Normally you shouldn’t take cookies from strangers. I remember the lecture from kindgergarten. He seemed friendly enough so I took him up on the offer for a free cookie and he interviewed me for his website. I swear it’s all true! Check it out in this video where you can meet some other folks who also live in Oakland.

It was great to meet you, Cookie Man! I hope you and your couch have many great travels meeting people and listening to their stories. Thanks for the snack and listening to mine. Cheers!

Long before I did porn, I watched it. Sometimes it was out of pure curiosity. My jaw dropped at images of stretched orifices. I watched in wonder at the full potential of the human body. There are those among us who can process complex mathematical processes in the blink of an eye, there are those among us who can pull a big rig with their teeth, there are those among us who can swim the English Channel and arrive on the shore in time for tea, there are those among us who can sexually consume everything in sight and be hungry for more. I am always humbled by our diversity. I honor our potential and insatiable appetite to continue going further.

In my porn collection I have pornographic clips from the dawn of motion pictures. I watch them repeatedly not for their erotic value but for their very serious contributions to understanding the culture of a time and place. I studied anthropology in my undergrad and I never kicked the habit. Vintage pornography is more than just the thrill of peeking into our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ secret stash of dirty thoughts. Old dirty films are artifacts and it is a devastating loss to our understanding of the times and the places of humanity that so much of what has been produced has been destroyed.

Porn is fantasy but we get the ideas somewhere. For the most part, porn is just reality on steroids. The advertising industry has relied on erotic tropes for far, far, far longer than any kind of commercial pornography has been available to the masses. When you have a lot of money you pay fine artists to hand paint your porno in oils and then put it in a million dollar frame but it’s always been the most cost-effective methods of producing porn that are trashy. Some of it is but you can paint trash with a brush and oils, too and it has been done on more than a few occasions throughout the course of history. The biggest complaint about porn is that everyone can see it. It is no longer a luxury item.

Porn has its own set of problematic politics but it’s very fucking honest about the politics belonging to everyone else. A chick blowing a ridiculous man with a stupendous mustache will drop a quick but scathing one-liner about a politician. The free speech isn’t just about showing people genitals. It’s also about the ability to criticize public leaders and putting a magnifying glass on cultural norms and then jizzing all over them. Porn isn’t populism so much as it’s, “here’s your fucking populism.” It’s a subtle like difference between fuck me shoes and fuck you shoes. Even before she did porn, no one was looking at the Ivory Soap girl and thinking about the relative cleaning merits that Ivory had to offer. Even if all you thought was, “what a pretty picture,” you were not thinking about soap and it’s already fairly pornographic that dewy virginal white girls are the utter symbol of clean.  Porn did not make that image dirty, it reminded you of why it was dirty all along.

One of my favorite adult flicks is The Erotic Adventures Of Zorro. Parody has always been a major device of pornography and I’ve been delighted by its current renaissance. On one hand, it’s just a kitschy excuse to fuck. On the other hand, it is a softcore film with some positively brilliant cinematography, a very fun script, actors with chemistry and comedic timing, a sense of self-awareness and humility, and an examination of politics, gender, and religion.

The Erotic Adventures Of Zorro does not forget the theme of government corruption and exploitation of the poor and directly parallels it to its own immediate context. The twist is that Zorro plans his attack by masquerading by day as a pansy-ass queer and then fighting for justice as Zorro by night. There are bad gay jokes aplenty the premise is a fascinating study of gender. In this story, it is masculinity that is closeted. Under his full name and with total understanding that his behavior would be reported back to  his father in Spain, Zorro immediately comes up with the plan to feign queerness and he steps into character immediately without any worry or fear about the implications to his reputation whatsoever. The man in the mask with the sword is a secret identity. Flirtation is his primary weapon in destabilizing the power structure.

At the time, “nudie cuties” like Zorro were street legal so long as all of the sex was simulated. The blowjob scene in the field is real, however. It slipped by the censors with an act of very creative film making. The scene is predominantly shot from just behind a pair of horses that the characters had been riding who are watching the scene just in front of the camera perfectly framing the shot. Other shots come through a veil and other visual barriers that obscure the scene just enough to let you know that you’re a voyeur. There are also entire scenes dedicated entirely to political humor. In one scene, a guard runs into the shot announcing that Zorro has left a note but that he needs someone to read it to him because he cannot. In one scene, an obviously poor peasant-hyperbole picks up the note and reads it aloud only to have the guard denounce him as “ignorant,” rather than thank him.

One sex scene is introduced by immediately calling out just how ridiculous Zorro looks when he walks around naked in his mask and sock garters. This kind of good-natured self-deprecating humor has not been lost to the ages as screening The Rocki Whore Picture Show with Kitty Stryker reminded me. I like the broad notion of adult entertainment. Preservation of our erotic heritage is so very vital to understanding our cultural heritage. Porn is made by people who throw a saddle on the Id and go for the ride.

Long before I ever set a toe on camera I disagreed with the notion that pornographic images were the source of sexual violence because rape was with us before recorded images so something newer cannot be an origin. The efforts to eradicate pornography is that of a kitten’s pathetic brawl with its reflection in the mirror. In order to change our images, we have to work towards progress in our day-to-day lives. That’s where our fantasies begin. It is also why I want to see more diversity in the people picking up the camera. For the most part, we have so many images captured by white heterosexual men that we think the way they see the world is natural and the rest of us are different. Porn flicks just might give us the clearest picture we can get of the worlds we live in and at least we all know that there’s a happy ending.

Hello Sex Worker Hater,

So, we meet again. You’re a shape shifter and I feel like I see you everywhere I go. I’ve spotted you on police forms for recovered bodies which had two categories: human and non-human. Guess which category specifically listed prostitutes? I don’t have to tell you, hater, you already know where you think sex workers belong.  I’ve heard your testimony at rape trials when the plaintiff’s occupation and clothing were judged more harshly than the actions of their rapist. You laugh at strippers when they believe they have the right not to be exploited with stage fees and racist policies and you think it’s hilarious when there is evidence of a battering behind sparkling eye makeup and feathered eyelashes.

You spend a lot of time at bars and parties whispering into someone’s ear that a person who sells sex and takes precautions for the health and safety of everyone involved is bad, dirty person, forces you to wash your hands after contact. You’re not saying that you personally would go and cause violence against a sex worker but when it happens, well, the sex worker really should have seen it coming. In your mind violence, rape, and homicide are just the natural and obvious outcomes to be accepted by anyone who makes their living from sexual attraction. You sneak your way into activist movements and discount the opinions of whores because “they’re obviously stupid.”

You’re everywhere at once sex worker hater and I see you’ve been writing over at Cnet. Allow me to quote you:

The porn industry is undergoing considerable changes, especially with the huge proliferation of free online porn. Will the existence of PornWikiLeaks make some think twice about their chosen means of making money?

Or is the expectation now entirely reasonable that anything you do, anywhere, at any time could–at any moment–be revealed online for all the world to see, know, and, of course, judge? -Chris Matyszczyk on Cnet

Let’s clear a couple of things up, hater. First and foremost this information was obtained from private medical records. It isn’t a coincidence that one of the major ways that we protect our health and the health of our partners was sabotaged. It’s a clear message: you are not allowed to have both a non-traditional sex life and good health at the same time. This was an act of terrorism. According to your words, hater, we should just sit back and accept this as proper order of the world. We should just accept that mainstream medical care excludes us and degrades us and that if we develop a community model of care that people will do everything they can to shut it down. I guess we should have thought about that when we tried to pay our rent, have a relationship, be part of a family, or go on living our lives like anyone else. We should have just known that someone would eventually think that they were saving California from “Mexicans and gays trying to get married,” by illegally accessing our medical records and posting them on the internet with our real names and an incitement for harassment against us.

Whether or not our industry is conventional has nothing to do with what happened. For example, I think that it is unethical to set up sweatshops in developing nations to exploit the local labor force. If I hacked into the HMO database for a major corporation with factories in developing nations and published the names and private information of thousands upon thousands of low level employees who worked for that corporation at any point in time on the internet alongside calls for harassment against them I would be immediately denounced as a deranged criminal who must be stopped immediately and that would be absolutely, 100% accurate. No one w0uld be debating whether or not those employees should be ashamed of working in retail. No one would suggest that the reason why they dropped their surname or opted for nickname on their employee badge was because they were trying to hide from their occupation. No one would speak as though they should have known that sooner or later someone would inevitably hack into their medical records and post their badge name next to their full legal name alongside libelous language and calls for harassment against them. We would solely focus on the actions of the deranged criminal and discuss ways that we can prevent that kind of illegal and dangerous behavior from happening again.

Like most haters, you’re getting defensive about the fact that people are calling you out for victim blaming. The opening and closing of an essay is prime real estate in a piece of a writing. It’s what people notice first and what they walk away with at the end.  This essay contained 538 words. The opening and closing  (103 words) constitute just under 1/5 (just about 20%) of the total essay length and both are dedicated to questioning whether or not porn performers should feel shame about what they do for a living rather than what actually happened or any form of compelling analysis. The reason that people are receiving this as victim blaming is because you opened your essay by saying, “For some reason, I am reminded of Eric Schmidt’s dictum. You know, the one that went something like: ‘If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.’” It communicates quite a bit about your priorities that you opened and closed your writing with a sentiment of judgement and shame.

The good news is, you don’t have to be a sex worker hater forever. You can choose to write something new, interesting, relevant, and original about what happened in this situation. You can choose to listen to this criticism and reframe your argument. You can choose to acknowledge that some of the people affected by the PornWiki might possibly be reading your column. You might even choose to apologize. At the very least you can acknowledge that you didn’t add anything to the argument by climbing up onto a moral high horse and wagging your finger at the whores down below to remind them that they shouldn’t expect the same kind of privacy that any other public figure expects. Don’t worry, including sex workers and talking about them ethically and honestly won’t turn you into one. It won’t even make you an ally. It just makes you less of a hating asshole. Anywhere you choose to go from there is up to you.

Sincerely,

“A pornographic whore and Hooker” who is mad as hell and won’t take it any more

Photo by Courtney Trouble

“The internet has changed everything!” -Everyone about everything.

As humans, our emotional responses to the world around us develop long before we have any mastery of language. It’s no surprise that when humans experience the extremes of emotion there is usually a corresponding decrease articulation. We laugh, we cry, we use violence, we do a silly dance but we have all had a moment where words fail us. Emotionality, no matter how extreme or illogical, is not evidence of a lack of a logical cause and effect process but rather a sudden inability to convey that. When we’re with someone face-to-face we can see that. We can put down the sudden need for words and just join in on inarticulate communication with a hug, a high five, a kiss, or return fire because we can see clearly before our very eyes that although emotion is has taken the center stage it wasn’t purely arbitrary. This is known as compassion.

Technology, on the hand, relies on clear articulation with a tiny margin of error as anyone who has stared at a programming language on a desperate hunt for the single character mistake that has rendered the entire attempt useless. Computers are not as far removed from humanity as we might think because its system of organization is modeled after our own brains. Unlike the human computer, the brain possesses the unparalleled ability to fill in a gap of knowledge with other pre-existing data. We do this automatically unless there is no pre-existing data to explain what has happened in which case we experience frustration.

Humans have never had the ability to communicate with other human beings the way that we do today. For the overwhelming majority of humanity we’ve actually been pretty limited. The first individuals to ever inscribe a thought in a language of some kind on parchment or stone undoubtedly run into troubles for their efforts. There were too few people who could even begin to understand it and the actual scribbles that one could use were incredibly limited. Technology is fantastic but there is a learning curve for its adaptation. In the past, humans had a very long time in between technological innovations. Today it feels nearly impossible to keep up with every single one of them and not everyone is using the same type of technology with the same level of comprehension but we are all using it simultaneously.

Twitter has made so many parts of my life infinitely easier. I have access to a constant river of information and as an information junkie I LOVE this. I love getting news reports from all over the world. I love seeing who is retweeting the same link. I love being constantly inundated with all of this data because it forces me to put my brain to work. I’m a nerd and I am infinitely fascinated by information systems and Twitter is a fantastic way to analyze a veritable universe of systems. We can track the passage of ideas in a way never before possible.

Well, in theory we’re tracking ideas and to lesser or greater extremes we’re junkies for them. Let’s call ideas ‘heroin’ for this example. Pure heroin is often described as unadulterated bliss by users and pure heroin does very little acute damage to the body.  There is always a risk of overdose and managing your right dose is a tricky thing because your dose changes in relation to your relative use. When I first logged onto the world wide web with a baud modem it took forever for even a single picture to load but that was exciting. Today I get frustrated if it takes longer than a few seconds for an entire video to play on my computer. The biggest problem that heroin users face is not the presence of the heroin, per se, but the presence of all the shit that gets put into it. No one really has access to pure heroin, they’re using what we call “black tar” or at best “brown sugar.” It isn’t the heroin itself that destroys veins and creates painful abscesses and track marks; it’s the needle itself scarring the tissue mixed with the huge number of caustic additives. Heroin in a slightly different form is known as morphine or Vicodin or any other opiate/opioid and it has very legitimate medical uses.

In other words, Twitter would be utterly fantastic if it weren’t for the fact that not one single person is every really accessing pure ideas on Twitter. Most of the time we are creating and receiving “black tar ideas.” We put in all kinds of additives that create major problems and distractions. We’re trying to reduce something bigger than language itself into only 140 characters and we have problems as a result but these problems for the most part do not outweigh our need.

Twitter is portable and immediate. It’s a soap box to share anything with an unlimited number of people. It’s an indelible tool for activism and revolution. It’s a message in a bottle that can double as an intellectual Molotov cocktail. Hacktivism and digital activism are now firmly embedded as a legitimate way to get something done.  Despite the fact that we may complain about individual brands of social media, we do know one thing: it works.

In the days before the technology, we only saw celebrities when they were consciously producing media for us. Instant technology and social media platforms have pulled the rug out of the notion that you are in any real control of your image whatsoever even with the very best public relations team that money can buy. People feel entitledto images of celebrities in private spaces (if they wanted privacy they never should have tried to chase their dreams and become successful, right?) and the more images there are the greater that entitlement becomes. We say things to public figures that we would never say to someone we considered to be another human being on this planet.

To clarify, I’m not opening a charity for rich celebrities any time soon. I’m just pointing out that human beings all have the expectation of being received as human beings and when we aren’t it makes us feel anxious (to say the least). Some people are marginalized literally to their graves. Other people are marginalized by the fact that they can’t escape the flashbulbs or the person in the corner recording them. Mainstream celebrities are paranoid about that kind of thing and for good reason. A lot of the strange tics we see in “celebrities gone crazy” are desperate attempts to return to some kind of sanity where worrying that the cashier at the coffee shop is going to run to the tabloids to tell them all about the fact that you used a credit card for a $3 purchase as if that indicates that you were a deliberate asshole rather than someone who needed coffee before they got to the ATM. We use constant surveillance as a way to torture people because it works.

Celebrity is an invented concept and one that does not come with a handbook as all-around awesome intellectual and humorist Stephen Fry discovered in 2009 on Twitter during what was deemed “Frygate.” Here are some of the screen caps of what happened:

This is hardly a call for someone’s death and it’s just another person on Twitter sharing their opinion like the rest of us. Rather than being received by Stephen Fry (in public persona mode) it was heard by Stephen Fry, the person. Like any other person he had the capacity to feel hurt by a statement that was clearly not intended to cause a breakdown in another person. It anything, @brumplum probably forgot that he was addressing his comment to a person rather than a public persona and moreover he probably did not expect to be heard or noticed. Well, he was.

Stephen Fry has his own personal context and life. He has spoken openly about his mental health struggles. Stress alone is enough to derail you from your own brand of logical thinking and his health has the potential to exaggerate that. He took a minor criticism as evidence that no one liked him tweeting and that he should abandon the attempt. Thing of it is, a lot of people LOVE his tweets and anyone who created enough harm to him that he might discontinue entertaining people in this fashion and it was received by his followers as a declaration of war without any real prompting or request.

Whenever we make shit up and think it’s real, the shit will hit the fan and it did. Stephen Fry, understandably, felt hurt. He used the communication device at his fingertips to express that pain which always seems perfectly rational at the time. In his pain, he forgot just how many people really listen to every single thing that he says and that at the end of the day people really do like him and don’t want to see him experience that pain. Forgetting that the person who made the initial criticism was also another human being with feelings, the hordes decided to defend Stephen Fry viciously. This is what is known as blowing things out of proportion and the maelstrom that just one tweet created is a fascinating innovation of our times.

Ultimately, Stephen Fry decided to stay on Twitter for the very same reasons that he kept writing, that he kept speaking, that he kept telling us what was funny. To say that he is a weak person is so ridiculous it’s laughable. We have clearly objective and factual evidence that indicates that he’s the kind of guy who gets hurt sometimes and then keeps on going. Emerging from the sadness that sometimes catches up with us all, he realized that things had gotten quite out of hand and used his Twitter consciously to try to set things back in place. Public figures do have to use Twitter differently because of the insane fixation that people develop on media sanctioned celebrities. Although we claim that we want to know the real person inside the celebrity shell we are not prepared to the consequences of that knowledge.

As a whole, we are rarely prepared to acknowledge the humanity of the people around us or our own personal power.

I write this because I’m re-thinking the way that I use Twitter. I say this because I’ve accidentally hurt people by saying something as simple as “what the fuck?” because I thought I was conveying a mixture of confusion and frustration and they thought that it was a hostile attack. I say, “what the fuck?” roughly 1 million times a day. I say it to inanimate objects, I say it to the media, I say it to friends in a good natured way all the time but on Twitter that phrase is mostly useless. I absolutely have the right to say “what the fuck?” as many times as I want on Twitter but what is it actually getting me? I know that I rarely, if ever, use “what the fuck?” in anger. I feel angry when I have an idea of what is going on I use “what the fuck?” when I don’t. It doesn’t matter how well I know what I mean. It matters how well the people around me know.

I’m still acclimating to my technology. Sometimes I’m not even sure I can ever acclimate to any of it. I do know that it is my goal to mean what I say and sometimes that just doesn’t happen on Twitter even though I think it’s a goddamn amazing tool that I’m grateful to have in my life. Sometimes I lack humility before the things that we have created. I’ve had times on Twitter where I was at the center of a maelstrom of misinterpretation and the only thing that saved me was my relatively low Twitter account. As more of you add me to your Twitter feeds the more conscious I become of the fact that one misfired comment can get out of control in just a few hours. I’m learning slowly how to be distinguish between self-censorship and self-awareness. The punishment should fit the crime and the message should fit the medium.

I’m still going to fuck it up from time to time and I’m counting on you to let me know when. I do put all of my available resources into hearing what it is you’re trying to tell me. Like any other human I sometimes find that all of my available resources have been directed elsewhere like my fucking coffee bean grinder that wouldn’t grind my coffee beans leaving me without coffee at all. Learn from my mistakes: coffee first, twitter later.

Paul Harfleet; Istanbul; Seen Mag

“Protecting the rights of minority groups, wherever they may be, is a shared responsibility for all. Prejudice and discrimination are destructive to societies and individuals – tolerance may be more challenging, but it is ultimately more rewarding.”

“LGBT visibility and our right to live without attack or abuse are an integral part of the seamless garment of human rights and is one that all of our partners are committed to achieving, especially in times of uncertainty and insecurity.

“In a country like Turkey, where prominent politicians find it acceptable to call homosexuality an offence and immoral on the TV and radio, and where many LGBT people still don’t feel able to come out or be accepted this project is an important and a timely reminder of why such work is vital.”

Find out more about the Pansy Project

Introducing the Netflix Pride Flag. With more than sixteen million subscribers welcoming all kinds of abuse and paying for it, Netflix’s customer base has become the largest organized fetish group in North America. A group this large, dedicated, and submissive deserves a symbol.

If you are one of the millions who pay Netflix for continued abuses like throttling, artificial new release delays, mysterious billing errors, dismissive customer service, unjustified fee increases, etc., please display this flag with pride, and let everyone know about your tougher-than-leather, undying love for Netflix. Because, sometimes, love hurts. -Netflix Underground

 

Also:

“Small amounts” might be a slight understatement here.  If you are on the two-out plan, you are going to take a hit of just over 7% on your monthly subscription fee.  If you are on a three-out plan, however, your prices are going up nearly 18%.  In how many areas of your personal finances would you be willing to accept an 18% increase to a luxury expense?

So, if you remain a Netflix subscriber, you will soon be paying more for the same level of service or worse. Are you going to cancel your service, or will you just take the abuse?

Aww, c’mon.  We all know you’re going to submit and take the new abuse. Much like Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary, you masochists just can’t get enough of your cruel red lover. Hey, when you create a new account with Netflix these days, do they make you select a safety word in case things get a little too rough? -Netflix Underground

See, here I was thinking that I just like to have alternative consensual sex with partners that I self-select and trust but all along I was really just engaging in secret $5 netflix fee roleplay with my partners. Thanks for clearing that up with your apt metaphor, Netflix Underground.

Thing is, it can be easy to forget that dungeon parties and SM websites and commercial store fronts didn’t just pop up on their own out of destiny. I think it is important to remember a historical context for the fun side of whips and chains. No, Netflix shouldn’t be an asshole about your privacy in regards to your rental choices. Making use of a pride flag and its context indicates a lack of awareness of why people made that flag. Not a censorship moment; a desire for more people to hear stories . Publicly advertised play parties are the inheritance of activism. Keep it in mind and keep it up.

For those of you wondering, you shouldn’t have to think twice. Of course I love slapping as much as I love the occasional well-timed slap.

This not a story about the horrors of abortion.

This is a story about how in one of the richest countries in the world we turn our backs on the poor. This is a story about what happens when people do not have access to safe affordable healthcare. This is what happens when violations can go ignored, where people can slip through a system designed to protect them.

This is a very graphic post and may be triggering to some people. It is the epitome of horror. There is no other word to describe what happened.

We’re in America and yet there are people who do not and cannot receive adequate medical care. Aside from the sheer cost, the spectrum of medical services available in low income neighborhoods are often quite sparse. Far too few people will open up a practice in neighborhoods with high crime rates either because they feel unsafe or because these clinics are rarely able to remain open and profitable. Without health insurance to rely on many people simply cannot afford to access anything better. There are many storefront medical practices in the places we call, “the wrong side of the tracks.” They usually look pretty questionable from the outside and those who venture inside will also notice more than a few health code violations and slippery ethics. Sometimes they are dentists, sometimes they are pediatricians, sometimes they are just general practice clinics. Women’s health services and abortion providers are even more scarce. The hurdles to open a clinic are steep. Some of these hurdles are deliberately designed to make it so difficult to open a clinic or obtain services. Abortion providers must also content with protesters who harass, threaten, and intimidate clinic staff and clients. It is not unusual for family planning clinics to have metal detectors and armed private guards for the safety of everyone inside the buildings.

Abortion is still technically legal in the United States. This does not mean that all people have access to abortion. It is in many cases de facto illegal. A lack of resources does not reduce the need for these services and unscrupulous people are more than willing to take the opportunity to profit. It’s amazing how much money you can make off of people when they have no other option.

Here’s the description of Kermit Gosnell’s clinic from the December 2010 raid:

The clinic reeked of animal urine, courtesy of the cats that were allowed to roam (and defecate) freely.  Furniture and blankets were stained with blood.  Instruments were not properly sterilized.  Disposable medical supplies were not disposed of; they were reused, over and over again.  Medical equipment – such as the defibrillator, the EKG, the pulse oximeter, the blood pressure cuff – was generally broken; even when it worked, it wasn’t used.  The emergency exit was padlocked shut.  And scattered throughout, in cabinets, in the basement, in a freezer, in jars and bags and plastic jugs, were fetal remains. (Grand Jury Report; page 2.)

If you’re looking for any more damning evidence that Kermit Gosnell was not in business to provide healthcare to people, there is also this charming bit of information:

The people who ran this sham medical practice included no doctors other than Gosnell himself, and not even a single nurse.  Two of his employees had been to medical school, but neither of them were licensed physicians.  They just pretended to be.  Everyone called them “Doctor,” even though they, and Gosnell, knew they weren’t.  Among the rest of the staff, there was no one with any medical licensing or relevant certification at all.  But that didn’t stop them from making diagnoses, performing procedures, administering drugs.  Because the real business of the “Women’s Medical Society” was not health; it was profit.  There were two primary parts to the operation.  By day it was a prescription mill; by night an abortion mill.  A constant stream of “patients” came through during business hours and, for the proper payment, left with scripts for Oxycontin and other controlled substances, for themselves and their friends.  Gosnell didn’t see these “patients”; he didn’t even show up at the office during the day.  He just left behind blank, pre-signed prescription pads, and had his unskilled, unauthorized workers take care of the rest.  The fake prescriptions brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.  But this drug-selling operation is the subject of separate investigation by federal authorities.

With abortion, as with prescriptions, Gosnell’s approach was simple: keep volume high, expenses low – and break the law.  That was his competitive edge. (GJR; pgs 2-3.)

The conditions of Kermit Gosnell’s clinic were dangerous to women. So dangerous, in fact, that a woman did die of Demerol overdose administered by an untrained and unlicensed employee of the clinic. She was an immigrant from Nepal who had been in America for just a few months after arriving here from a refugee camp. As she is deceased, she cannot speak for herself. Her family required Nepali translators to testify in court as they spoke little or no English at all. It is doubtful that this woman did give truly informed consent. In fact despite the fact that many, many, many files that should have been in the clinic were missing (employees stated that he stored some of the more ‘controversial’ files at home), those that were seized were often incomplete, contained fraudulent information, or lacked a signed consent form for the procedures.

The grand jury report also explicitly cites pro-choice politics as one of the reasons that these conditions persisted for more than 15 years at least. Perhaps this argument might (might) hold water except that there had been numerous complaints and lawsuits about his practice. In fact, even the report of the death of Karnamaya Mongar after a routine abortion had not been investigated at all. This son-of-a-bitch got caught when his clinic was raided for drug charges from his prescription narcotic mill. If it had not been for an investigation into controlled substances, these violations and deaths would have gone unnoticed. City Department of Health officials have lawyered up about their complete lack of response to any of the formal complaints, 46 lawsuits, or the very suspicious death that had been reported to them. It wasn’t just the City Department of Health that failed, it was also the State Department as well. They too had received numerous formal complaints and requests for an investigation.

Almost a decade ago, a former employee of Gosnell presented the Board of Medicine with a complaint that laid out the whole scope of his operation: the unclean, unsterile conditions; the unlicensed workers; the unsupervised sedation; the underage abortion patients; even the over-prescribing of pain pills with high resale value on the street.  The department assigned an investigator, whose investigation consisted primarily of an offsite interview with Gosnell.  The investigator never inspected the facility, questioned other employees, or reviewed any records.  Department attorneys chose to accept this incomplete investigation, and dismissed the complaint as unconfirmed. (GJR; pgs 10-11)

Here are some stunning examples of the complaints lodged against Kermit Gosnell:

One woman, for example, was left lying in place for hours after Gosnell tore her cervix and colon while trying, unsuccessfully, to extract the fetus.  Relatives who came to pick her up were refused entry into the building; they had to threaten to call the police.  They eventually found her inside, bleeding and incoherent, and transported her to the hospital, where doctors had to remove almost half a foot of her intestines.

On another occasion, Gosnell simply sent a patient home, after keeping her mother waiting for hours, without telling either of them that she still had fetal parts inside her.  Gosnell insisted she was fine, even after signs of serious infection set in over the next several days.  By the time her mother got her to the emergency room, she was unconscious and near death.

A nineteen-year-old girl was held for several hours after Gosnell punctured her uterus.  As a result of the delay, she fell into shock from blood loss, and had to undergo a hysterectomy.

One patient went into convulsions during an abortion, fell off the procedure table, and hit her head on the floor.  Gosnell wouldn’t call an ambulance, and wouldn’t let the woman’s companion leave the building so that he could call an ambulance. (GJR; pg 6.)

Not all of Gosnell’s patients were treated in such a manner. “Only in one class of cases did Gosnell exercise any real care with these dangerous sedatives.  On those rare occasions when the patient was a white woman from the suburbs, Gosnell insisted that he be consulted at every step.  When an employee asked him why, he said it was ‘the way of the world.’” (GJR, pg 7.)

A further indication of the state’s prejudice against abortion care can be found in another report that was in the hand’s of the State Department.

“A woman, years before Karnamaya Mongar [the victim of the Demerol overdose]…died of sepsis after Gosnell perforated her uterus.  The woman was 22 years old.  A civil suit against Gosnell was settled for almost a million dollars, and the insurance company forwarded the information to the department.  That report should have been all the confirmation needed for the complaint from the former employee that was already in the department’s possession.  Instead, the department attorneys dismissed this complaint too.  They concluded that death was just an “inherent” risk, not something that should jeopardize a doctor’s medical license.” (GJR; pg 11.)

There had been numerous lawsuits against Gosnell from women whose internal organs had been punctured. The State Department never investigated these claims and they never checked the national litigation database. They concluded that there had been no pattern of wrong doing. The Grand Jury Report does note that there is a bit of a pattern here. Not one of these lawsuits or complaints had any media coverage whatsoever and the victims were all people of color from low income backgrounds.

The Grand Jury Report actually goes on for many more pages describing just how much knowledge the city, county, and state had about Kermit Gosnell. In fact, multiple city DPH workers who visited his clinic to pickup blood samples for testing observed fetal remains in the employee food refrigerator and the 30 jars containing the severed feet of fetuses scattered throughout the clinic. These employees did file formal reports of these observations. Everything had been ignored. “The agency’s head lawyer, chief counsel Christine Dutton, defended the department’s indifference: “People die,” she said.” (GJR; pg 15.)

Kermit Gosnell not only took advantage of his patients, he exploited his employees whenever possible. The 15 year old high school student he hired to perform administrative tasks and assist in patient care was forced to work 50 hour weeks (GJR; pgs 14-15.) He pay rate was low, when he actually paid his workers. He often required that they work “volunteer shifts” at the clinic where only their gas fare was compensated. One employee stated in the case presentment, “For 15 hours a week, sometimes he give me 200 every couple of weeks and sometimes 200 a month. Sometimes 400 every two months.” Gosnell paid in cash. (Presentment; pg 48.)

Here is a description of the raid on Kermit Gosnell’s clinic and home:

There was blood on the floor. A stench of urine filled the air. A flea-infested cat was wandering through the facility, and there were cat feces on the stairs. Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets.

All the women had been sedated by unlicensed staff – long before Gosnell arrived at the clinic – and staff members could not accurately state what medications or dosages they had administered to the waiting patients. Many of the medications in inventory were past their expiration dates.

Investigators found the clinic grossly unsuitable as a surgical facility. The two surgical procedure rooms were filthy and unsanitary – Agent Dougherty described them as resembling “a bad gas station restroom.” Instruments were not sterile. Equipment was rusty and outdated. Oxygen equipment was covered with dust, and had not been inspected. The same corroded suction tubing used for abortions was the only tubing available for oral airways if assistance for breathing was needed. There was no functioning resuscitation or even monitoring equipment, except for a single blood pressure cuff in the recovery room.

Ambulances were summoned to pick up the waiting patients, but (just as on the night Mrs. Mongar died three months earlier), no one, not even Gosnell, knew where the keys were to open the emergency exit. Emergency personnel had to use bolt cutters to remove the lock. They discovered they could not maneuver stretchers through the building’s narrow hallways to reach the patients (just as emergency personnel had been obstructed from reaching Mrs. Mongar).

The search team discovered fetal remains haphazardly stored throughout the clinic – in bags, milk jugs, orange juice cartons, and even in cat-food containers. Some fetal remains were in a refrigerator, others were frozen. Gosnell admitted to Detective Wood that at least 10 to 20 percent of the fetuses were probably older than 24 weeks in gestation – even though Pennsylvania law prohibits abortions after 24 weeks. In some instances, surgical incisions had been made at the base of the fetal skulls.

The investigators found a row of jars containing just the severed feet of fetuses. In the basement, they discovered medical waste piled high. The intact 19-week fetus delivered by Mrs. Mongar three months earlier was in a freezer. In all, the remains of 45 fetuses were recovered at the clinic that evening and turned over to the Philadelphia medical examiner, who confirmed that at least two of them, and probably three, had been viable.

A simultaneous search of Gosnell’s house found patient files that he had taken from the clinic. In a filing cabinet in his 12-year-old daughter’s closet, they found $240,000 in cash and a gun. (GJR; pgs 20-22.)

This is the work of a sociopath who was continuously allowed to carry on with his practice. Investigator’s have estimated that Gosnell was making roughly $10,000-$15,000 each night (mostly in cash) from abortion services alone. This number does not include what he made as, “top Oxycontin prescribers in the state.” (GJR; pg 23.)

I realize that I have essentially just been rehashing this report. It is reprehensible that the city, the county, and the state all allowed this to continue. Every time we push a family planning clinic out of a neighborhood, we could be allowing someone like Kermit Gosnell to move-in. Every time we make cuts to sponsored healthcare, we could be allowing someone like Kermit Gosnell to move-in. This is why we need to make drastic changes to health care. This is why we need to fight to keep abortion safe and legal. We can’t allow something like this to happen ever again and what saddens me so much is that there are undoubtedly more stories like this one out there. There are more reports and complaints lost in the system. A horror show like this does not exist in a vacuum.

But what does virginity really mean?

Even in our modern world, women are being murdered because of their perceived “lack” of virginity. In the US, purity balls are hosted where a girl’s father (or another male guardian or patriarch) is named the protector of her virtue/virginity until the day she marries when that control is passed on to her husband. Women are judged negatively for having “too many” sexual partners regardless of health, consent, or desire. A woman’s worth, value, and integrity can’t not be measured by her vagina.

Before I go any further, I want to add that we are allowed to make our own choices about our bodies. This is not about whether or not someone “should” do something in private or not. I am not here to judge fantasies or desires. It takes a lot of chutzpah to organize something like this and I hope that the evening of January 15th is everything that Ms. Blue wants it to be. I can also speak to the respect I have for the 3 main male performers who will be participating. There is a lot of excitement and energy that surrounds sharing a first with someone whether that is the first time you engage in bondage, S&M, use a sex toy, eat at a new restaurant, travel to a new country, hike on an unexplored trail, etc. Hell, the internet is exciting because it exposes us to all kinds of new data. New information and experiences are deeply compelling. I have no issues with a declaration of independence and bodily autonomy. I do not take issue with Ms. Blue’s fantasy and desire to have vaginal sex for the first time on camera. I do not take issue with the fact that it can be incredibly hot and sexy to watch someone have vaginal sex for the first time. I do sincerely hope that it is a rewarding experience for everyone because I am a big cheerleader for all forms of consensual activity whether or not I enjoy them myself. My life has been dedicated to fighting for that very thing.

I do have issues with press releases that perpetuate dangerous myths.

“Prior to the event, a trained expert will insert Kink.com’s official hymen-cam to validate that Blue’s hymen is still in place and that she is a true virgin. Once her hymen is confirmed, the evening will proceed, the company said.”

• Myth #1: A woman’s “virginity” can be determined by the presence of absence of a hymen.

Contrary to popular belief, the vagina is not “sealed for freshness” with an iron hymen. It isn’t brittle, it does have openings, and the vaginal corona looks and feels different for each woman. For those of you unfamiliar with the term “vaginal corona” please allow me to back up. The term “hymen” is not actually a biologically sound term because it implies a solid piece of tissue that ruptures or breaks upon penetration. This is not the case. A “corona” is much more accurate for the mucous tissue just inside the vagina. Some women do have thicker and stronger coronas that may require medical intervention to help reduce pain in penetration whether that is for sex or for menstruation. Some women have very small, thin, and nearly transparent tissues that never causes them any pain or problems. Like every other part of our body, it is unique to us. The presence or absence of a “hymen” does not indicate virginity. To learn more, check out this helpful information here.

First time penetration may be painful for some women. Sometimes it is because she may be nervous and tense which certainly won’t help make penetration any more comfortable. Our bodies aren’t always as intuitive as perhaps they should be. It takes some time and practice to know when your body is ready to accept something inside of it. Many women, regardless of their number of partners, still appreciate having their vagina warmed up with lots of foreplay and the gradual introduction of foreign objects starting small (like a single finger or small toy) and gradually working their way up in size as they feel comfortable. Additionally, most women will not bleed the first time they have intercourse. The presence of blood indicates that it is definitely time to check in with your partner (whether it is their first or thousandth time having sex) and slow things down a bit.

• Myth #2: A woman’s “virginity” is defined by whether or not a penis has entered her vagina.

We put a lot of weight into penis-in-vagina sex but there are unlimited ways to have sex. Oral sex is a sexual activity. Anal sex is a sexual activity. Dry humping is a sexual activity. For some people, hair washing is a sexual activity. What about BDSM play? Is it sex if no one has an orgasm? Is it sex if there isn’t an erection? There are a lot of ways that we fuck and a penis has never been the bottom line. If there is any website that has demonstrated that, it is Kink.Com where sometimes people have orgasms from caning, whipping, or bondage. There are lesbian gang bangs. There are times when merely watching something is enough to bring you over the edge. Websites dedicated to alternative sex are a reminder that there are no set rules about what sex really is or can be.

Reiterating the notion that virginity is defined by whether or not a penis has entered a vagina has dangerous implications because it is so very closely related to the idea that virginity will keep you safe from sexually transmitted infections or the emotions that can arise from engaging in sex. The language that we use around sex has real world implications and yes, semantics do count especially when people’s lives are literally on the line.

• Myth #3: “Virgins” are better for sex because they’re tighter.

The vagina is an amazing part of the body. It is important to distinguish between the muscles of the pelvic floor and the vagina itself. Much like the penis, the vagina has a flaccid and an aroused state. When the brain starts to feel aroused it sends messages down to the vagina encouraging it to open, lengthen, lubricate, and widen. It will actually lengthen by several inches and there will be an increased blood flow to the area which will also increase its sensitivity. The idea that “men are from Mars and women are from Venus” is silly when you take into account that we posses very homologous genital tissues. An unaroused vagina is incredibly tight, so much so that it can hold a tiny tampon in place without falling to the ground. “Tight” though it may be, it isn’t actually prepared to accommodate the rigors of penetrative sex. This process has absolutely nothing to do with “virginity.”

Image courtesy of WikiCommons. Unaroused vulva on the left, aroused vulva on the right.

The vagina is surrounded by the muscles of the pelvic floor. These muscles do have a lot of power in regards to our sexual functioning and ability to regulate our bladder and bowels. Exercising the pubococcygeus (also known as the PC muscle) will help “tighten” the vagina and give women more control over their pelvic floor muscles in general. The added benefit? The vagina will still swell, expand, and widen to comfortably (and pleasurably!) accommodate penetration and the orgasmic contractions may become more intense. These exercises are known as  kegels and  male bodied people can reap their benefits as well.

In other words, sex with a virgin can be a totally hot turn-on or fantasy but it has far less to do with muscle tightness than most people believe.

I find the marketing and publicity around this shoot to be the issue at hand. To decide that you want to engage in any particular sex act for the first time in a way that you will find really enjoyable is sex positive. There is no inherent exploitation involved in filming it and for some of us that just adds to the experience. When I read, “We strive each and every day to bring the best possible content to our customers and sacrificing Nikki’s innocence is in perfect alignment with what our fans expect and deserve,” I feel that the sex positive message is lost. That same sentence also reminds us that commercial value is of a much higher importance than sex positivity. For most porn sites that comes as no surprise. The only reason that a lot of people are speaking up about this has to do with the expressed mission statement to, “…demystify and celebrate alternative sexualities by providing the most ethical and authentic kinky adult entertainment.” In this case, sexuality is not being demystified; it is being further obscured. It does not celebrate alternative sexualities because it so very deeply phallocentric and heteronormative.

Again, I cannot say it enough: I support Nicki Blue in what she wants to do. It is 100% her choice to make and no one has the right to say that she should or shouldn’t do go forward with her plan. I do not think poorly of any of the other performers on the set, either, because it is an honor to have someone request your presence at their first time doing anything. A request like that indicates trust and comfort and it is an honor when someone entrusts you to be a part of something that you’ve never done before. I am not worried about Nicki Blue. I know that she is in very good and capable hands on set. It’s the rest of us that I’m worried about when the packaging of the shoot includes blatant misinformation.

Kink.Com has the right to say whatever they want about their content.  I am experiencing disappointment by their unwillingness to rise to the occasion. A press release is, by its very nature, designed to spark interest and by that standard is was inordinately effective. Buzz words were selected with deliberation and it is true that if you want to sell a product, the press release may not be the best place to do so. However, when I look at the pride flags waving in the wind from the rooftop of the armory I have to wonder if they match the words in those press releases.  They are in possession of numerous outlets to dispel dangerous and sex negative mythology and they have done so numerous times in the past. It isn’t too late for Kink.Com to address these issues head on and I hope that they will. Kink.Com has influenced and inspired so many people over the years and I do hope that they remember their ability to affect real change even when it doesn’t directly increase the profit margin.

The first line of commentary about this track read, “This song was composed as a dedication to my devoted Slave and Lover who deserves all the praise of the world for her beauty, intelligence, strength and wit.” It’s no wonder that he wrote something special for his own personal something special. Apparently she is a part of the show and the theatrics that help set a creative and sexy mood. If you’re out in the Dallas area, it might be worth checking them out. Like me, you may not be super into all of the tunes (really good jazz is what gets my blood flowing, personally) but you do know that this is a crowd that won’t think twice about your fetish attire and what kind of sex you really want in the bathroom of the club. (This is what we refer to as Wednesday night in San Francisco.)

What I really, really want? I want to make some music videos with Frausun. I have a dermal stapler and I would love to show it to you. I wonder what kind of music we could make if we started plucking strings stapled into someone’s back…