March 12, 2012

A Brief Layover Between Here And Infinity

I stopped to stare at a budding fern, rolled into coils of tense potential energy ready to spring outward. I find these fractals of green so captivating that I am certain they must resemble the neural networks of my brain through some lens we have yet to fully construct. I know there’s some truth to be found inside it, so I keep watching this fern in the husky air of this tiny patch of forest in this tiny sprawling valley in this little spot I know, somewhere between here and everywhere, that I like to go.

When I get out and away from everything busy, I try to suck it all in by stopping at vistas to close my eyes and breathe to know it. The environmental transitions on the hike are hazy, luminous, and often radical. The nature shapes the path and the path shapes nature. There are times when it feels combatively narrow and terribly unsteady and shows the sheer persistence of all the animals like me who just went there anyway. Mostly it is the path of least resistance or the best access to the resources and it just feels like a natural journey carved by the landscape that we happen to follow as creatures on a ride. This is why it’s vital to stop and know it by the sounds and feel with your eyes shut and you whole mind open. When you’ve been walking so long that your legs tire, it can be impossible to know if the hills are getting higher or if the valleys are getting lower. It’s like being so underwater you aren’t rightly sure which direction leads to the surface.

On this walk, it was the ferns I saw among the different contexts and conditions that draw forth the diversity of speciation. There are so many varieties of these botanical cephalopods, such a sprawl of greens and curls that seem to conclude solely due to a lack of resources rather than any kind of formal aesthetic completion. They reek of endless potential and flying spores and kinetic energy in the coils. They’re always moving; you can almost hear it like a faraway echo in a shell, the slightest vibration of motion, the constant spritzes of freshness being unveiled.

This fern is pristine and crisp. It’s barely been out of the warmth of the soil but it’s raring to unfold upward and outward and what a grand place to grow indeed. It has everything a fern really needs to thrive. The valley captures the sunlight and it seems to tumble down like a shower between the leaves of the canopy above. The ground is covered in soft redwood bark that looks and feels like warm fur because the earth just soaks the sunlight up all day and holds onto it. Those leaves are all busy doing strange light alchemy but the ground just basks in it all. It’s nice to stand in the moment and remind myself that I’m not surrounded by things, but processes of life all dancing with the light.

It’s a rich, warm, wet spot in the forest today and I would much rather wear that than the fabric on my back. How can I get to know this moment better wearing all of these clothes? I’m just another part of this ecosystem and I’ve been expected.  Right here, right now is a beautiful place to sprout and so, I do. I peel of clothing, socks, and finally my boots casting them off to the side where I can pick them up again when the the situation changes.

Crouching low on the ground, my skin twitches at the shock of the sudden transition. I close my eyes and feel each place where a tiny ray of light touches my skin and I follow the path of warmness. At first I can hold onto one for a short distance but before long I can hold the strings of sunlight on my skin like chords and follow their voyage everywhere in my body, even my eyelids and between my toes. When I open my eyes again, I can twice as many shades of green, then three times as many. If I keep observing they may never stop coming and spreading out into all directions and planes. My eyes are dilating with the pleasure of the moment and the safety of the soft light. Sleepy nerves throughout my body start to rouse and lift outward. It feels vaguely prickly as the first wave of nerves flicker on and rush forward but then it evens as everything thickens and warms and rushes from my inside to talk to my outside.

It’s easy for everything to get in right now. My breaths become deeper and longer and the warm flush begins; my pores open up and lubricate with sweat, my thighs start to widen, my cunt begins to swell and open and drip. My muscles begin to loosen and before long my bare ass brushes against the soil. I bounce lightly as my muscles continue to warm and stretch and soon I am flexible enough to brush my bush onto the earth. I continue with the motion and can feel the sensation of individual hairs on individual grains. After more swelling and warming and soft vibrations of loosening muscles, my raw open cunt dips down to kiss the soil and I cannot help but grind.

Me, the earth, you, and the universe too: here I am opening up to you. I roll onto my belly and arch my back as far as it can go, until my breasts fall back toward my throat and the tops of my feet and ankles are pressed flat into the dirt. The more I can arch and the longer I can hold that tension, the easier it is for everything around me to fuck every hole in my body; my pores, ducts, ears, nostrils, tastebuds, and other places of in-and-out traffic. The pose starts burn, a shake sets into my body, and I want to stay here and let it overwhelm me. There is mud on my asshole and so what if all of this really does amount to some hippie chick in the woods bullshit? Because this thing, whatever it is, happens all of the time out here and it feels so good that every cell inside me is stepping forward and back to satisfy its own thirst for this kind of pleasure.

That’s when I start to howl and nothing near me is startled or even moved by my spasmodic display that makes me roll forward like a cresting wave as those electric pops fire off down my spine and out into everywhere. Every noise I make echoes off the mountain walls and bounces from the tree trunks and even runs through the spirals of the fractal ferns by my side but nature does not flinch. All the world’s an orgasm and this is my contribution. It has me gyrating and smothering the ground with my breasts and pointed nipples.I am hot and sore and sweaty; that’s when the breeze comes and knocks the morning fog of the branches and leaves above in a fine mist with a crystal sheen.

After awhile I, I rise from the ground and walk to the stream. It’s not until the water hits my ankles that I realize I had never been here before but knew exactly where to go because everything around me said that it was so, and I followed.

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February 10, 2012

Sex Week 2012 & Occupy New Haven

My dear internet travelers,

This blog post comes to you from New Haven, CT and more precisely, Yale University where I have been invited to speak at Sex Week 2012. Tomorrow afternoon, I will be a part of a round table panel with Professor Gail Dines and Professor Carolyn Bronstein and then I will be speaking with students about sex, sex on camera, and the porn industry in a dialogue moderated by Cindy Gallop.

It’s an incredible honor for me to speak here. I am a smut peddler which is low culture at its finest and here I am in the hallowed halls of the prestigious Yale University Campus. Apparently, my presence here is somewhat controversial as is Sex Week, itself. Reading the news coverage reveals the paradigm of “porn star” at work in the American imagination.

Maybe, just maybe, those who oppose my presence here have a reasonable reason to be concerned but not for the reasons they have articulated. There’s something dangerous about letting someone who has chosen a counter-cultural occupation in a stigmatized profession speak before young people who have lived within a distinguished institutional incubator on the political intersections of pleasure, labor, revolution, and autonomy. A whore with a library card has the potential to be a rhetorical assassin in the intellectual arena.

When you have been repeatedly dehumanized to your face, you start to cultivate a steely reserve that exceeds your nerves. What can anyone say that I have not heard or read in my inbox already? That I should be raped to death, brainwashed by the patriarchy, that I am in-human, that I am a traitor to feminism, that I am deluded, that I am a fucking stupid cunt? It’s the redundancy of these phrases that grates less than the punch that the prose emits.

I am the fearsome porn star. Rather than copulating my way across the campus, I have gone on something of a journey throughout the streets of this town and it’s co-dependent relationship on the exclusive institution in its midst that might possibly own more land than the city.

You see, sex is one manifestation of the tightly controlled madness in my brain. I have always followed the beat of my own drum, always on the outskirts of my cultures and communities, large and small. I don’t know what I’m looking for as I wander these streets as a veritable tourist but somehow I always manage to find at least one thing I was looking for without the conscious awareness that I was seeking it.

As I walked the streets, I noticed a striking number of video surveillance cameras. It was just a side observation and I began to snap cellphone pictures as I walked to help tally them up. Well, there may perhaps have been the knee jerk reactionary desire to take pictures of those taking pictures of me. Regardless, there I was snapping pictures of the video surveillance outside of a retail front office for a city district manager who was very curious about the pictures I was taking before inviting me into his office. There, he delivered a diatribe on how notions of a panopticon are just moronic liberal hogwash as well as his plans to get even more cameras onto the streets of New Haven.

Well, there you go.

My wanderings took me also to Occupy New Haven. As a resident of Oakland, CA I know firsthand how these camps have been received. Even as the weather is frigid and hypothermia is a legitimate risk of camping outdoors (especially when open flames of any kind of forbidden by law), the camp still stands and the protesters have a pretty reasonable relationship with the city and its police. Their greatest disruptions so far have come from students at the university. Erected on October 15, 2011 the camp is situated in between the city hall and a campus dormitory building, both of which look down upon the encampment in the park.

The punchline to this layout is the fact the city hall building of New Haven has a gorgeous and massive skylight that creates something just short of a literal glass ceiling. Looking down upon the city hall with a clear view into the building and its hallways and offices is Bank Of America.

Upon seeing the camp, the chill in the air hit me a little harder along with the reminder that the homeless lack even the minimal shelter of a tent to protect them from New England winter. There they are, holding the space, reminding people that their investment in cultivating change is serious. Although the number of campers has dwindled there is still a strong and consistent presence and individuals who have been there camping for 118 days without interruption.

What I love about the Occupy Movement is the easy access to political think tanks across the country. The culture shock of Yale has been striking to me. I did my undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz, home of the banana slugs, which is relatively well known for being a hippie school with a solid University of California accredited education. I take my experiences in education in a weird little town where the surf meets the forest for granted, sometimes. Not everyone read philosophy texts at the top of 60 foot redwood trees? Not everyone hiked 20 minutes through a forest between classes? Not everyone has a tradition of running naked at the first rain of the academic school year?

The prismatic walls of my liberal bubble have been shattered by the prevailing Yale culture. The Occupy camp here in New Haven has been my primary means of assuaging my homesickness and working on my long-range goals for systemic change as well. Here I am, talking smut with the heirs to America and tactical politics with a group of crusty protesters braving the freezing weather to speak up for what is right and ethical.

It’s liberating to sit with them. I came today with some bags of food containing fruit, bread, cheese, yogurt, and granola. Experience has taught me that most of the food donations to Occupy Camps tend to run along the lines of junk food which is certainly tasty but not always the best possible option. As I cracked open a sourdough baguette to pass and share with some goat cheese, several of my new acquaintances commented that they had never tasted goat cheese before.

The street outreach worker in me still lives. Although some people have homes in houses, experience has taught me that whether or not someone’s home has visible walls does not mean that you are any less a guest in that space. It is a long and international tradition to offer gifts of food as a sign of friendship and good faith when entering someone’s home. Sharing lunch turned into an opportunity to visit the New Haven City Hall for some research on resources, public meetings, and tax assessor maps. Having packed a wardrobe of largely “straight drag” items, I pulled my fancy notebook out and put my camera around my neck and followed behind to support their information seeking process.

Having someone who looks straight and makes it a point to confidentially and actively observe a situation with visible documentation tools changes the tone of a dialogue between a protester and a city official. The scandalous porn star invited to Yale somehow managed to slip into city hall and pass as someone legitimate based on presentation and accouterments alone. At no point did I lie, I just made it a point to sit back silently from the conversation and conspicuously take notes and maintain strong eye contact on the city officials at all times.

The conversation itself was immensely positive. As I said before, although there may be tensions with what many call crusty hippies the camp does not have a negative relationship with its occupiers and has been maintaining an open door for communication. The alderman that the occupiers spoke with demonstrated his skill as a politician when he worked quickly to find the common ground and establish rapport by discussing his local work around issues such as corporate personhood. He made it clear he was listening, he made it clear that he agreed that great changes to the political process should occur.

Finally, his curiosity broke and he inquired as to who I was. I was honest; I told him I was invited to speak at Yale for the Sex Week events and that I had been talking with the occupiers and was taking notes for my writing. Politicians, even the best that I’ve ever encountered, have some fairly consistent behavioral quirks. They are well practiced in their handshakes and eye contact and quite a bit of what they do to win your confidence is detailed in pick up artist manuals. They do everything they can to establish a connection so strong that the person they are speaking with really does feel heard and special.

I walked back to the camp and chatted with the occupier who instigated the 3 person field trip about how long he had been at the camp, what he was working on, and what his vision for action was. The occupiers I spoke with were all immensely warm and all in possession of a type of authenticity I do not see with most of the Yale students who seem to be consistently anxious and ill at ease with their abundance of un-embodied knowledge.

The other night I sat in a dorm room with many of the sex week organizers and shared stories and histories. Somehow in the cramped social space that had been designated as safe for off-the-record discourse about sexuality I could see some of them finally relax just a bit and begin to speak from their hearts. As the night wore on, their tone changed. There is a the palpable presence of pretension and privilege in a “Yalie,” but it is truly a facet of the institutional culture here. As their tone relaxed, I realized that mine was as well.

Even I had been making it a point to be strategic with words and topic matter in a way that revealed an acute anxiety about how people will judge me by the way I speak and the composition of my rhetoric. Is  it the Neo-Gothic architecture? The sheer number of churches and security cameras looking out and down and that people? Is it everything that you have to deny yourself in order to be a “Yalie” of distinction.

They wear more drag at Yale than they do in the gay bars of San Francisco and they don’t even know it.

Tomorrow, my dear internet friends, I undertake this crazy venture of contrasting the views of two women who possess infinitely more cultural capital than I in regards to scholarship in the arena of pornography. A student actually articulated the situation precisely when he said, “Tomorrow, they’re going to be able to get away with murder and you won’t. That’s just how it is and you have to be that good.” I guess that’s cost of admission if you have the audacity to fuck, think, and speak.

I don’t know what I can hope to accomplish tomorrow at the panel. I don’t know what people are willing to hear when I’m framed as a porn star rather than a curious stranger with infinite questions about the politics and philosophy of the spaces I enter. Perhaps I have so fervently pursued them because it may be more effective to have constant conversations in which I can show someone, at the very least, that I am capable of human thought and emotion and that I have come here of my own accord and on my own journey. I do not ask for the blessings of an institution but I do demand that my humanity be recognized.

I’m here less to be a groupie and more to look these young heirs to America square in the eye and show them that there are greater truths beyond their paradigm. It seems that I have had great successes on this front from my smaller dialogues and I will continue them so long as someone is there to listen, respond, and share their thoughts as well.

 

 

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January 31, 2012

On Rape Response

Since I have been the subject of a recent article about a fundraiser I hosted for a workshop that I give on sexual assault in sex centered communities, I thought I might write a bit about my mission statement around that workshop in particular.

For one, I am trying to get to the root of good faith and bad faith conflicts. As a trait found across human nature, we tend to attack easy victims. This goes for rape and this also goes for mob mentality. Let it not be said that I am a fan of lynch mobs. I am certainly a believer of self-defense. If you touch me sexually without permission, be prepared for an herbal refreshment of a caustic remedy I like to call pepper spray. That said, there is no feasible model I can conceive of for a community to retaliate in a formal and systemic manner without bias.

What I am looking at is very much the often cited Gift Of Fear by Gavin DeBecker. Often recommended to those concerned with being the victims of violence, it is also very much a book for bystanders that goes into why we so often have a very bad gut feeling about something we’ve observed but fail to act. I do not think that the BDSM community is exceptional but I do think it has unique barriers that faciliate assault and abuse that must be considered.

First and foremost, we have limited access to law enforcement and the judicial system. Those of us who have looked through assault and abuse trials have seen that even the most so-called perfect victim will go through the ringer. Most rapes aren’t prosecuted because they aren’t picked up by district attorneys and being someone in a sexual alternative community won’t do you any favors. Although we are working to improve conditions and they have gotten vastly better, we can at the least acknowledge that it’s easier to pick up the phone and call for help when you aren’t worried about whether or not you will be involuntarily committed into a psychiatric hold for being kinky or arrested yourself.

Secondly, shame is an isolating factor that facilitates abuse. Many people who are in a sexual minority may have a diminished number of social contacts to go to for help and support. So often we are advised to have our friends and families meet our partners but those rules change if you’re not in a traditional sexual arrangement. Being in the closet is a risk factor but not everyone is safe to come out. One of the major components that strengthens a community is looking out for those factors.

The fact that a lot of people are shit heads to sexual minorities is not the fault of any of these communities. Some would say I shouldn’t talk about the fact that yes, even here, there is a dark side lest the bad reputation get worse. A bad reputation won’t get better from a few human sacrifices in the name of silence. Recognizing that assault and abuse are exceedingly common in all communities including your local dungeon, YMCA, religious organization, knitting circle, and book club, or swing club and creating a system to respond to that is being pragmatic and realistic.

There’s more to responding to sexual assault than a mob with torches and pitchforks. There is also taking a look at the many dark corners we create and just how much it sucks when someone who does bad things to people is on your team.

Right now, I’m going through that feeling in San Francisco as Ross Mirkarimi faces domestic abuse charges. Mirkarimi was the candidate I wanted for sheriff. He is progressive in his politics and moreover I actually spoke to him face to face about sex worker issues and he listened. I felt that he was the best person for the job. Now he is facing multiple allegations of abuse.  It’s bad for politics. Part of me wants it all to be politics, to have it be some outsiders trying to keep a strong candidate away from this office. I mean, how often do you get a sheriff who has serious issues with the cops?

That’s wrapping myself up in my own agenda and my own disappointment at having publicly supported this individual. I don’t want to have put my stock in someone who does that. Then again, I have not been the recipient of these actions. They are complicated. They are complicated as fuck and it can never be said that I think it is simple.

What I do think is that it has to be discussed. My chief complaint with my particular community is the desire to keep the the bad faith as quiet as possible. There are people who speak up, rightfully, for those who are mislabeled as creepy for not fitting into the traditional mold for someone with good intentions and that statement is not inaccurate. We are prone to that kind of bias. What I notice, however, is that we go for those acting in good faith because they are safe targets for criticism. We are often dead silent for our worst repeat offenders.

My biggest outcry are about the people whose names you can mention in certain circles and get, at best, someone creating a defense for a destructive person that individual is and yet everyone will still promote that individual’s shows, work, and feeding grounds. Perhaps that is the biggest sign of the fear they inspire in others. I have literally run into individuals who have gone through scores of victims as a persistent repetitive behavior and modus operandi. I’ve also noticed that some individuals will move from one community to another with very little cross communication. The behaviors of the Catholic Church are not unique. We are often more afraid of the scandal than we are what occurred and that blinds us.

We pride ourselves in negotiation and articulating desire and yet we get into very mixed rhetorical language when it comes to some of our shadier characters. So often I hear something like, “Oh, that’s X and X is always an asshole like that. I mean, I’m not saying X is like, a rapist, but X is kind of rapey. Oh no, I’m not saying X would hurt anyone though. It’s just’s X’s style to be an asshole. That’s why we love X.”

What I’m saying is, if you make an honest mistake you’re likely to be publicly flogged and criticized. If you scream at more than a dozen fetish models and coerce them into silence instead of the no you just agreed on and then fuck them, you’re likely to be left in peace as a hard core edge player or something. That’s an imbalance. We need to look at who we scream at and brainstorm ways to be supportive of people without arguing over whether or not a tribunal would work.

I’ve been to sex community meetings. I am not suggesting this at all for a myriad of reasons.

I am saying, look at the language we use. Are we receptive to hearing the word, “no” or should we think at practicing some social decorum in that arena? When someone says no, they’re giving us a chance to play another day if we handle that situation with respect. Instead of arguing the legalese of what consitutes “technically touching someone” like a 7 year old in the back of Mom and Dad’s minivan on vacation with your siblings, think about respecting someone’s space and boundaries. It means checking our sense of entitlement to other people’s bodies and not making assumptions about free access.

Although many sex communities may have barriers to the outside support, sex communities are also known for the novel invention. What I’m calling for is dialogue around how to respond to assault and abuse and bring the numbers down. It doesn’t matter if sex communities are coming in at the national average for rape when the national average has been estimated to be at a 64% prevalence for women with 70-80% percent of sexual assaults coming from individuals that the victim knows.

It stands to reason that there is sexual assault and abuse occurring in a community where there is increased access with decreased outside support. Saying, “safe, sane, and consensual” is not the same thing as clicking your heels together and saying, “there’s no place like home.” Safe, sane, and consensual are a series of actions. What I’m working to do is isolate how to best respond to them when good faith and bad faith are indeed muddy concepts.

I’m looking to integrate rape, assault, and abuse training into dungeon monitor training along with promoting non-violent communication and assertiveness. I think in many communities, these things would be welcome because it’s more information and education to access. What isn’t going to solve anything is sweeping assault and abuse under the rug as “drama.”

At the same time, our inclination to avoid those who inspire the most genuine fear in favor of easier targets is exactly why I do not like the notion of the mob. However, asking folks to perhaps consider who they publicly endorse as educators at small local gatherings is not the same thing as calling for a black list.  So often I hear excuses like, “well, I know they aren’t so great at that part but they are so talented it would be rude not to promote them because that’s what community is for,” and I’m a little surprised by the cognitive dissonance at play.

Dave Chapelle perhaps best illustrated this cognitive dissonance in stand up with his big about being held hostage on a bus:

Although he is using comedy, what he’s talking about is the dark humor in the fact that he gets approached for smoking a cigarette and everyone is quick to chime in about how offensive that behavior is but everyone was suddenly silent when someone was inappropriately masturbating. Although the context is different, the sentiment is the same. Those who spark fear inspire silence.

My anger at the community comes from having finally figured out that the worse and more repetitive someone’s behavior, the more quiet and euphemistic we get about the situation. I have heard people articulate strongly worded opinions about people that have not held up in any logical way so it is not something to be relied upon as a sole calibrator. On the other hand, if people get quiet and hedgey about someone and offer quick and short forced defenses and mixed messages, that’s when my hairs start to stand on end. This method isn’t helping anyone.

One of the biggest focal points of basic self-defense classes is learning how to say NO loudly. In many ways, hosting these classes at dungeons and sex community spaces will help facilitate better sex negotiation in general because these classes provide detailed attention on asserting limits and boundaries verbally before a situation escalates. Sex spaces will hit demographics that might otherwise miss opportunities for this training or feel uncomfortable attending otherwise. Outreaching for educators who focus on these issues and hosting regular events like these can do more for empowering individuals in your community than coded mix messages will.

There is no acceptable number for assault and abuse. The status quo is unacceptable in this regard. We have all of the same mitigating factors for sexual assault that the mainstream has as well as a few beyond our control. We can answer that by making it a point of discussion and openly providing resources. I want to spend time on that discussion and work with people who are committed to finding what can be added to realistically acknowledge that it occurs and that these occurrences impact our community’s livelihood and growth and find ways to reduce the harm of those occurrences.

As a loud mouthed woman, I have justified concerns about people forming a crowd and calling for you to be burned at the stake. Allow me to repeat: I’m not a fan and I don’t think institutional violence would be helpful. I do think that our community needs resources on how to actively listen to these stories and where to direct people for support and action. We do have limited roles as community members but we are not fully absolved of any and all action or we should truly abandon the term.

Often times, people have a hard time with the conversations they want to have because they don’t have the tools. At the same time, like some of our best human invented tools, we get terrified at the shame of having to need them. We do have kink aware and poly aware professionals and we do have networks that are connected to one another. Being sexually different doesn’t mean that you’re abuser and as such you don’t want to stand idly by while it happens. Being opposed to sexual assault is not a sum zero game and it does not mean loss of liberties. It means being realistic about its occurrence and having a response to it.

We spend time learning intricate knots, we keep up on the latest sex gadgets, and we read books about communication, and we go to workshops on prostate play. We can hang some posters with some phone numbers. We can put sexual assault awareness in our first aid kits. It’s is not about rounding up the rapists and shooting them or dropping the issue entirely after saying “safe, sane, and consensual!” 30 times on the internet.

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January 18, 2012

SOPA BLACKOUT

STOP THESE BILLS

If you like the content that you read here or anywhere else on the internet, please take the time today to click the link on the photo above or at the start of this post to make your voice heard. SOPA and PIPA have fantastic names and expensive lobbies but implementing them will mean a corporate controlled censored internet.

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January 11, 2012

A True All Girl Experience: FUCK TRANSMISOGYNY

WRONG

A 14 year old girl in Ventura, CA who has obviously been groomed by conservative parents is making a statement: boycott girl scout cookies because the Girl Scouts Of America are welcoming to transgender children who want to be scouts. Although she has another list of complaints surrounding the increasingly progressive nature of the Girl Scouts with their belief in a woman’s right to own her own body, learn about it, access health services, and make independent decisions regarding when to be a parents it’s the issue of trans inclusion that has her (and presumably her family, as she repeatedly mentions) riled up. In her video, she calls the girl scouts “dishonest and unfair” for including a 7 year old transgender girl into a troop and claims that this would disrupt the, “true all girl experience.”

Yeah, that’s some tired-ass transmisogynistic bullshit right there.

It’s not the first time that the Girl Scouts have come under fire from conservatives. Hans Zeiger, a young man who started to develop himself as an emerging conservative pundit when he was still a teenager, came under fire in his 2010 campaign for a 25th Legislative District of Washington seat for statements he made about the Girl Scouts in his adolescent years such as, “the Girl Scouts allow homosexuals and atheists to join their ranks, and they have become a pro-abortion, feminist training corps.” He pulled down his old work, made a formal statement that he did not stand by his old position any longer, and went on to win his campaign.

The 14 year old “founder” of the website Honest Girl Scouts calls up all those old ghosts but her video and campaign are exceptionally focused on transmisogyny. Although the website criticizes partnerships with Planned Parenthood and other more progressive policies, the project is dedicated primarily to maliciously excluding transgender children. More or less, the video is a teenage conservative’s rehashing of the “womyn born womyn” bullshit that comes out of the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. The 14 year old speaker in the video criticizes the girl scouts for not “confirming” the gender of a potential scout.

What the hell does it mean to “confirm the gender” of a 7 year old child? Where the fuck does that line of logic go? Does it require a note from your personal physician indicating the presence of a prepubescent pussy? A quick check by the scout leader before a camping trip? From where I stand, a child’s genitals are NOT THE BUSINESS OF A SCOUTING TROOP. Period. That comment alone is horrifying to me because of what implementing such a policy would even begin to entail.

The video goes on to equate a 7 year old transgender child with an 18 year old high school senior donning a dress and saying he wants to be girl scout in a deliberate attempt to sexualize the space as a man “pretending” to be a woman. It’s outright hateful and wholly irrational to equate a 7 year old child with an 18 year old high school senior wearing drag to violate women and it’s a straw man to boot. It’s a phantom, a fictional construction designed to inspire fear. First off, a 7 year old child is not “manipulating” the system as a way to get all kinds of “womyn born womyn” pussy. Secondly, even if the applicant were a high school senior trying to join the scouts, the risk of rape, assault, murder, harassment, and other violence that comes with being a transwoman in today’s society is already a pretty strong filter.

A policy of inclusion via identity is not a slippery slope for cisgender, heterosexual males to put on a dress and “use” the policy sneak in and violate women at will. That’s nonsense talk. That is what we call a logical fallacy and a bad faith tactic for debate. It’s just a way to derail a conversation and it wouldn’t be worth acknowledging at all save for the fact that this 100% contrived bullshit is so goddamn popular in the political arena right now. Grown-ass adults who cannot see past bigoted fiction should not be in charge of running our country. Marriage is NOT the most important issue facing sexual minorities but when Rick Santorum equated same-sex marriage to bestiality he exposed himself as someone who cannot be depended on for clear, rational, and intelligent thinking. Positing the notion that if a policy of inclusion based on gender identity rather than genital morphology will lead to quarterbacks donning drag and raping girl scouts with impunity is just as fucked up if not more so.

The you tube video created by the young woman calling for a total boycott of girl scout cookies until her hate issues are addressed is essentially a playbook of transmisogynistic commentary. The girl scouts have one simple policy for who gets to be a girl scout: being a girl between who is in kindergarten-12th grade. There’s also the  huge class bias revealed in calling for a cookie boycott: those cookie sales make it possible to reduce the cost of GSA hosted camps and excursions for lower income scouts. In other words, not only is this a big FUCK YOU to trans folk it is also a big FUCK YOU to people of a lower income who rely on the GSA for the education, support, and opportunity to go explore the world it provides to their young daughters.

And frankly, even if the applicant were a teenage trans girl it still wouldn’t matter and that individual is still entitled to support. Our culture treats transwomen as lower than trash and the real world risk of unending bodily harm for coming out as trans is a pretty fucking strong goddamn filter. It’s totally disingenuous to state that accepting someone’s preferred gender identity means that “just anyone could claim they ‘want’ to be a girl.”  The GSA has stated that they are responding to an increasing number of requests from transgender children with a warm welcome and what I would really like to see as a part of that response is strong support for transwomen who step up to be girl scout leaders, as well. It’s not about “allowing” transgender children into the scouts, it’s also about transgender women leading them.

Netter's Anatomy Book

Human beings have roughly 20-25,000 known genes. These are the ingredients for making a human and with 20-25,000 different ingredients, there are a metric fuck ton (that’s a scientific term, of course) of recipes to make a human being and they are all legitimate. It is often said we all “start” as female but this is not accurate. We don’t all start out with a pussy, we start out with a genital tubercle that develops as the genetic, chromosomal, and hormonal sequences unfold themselves. To put morphology (what you physically see on the outside) before gender is to literally put the cart in front of the horse. In fact, hormone washes and changes have the ability to reshape the morphology of the flesh between our legs even after puberty.

No, we do not all start as ‘female’ but we are all made out of the same “star stuff” and we’re just beginning to understand what that means.

And since there was a comment that admitting transgender children into the GSA “almost dangerous situation for children,” I would like to spend a moment talking about other venues that create an “almost dangerous” situation for children: school, church, playgrounds, day care, museums, camps, sports teams, locker rooms, and any place where a child is with someone that they know. When gender and sexuality are framed as something that belong to grownups like parents, teachers, clergy, or sexual partners it becomes much harder to internalize the notion that you make the final call about who does or does not touch you and that you have a right to fuck shit up for anyone who thinks they are entitled to it.

The GSA programming includes having conversations where questions are answered in age-appropriate but honest ways. Children have a right to know how their bodies work and teaching them that their body is their own is not what is confusing. Telling children that their body belongs to anyone with the means to take it (especially sky daddies) is what’s exceptionally confusing because it’s insane. Yes, the GSA programming teaches young women that they are the sole owners of their bodies. It helps provide information on how it works by partnering with recognized and accredited medical institutions, it teaches them that no matter what someone says it’s their call what they do or don’t do with their bodies.

This video and it’s accompanying webpage demonstrate transmisogyny very well: teaching bodily autonomy to women is bad but it’s worse to teach bodily autonomy to a trans woman or girl.

The GSA has been moving towards a more progressive stance on gender at a pace faster than any other self-identified feminist space. Although they aren’t perfect, I respect the Girl Scouts for listening to the people they serve more than they listen to the mainstream feminist establishment especially since they’ve had branches of their national organization that first began recognizing that gender is more than male/female since the early and mid-90s before the blogsophere was an established anti-oppression tool. 

And this is the place where I start making people uncomfortable:

To the adults behind this campaign and especially to the parents of Taylor, the 14 year old girl behind this video, you better fucking hope that the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts and the schools and the average American household starts accepting non-gender normative kids. Some bigots will not let go of their male/female fiction until it is pulled out of their cold dead fingers and there are revolutionaries who are prepared to accept those conditions and they are supported by a growing number of allies who are  willing to follow direction and aid the process because they recognize that their own liberation is tied up in the struggle as well.

The Girl Scouts are not a radical organization. I would say that they are progressive but they are not, in fact, creating an anti-oppression militia. They’re pretty passive but it’s not uncommon to see self-defense anti-abuse classes taught to even the littlest girl scout. At best, they’re starting to create a space where young queer, gender queer, and transgender kids can go and not be brutalized. There are radicals out there, though. Some might be in your community already and they have these new fangled tools that allow them to network, support, and cross-educate one another. When people do find their support network and have the opportunity to develop the confidence and self-esteem to defend themselves, they will.

So allow me to repeat myself: you better fucking hope that it’s the Girl Scouts who welcome marginalized children and actively implement policies and leaders who can fully support them because the Girl Scouts won’t teach you how to make a Molotov cocktail.

When you teach hate, what you’re teaching children is how to ignore, deny, and invisibilize the reality of our world and and the people who live in it. When you teach your children that they can act as the owner of someone else’s body, you have taught them a dangerous delusion. There is a human survival instinct and when you tell your children it’s OK to run around and start fucking with that they run the risk of touching the wrong button someday and those odds are going up with each passing moment. Although we convey a message of non-humanity to transgender/gender queer/intersex/non-gender normative humans, the truth is getting out there one tweet and blog post at a time.

When you go out of your way to fuck with people, systemically dehumanize them, rip out their support networks, and threaten their lives at a time when they can quickly and effectively organize, you’re creating something of a problem, especially if you make the police and criminal justice system wholly inaccessible to them as anything but a defendant. In that context, you have left those you’ve fucked with no other option.

If you raise a child to think that they can do whatever the fuck they want to do to someone so long as their victim looks less like Barbie or Ken than they do, you are setting them up to have their entitled ass handed right fucking back to them. If you raise a child to make it clear that no amount of logic, reason, or words will ever change their minds that marginalized people are worth less than they are and your child acts on those delusions, you are raising a future target for justified violence in the form of self-defense.

Something to think about.

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January 10, 2012

Girl Boss Guerrilla With RodeoH

Photo By Whole Sex Life

I was nervous the first time I was invited to fuck someone with a strap-on cock of my very own. The leather harness looked complicated to put together, there were straps and buckles everywhere. It actually took me several tries to figure out how to wrangle it all and stick a hard and bouncy appendage between my own legs and eventually I learned that a novice strap-on fucker’s best friend for the learning curve is a blindfold over the bottom’s eyes so they can’t see you struggle with the straps or resort to improvisation and overhand knots when it all becomes too complicated to handle.

Apparently it’s very important to have a cock between your legs if you want to get ahead in the world. Well I have something like 20 goddamn dicks in all kinds of sizes, colors, textures, and relative hardness. I have flaccid packers that I wear just because there’s something about the weight of a dick between your legs that makes you want to get into mischief.

RodeoH is a new San Francisco company that is attempting to take the complications out of cock harnessing. They built a harness out of a machine washable set of boy briefs that you can pull on and get going. It’s easy to wear under clothing even when it’s super tight and stylish and there are no complicated buckles to got lost with when you’re hot, bothered, and ready to go. I love it for being able to wear a flaccid cock while getting coffee because of the ease it creates in loading, unloading, or switching out a cock.

Versatility is key for me. I have a growing collection of strap-on harnesses and I’m no slouch when it comes to grabbing a piece of a rope to make one on the go. I’ve transformed button fly jeans and even saran wrap into harnesses. It’s a lot of fun to be inventive in bed but there’s something to be said for having something easy to carry around in a purse that makes it possible to get going in a few quick moves. There aren’t any rings to lose (or break), the cotton is super breathable, and it’s really simple to use if you’re looking to break out into the world of strap-on sex.

Advanced strap-on tops might be dismayed by the fact that the RodeoH won’t hold some of the bigger and wider cocks out there on the market. The website states that the optimal toy dimensions are about 5″-6″ length by and 1 1/2″-2″ width. This is true. Although it is possible to squeeze in something larger with the flexible ring, this is not a harness for giant dicks. The things that make this harness so quick and easy are it’s lack of straps and buckles. Still, the idea of wearing a harness comfortably all day long as a pair of underwear is the major draw of this harness.

Not to mention the fact that even I sometimes get obsessed with the size of the dick I’m wearing. It’s not the size of what’s between your legs that matters, it’s the pleasure of the people involved that really counts. In the event that I’m cruising for a quickie session in, say the bathroom of a bar or gas station, I’m not going to have the time to do all of the foreplay necessary to warm someone up for some of my monster cocks especially when something right off the bell curve of average cock size will do just fine.

RodeoH is an awesome company that is local to me in the Bay Area and I would very much like to thank them for sending this fun new toy to me. I’m happy to say that my RodeoH has a spot in backpack next to my lipstick, chewing gum, and other vital essentials. I would also like to thank the photographer, Whole Sex Life, for capturing these images.

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January 9, 2012

Knock That Shit Off, Oakland

As I strolled through my neighborhood, I couldn’t help but notice that the political postings calling for a recall of Mayor Jean Quan had been updated. Now I’m a fan of social progress and activism. I support the global Occupy/Decolonize movement. I don’t believe passivity will save us. I believe those being attacked have a right to physically defend themselves. I am also mad as hell about the fact that the physical brutality that Mayor Jean Quan is responsible for is considered an appropriate reason to plaster this bullshit all over the neighborhood that I have to walk through.

I don’t live in the part of Oakland where Mayor Quan lives. My neighborhood is a little more sketchy than that. It doesn’t have any easy access to the BART line, it’s a bit of a walk to get to any real commercial districts, and when I walk my streets I’m going to face no small amount of street harassment. Cat calling is not about compliments or beauty; it’s about harassment and the entitlement to say whatever you want to someone minding their own business just trying to get to the corner store. Whoever placed those signs did not take into the account that there are women who walk these streets with the knowledge that stalking them is not only socially appropriate, it’s heralded as damn near romantic in the mainstream media and cinema.

What do we know about stalking? According to a 2010 CDC report we know:

  • 1 in 6 women and 1 in 19 men in the U.S. have experienced stalking at some point in their lives in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed.
  • In the United States, approximately 1 in 5 Black non-Hispanic women experienced stalking in her lifetime. The prevalence of stalking for White non-Hispanic and Hispanic women was similar (1 in 6 and 1 in 7, respectively). Additionally, approximately 1 in 3 multiracial non-Hispanic and 1 in 4 American Indian or Alaska Native women reported being stalked at some point during their lives. (Note: the CDC report has a blank regarding women of Asian/Pacific Island descent.)
  • More than half of female victims and more than one-third of male victims were stalked before the age of 25.
  • People of color continue to bear a heavier burden of sexual violence, stalking, and intimate partner violence.
  • The average duration of stalking is 1.8 years, but increases to 2.2 years when involving intimate partners.

California was actually the first state in the country to criminalize stalking in 1990. The penal code states:

  • Any person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows or willfully and maliciously harasses another person and who makes a credible threat with the intent to place that person in reasonable fear for his or her safety, or the safety of his or her immediate family is guilty of the crime of stalking, punishable by imprisonment in a county jail for not more than one year, or by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars ($ 1,000), or by both that fine and imprisonment, or by imprisonment in the state prison. Note: the average duration of stalking by a strange or acquaintance is 1.8 years, many victims will move to a new home, or may actually be asked to leave their job because of the “risk” they pose to the workplace for being a victim.
  • This section [stalking] shall not apply to conduct that occurs during labor picketing.

When someone is stalked, they are encouraged by anyone they report the behavior to get a restraining order. A restraining order is great if the individual receiving it is A) confused as to the nature of your relationship and B) reasonable. If someone wants to scare you, hurt you, rape you, or kill you a piece of paper is not going to stop them. A restraining order may reduce your stress and anxiety level but if you are genuinely concerned for your life it’s not going to be a restraining order that saves it. It’s just a piece of documentation for court if your perpetrator is arrested and if your district attorney pursues the case.

Stalking victims are re-victimized by people who either don’t give a shit and even by people with the best intentions. All in all, stalking and repeated malicious harassment are not taken seriously regardless of how many people are impacted each year. The number of women annually reporting stalking? It’s now well over 1,000,000 reports a year in the US. In Oakland, it took me 30 minutes to get a police response to an active burglary in my home when I was alone. A stalking victim in Oakland cannot maintain any faith whatsoever that the police will be able to uphold their restraining or protective orders. 

These stalking signs are numerous in my neighborhood. I understand that they were written as a call to action against a mayor who DID take horrible life harming action against protesters but I’m the one who has to walk the streets of my neighborhood everyday.

I don’t want any part of your revolution if a “tactical political tool” is placing a reminder every 50 fucking feet by my house that stalking is a totally acceptable thing to do to a woman. The signs calling for a recall against Ed Lee in San Francisco, matching the recall signs for Jean Quan, have not been altered to reflect the pro-stalking stance so this isn’t being universally applied to any and all politicians pulling the string on the response to Occupy encampments. This was an articulation of the thoughtless misogyny that happens everyday.

There are men who are stalked but it’s positively fascinating that when it came to a female mayor, the reacting call to violence for her action was, perhaps “appropriately,” altered to reflect a form of violence against women that is systemically ignored and often fatal in the country. It’s a reminder that most anarchist spaces are not safe for marginalized people. The rhetoric matters.

I’m not proposing passivity. I’m asking to consider why some words are chosen for some people and not for others. Why not words like mace, tear gas, restrain, take down, rise against, incarcerate, kettle, or any other immediately related activities that would clearly demonstrate the utter lack of ethics she actually displayed in the way that Occupy Oakland has been handled without bring acute misogyny into it? Why was “stalk” chosen other than the fact that it is one of the scarier things you can imagine if you’re a woman? Why is it justified to throw the women in my neighborhood completely under the bus in regards to the very real world experiences we are having because someone wants to show just how angry they are at the mayor? 

Knock that shit off and think for just 5 fucking seconds about whether or not you’re using the words that fit your intention. My neighborhood in Oakland does not have money or resources. We have bars on our windows and corner stores in the middle of the street. Every single night you can hear gun shots and after a few months you’ll never mistake the sound of gun fire with a car back fire ever again. It’s a load of fucking bullshit to put those signs on my streets in some fucked up way to reach people and get them to join the movement because Jean Quan does not fucking live here. It wasn’t a message for her, it was a message for the residents of my low income neighborhood. Fuck you very much for that, by the way. Our streets don’t get regular cleanup here and there’s a lot of us who already have more than our fair share of worry about stalking.

It took not only misogyny and a total lack of compassion for victims to infect my neighborhood with tons of those signs, it also took a lot of classism. These were signs made my someone who felt entitled to make those of us affected most by that kind of violence deal with the heavy weight of that message.

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