Being a woman in geek culture

[Netzach]

Can you really type this and keep a straight face?

Yeah, I'm not seeing it either, but I consciously picked Dominatrixing over licking lawyer's asses. I'm aware that it's not the same as escorting. A lot of girls I met ARE escorting, and I learned pretty fast that they're a mixed bag. Now: I had no contact with anyone who entered industry under the age of 19. I had no contact with anyone who was streetwalking, though I was mentored by a woman who had for a short time. Her brain could put mine to shame. These people may not be the most vulnerable and the most exploited, but they are the middle of the bell curve of sex work.

Some are sad and have no options and not granted a lot of smarts of any variety. That's a tiny fraction of "some" and that's true everywhere you go.

Most are as smart as you are and are choosing what they're doing. Whether that's formally educated or not, it doesn't matter. They CAN do other things. They do not WANT to do other things. They might want to supplement a life they like with periodic sessions/tricks/clips/porno shoots (the most common.) I met a LOT of creatives. A lot of people have kids, and in some cases a clips store puts food on the table, in other cases a clips store means braces on teeth.

Nobody having this conversation is willing to accept that 90 percent of the people they're defending from their fantasy of oppression are as smart as they are. Work from that assumption and then tell people where they can and can't work and what they can and can't sell.

I LIKED it better. It was more dangerous, but it was more lucrative, more interesting and it didn't kill my motherfucking soul. How DARE anyone with no first-hand direct experience and no willingness to listen to me decide what job is "better" for me? Frankly, just dating men I felt just as likely to end up killed by a psycho as whipping one's ass in a nearly public place. But if you sell sex, you are too stupid to do your own risk assessment. You need a task force.

Because everyone freaked out over snuff films that don't exist, (urban myth, but you can totes watch people die on the news, you know) it is now almost impossible to sell a smut clip that has artful and fun lesbian vampire camp content. BECAUSE ALL BLOOD IS REAL BLOOD!!!!

If your content is "hypnotizing men to be good sex slaves" you can now no longer monetize your clip because "hypnotized girls!" is of course REAL and never ACTING.

Someone said, just because a clip looks happy and consensual doesn't mean it was made under those circumstances.

I'd offer that the opposite is true, often. Representation matters, but representation isn't ALL that matters.

I'd like to see people who make actual child porn and coerced porn thrown in jail or ground into dog food. Policing content we can fairly easily determine is not real and is made by consenting adults is taking away from the actual effort to stop actual, not fictional, harm.

So if you made your living in certain areas of niche, now you have to be more mainstream, and therefore, navigate the patriarchal bullshit all over.

 

[Netzach]

FWIW crush films are illegal. Making other kinds of clips illegal does absolutely fuck all to stop them. You can't stop a fuckhead with a cell phone camera from being a fuckhead with a cell phone camera, but it's not exactly easy to monetize illegal content either. Everyone has made it almost impossible to monetize legal content as a small producer because we have to save the world, thanks so much. These are probably being traded by the sick fucks in that scene but they are in no way "an industry."

 

[Netzach]

But I wandered off on a bit of a tangent about more coercive approaches that attempt to shut down an admittedly-crappy industry without providing an alternative. (Tangents are my thing.)

Of course, it's best when people outside both posited industries get to decide what is and isn't crappy.

Wow, guys. Just wow. Yeah, class intersectionality. I get that I'm erring on the side of the individual, but working class women in sex work don't really get the luxury of being listened to as individuals like, ever. It's so great to know people are working hard on our problems for us, in theory land anyway.

 

[KoPilot]

For the record, I give a shit about sex work as muh as I give a shit about any other kind of work: it's fucked because it's work, plain and simple. I'm not going to sit here and make a stink about art because x, y, z, or working retail, or whatever, and then it comes to sex work, fold my hands and say that sex work is a special case and exists outside of ideology or politics. Sex workers making 6 figures are going to get side eye from me like anyone else. As a means of paying the bills, it's legit. But when that extra money starts going into stupid fuckin luxury shit or into private (not personal) property, that's where I draw the line personally. Fuck private property.

For me, I'm going to try my damnedest to conduct myself in a way that is consistent withy the ethics I have that would apply to when we lived in a world that didn't force people to sell their labor. Am I perfect? No. Am I hypocritical sometimes? Yes. But that doesn't mean I'm going to give a free pass to people to do whatever the hell they want and be reactionary just because they're part of a marginalized group. case in point: Obama. Sure, yay, black president or something. Doesn't make him any less of an imperialist shithead.

 

[Netzach]

For the record, I give a shit about sex work as muh as I give a shit about any other kind of work: it's fucked because it's work, plain and simple. I'm not going to sit here and make a stink about art because x, y, z, or working retail, or whatever, and then it comes to sex work, fold my hands and say that sex work is a special industry. Sex workers making 6 figures are going to get side eye from me like anyone else. As a means of paying the bills, it's legit. But when that extra money starts going into stupid fuckin luxury shit or into private (not personal) property, that's where I draw the line personally. Fuck private property.

For me, I'm going to try my damnedest to conduct myself in a way that is consistent withy the ethics I have that would apply to when we lived in a world that didn't force people to sell their labor. Am I perfect? No. Am I hypocritical sometimes? Yes. But that doesn't mean I'm going to give a free pass to people to do whatever the hell they want and be reactionary just because they're part of a marginalized group. case in point: Obama. Sure, yay, black president or something. Doesn't make him any less of an imperialist shithead.

Anyone capable of being elected at this moment in time as the leader of this country is going to be an imperialist shithead. It is our national character. Black president is still a pretty fucking big deal, because, well representation matters.

Imperialist shithead is a requirement of the position. Do I think he would do better if he could do better? Probably slightly. Not enough.

Side eye all you want, but unless I get into high double digits and work fucking hard, I'm never getting out of medical debt. I can't exactly do that at the grocery co-op or teaching children to fingerpaint. Clips and flesh and perversity actually MIGHT do the job.

Insert conversation about chronic illness body as capitalist resistance site here.

 

[KoPilot]

Also Netz, I'd like to mention that I have come VERY close to becoming a sex worker on numerous occasions over the past 5-6 years. So it's not that I see myself above it or anything like that.

 

[Netzach]

I appreciate that, and I don't think you're being like that.

But until I did it I didn't know what I didn't know. The truth as I see it lies somewhere on the spectrum between yay sex work and sex work is inherently exploitative to the point where we have to attack the flow of currency within it.

Now I know what I don't know. Work sucks, but control of your work is as good as it gets. Other people telling you you're too exploited to control your narrative and that any organization you do on your own behalf isn't valid, other industries don't get this.

 

[KoPilot]

"representation matters"

yeah but I can sure as hell tell you that no part of me would be happy to see an openly transgender person bombing Palestinians. That's not the representation I want.

 

[Netzach]

"representation matters"

yeah but I can sure as hell tell you that no part of me would be happy to see an openly transgender person bombing Palestinians. That's not the representation I want.

I see them as points a and b. I'd like to get congress to stop blowing AIPAC. And I'd like to vote more T persons into leadership. Since the former is not happening immediately, I don't think it would hurt to have more Transgender people in positions where power is while I'm not-in-my-naming.

 

[KoPilot]

I appreciate that, and I don't think you're being like that.

But until I did it I didn't know what I didn't know. The truth as I see it lies somewhere on the spectrum between yay sex work and sex work is inherently exploitative to the point where we have to attack the flow of currency within it.

Now I know what I don't know. Work sucks, but control of your work is as good as it gets. Other people telling you you're too exploited to control your narrative and that any organization you do on your own behalf isn't valid, other industries don't get this.

Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt.

At any rate, I definitely concede that sex work is a special case in the world that we live in here and now.

And while I have my general opinions on the place the industry has in this society, this conversation has inspired me to do more reading. I'll probably spend a few hours on this tomorrow, actually.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Um how about everybody actually accepts that "the sex industry" and "the porn industry" are both very big tents with a multitude of people working in them for a multitude of reasons.

I intended for "as a generalisation" to acknowledge that, but looking back, I don't think my wording was adequate; if I had a do-over, I'd express it more along the lines of "there is a significant amount of yada yada in the sex industry". I apologise for that.

I hope my posts above also made it clear that I acknowledge sex work isn't the only industry that has such problems, or indeed the worst - part of the point I was trying to express is that a lot of people have chosen it as being better than the alternatives.

Apologies again, and shutting up now.

 

[BiBunny]

Of course, it's best when people outside both posited industries get to decide what is and isn't crappy.

Wow, guys. Just wow. Yeah, class intersectionality. I get that I'm erring on the side of the individual, but working class women in sex work don't really get the luxury of being listened to as individuals like, ever. It's so great to know people are working hard on our problems for us, in theory land anyway.

Thank you for this, and for your other posts on the subject. You word things so much better than I do.


Do I hate my job? Yes.

Do I feel like I'm probably helping train men to be fuckheads by doing it? Yes.

Is it making me crazier? Probably.

Is all that still preferable to being homeless/moving back in with my parents/a million other shitty alternatives? Yes.

Do I need saving? Nope.


(I have so many thoughts, but none of them want to cooperate with me so that I can put them into words, so I'll keep everything else to myself at this point.)

 

[Netzach]

Thank you for this, and for your other posts on the subject. You word things so much better than I do.


Do I hate my job? Yes.

Do I feel like I'm probably helping train men to be fuckheads by doing it? Yes.

Is it making me crazier? Probably.

Is all that still preferable to being homeless/moving back in with my parents/a million other shitty alternatives? Yes.

Do I need saving? Nope.


(I have so many thoughts, but none of them want to cooperate with me so that I can put them into words, so I'll keep everything else to myself at this point.)

Don't do that to yourself. Well, do it if you want, but stop, Hammertime. Of course your mileage will vary and you have perfectly fine reasons to feel as you feel. I'm just gonna share my experience with that very real train of worry.

For every guy I've trained to be a fuckhead, there are 10 horribly secretive weirdos who are decent enough people with a completely harmless kink - into something like gay guys in rubber rain boots - who get a release valve and a human being to tell about it when none other feels safe. Seriously. Most of what I do. I'm in the catharsis business and I won't apologize. I do good things. Things other people won't touch and are not allowed to touch. I'm willing to be a pariah to do them, because I KNOW they are good. (Which doesn't mean I don't hate my job a lot of the time either, because burnout.)

My mere existence as prodomme hurt other women, I've had it screamed in my face. Because I invented patriarchal marriage modes? Because no man ever had weird relationships to women and power before he saw MY ass in a catsuit? Even at its best my ass was never that good.

Those poor poor "other women" are the ones benefitting from six figures sexism, so fuck this entire diatribe. What kind of intersectional feminism daintily sidesteps the idea that massive amounts of money and heterosexual respectability just don't count as privilege?

I felt bad about myself for a while. Not too long a while. It's very seductive to see oneself as respectable and middle class in values, but it's really quite hard to maintain any feelings of solidarity when you see yourself being thrown under the bus at the slightest opportunity. Almost everyone who was really up in my face about what I did was 1. married 2. kids 3. at home. Subsistence for them was A OK, and I was an obvious point of attack for their insecurities, but I'm not the only one who chose my job.

That Feminism is telling me that my right to navigate my own survival is less important than the institution of heterosexual marriage and its myths about itself. Because it's Feminism that is either hetero and middle class or has internalized that agenda so completely that it's useless to me.

Well, privilege has its prices, and nice girls don't get called up for every detail. Both client and poor poor other woman benefit from having the myth about her preserved, and hers about him.

No one goes to a prodomme who hasn't genuinely really *wrestled* with whether the wife can handle it, and I have wrestled that same wrestle and it is often MUCH more merciful to shut the fuck up and go and get your shit straightened for a while (because it's not going away) than it is to have that talk (because it's going to stall out and make them miserable.) Marriage is a bullshit institution, but it's also the most personal of spaces, so I never presume anything about what anyone else is making work. I don't have any information, other than my knowledge that solid interpersonal relationships take EVERY possible shape. That job exists primarily to save wives (some perfectly in the know) from yet ONE MORE marital obligation they have no interest in, are creeped out by, and don't want to know about. No one would demand they be his shrink or his dentist. No one gets married elated for the day you have to clean the other person's poop. No one should HAVE to cater to anyone sexually without their own gratification, but no one should have to suppress innate sexuality till they go crazy either.

I don't think I have a karmic debt, at the end of the day, or anyone else in the enactment and acting business. I certainly have less to answer for than the Spider Man movie franchises where the function of women is pretty princess and the kiddies are being indoctrinated.

So apparently everyone on earth except genetic men deserve the feeling of "I'm NOT the only one!" from their fiction? I'm not a fan of the demographic, but fuck that's pretty cold. If there were more, wider multiplicity of fictions offered to them than another iteration of St. George and the motherfucking dragon, maybe they'd be less fucking assholes.

Probably not, because we're all soaking in it and we don't get to choose kinks. I know that the kink stick is pretty indiscriminate, and a lot of fantasies are not exactly politically correct but they're not exactly asked for either.

 

[Primalex]

For the record, I give a shit about sex work as muh as I give a shit about any other kind of work: it's fucked because it's work, plain and simple.

[...]
For me, I'm going to try my damnedest to conduct myself in a way that is consistent withy the ethics I have that would apply to when we lived in a world that didn't force people to sell their labor.

So you hope for a world where the food jumps into your mouth? Everything else means you need to work or exploit someone who works for you, because food does not just jump into your mouth. And because plenty of people would be crappy farmers, I'm sure they are glad that they don't have to grow their own grain.

 

[KoPilot]

I don't read 101 literature but pretend that I do

Trying to argue with me when you've got no idea what you're talking about. I'd say that were cute but reall, it got old like, years ago.

 

[KoPilot]

Found some interesting things:

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/organise-interview-with-an-anarchist-dominatrix\
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/libr...g-brigade-an-anarchist-defense-of-pornography
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-feminism-as-fascism

 

[Stella_Omega]

Um how about everybody actually accepts that "the sex industry" and "the porn industry" are both very big tents with a multitude of people working in them for a multitude of reasons.

Some people in the industries are exploited and have no choice. Eat anything in a restaurant lately? Wear clothes? Used sweatshop threads are still sweatshop threads, we're all in it.

I've worked with a lot of women like me, and totally not like me. I'm fed the fuck up with the stereotype that everyone other than the college educated have to be doing sex work because they're coked, abused, and too stupid to know how bad the bad thing they do is. If that makes me a reformist pleeb, so be it, but fuck this. Heartily. I've seen more class-based hypocricy among class-intersectionality warriors going after this topic than I ever might have internalized in prep school.

None of you know when to shut the fuck up and listen and let the sex workers tell you what we/they want and need. Guess what - if , nay WHEN, we have a problem with the people who cut our checks, there is a very powerful grapevine effect. We can organize and do organize, in a multitude of informal networks and the last thing we fucking need is someone outside the entire scene sticking it to the people who cut our checks while "supporting us as people."

I don't care if you choose to get off to manga instead of indie ********** clips, but this doesn't exactly confer sainthood, and nine times in ten people who "never pay for porn" are pirating our shit. That's SO kind of you.

How about asking some actual women what would make life better. It's not all la la la yay sex positive, but it's not all trafficking either.

Netz, i don't know where we would be without you.

 

[Primalex]

Netz, i don't know where we would be without you.

At exactly the same position. Fundamentalists don't change their opinion when confronted with reason; that's the whole point of being a fundamentalist.

 

[Stella_Omega]

At exactly the same position. Fundamentalists don't change their opinion when confronted with reason; that's the whole point of being a fundamentalist.

I keep expecting people to address facts. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised, other times I hear each side accuse the other of fundamentalism.

 

[satindesire]

SWERF/White Feminism is the culprit which is why I believe sex-positive/Trans-positive third wave Intersectional Feminism is so damn important.

 

[KoPilot]

SWERF/White Feminism is the culprit which is why I believe sex-positive/Trans-positive third wave Intersectional Feminism is so damn important.

SWERF?

But yeah, more or less this^.

 

[Never]

What are your thoughts about this?

#gamergate sucks.

Have you experienced sexism in geek culture due to your gender?

No.

 

[satindesire]

SWERF?

But yeah, more or less this^.

Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminism.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminism.

I like to call them "EBMERF"
"Everybody But Me Exclusionary Radical Feminist"

 

[Primalex]