Ol' Firebones

I wrote this privately to Dani, and she asked me to share it.

Remember what you said about fighting for the right for women to go topless, and then choosing not to go topless yourself? My *gosh* that seems like a perfect expression of my thoughts on sex work recently. To explain, I have to take a big step back.

I have a sad, frustrating relationship with feminism. I've identified as a liberal ever since college, and ever since then I've tried, and failed, to "be a good liberal" and engage with feminism. I've failed because every damn time I feel that most people give no more than lip service to the ideals of feminism. Beyond that, their behavior derives more from a desire to lash out than to achieve equality. Feminism is used more as a cudgel than anything else.

It's tragic. I've watched the dynamic for *decades*. In college I witnessed people arguing, and it was clear to me that the battle of the sexes boiled down to...

MEN: "You're ugly!"
WOMEN: "Well... *you* can't get it up!" I can't stand watching people hurt each other. I grew up watching my family do that. So I disengaged.

After college, I was with an emotionally abusive woman who used feminist ideas to absolve herself of responsibility for her abusive behavior. Men had treated her badly, so she got to lash out however she liked. So I disengaged.

A year or two ago I tried once again to engage with feminism. And I encountered this impenetrable thicket of ideological ossification. Feminism today seems like mostly women demanding that men say "Shibboleth" before they can even enter into the conversation. If I don't jump through every hoop, intone every point on the checklist of feminist assertions (never mind that there's no agreement on these even among people who call themselves feminists), then I'm dismissed. Every word I say is invalid because it derives from my privilege.

The heartbreaking thing about *everything* I've seen during those decades is that it's so *utterly* dysfunctional. The men who make honest attempts to engage with feminism are the ones who get the ire, because the men who really *need* to hear the message will *never* hear it. So what we're left with is, on the one side, horrible asshole rapists and misogynists who either ignore or mock feminists; and, on the other side, two types of men: those who get discouraged by the hurtfulness and dysfunction of it all, and those supercilious sycophants who intone the latest feminist proclamation and soak in the adulation. Meanwhile, the goals of the movement languish.

I am afraid to say all this. I'm afraid because I've seen how entrenched, polarized and myopic the dialogue has become. I'm afraid you think I'm a men's rights activist, when in fact the vast majority of those guys make me want to scream and run away. I agree with the goals of feminism. I want to be a part of that movement. I want to work toward a world where people stop hiding behind gender and see each other as people first. But that ain't what I see happening. I just see people lashing out at the nearest convenient target.

So, over the last few years, one of the most discomfiting things I've noticed about the dialogue surrounding feminism is the way we discuss porn and sex work. For the most part, the people who are eager to declare themselves as good liberals jump at the chance to denounce porn because it objectifies women. I feel like it's reached a point where liberals have painted themselves into a corner.

From where I sit, one of the greatest things about being a liberal is being free of repressive, shaming attitudes about sex. I grew up feeling ashamed of my sexuality. I can't put my finger on where it came from, but it was like this thread running through my upbringing. And it's not like I'm even an outlier in that regard. I'm pretty vanilla when it comes to sex. It's hard to imagine what the outliers went through, and still go through. Anyway. When I look at my life, one of the things I'm most grateful for is that I had the opportunity to divest myself of that shame, and just... be a sexual being without it being remarkable.

It seems as obvious as the ground beneath my feet that, if we want that sexual liberalism, we *have* to accept that sex work is going to be part of our culture. You can't have one without the other. It's our responsibility as liberals to reckon with the necessary side-effects of our ideology. If we get what we want, porn *will* exist. Prostitution *will* exist. It's our responsibility to accept that and figure out how to make sex work the *best* expression of our sexuality it can be. But instead of doing that, I see liberals doing exactly what conservatives have always done: brush it under the rug. Beat your breasts. Make it a shameful thing. Which is the VERY BEST WAY TO MAKE IT HURTFUL. When sex is shameful, that's where desperation flourishes. If porn and prostitution is shameful, then porn and prostitution will exist in the shadows, where unscrupulous people will continue to exploit weak people.

Like I said at the top, this is why I thought of all this yesterday: what you said about *choosing* not to do it yourself. There will be women who choose to go topless, yeah? Likewise, in a liberal society (which is what we want, yeah?) there will be people who choose to do sex work. We may (almost certainly) wouldn't choose that for our children, but we, as liberals, are supposed to be all about allowing people to make their own decisions--to express themselves as they will. And there will always be freaky people who will *choose* to do sex work. It seems plain to me that, as liberals, our best possible society would be one in which we do not shame sex workers, and that lack of shame would minimize the number of people doing sex work out of desperation. We would achieve the maximum proportion of people doing sex work because they enjoy it, or at least because they find it marginally more attractive than, say, working at Starbucks.

I don't have the slightest idea how I can help make any of this happen. I'm only thinking about this because recently I happened to catch wind of an ex-porn star who has been transitioning to a life outside of porn, and I'm *fascinated* by her. She's a social worker and graduate student, and she's currently finishing her graduate study on student sex workers. She wants to focus on advocating for sex workers in general. She's this articulate, intelligent person who is honest about her past choices, doesn't seem to particularly regret them, yet clearly sees that we need to make sex work better. After all the people I've listened to on both sides of this utterly dysfunctional conversation around sex and gender, *THIS PERSON*... this ex-porn-star-turned-social-worker... *she* seems like the sanest person in the world to me. I have no idea what to do with that. Maybe advocate for, and contribute to, groups who do that kind of social work? I don't know.

If you made it through this bolus of crap, thank you. I know how manic I sound. This shit has been driving me crazy for decades, and I just don't see a damn thing I can do about the impenetrable acrimony of it all. Not to mention that my country has gone insane and I'm awash in existential dread. And I'm sad for xxxxxx. So... I can see that, to an extent, this is a distraction. 😞