I feel extra sensitive about this today in part because lately I’ve been working pretty hard (not twenty-two year old hard, but harder than I have been over the past couple of years) and been just about as focused as an ADD person can. It’s hard to see where it gets me except that I’m harder to be around (”don’t INTERRUPT me! Can’t you see I’m concentrating?”) and my eyes are crossing from looking at the computer for so many hours at a stretch.

*****

I actually have some really nice, pleasant, heart-warming things to blog about, but this bile rose to the surface tonight instead. My apologies, but I feel better now. Again, I would put this over on my bitchy blog instead of here, but I do think it’s interesting not as leisure-reading, but as documentation of how porn entrepreneurs without startup money have to operate. It’s especially frustrating to me when I have something GOOD to do (example: finishing a private diary entry that I started IN APRIL for members about one of my students, began re-researching/refreshing my memory to finish last night, and have had no time to properly immerse myself in today). And instead I’m spinning my wheels doing drudge work.

Yesterday I walked across a field with my eyes closed. After the heavy grounded feeling of walking in wet sand for almost an hour, walking blind on hard-packed dirt with sunburned grass felt like flying with the wind in my face, blowing my hair around. Or floating, at least. The only other people in the field were three black-robed figures sparring with each other using long sticks. With my eyes closed they sounded like three people playing football. The field was so big it was easy for me to avoid walking into them even without the benefit of sight.

*****

We’ve been having some private stress around here (on top of the published stress of trying over and over again to get pregnant) so yesterday Delia canceled her show and we *finally* went to see The Dark Knight. I wasn’t nearly as excited going into it as I was Batman Begins and didn’t feel the same attachment to this one, maybe because I preferred the more solitary focus on Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins and the whole emphasis on creating and finding an alter ego for himself. The imagery in Batman Begins was also darker and more appealing to me in a sort of Robert Louis Stevenson way than Dark Knight, which everyone keeps describing as “darker” than BB but really was just more hideous, brutal and scary. Yeah, the humour was darker and everything felt more tragic because of Heath Ledger’s potent brilliance, but that diverted so much attention from Christian Bale that it wasn’t really about Batman or anybody except for Heath Ledger’s Joker. Oh yeah, I do love the whole commentary on human nature being a dual thing of dark and light, I’m just saying that it didn’t speak to me on a deeply personal level the way Batman Begins did.

As I get older, it’s harder and harder for me to watch movies without being bored and annoyed by what seems like derivations from other movies I think are “better” or strike me as more original just because *I* happened to see them when I was younger and was first introduced to certain themes. There were a lot of familiar elements in The Dark Knight, but it really was awesome enough that it didn’t annoy me, especially since I recognize that there are *no* original ideas (plus, having no familiarity with comics or specialized movie knowledge I KNOW I’m completely ignorant of where some of these things “originated”). I felt like I recognized stuff from In the Line of Fire and freaky cross-dressing a la Silence of the Lambs. Since I know nothing of the comics and never even saw Jack Nicholson’s Joker, I couldn’t help totally associating the smile/scar with the Black Dahlia, especially since I just picked up another book (with the ghastly pictures) about the case.

Anyway, I loved the magic trick with the pencil and lines like “whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you… stranger.” Favorites aside from Heath’s performance? Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Rachel Dawes was SO much better than Katie’s — LOVED her, and the chase scene/shootout with the semis. We also loved the political commentary on whether or not the threat of terrorism justifies spying on people, etc. Still, I don’t feel compelled to see this one more than that once in the theater (unless we could see it in IMAX). I really wasn’t prepared for the violence, and of course it always annoys me when there’s no swearing in a movie but there’s plenty of freaky brutality (I could not hack the part at the end when the dogs and Batman were being beaten with the pipe) and it gets less than an R rating; just having the knowledge in my head that our government is prosecuting people for “obscenity” even for just writing taboo stories and that they refuse to let COPA die makes me resentful when I see how violence in movies is embraced in America as totally acceptable for young people to watch. I can’t watch this stuff without thinking, “so THIS is okay for thirteen year olds to see but the sight of my clitoris will scar them for life?” Whatever. It’s not that I want kids to see porn or that I don’t appreciate a movie without swearing or that I think violent movies should be boycotted, it’s the nonsensical double standards that drive me up a wall.

So does Christian Bale’s alleged assault of his mom and sister ruin my appreciation of his acting? Ummm, no. Just like a president cheating on his wife has absolutely zero to do with whether or not he’s a good president, whether or not Marky Mark is a homophobe or a racist has nothing to do with my enjoyment when I watch Boogie Nights or Entourage and I still think PYT is a fucking awesome song whether or not Michael Jackson is a pedo. Given the rant I just made, it probably surprises you to hear that I don’t relate to people who can’t enjoy a celebrity’s work because of their crimes and supposed personal flaws (which may or may not be true, but we will never know). It’s not that I don’t enjoy juicy gossip about famous people, but it’s just another form of entertainment to me that is separate from whether or not I enjoy their actual work. Like, is it really a surprise to Christian Bale’s fans that he’s a freak? The guy wanted to starve himself to 100 pounds only eating an apple and can of tuna a day for The Machinist; were you really not aware that he’s fucking mental? Apparently, because I’ve been reading whining from women who think they can’t adore him anymore. YOU ARE WATCHING HIS MOVIES, NOT DATING HIM!

So yeah . . . sometimes I can separate things. Other times? Not so much.

*****

In addition to taking the night off for a movie, I also made emergency reservations for a three night stay at the beach next week, so our Sunday, August 10th and Monday, August 11th shows will be canceled. We will do some shooting while we’re there, but mostly we just need to get away. Yes, we have a beach here, but Puget Sound and the Strait aren’t the same as the actual ocean. I didn’t know it until Delia told me, but the timing is perfect because we’ll be out there for the meteor shower. She also just happened to order some things from REI before we made these plans so it all fell into place perfectly since the days I happened to find open rooms and camping spots weren’t my first pick before I knew these things, but just happened to be after the REI stuff will arrive and during the meteor shower.

Thanks to our friend Nerdy Anna for pointing out this post on Feministe about porn sparking a discussion about whether or not “feminist porn” exists, etc.

Honestly? I only hastily skimmed the post and avoided taking a close look at the comments. Not because I don’t think it’s a worthwhile discussion. Not because I don’t want to help “represent” the feminist pornographers of the world. But because for me right now, the most feminist thing I can do is make money and be free of debt, because paying credit card companies tons of interest is totally not feminist. With that being my focus I view reading and participating in these oft-irrational discussions as a big waste of my time. I was much MUCH happier reading the Feministe post on The Golden Girls which I, of course, agree with.

WARNING: reading the following rambling may be a total waste of YOUR time, but it was highly therapeutic for me to write about it.

I’ve got a number of drafted blog posts and of course plenty of thoughts about sex, feminism, porn, and all that “good” stuff (or bad stuff, depending on your perspective). But I’ll take this opportunity to just briefly touch on a few of my positions and answer the question, in short form, of whether or not I think the porn *I* make is feminist.

*Making money (and especially being self-employed, and especially making GOOD money, ESPECIALLY if it’s better money than men are making and especially all of these things in THIS country and cultural context) is feminist. Even if you’re making money on something that seems totally counterproductive to feminism.

*The interesting thing — the KEY thing — is acknowledging that behaviors and products (and I use that term very loosely — could be a piece of merchandise or the end result of certain behaviors or a speech or whatever) can be feminist in some ways, and not in others. You can do something that makes feminist progress in one area, but is regressive in another. That duality is intrinsic to the movement(s) and anybody who thinks it’s possible to be and live and think and affect 100% feminist is fucking delusional. Because you can’t control other people’s reactions. Because sometimes making progress in one direction means distancing yourself from another point on your (or the group’s) carefully mapped travel plans. Because everybody has something unique to contribute, and while they might excel in one area, they won’t in another. THAT’S WHY WE NEED DIFFERENT WOMEN REPRESENTING DIFFERENTLY. Because it’s not feminist at all to think we all want the same things, or to demand that we pursue the same things. Because it’s humanly impossible to consistently put FEMINISM before yourself all the time. Because for some of us feminism means putting OURSELVES (specifically MYSELF or YOURSELF, in your case if you are a woman) first. Because life is just way more complex than “feminist” or “not feminist”.

Maybe it’s like a big scavenger hunt. There are tons of things on our list, things we should have RIGHTS to. Maybe you go look for education. Maybe sister over there goes and looks for health care. Maybe another goes and looks for safety. I hope there’s someone out there looking for reparations. MAYBE I WILL LOOK FOR THE MONEY. Maybe I will look for proof that my body is not YOUR body, and maybe you’ll be fucking confused because you think that if I sell my body to a man that I’m violating YOURS. Maybe I will have time to hold your hand and we can find RATIONAL THOUGHT together, huh? Wouldn’t that be nice. Maybe we’ll all accept that we all have the right to anger, and that a lot of it is righteously directed at each other.

Maybe you have no clue how often I advocate for some of the most unpopular feminist causes and rights while I am in some of the most hostile environments for doing so in the first world. Maybe you have no idea how much thicker the leather is on my militant boots than yours and your buddies, with your unproductive running-off-at-the-mouth. Maybe you underestimate how much more effective being feminist is on this platform than on yours. Maybe I love getting ALL. FIRED. UP! Maybe that’s why I suppress my work on it so often. Because that fire comes close to incapacitating me with screaming.

This is so not short or coherent the way I planned for it to be, but it’s making ME feel better, and THAT is feminist.

*Do I, Trixie, make feminist porn (if such a thing exists)?
I do think feminist porn exists/is possible. I totally disagree with anyone who thinks it’s a contradiction in terms. At the root of that mistaken belief is a huge double standard regarding PLEASURE, but that’s a topic for another time.

Many people would say, “yes, Trixie’s porn is feminist”. I personally would say that the the individual chunks of porn I/we make are only feminist sometimes. I will also say that I do not *want* all of the porn I make to be feminist. Because my sexuality and personality do not always cooperate with feminist ideals, nor do other people’s. Because our fantasy worlds cannot and should not be bound by politics. Because sex as we experience it/feel it TRANSCENDS politics (even if it never transcends politics in reality). Because sometimes you specifically fantasize about un-feminist things because your ideals have created such intensely taboo triggers. Because it wouldn’t be feminist to deny myself all of me. Because the most feminist thing I can do is MAKE MONEY and to represent myself as a feminist while I do it.

The major way my work is feminist (outside of or next to the money-making arena) is that I consistently remind people who I belong to (MYSELF) in contexts where it is unexpected. My body belongs to me. I consistently assert my will, my self-ownership, even when it is counterproductive to making sales. My work as a whole is feminist because I REFUSE TO BE A NON-PERSON or a partial person or a person only part of the time. Anybody who looks at my work as a whole (or even/often just in small parts) can see that I REPRESENT MYSELF AS A WHOLE PERSON. To an extent that I think very VERY few people, men OR women, in ANY industry or from any walk of life, are willing to do or are allowed to do or know how to do or are brave enough to do or have risked as much to do. I AM A WHOLE PERSON, and my work in porn is contained within that and presented from that place of wholeness. Being a whole person and INSISTING UPON wholeness everywhere is awesomely feminist. Paradoxically it means that I cannot BE wholly feminist or affect in feminist ways all of the time.

I could spend a lot of time describing what I mean by “a whole person”, but I’ll just clarify a little by saying I don’t mean “perfect” or “finished” when I say “whole” On the contrary, I mean I am and deserve to be and insist upon staking my claim on IMperfection, meeting my primitive needs, fucking-up, growing sideways and in general pursuing happiness.

You *can* make feminist progress in your own life and in others’ by making art that is gender conscious, class conscious, and power conscious EVEN WHEN your representations of it are stereotyped and politically incorrect (sometimes BECAUSE they are, especially if they’re totally campy and over-the-top). Especially when it acts as therapy and finds meaning/truth. And MOST especially when it’s presented in a broader context that is overtly or even covertly political and/or built on a feminist foundation or told by a feminist voice (even when some of those stories and characters played are distinctly NOT feminist).

I, presenting myself as a whole person, am the context. In everything I do. And I am feminist. That is the powerful truth in my life and work and someda
y I hope I’ll be better at articulating it.

aka “Acronyms and the People Who Love Them”.

I grumble whenever I read a blog post, a letter to the editor or anything intended for a general audience using an acronym or abbreviation that hasn’t been spelled out; unless you are writing for a special audience of people you shouldn’t assume everyone will know what you mean when you type out XYXY blah blah blah.

Today I found myself *especially* annoyed when I read this email about who qualifies for affirmative action when choosing delegates for State and National conventions:

*The WA State goals of their 97 delegates is: 6 African Americans, 3 Native Americans, 10 Hispanics, 3 Youth (between 18 and 24), 7 LGBT (if you have to ask- you are not one), 9 Asian Americans, 3 disabled

Sigh. And if you are too busy being cute or evasive that you can’t spell it out, then your email isn’t really helpful in answering people’s FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions). FYI: LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bi(sexual), Transgender.

I know I’m guilty of assuming my readers understand the terms I use. I know I don’t always explain things as well as I could (and am sometimes just guilty of shitty writing, like the way I totally didn’t explain up there that the reason I *got* that email was because I am an Obama delegate to one of the low-level meetings where they decide who becomes a delegate to the NEXT level and so on; if you’re a minority, you have a better chance of being selected to move on). And I know that other people who drop acronyms without defining them are usually in a hurry or DO write for people who share their specialized knowledge (though I think they can really alienate people who DON’T but are seriously trying to understand the writer; it bugs me when unnecessary hurdles are placed between me and information). This case just REALLY chaps my hide because the person writing it 1) acknowledges that some people might not know what it stands for, 2) decides that the information isn’t applicable to anyone who DOESN’T know, 3) decides to withhold the information when it would take just as many keystrokes to spell it out as it did to deny us the information, and 4) is just really insulting and patronizing to people who aren’t “in the know”.

I’m sure the person writing it didn’t MEAN to be an asshole, but it’s so TYPICAL of Democrats and “Liberals” who are so busy bullshitting themselves and each other with their social awareness and intellectual elitism that they don’t even bother to notice that THEY AREN’T HELPING OR EDUCATING ANYBODY outside of their literati circle jerks. Oh, sure, most people these days probably have an idea of what LGBT stands for and I wouldn’t have even batted an eye at the acronym if it weren’t for the flip secret-password remark afterwards.

I imagine there are a lot of people, older people or even younger people just becoming self-aware, who don’t go to fucking rallies and meetings and parades and stuff and maybe have not even given any thought to the possibility that they are part of a special group. I feel like too many people assume that the whole world is full of social butterflies and they don’t GET that some people don’t identify with the cliques and the crowds and the activists with their secret codes and handshakes. And WHY do you want your readers to have to interrupt the flow of reading whatever it is you supposedly want them to hear and understand just so they can consult a dictionary or encyclopedia or google to find out something you could have explained in four words or less?

I would be more sympathetic if the authors of these things were writing a fucking telegram or a tweet or something else short and sweet BUT THEY NEVER ARE!! These people invariably have the time and energy to write at least fifty-nine exhausting paragraphs telling you more information than you could possibly ever want or need, letting you know what they had for breakfast and how many hours they slept the night before and every single model of camera they’ve had since they were in Kindergarten, but they refuse to trouble themselves with two to ten words that are actually fucking relevant. You torture yourself reading these people’s writing, you know they have something important to say, and while you’re giving yourself a migraine staring intently at your monitor they HURL these sharp pointy rocks at you every so often just to break up the monotony: ASFW! MRPQ! WOS-VINA!!

Anyway, I shot myself in the foot (as I like to do) by writing back to the person who sent the email:

It *is* possible for someone to be “LGBT” without knowing the politically correct and cool acronym that goes along with it. I’m not sure what is accomplished by acknowledging some people might not know what it stands for and then denying them the explanation. Also, people who AREN’T queer or transgender might like to be in the know; it would help raise awareness where it’s lacking. Just because people are interested in participating in this particular process doesn’t mean they are politically savvy about every special interest group out there.

I’m sure whoever wrote this didn’t mean to be insulting or maybe they were just in a hurry when writing it, but it would have taken about the same amount of keystrokes to spell it out as to dismiss the information as inapplicable to anybody who doesn’t already know. I feel like a lot of communiques (not just this one) from the Dems assume readers have information that many do not; it alienates people by making them feel like they’re not part of the in-group and undermines real communication and education when all it would take is a couple extra words typed out to introduce acronyms. If the goal is to make people aware and invite them to become involved then why not spell it out instead of withholding the information?

I know it seems like a small thing and I’m not trying to make anyone feel badly about it; but it did chap my hide a little. It’s not a big deal, but it can be frustrating when I (and maybe other people) read these emails and feel like they’re not really written for everyone who identifies as a Democrat in this county, but are intended for people who are already super-involved and up-to-speed on everything. I don’t need a reply or anything, and I do know what LGBT stands for . . . just offering it as food for thought.

I know, I know — you have to be living under a ROCK to not know what LGBT stands for, right? But there are lots of people living under rocks, many of them quite happily, and they are JUST the people who DO need to know what LGBT stands for so when you alienate them? It’s really counterproductive.

And you know what else? If I hadn’t read that email I wouldn’t have known that I actually have an on-paper edge for going to the next level; yes, I *did* think about my sexuality and my partner’s gender identity as things that make me special/representative of a minority group, but I totally hadn’t thought about it being, like, OFFICIAL. And seriously, I actually have had and will continue to have qualms about counting myself as part of that minority group because I believe the *majority* of people are bisexual and I don’t believe I’ve “suffered” enough personal persecution because of my pansexuality to “deserve” to check a special box; this might come as a shock, but I spend a lot more of my time thinking about porn and sex work and promiscuity and making money than I do about the intersection of my comparatively mundane sexual preferences with personal political privilege (I think about it with regards to OTHER people and I think about how scary it is to live next to violent misogynist rednecks while in an “alternative” relationship but I just didn’t happen to wander across thinking about affirmative action having anything to do with me *personally* in an up-and-coming kind of way; I think about the ideas of things and sometimes the reality of them comes as a total shock). So guess what? If *I* have trouble knowing how to identify myself, I of the blogs and websites and ope
n-mindedness and college-education and whatever, then it’s not hard for me to imagine a whole lot of other people are unsure too. I mean, I’m pretty sure that at least half the individuals in the world know less than I know (individually, not combined!). Not to be an asshole, but seriously. FWIW.

WTF? LGBT FTW.

Oh, I know similar complaints could be made about using “big” words that the average reader doesn’t use on a daily basis (if ever), but I honestly think big words are different from acronyms; you can usually suss out the meaning of a big word based on context clues and familiar-sounding PARTS of the word. If not, the reader has only missed out on ONE word, not a whole batch like those contained in an acronym which is often the subject of the sentence, not just some fancy-sounding adjective thrown in for its saucy sound.

An overwrought, incoherent mini-tribute to my favorite periodical and worthy cause, $pread magazine:

Do you know what it’s like to go to the newsstand and see business magazines like inc. and then for a second get excited because you see a magazines for WOMEN-run businesses. But it’s called something like “PINC.” and you buy it even though you know absolutely nothing inside will have anything to do with the one industry that women should dominate. The sex industry (the pinkest industry). Not. One. Word. Of recognition. It’s like trying to plan your own funeral in a society that doesn’t have a word for death or acknowledge that everyone dies in the end. That’s how crazy it seems to refuse to acknowledge the business of sex in general discussions about business, particularly businesses run by women. That’s how fucking backwards and NOT progressive we are (but I’m sure most straight business-women think that IS progress, to not associate women in business with the possibility of anything remotely sexual except for harassment and victimization). The new ambitious woman is required not to be in charge of her body or to enjoy it in her off time or to use it to get ahead, but to project a consistently professional asexual image, don’t you know? God forbid word leaks out that she even HAS a body underneath those clothes! No, the working woman can only advance in status by keeping her tits and pussy discretely locked away in a witness protection program; showing off our assets only serves to make them a liability. If we show them to anyone on purpose it might make it harder for us to use them to prosecute some guy later who took an uncivilized interest in them.

The world thinks that starting an ebay business selling crocheted kleenex box holders is a better, more legitimate career* for a woman than turning tricks or being a webwhore. This is unbelievably STUPID to me and it’s why women who do sex work are pretty motherfucking socially isolated. Because we’re not just doing a job that’s hard to talk about with other people, like being a paramedic or a soldier or a nurse who attends to the dead and dying and ends and saves lives; those people are considered heroic even if no one wants to hear the truth of their jobs. Those people usually work in teams, teams that don’t have to compete against each other for pay; they can talk to EACH OTHER about their work. I’m not denying that there’s competition in those fields for promotions (which do equal more money) and status and I’m certainly not denying that those jobs are hard (on the contrary) nor am I trying to say that sex work is harder than those jobs; what I’m trying to say is that doing sex work can be very isolating. Not only are we discouraged by polite society from talking about our work (and even laws against talking about it in some cases), but our work itself is often against the law. Very few sex workers can talk to their family, romantic interests, or non-whore friends about our tough days at the office, and developing a sense of camaraderie with colleagues is often challenging. There’s no human relations department where we can file grievances. I’m not saying these circumstances exist for all of us or are necessarily unbearable or even undesirable for a lot of us, I’m just saying that it *can* be pretty fucking lonely in ways that are fairly unique. I am really lucky that I am a hermit to begin with, my partner does the same kind of work I do, and I’m out with my family and can be fairly open with them. Plus, my brand of sex work is really safe, no-(physical)-contact stuff. Still? There are times when I realize that my friends and family have no fucking clue who I am, what I do, or what’s important to me . . . and don’t WANT to. There are some things that I can only talk about with other people who do the work I do. I’m sure it’s the same for lawyers, priests and teachers but they HAVE networks and coffee rooms and church and professional associations. Me? I am still stunned by finding out that my sister (who I’m very close to) assumed I would want my sites taken down if/when I die. Apparently my story is something she thinks I would want erased rather than shared and preserved in all of its grotesquely intimate nakedness.

So is it weird that seeing $pread for sale at a bookstore made my heart skip a beat and a pain dive down through my innards as though I’d just unexpectedly caught sight of someone I have a big crush on? I don’t know if I can explain where that intense feeling of recognition comes from and the sense of being on the verge of something life-altering, like standing in a crowd and having a beam of sunlight shine specifically down on just you, singling you out as deserving of solace and renewal. While everyone else just mills around the bookstore, you are aware of being part of a group of people witnessing and breaking through thousands and thousands of years of foul, soul-staining, isolating, life-killing bullshit.

I think it’s the sensation of battle (not war) victory upon seeing a visible representation of a long line of stigmatized women’s voices finally coming to be recognized and legitimized, our hiserstories written by ourselves and our concerns and specific business needs addressed. Uncensored, not twisted or misappropriated or degradingly pitied by academia and looky-loos and feminism-hoarders. Not perfect, not artsifucked, but really fucking important. Our stories. VALUED in print and for sale in public.

*Note: I mean no offense to crafty crocheters of kleenex box holders; I myself would love to know how to crochet. Plus I would never disrespect someone for honoring tissue boxes since I myself have a major kleenex fetish. I’m just reasonably sure that whoring is a more viable business than hand-crafting tissue cozies.

**Confession: I delayed posting this entry because I let my $pread subscription lapse and felt like it would make me a liar to post this without my money backing it up. Then I realized that’s silly since I will resubscribe and order the back-issues I missed. And who would know this if I didn’t tell them? Why am I so uptight and guilt-riddled? I also need to finish my site redesign and include more links to things and people I care about.