Welcome back!

I stay away from a lot of feminist blogs because, well, reading them often hurts my soul. In fact other than perusing Feministing and Feministe, I leave it up to Ren, Trinity, Amber, and Caroline to keep my up to date on what is happening vis-a-vis sex and feminism. These ladies have the patience of saints because they manage to spend a lot of time reading the same angry arguments about sex work and responding to them over and over again.

For a long time I knew that there was some fundamental lack of clash in the debate. An ideological space where the competing ideas could not be resolved because they are operating on different planes. Many radical and second wave feminists take a strong social constructionist view of gender and violence against women. Many sex positive feminists see this as lacking in nuance and denying the autonomy of individual women. But, that distinction has been on the table for a long time.

Today I started thinking about another one when I was reading this post of Caroline’s. She links to a blog where a very brave woman discusses her incredibly damaging and negative experiences in the sex industry. That woman believes that she is dismissed by sex positive feminists as being a “sad case” – that her experience is the exception and does not invalidate sex work. On the flip-side, many former sex workers that had positive experiences feel their voices are drowned out and silenced by radical feminists who claim they are apologists for the patriarchy.

The problem is that these arguments still aren’t truly clashing with each other. Two claims are being debated as if they are a single one even though they are neither directly related nor mutually exclusive.

Claim #1: Sex work is wrong.

Claim #2: There is something wrong within sex work.

The “within” is very important in that second claim. It distinguishes the idea that sex work is on face something to be rejected from the claim that there are problems in sex work that need to be remedied. I don’t know a single sex worker that would not concede the second claim. Of course there are individuals, perhaps even the majority of individuals, who are severely adversely affected by sex work. But, one claim does not automatically support the other because Claim #2 is a quantitative claim that describes a current problem whereas Claim #1 is qualitative and makes a value judgment. The material conditions of sex work can change and Claim #2 would be eroded but for those that support Claim #1, no change would be sufficient. By definition sex work is wrong and no number of pleasant personal experiences could change that.

So, yes, I desperately abhor the abuse and mistreatment of sex workers. I loath the deeply disturbing and violent treatment that sex workers face. As a separate issue I am, of course, concerned about the trafficking of human beings or the exploitation and rape of children that cannot consent to entering the sex trade. I can see all of these things and I can still say that sex work should exist and can be healthy. I can believe that it will never disappear and so it must be prepared, not just to make the best of a bad situation but to create joy out of a vocation that should be honored instead of denigrated. I honor the voices of women that have experienced pain or violence in sex work and I don’t think that they are tokens. But, I think that their experiences provide a backdrop for an important change and®evolution, not for a dismantling of an eternal system.

(Also, go read the 11th Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy)

Download Bedroom Radio 16.5: An Open Call to Clients of Sex Workers

I was so happy to see this article from Violet Blue that has an in depth discussion of the clients that keep sex workers, well, working.

Another excellent resource on this topic is the great Letters from Johns blog that is run by the amazing Susannah Breslin. The blog is a brilliant concept exercised with simplicity and grace. I just wish there were more letters. They range from clueless to compassionate and everything in-between.

Honestly, I gave up on writing this entry a few minutes into it and recorded a podcast instead. Please download it – it is my thoughts on sex work and clients and the interactions between them. It is based on limited experience. I am sure I said some things that will offend people. I didn’t mean to but I want to start a discourse on sex work that includes the voices of clients as clients.

My email address is lumpesse AT gmail DOT com and the number to call with your ideas is 206-339-5939 (To be 100% clear, this is not my phone sex line – it is just a voicemail box, it won’t cost you anything beyond long distance and your time and I won’t answer the phone).

I really want to collect audio so you can leave it as a voicemail or email it to me. Or upload it on your own blog or talk about it on your own podcast. I do plan to make another show (or more! many?) out of the comments that I get so if you don’t want your comment included, please state that very clearly in your message to me. Please pass on the word about this to anyone you can think of that might be interested.

Download Bedroom Radio 16.5: An Open Call to Clients of Sex Workers

I’ve been reading everyone’s Sex 2.0 wrap-ups the last few days and been trying to decide if I should podcast my thoughts or write them. I figure I’ll do both and you can hear more detail in the podcasted version that I’ll get to a bit later.

The event was an interesting one for me personally because I have never appeared publicly in relation to this blog or my work in phone sex. I was both excited and nervous but luckily I met some of the most amazing people during the process and therefore felt totally safe.

The weekend began for us on Friday afternoon when Jay and I arrived at our hotel, I had time for a quick cleaning up after the car ride and then ran to the airport to pick up Melissa who I’ve been waiting to meet forever. You know how you meet some people and they are nothing like you expected them to be based on their writing? Well, this was not the situation with Melissa. She is bright, cheerful, sarcastic, and carries this amazing presence given her tiny frame. After getting Melissa to the hotel I met up with Match for a drink before the pole dancing party.

The pole party was a blast, again I expected to feel self-conscious and worried but everyone was gorgeous and sexy and uninhibited and that sort of thing rubs off on you. This is where I met Mistress Maeve, who happens to be one of the most stunning women I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, she doesn’t do pictures but here is everyone at the party (excluding myself and Maeve.)

While I was pole dancing, Jay was at the Clermont Lounge with a bunch of people from the conference. The original plan was to head over there after the party was over but I was so exhausted that we headed back to the hotel instead. We went to a lot of trouble to get a nice hotel room with a whirlpool tub and all sorts of neat features but we didn’t use them at all and instead just crashed. I was surprised to realize that I had actually gotten sore from pole dancing. The front of my thighs were in rough shape because I guess that a lot of what I had been doing was basically squats.

We woke up bright and early, had some breakfast at the hotel, and headed to the conference. I got to see 1763 for the first time and was pretty impressed. When they said that the conference was happening at a dungeon, they weren’t just messing around. This place was, as they like to say on the internet, serious business. There were several rooms outfitted with lots of different equipment and the central space was huge and featured a giant shower in one corner (that Viviane quipped was the size of a New York studio apartment.) We arrived as Amber was giving the opening comments and then got to see Dacia give her keynote remarks. At this point it was time for the first session and I chose to attend Melissa’s. She trotted out her bag of tricks from being a sexual health educator and assigned us to perform roleplays of various sex and internet problems that people might have. I got the joy of performing a creative piece that Match and I developed to deal with jealousy that insignificant others might have over blog fans. I don’t remember much of it other than Match cracking everyone up with his request that I “@ him while I do it“. This was the first sign that Twitter was going to be a driving force of the weekend.

The next session I went to was run by Elizabeth Wood and was on Creating the Sex Commons. This was definitely the most thought-provoking and emotionally difficult sessions that I attended because we talked about responsibility. And I thought a lot about my responsibilities as a sex positive person when I step into a classroom and when I open a blog post and how (if ever) those two things are meant to interact. (I have written about this before). I also thought a lot about my responsibilities to my clients and friends and this session made me realize what important group of people were missing from Sex 2.0 – the clients. We were many of us there sex workers but none of us were paid consumers and I really wished that perspective had been present. Maybe next year!

After lunch I attended a session by the lovely Cunning Minx of Poly Weekly. Since Jay and I have struggled with our open relationship I thought that some tips might be helpful and Minx was encouraging and helpful while remaining quite realistic. I appreciated her sense of humor and grace in discussing icky emotions such as jealousy.

After this session, it was time for my own. I felt under-prepared but the vibe at the conference was so pleasant and open that I was really excited and confident anyway. In preparation, I had surveyed some phone sex operators and asked them about their personal phone sex habits and histories. I found out some interesting tidbits about the industry and how the average operator feels about phone sex. Some said that they regularly get off during calls, some said that they would never ever get off because phone sex doesn’t turn them on at all. Some said that they have NEVER done phone sex before being hired as a professional, others had done it recreationally for years. These statistics were interesting to my audience but what they really wanted to know was the nitty gritty of the job. How to get started, how to promote yourself, what to do to get the caller to tell you what they want and make them happy. I enjoyed sharing my expertise and it seems like there might be some more bloggers cum phone sex operators on the scene in the near future. Certainly a lot of women decide to do phone sex (as themselves or as a character) and the blog and promotional efforts come later. This is a logical way to go about things but I’m really grateful for the route that I ended up taking. This blog is too important to me to be reduced to a pure marketing effort. The minimal planning that I did for the session went out the window when I realized that we had run out of time just on me answering questions.

The last session that I attended was Viviane’s sex blogging session. Since I’ve been doing this for a few years, I had covered most of the ground that she did but it was amazingly informative. I can imagine that people just starting out with blogging got an amazing leg up because Viviane was sharing things with them that it took me years to figure out. Also, she is hot and amazing and brilliant so I wanted to bask in her presence.

Honestly, the day ended too soon. As it was wrapping up I was wishing that there was more but luckily the social opportunities had just begun. More on that later but for now check out Sakura Sarashi’s account of the evening and Sunday as she was with me the entire time.