Paper Cuts and Plastic

Schroedinger's Rapist

2009-11-10T21:37:00.003-05:00

I want to share with you all a guest post at Shapely Prose by writer Phaedra Starling that I found not long ago which has put a lot of my thoughts about public interactions with men into words. It's not a short post, but I really recommend reading the whole thing, especially if you happen to possess a penis.

The post discusses how, when one approaches a woman in public, it's really important to be aware that she does not know whether or not you're a rapist. An excerpt:

Consider: if every rapist commits an average of ten rapes (a horrifying number, isn’t it?) then the concentration of rapists in the population is still a little over one in sixty. That means four in my graduating class in high school. One among my coworkers. One in the subway car at rush hour. Eleven who work out at my gym. How do I know that you, the nice guy who wants nothing more than companionship and True Love, are not this rapist?

I don’t.

When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape. I won’t know for sure unless you start sexually assaulting me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions. If you expect me to trust you—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.

Fortunately, you’re a good guy. We’ve already established that. Now that you’re aware that there’s a problem, you are going to go out of your way to fix it, and to make the women with whom you interact feel as safe as possible.

Now, there have been some negative reactions to her tone. I think, given the subject matter, that it's called-for, although perhaps her condescension is unhelpful. If you can disregard the talking down just for a minute, though, and if you hear all the dismal statistics and despair at the state of affairs, if you wonder how you can successfully approach a woman without being a creeper, or if you're just really awesome, read the rest of the article. It's worth it.

What Makes a Woman a Bitch

2009-11-09T23:45:00.000-05:00

I want to clarify something about my goal of being more assertive.

I know that it's not very nice to tell a potential suitor to fuck off.* There are damn good reasons, though, for no more Ms. Nice Girl. I've written about a few of them over the course of this blog. The long and short of it, if you don't want to go back and read four blog posts, is that I'm constantly sexually harassed every time I leave my apartment.

It doesn't matter what I'm wearing; it doesn't matter what expression is on my face; it doesn't matter how I respond or even who I'm with. I'm tall and noticeable and have red hair, and I'm apparently hot. Or "sexy baby" or "can I taste that lip ring?" or "look at that pretty tummy." That last one was today.

This puts me in an awfully awkward situation. The thing about hot women in the media is that they're always portrayed as bitches: the blonde popular girl who is too haughty to respond even with kindness to the poor nerdy boy who just wants to love and cuddle her. What they don't show on TV are the good reasons for this behavior.

I don't want to be a "bitch," but I'm fully aware that the reason people use that word is usually to bring women into line. The words "bitch" and "slut" more often have to do with a woman exercising her power and the discomfort that causes in everyone else. If I have boundaries around who I allow to talk to me and in particular how they do it, I'll be branded a bitch. I'll become "that one" who is too cool to give the time of day to a defenseless guy. The thing is, y'all are rarely actually defenseless.

There are things that I respond well to. "Hello, how are you?" is usually one of them. Curiosity about me as a human being with emotions, opinions, and things I like to do is another. "I like you" or "You're pretty" on the street or in a club when my looks are the only thing you could know about me are not. Male folk have an option in how they view and approach me.

Nobody likes to be objectified, diminished into just one part of their person. Maybe somebody who approaches me ham-handedly is just socially awkward and because that's the only thing I see, I judge him as such. I recognize that if I reject someone in a club, that could hurt their feelings. The truth, though, is that it hurts mine to be approached lewdly, to be singled out solely for my looks. So what would you have me do? I'd love a better world, where this wouldn't be a problem. Or just a better solution. Any ideas?

*There's a more specific story there: a group of guys came up to me and my roommate and asked if we'd make out. I asked if they would then all make out with each other and they said "Hell, no!" so I responded with "Well, fuck off then."

On Being Assertive

2009-10-29T13:14:00.001-04:00

So, my current professional and personal life goal is to learn to be more assertive in my flirtations, my rebuttal of others' sexual attentions, and in the bedroom.

As a domme, it's professionally essential that I find a way to be comfortable with topping these men who come in and want to pay me hundreds of dollars to do so. They want me to call them sluts and worms and dogs and whatever, they want me to step on them or beat them and humiliate the shit out of them. There's a very large part of me that goes "Eek! But that's mean!"

I'm starting, though, to embrace it. I can see the change in the rest of my life, too. I went out clubbing the other weekend at Webster Hall. I had no idea where I was going - I was just along for the ride - but apparently this is a too-well-known and therefore sketchy place to go dance. LOTS of men who will throw themselves at you. And they did.

But I told them to fuck off! Well, not all of them. I was a little kinder to a few, but I routinely and calmly rejected them if I didn't want to dance with them. I just danced with my roommate, and when I did finally find someone attractive, I made out with him. And then left. It was altogether awesome because I felt fully in control of the situation.

My goal for the next while is to strike up one conversation each day with someone I don't know who looks interesting or attractive. If I go on any dates, I want to be the one to initiate physical contact, even if that just means holding hands. If I see an interesting profile on OKCupid, I will in fact message the person. These sound like little things, but they're challenging to me and I intend to conquer them. A few baby steps, and I'll be there. Whee!

Inconsiderate Lovers

2009-10-28T17:13:00.000-04:00

There are so very many people who are bad in bed. Specifically, there seem to be hordes of inconsiderate men floating around waiting to spring their time-wasting self-centeredness on me at any unsuspecting second!

That's not to say that all men are bad in bed, of course. I've been with men who were wonderful lovers and women who were only so-so. There are lots of factors to a sexual experience, and plenty of them have nothing to do with skill and everything to do with connection. That said, there's a base level of consideration that makes for a decent lover. When I say someone's bad, I mean that they're selfish, not that they lack tongue agility or erectile prowess or some such nonsense.

For all I know, straight women could be on average just as bad as straight men in this regard. I can't be sure, as they won't sleep with me. Same goes for gay men. I have been with more inconsiderate men than inconsiderate women, but I've also just been with more men than women. Maybe it has nothing to do with demographics.

All that said, it's just sad. I'm almost content with very mediocre sex; I know how bad it could be, so if they even try to give me any kind of pleasure, I'm halfway to satisfied.

Now, generally speaking, I can just take care of myself when I'm having sex with someone who doesn't know what they're doing. That's actually totally fine. If they're trying and I like them enough to invest the time, I can teach them what I like. In the meantime I can take care of myself, and that's sexy in and of itself. I love to masturbate with assistance.

There's no hope, though, with the ones who don't even try, who don't care a whit about my pleasure. Kind of like the guy I slept with last week.

This man was attractive. I thought he was gay, actually, when we first met, which made him even moreso to me. I like people who push the queer/gender envelopes. However, his idea of foreplay was to masturbate a little and then try to put it in me. In other words, none.

As an independent woman who knows how to take care of her own pleasure, I could have done something about this. I could have initiated the sex sooner. Instead of sitting there not wanting to watch the same episode of Real World Road Rules twice in a row because he was too stoned to notice, I could have climbed into his lap and gotten things started.

Instead of waiting until I was too tired to care enough, waiting until I was half asleep in the middle of the night and woke up to his cock in the air as he stroked it, I could have taken matters into my own hands.

Instead, I had the second worst sex in my life (ask me about the worst sometime). He tried to go for it without a condom, which I had none of, and once I got one and put it on him, he went limp immediately. And then to sleep. Not once did he try to touch any part of my body other than my vagina, with his penis. Gross.

Perhaps if I'd started things earlier, I might've been able to steer him into, you know, doing anything at all to my clitoris or nipples. I could've asked him to turn me on in any way other than masturbating in my general direction. I like a show as much as the next girl, but not enough for me to be ready to fuck.

Anyway, I'm going to make it a project for myself to be a more aggressive flirt and lover. I want to initiate things more, drop this femme bullshit where I try to attract people but make them take the final step. I'm going to set concrete goals, hold myself accountable, make this a real thing I'm working on. I'll let you know how it goes.

Being Invested

2009-10-17T12:46:00.000-04:00

When I moved to New York City, I imagined I would work as a canvasser for a little while as I searched for and found another job. I didn't think I wanted to do it in the winter; I didn't want it to be my actual job here. It was a great situation because I could transfer from San Francisco without having an income-less period, but I didn't want it for more than that.

Then, of course, I arrived here and things changed.

For my first week or two of canvassing in New York, my average raised was terrible, I was completely exhausted every day after work, and I had no energy to even look for other jobs. I dreaded dragging myself out of bed every morning to trudge in. Things were going in a bad direction.

Of course, being the savvy individual that I am, I realized that this was no way to go about my life. In San Francisco, I really enjoyed canvassing. I did quite well at it. I liked my coworkers a lot. The nature of the beast had not actually changed, so I knew that the job itself was not in fact my problem. It was, of course, all about my attitude.

As soon as I made the decision to actually invest in my job, to treat it as what it is - the main portion of my life and what I spend my time on - things got so much better.

We had a meeting that week, the day I made this decision in fact, about the national plan of our company. I'm a field manager of the canvass, basically the bottom rung of the leadership of the company, but my boss made an effort to clue us into the vision of what we're doing and what it means for our activism and politics in general in this country.

It's pretty awesome to be a part of something that's empowering much larger numbers of citizens to actually get involved in what's happening in the government. I like canvassing for political groups because the way I see it, it's the only thing combating the fact that money talks and corporations by far have the most of that to throw around. Sure, a twenty dollar donation to a PAC isn't that powerful, but if we can get thousands of people to make those then we suddenly have some leverage.

The right tends to be so well organized through their churches. It's been a consistent problem of progressive politics that we're so concerned with being revolutionary that we can't organize behind a single goal. Canvassing may have a hope to bring us together in large enough numbers to start fighting effectively against the f*ing Christian Coalition. That is pretty neat.

Bearing that in mind as I work has not only improved my morale by leaps and bounds, but it also makes me a better worker. I personally raised around $2300 this week, which is pretty fucking cool. It just goes to show that how happy I am really has the most to do with how much I'm committed to what I do.

When I pour all my personal energy into a goal, it doesn't feel bad when I have less of it at the end of the day. It feels like I'm connected to something, like that expenditure was a gift. That's what I want to feel in all the work I do, forever. It's good to be figuring out how to do that.

Sex Worker Personae - A Submissive Mistress?

2009-10-11T22:16:00.000-04:00

I've spent a few shifts now at the dungeon, and helped in a few sessions. I'm not yet sure how I feel about the whole business, but I do know what a few of my challenges will be.

The most difficult thing for me, particularly in sessions with other mistresses, is to stay out of sub space. The whole setting of the place is meant to send a submissive person into a state of mind that's aroused and obedient. I'm surrounded by "instruments of punishment" and women in skimpy fetish clothing. When I go into a session to train, I'm standing next to a woman in a dominant role, one who calls herself mistress and who has control over at least one other person in the room.

My first instinct, of course, is to be full of "Yes, Mistress" and attempts to please. Trying to work as a professional dominant has made it only more clear to me how much of a little sub I am. It comes so naturally to me, the obedience and reveling in the sensations, whereas I definitely feel awkward trying to dominate or humiliate the clients.

I understand now why people have sex work personae. As a stripper, I never really needed to be anybody but myself. I'm already all these things that men want in a dancer: extremely sexual but reserved with it, bisexual, available, articulate, eager to please. Genteel but dirty. It bugs me a little that these character traits that I happen to have are also the ones that men fetishize, but there you have it.

As a domme, though, I know I'm going to need to find/build a persona for myself. I'll need to find a way to act that's comfortable, but different from the way I usually am. I know there are people who do that for stripping, who act out a role when they hustle and lap dance, and now I'll get to experience that in a different industry. It should be interesting to see how it turns out, what roles I end up playing. I'll certainly fill you in as I find them.

Something New

2009-10-04T21:15:00.000-04:00

I mentioned earlier that I was going in for an interview at a dungeon. That was, of course, a teasing hint since I haven't blogged about it since.

Well, I went in for my interview just over a week ago. I sat in a little room with simple but decadent furniture for about two hours waiting for the owner to see me. I ended up choosing a different, better dungeon, but the time before that first interview stands out in my memory.

I wish I could capture the feeling of walking up to a strange building, ringing a buzzer, and being let into a new work space for the first time. The dark rooms and BDSM instruments and even the smell of the place affected me like a client: intriguing, arousing. I was wide-eyed, taking it in. I want to put that feeling into a bottle and save it for later. There's nothing quite like the sense of total newness, of having no real idea of what I'm getting myself into.

It's the same feeling I had when I went for my audition at the strip club. It's a feeling of nervousness, yes, but mostly actual excitement over the mystery of it all. I think wanting to feel that is what drives me a lot of the time. It's a unique and pleasant kind of agitation. I like to be stimulated; I get bored with the everyday. I can only have that special sensation from truly novel, vaguely dangerous situations.

It feels really good to be back to that freshness. I know that being a domme will eventually become just a job. I'll learn from it and acclimate to it and it will change me, just as stripping has. I won't be able to imagine anymore what it was like to be me before I started.

That, though, is why I write. If nowhere else, I can find that feeling again on this page, on the internet for everyone to see. That's a pretty cool thing.

A Post of Two Cities

2009-10-03T20:26:00.001-04:00

So, there are lots of things that are different between San Francisco and New York City. There's the weather, the size, the unique NY garbage smell, and SF's general sense of carefree liberalism compared to NY's angsty liberalism. Yes, they are both major cities with a serious leftist bent, but obviously they've got drastically different cultures within that.

Canvassing in New York City is also somewhat different. It's definitely the same animal, but perhaps a slightly different breed. It's harder to get people to smile at you as they pass by without stopping. They're way more in a hurry and used to be hassled. They've got the blinders on in a way that San Franciscans never did.

One major difference between the cities, both in canvassing and just in being on the street, is that I get street harassed a lot less here than I did in the West. I'm not really sure why. It could be because San Francisco, as Aviva suggested in the comments on that first post, has a more lenient attitude in general over what's acceptable public behavior. If sexual behavior in public is easier to get away with, does that make sexual harassment easier too? I don't know, but I can see the difference.

Now, I do still get bugged. People definitely hit on me when I'm in public, but it's so much more polite. It's still annoying, but much less so when someone says "Pardon my saying this, but you're very pretty," than when they ask my friend, "Hey, is that your girlfriend? I'd put that on my tongue," or just shout "You're hot" from their seat in a door frame.

I'm still not sure how to respond to street come-ons. I'm thinking calm honesty would probably be the best policy. You know, respond like I would if I was canvassing. "Thank you. It makes me uncomfortable that you say that, but thanks. It's weird on the street." I said something to that affect to a guy who wanted my number the other day, and it worked really well. He just said "That's cool, I understand" and walked away.

Has anyone had any successful rejoinders to this kind of stuff? I'd be interested to hear what works for you.

Moving and Settling

2009-10-02T00:03:00.001-04:00

I've been in a very strange mental state lately, one that I tend to enter during periods of intense transition or stress. Things are bumping along pretty well with the move to New York City. I've got an apartment I really like and a roommate I love and a job that's stressful but fulfilling, so on the surface level I'm doing well. My roommate's been having some health problems that have thrown a good-sized wrench in things, but overall things are alright.

I feel, though, kind of disconnected from everything. I have to keep reminding myself that this is, in fact, my life. What I've been doing is my everyday reality. This job is what I do now, at least for the time being. I live here. You know, for reals.

It's a dissociated feeling, and it makes it hard for me to think critically about things or to decide what I really want to be doing. Everything feels very temporary, and I just kind of go through the motions. It's not a terrible place, I wouldn't say I'm depressed, but I'm definitely not at full functioning.

I think it will be much better once I develop a concrete friend group beyond my roommate and her friends. I need to have people I can call to chill on a Thursday night, for my own fun and also to be less dependent on her. In a sense I need to guild up my New York family.

I think I'm starting to settle a bit more and come out of this. Thus blogging here; it's hard to do when I'm all out of it. Hopefully I'll be posting a lot more about all the interesting shit that comes up when canvassing and the weird stuff that happens in my relationships. It's all still there, I just need to write it down.

Being a Grown Up

2009-09-11T22:27:00.001-04:00

Well, I've now signed my first lease.

My mother used to always say that you're not a real adult until you have to pay your own bills. After a couple of weeks of sitting on the phone with the cable, gas, and electric companies, setting up appointments and equipment for same, tracking down and paying for furniture, and unpacking boxes, I think I can now officially say I am an adult.

I've been getting up every morning at 9am and trucking on the subway into work. I'm still canvassing here in New York City, which I definitely don't want to do for much longer. It is, however, a job with income. This is currently important.

I don't believe I've mentioned this here before, but one of my friends is a professional dominatrix (or pro-domme). I'm planning to go in with her to the dungeon where she works and have an interview with the boss this Tuesday. If you read here at all regularly, you know that I definitely have a submissive bent, so this venture should be pretty interesting.

I have no idea whether I will like dominating men for money, but it's another one of those things that I figure I might as well try and see how I feel about it. I'll certainly be writing about that, and much more about my adventures in this biggest U.S. city, now that I'm finally a bit settled. I'm such a nester; it makes me much happier to have a home to go back to that's all set up and pretty and comfortable. This is the first one I've gotten to build myself.

P.S. See, Myca, I blogged!

Everything's Gonna Be Alright

2009-09-02T00:03:00.000-04:00

This is an extremely quick blog post to thank everyone who offered to help and let y'all know that I have found and apartment and everything is settling nicely. I'm at a friend's house on his computer, but I'll have internet of my own starting around Friday. I'll be able to write more extensively about my crazy week starting then.

Woo, moving!

Uh Oh

2009-08-26T13:24:00.000-04:00

So, I'm moving to NYC tomorrow, and I no longer have anyplace to stay while I apartment hunt.

I was planning to crash with a friend of mine for a few nights, but he just had a family emergency and had to take off. He was already going to be moving away at the end of the week, so he's giving up his place and I can't stay.

Therefore, if you are a New York City (especially Brooklyn) person and have a couch I can sleep on, I will be your new best friend. I know it's sketchy to be asking over the internet, but I'm in sort of dire straits as I've got a plane flight tomorrow and no idea where I'll be headed to when I leave the gate.

I'll be stalking the interwebs for the next day or so, watching my inbox feverishly, so if you can help me out (or know someone who can) please leave a comment here. We'll be BFFs. Instantly.

Canvassing vs. Stripping Part 2: Objectification

2009-08-25T13:41:00.002-04:00

I wrote not long ago that stripping and canvassing are very similar. I stand by this; it's mostly the same skill set and similar interactions. I've been surprised to find, though, that there's one major difference. I actually feel a lot more objectified when I'm canvassing than I ever did when I was stripping.

There's the general problem, in canvassing, of standing on a city street for five and a half hours a day. This makes the street harassment I mentioned in my last post a constant issue and very much a part of the job. It's a sort of montage in the background of my daily life. You know, various cut scenes of "Hey baby, what's your name?" and "Aren't you pretty?" and "You got a boyfriend?" and "I'd put that on my tongue."

It also happens with the people I canvass, though. See, I'm ostensibly standing out there for a cause that has nothing to do with my looks or my body. It's gay marriage, it's about equal rights, it's a political thing. I'm being friendly and outgoing but not sexual. The size of my boobs and the color of my eyes have nothing to do with it.

And yet I get the once-over from customers on the street as much as I did when I was stripping. They come on to me just as often. The difference is that in a strip club that's part of the expected interaction. By being there in a thong, I've given the customers permission to oggle and be lewd at me, assuming they pay appropriately.

One of the things I always liked about stripping is that it took objectification, which happens every day no matter what I do, and put it in a place where it was controlled. It gave me the option to consent to it. It gave me bouncers to make it stop if anyone did it in a way I didn't like. When I was stripping, I had the option of saying "No" to someone's objectifying behavior and having it mean something. Yes, we needed the bouncers to enforce that, but we had them. It was enforced.

On the street, I can't say no. I do sometimes, but it's often ignored. I feel like I have no control over the way people treat me, and it's often with minimal respect. I feel uncomfortable a lot of the time. I feel placed into a box labeled "fuckable woman" and imposed upon. I feel objectified. Way, way more than I ever did when I had chosen to be naked on a stage.

Sexually Harassed

2009-08-24T02:09:00.005-04:00

Every day I go to work in downtown San Francisco. I get dropped off outside the BART station near my house, ride a train for ten minutes, and walk approximately 100 feet outside another BART station to get to my office. It's a very short trip, especially in terms of the number of steps I take that are actually outside.

Every day, I am catcalled, propositioned, lewdly complimented, or generically hit on by a man at least once on my way to work and at least once on the way home. Often, it's more than that. I literally can't walk outside my house or out of my office without having some guy try to foist himself on me.

Of course, when I'm canvassing on the street for five and a half hours a day, this effect is multiplied tenfold. It's true that pretty much all canvassers are attractive by society's silly standards. It's part of how we make money, and I of course use that to keep my average high.

Even when I'm not trying to attract a donor, though, I garner a lot of unwanted attention. The other day, a fellow female canvasser and I were waiting for a bus and a man driving a Mercedes pulled over, asked if we were dating each other, and then told us "I'd put that on my tongue." It's gross, and it happens all the time.

I'm damn sick of this. It's driving me crazy. I have to fend off sketchy men almost constantly, and it's to a point where it's a big burden. I'd love to be able to just walk down the street without having to think of some witty rejoinder or feeling awkward and rude as I ignore a come-on. Even just having to respond to this shit takes up a decent amount of time and energy that I'd much rather spend on better things.

The thing is, I don't do anything to bring on this attention. I just happen to be at an age and in a physical condition that makes me fit the arbitrary beauty ideals that our society holds over everyone's head. I didn't choose this, it's just the fact of my person. It's a fucked up consequence of being "attractive" that I then have asshole men assuming it's okay to oggle me. I become an unwilling participant in their show of masculinity: hey, look at me! I'm attracted to a pretty woman! This proves I'm a man!

I actually really look forward to getting older and being less "ideally" attractive. I know for a fact that anyone at all can be really sexy. It's all about confidence and feeling sexy and projecting that attitude onto other people. Anyone can do that, no matter how they look, and it's something you get to choose.

When I'm older, I won't have to be perceived as sexy all the time just because of how I look. I'll get to be sexy when I feel like it and towards the people that I pick. It'll have so much more to do with who I really am and what's actually sexual about me than this annoyingly arbitrary body I've got and the gender role that goes with it. I'll get to actually have some choice about it, some control over the mode in which I'm interacting with people.

I suppose I don't know for certain that this is true, and it's certainly true that one can never control anyone else's actions or reactions. Gender roles will still suck and I'm sure it'll be annoying when I'm feeling sexy and other people don't pick up on it. I know there are two sides to this beauty ideal coin and that they both rather suck. I'm just really fed up with being sexually harassed on the street every day, and I'll be glad when it stops or even just happens less often.

Gay Bar

2009-08-22T02:25:00.000-04:00

I went, tonight, to a gay club in the Castro. San Francisco's pretty fun in that its queer culture is exactly what you'd expect it to be. This club was all techno, mostly gay people, more men than women, and a good amount of drinking. It was packed. The bodies writhed together. It might as well have been a scene from Queer as Folk. (Although I know that was set in another city.)

I went to gay bars and clubs a lot throughout my college career. There was a period of time where I'd go to a gay bar at least three nights a week, to socialize and sometimes dance and sometimes drink.

I didn't like going to straight dance clubs because men would inevitably feel me up or at least hit on me in a very sketchy fashion. At gay bars, there isn't this problem. The men are only interested in each other and the women know better than to be totally disrespectful.

Since I've graduated, though, I've spent less time with queer folks. My job is to canvass for a queer issue, but there are still more straight people at work than gay ones. I'd sort of forgotten how much more comfortable I am within the queer community than I am in the straight one.

I have my own gripes with the gay community, mostly involving their sometimes exclusion of bisexual people. I still feel better, though, with teh gays than with teh straights. There's so much more gender flexibility, such an understanding that gender roles don't have to define everything. It cuts down a lot on the blatant sexism.

I'd forgotten, before tonight, how much more comfortable I feel around gay people than around straight ones. I'm considering taking a little break from dating men, just because I've gotten into such an unfortunate head space about them. Even if I don't skip out on all the less-sexist men who I do like, I'd like to spend more time with gay people. I think it's time to start pursuing women again.

Self Discipline in Writing, and My Evening

2009-08-21T06:42:00.000-04:00

I think it is now time to start forcing myself to post every day. I have been very, very terrible about blogging for the last several months, to state the obvious. This isn't because I've had nothing to talk about; my brain continues to churn regardless of what weird emotional/stress state I'm in. I've had plenty of things percolating.

I just haven't really been writing. Not here, and not for school anymore, and not in my journal, and not anything fictional. Nothing. This, for me, is not a good thing.

Writing keeps me a little more sane, forces me to analyze my life, helps me to understand my feelings and experiences by articulating them. I really need to be doing it more, because I've been letting some good ol' life patterns (like the whole man issue I wrote about in my last post) build up without really dealing with them.

I spent tonight at a bar and then a dance club with a group of people from work, and although I enjoy the company of many of my coworkers, I was left feeling uncomfortable and almost grossed out after this evening. It really had nothing to do with my companions and everything to do with my feelings about men and being surrounded by them.

I was being lightly hit on by one male coworker, Y, who shared that he hasn't had sex in months and is desperate (his word!). He was also pursuing, and talking about pursuing, another coworker who is new to the office. C, the third woman in the group, picked up an Italian guy early on and got him to buy her drinks and make out with her.

I was being more subtly but also more persistently hit on by N, another male coworker who has a girlfriend but who admits that he make-out cheats on her when he's drunk. He kept saying he wanted to drink more so that he could make poor life choices and touching my knees. A random guy outside the club who I talked to for about a minute took the time to make sure that N would be escorting me home as it's not safe out there for a beautiful lady like myself.

I can't really say what it was that bugged me so much about the whole night, I just felt vaguely dirty, as though I was a part of something I didn't like. I wish there was some way to just check out of traditional gender roles entirely, to not be confronted with them all the time. I wish men didn't objectify me constantly based on my confidence and openness around sexuality. I don't want to be someone's wet dream.

I like it when people are attracted to me, sure, but not so much when it's because they think I'll be the perfect lay. Or the perfect anything, for that matter. It's so much nicer when they perceive me as a human, flaws and all.

It's been an off night, and I'll do a better sort later through what was up. I'd like to find some kind of conclusion, a reaction to this discomfort with men, that will help me function better in their presence. It is, after all, a little hard to avoid them altogether.

Stripping and "Hating" and Dating Men

2009-08-02T14:18:00.000-04:00

When I first started stripping, I heard from lots of my coworkers and a few of my friends in the industry that the job would make me hate men. They said that when you do sex work, you see the worst in men and so it is inevitable that you start to dislike them at least a little. I didn't write this off entirely, as of course they had experience at that point and I didn't, but I hoped that it would be different for me.

I was, I rationalized, doing sex work for different reasons than most of them. I didn't need the money, I just kind of wanted to see what it was like to dance naked and get paid for it. I figured this privilege would protect me from making some of the compromises they might have had to, would protect me from a changing opinion of men. I knew the industry would definitely alter me, as everything in life does, but I figured my compassion could hold up to it in that regard.

Well, my compassion is certainly still there. I feel sorry for men much more than I hate them. But things have definitely changed in my feelings towards them.

I've been thinking about my recent heterosexual trend, wondering why my attention has been so much more on men than on women. It hasn't been for lack of physical attraction to women; it's just that when I meet a nicer (and attractive) man, my focus zooms in on him immediately. He stands out to me. This hasn't been happening much with women.

It occurred to me that I've got a little reaction formation going on when it comes to men. (Wikipedia: In psychoanalytic theory, reaction formation is a defensive process in which anxiety-producing or unacceptable emotions and impulses are mastered by exaggeration of the directly opposing tendency.) In this case, I'm very uncomfortable with and somewhat dislike men, so I've been dating them.

So I certainly don't hate men, but I do hate a lot of the things a lot of them do. I don't much like being objectified without my permission. (Accepting money for it is giving permission.) I don't like it when they assume I'm sexually available or feelingless based on my orientation or relationship style or job. I feel almost paranoid about being imposed upon by them, pushed into ways of being or thinking of myself that I don't like, and it affects me from day to day.

So I'm very defended against them. In order to protect myself, I have to be paying attention to the men around me at all times. I'm expending an enormous amount of energy and attention on making sure I don't interact with men in ways that will hurt me. I'm super up front about my job, orientation, and relationship style so that I can immediately avoid the men who objectify them. Putting up barriers like that takes a good amount of effort and so I'm always very aware of men.

What this means is that when I do find a guy who's nice to me, who doesn't do those things I hate, I've already been paying oodles of attention to him in order to find that out. It seems notable, remarkable, that he's not going to be sexist towards me. I appreciate him a lot. I date him, if he's available. There you go. I'm not as afraid of women, and so this happens less often.

(As a side note: I don't claim this is a rational reaction to anything. These are feelings and my attempt to understand them.)

Now, back to stripping. Stripping didn't force me somehow to have these feelings towards men. It's not even that men act much differently at a strip club than they do in general. In fact it's just the opposite, and that's the problem. Stripping commodifies the sexist interactions that exist every day, everywhere. It puts a monetary value on them and so it makes them very, very obvious.

As a stripper, I have to trade somewhat in misogyny, to play off it and manipulate it so that I can get lap dances and tips and avoid groping and slurs. It's something I simultaneously like and hate about the job. I've learned oodles about gender roles, particularly about what's dysfunctional in masculinity. I like learning. However, this knowledge makes it hard to move comfortably in a world that's so full of sexism. I'm just so aware all the time. I can't really sit back and accept it, learn to ignore it, bite the harness and move on like women have been doing for centuries. I'm psychologically fighting it out most of the time.

I'd like to try to shift my focus a little. It's probably unnecessary and certainly draining to be so defended all the time. I'd like to learn, in my day to day activities if not my scholarship and activism, to brush off sexist men. I don't want to let them inside my head, let them affect me, which is something I do have control over even when I can't change their behavior. It'd be nice, even, to spend more time with women and live more in a sisterhood community where I can feel safe. Focus on safety, on whom I am comfortable with rather than on whom I'm not.

I suppose it's a lesson for me as an activist. I want to keep working to change the things in the world that strike me as unfair and wrong, the things that make me angry and hurt me. I need also, though, to focus on healing from that anger and hurt. It's just as important.

Birthday Post

2009-07-31T14:12:00.000-04:00

It's my birthday today, and I am now 22. Whoo!

Actually, I'm not feeling particularly excited or sad or whatever or anything about this birthday. It kind of just is. I like getting older, as I always hated the way people would ignore what I was saying because I was young, or seem generally suspicious of my intentions. I've noticed that happening less and less, and it's awesome.

Mostly, for me, this birthday means the end of my medical insurance coverage by my parents and the beginning of my "real" adult life. That's something I've been grappling with for a while now, and I'm finally starting to come to terms with it. The concept of independence is still a little freaky (I'm lucky I've had someone to depend on so that's the case), but I'm starting to pull things in order. It feels pretty good.

So happy birthday to me!

Kissing (and my first HNT!)

2009-07-30T04:47:00.000-04:00

There is nothing I like more than kissing, whether I'm fucking, making love, or just sitting around enjoying it for itself.

I am a hugely orally fixated person. I love oral sex, giving blow jobs and going down on women. Sometimes when I masturbate, I put my fingers or a dildo in my mouth because it feels really good to me to have something there. These things are great and I wouldn't want to do without them, but my favorite thing to do with my mouth and my time is kiss.

Kissing turns me on more than any other sexy activity. I cannot have sex without kissing; I won't be into it and I'll get frustrated and annoyed. Kissing is what makes me wet, and I could do it for hours before getting to anything else.

More importantly, it's what really makes me feel close to whoever I'm with. A kiss causes an instant release of happy bonding chemicals in my brain. It's like insta-bond. Even just a quick peck from a partner as we go about our day keeps me happy and prompts small swooning. I really just like the feeling of someone else's lips on my own.

I haven't had lots of good kissing in almost two weeks. (I know, I have a low tolerance for abstinence from anything.) I want some.

Kisses in bed, anyone?

Canvassing vs. Stripping

2009-07-29T15:56:00.001-04:00

To those of you who also work in the sex industry (and some savvy folks who don't), it may not come as a surprise that working as a canvasser is similar in many ways to working as a stripper. That might sound like a stretch, but aside from having to wear a slightly different uniform, a lot of the things I'm doing in my new job as a canvasser to overturn Prop 8 are similar to what I did as a stripper.

I spend all day being cheerful, nice, and attempting to get people to give me money. I have to walk up to strangers, charm them, and get them to like me. I need to be completely comfortable with rejection because more people will walk by me on the street or refuse to open their screen doors than will donate $70 a month. I need to convince people to part with their money in ways they weren't expecting.

One of my immediate supervisors (not the hiring boss) just remarked to me that she's noticed our company doesn't hire unattractive people. The office is pretty diverse in terms of race and sexuality, but nearly everyone is aged 18-27 and is at the very least pretty or cute. This is partly because of who they hire and partly because you have to make a certain amount to stay on staff. Prettier people make more money.

That prettiness principle demonstrates the job's similarity to stripping. It's slightly exploitative, it commodifies people's looks, and it lends itself to a particular staff demographic.

My point here is that stripping is a lot like any other service or public relations job. Yes, it commodifies and sometimes exploits people, but so does canvassing or waiting tables or selling just about anything. It's all labor, stripping just involves less clothing.

That is all.

Future Work

2009-07-28T14:11:00.001-04:00

I wrote not long ago about living at a crossroads right now. Well, one of the major lanes of that road is work: what I'll be doing, where I'll be doing it, and how long I'll be doing it for.

I've been working as a stripper for going on two years now. I've had a lot of time to experience and think about that kind of sex work. I wrote at the very beginning of this blog about the reasons I decided to start stripping. The most lasting motivation has been the one that pushed me to understand the industry, the customers, the workers, and what it all says about gender and life. I think it's all incredibly fascinating.

Of course, stripping is hard work. I've tried never to make bones about that. It takes a lot of energy to dance but mostly to hustle, to be very nice, to be sexually available but not, to be charming and beautiful night after night.

When I would work at the club near my college, I'd be too tired to talk much after a shift. It would be like my voice was all used up. I'd be too keyed up to sleep, but too tired to speak. It was great to live in a laid back house of people where I could just sit in a room with others and watch them play video games. They gave me a comforting, calming presence without asking for anything from me in return.

Well, that kind of work isn't really something I can sustain on my own. I really need the supportive relationships, the people around me, in order to keep my energy up. I do like stripping. I like the attention and harnessing the raw sexuality and dancing and talking to people. At the peep show, I get paid to masturbate, which is basically awesome. However, I'm looking for something else now to fill my days, with maybe the occasional lucrative naked night thrown in for good measure and fun.

So I'm sending out résumés looking for work in New York City. I'm moving there at the end of August and I want a full time youth and/or LGBT or women's rights related job. I'm kind of excited at the prospect of work I could like and not have to take home for me. Something that would stimulate me intellectually and hopefully exercise my compassion without making me too much a part of any sexist institutions. You know, a "real" job. It should be fun.

Bisexuality and Dating Men

2009-07-27T12:40:00.003-04:00

For the last couple of years, I've dated only men. I've slept with plenty of women, but all the people I've seen consistently or seriously were men. I wouldn't say that I've done this on purpose, but it's been a pretty obvious trend.

I think a lot of the reason for this is simple convenience. There are a lot more straight men scattered around in obvious places than there are queer women. They tend to approach me more often and I end up with them just as a matter of odds. In the past six months or so, I have been on more of a hetero kick, but that's not unusual. I've always gone through cycles of leaning one way or the other every once in a while. I had a lady cycle three years ago, and now I'm going the other way. Woo, fluid sexuality.

This trend of male-dating, however, puts me in a strange and slightly uncomfortable position. I'm a bisexual person who has been very involved in the queer community. In college, most of my female friends were queer. I was part of the leadership of the Gay Straight Alliance. I went to gay bars. Most of my jobs were in specifically queer-friendly or queer-oriented places. I tied a lot of my identity in with queerness.

And yet, most of my relationships were heterosexual. Straight, if you will.

Of course, the fact that my relationships are always open does allow me to sleep with women. That doesn't change the fact, though, that people assume I'm straight when I go out in public with a male sweetheart. It's sort of like the queer part of me is hidden inside myself.

I don't like feeling hidden. I end up questioning myself a lot because there is pressure from both sides to define and present myself as either queer or straight. It's not always an open or spoken pressure, although I've heard my share of "choose already" jokes and not-so-jokes. It's more often a pressure based on the fact that the queer community is so close and clearly-defined. There's a norm there, and there are great rewards of community and support for following it.

I do have a strong desire to be recognized for who I am and to fit in with a group. I'd like to be more independent, but part of my identity is based on how others see me. I suppose that's my own cross to bear, but it makes the bisexuality particularly hard when it keeps me separate from what seems to be such a fun and close-knit group. I'd like to be a part of it.

I'm not letting identity issues stop me from dating whomever I like (or love) or dressing how I want or making friends with whomever I want. It does cause me some angst, though, when I feel excluded not only from the straight world which kind of turns me off anyway, but the queer community that appeals to me.

Crossroads

2009-06-27T18:16:00.004-04:00

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about where I'm going with my life and how I want to get there.

I've had a pretty good idea of what I want to do for a long time. I really want to be involved in sex education. I think that's a way for me to be a teacher, which really appeals to me, and help people, which is really important to me, and be an activist, which I think everyone should do. Sure, not everybody can be an activist about everything, but I think we can all make a contribution, however small, to some world progress we think is important. It's more a question of caring about the world and the beings in it and letting that affect your behavior than organizing rallies.

That said, I'm having a moment of hesitation about my life plan now that I've got my undergrad degree in hand and the possibilities of what I could be doing are wide open. I could live anywhere, I could work at almost anything. I could get my masters (in human sexuality) or not. I could live for the whole year with my best friend or not. I could travel. I could settle down. It's so endless.

I'm not operating under the illusion that I need to know what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life. I'm just at a point where I can really, truly decide what I want to do now and the myriad choices are a little more overwhelming than I expected. It's kind of cool, but also kind of scary.

The World Provides

2009-06-15T04:30:00.005-04:00

Life, the universe, and everything are pretty amazing sometimes. As in surprising and challenging and I'm amazed amazing. If you read here, you know I wrote this...

"I've been doing a lot of thinking and my conclusion is this: I'm not in a primary relationship (of any kind) and I want to be. So I need to start acting like that's the truth instead of ignoring it. Time to communicate what I actually need, to be clear with new partners. I want cuddles and talking in low voices and doing things together that aren't sex and comfort and familiarity with body and mind and someone to do things with and a partner in crime and someone to call me on my shit and the ability to fight sometimes and have it be okay. I want to actually get closer. I want love."

...about two weeks ago.

Well, the world seems to have provided. Ironically enough, I've started spending a lot of time with S's best friend X. X and I slept together with S there (and participating a little) about two weeks ago, and I went to visit X in Santa Cruz for four days the other weekend. He's loving and spiritual and all these things that I haven't had in my life for so long. It's kind of nuts and I have no idea what's going to happen, but I'm going with the flow. X has moved up to the city now to live with S (I know) so I'm seeing him a lot.

I don't have much else to say. I haven't been blogging very much because I've been kind of reevaluating my life and what I want to be doing with it and that's eating up my brain. Hopefully I'll come to some conclusions soon and then I'll have more to say.

Money

2009-06-06T20:01:00.000-04:00

A disorganized and possibly rambling continuation of my thoughts on my privileged stupidity when it comes to money: how did I get this way?

I try to be fairly open about the fact that I come from a very privileged family. For starters: I'm white, started out as Catholic, and my family has a lot of money. My dad is an executive for start-up biotech companies, which means he does very well financially. My mother works very part time and doesn't make much; she could afford to make that choice. Both of my parents are college educated. They both came from upper-middle-class white families. My background is a continuation of theirs.

We did not talk about money in my family when I was growing up. Apparently, it's partly because my father really hates to. I think it's a combination of his being proud of how much he makes and wanting to spend it on his wife and children (quite the patriarchal sentiment, that) and feeling awkward about being richer than most people and living in luxury. Not ridiculous luxury, but luxury nonetheless. There's a nice big dose of white, wealthy guilt in my family and the way it manifests itself is that we DO NOT talk about money.

My dad hands his credit card to waiters at restaurants before they bring him the check, and he just signs it. My mother doesn't check the price tags of things we buy at the grocery store or jeans at the mall. I don't know how much money my dad makes in a year, or in a month, or in a week, or in an hour. I don't know how much our mortgage costs. I don't know how much our food costs. Off the top of my head, I don't even know how much this computer cost.

Maybe sharing all of this is just rubbing the privilege in people's faces, and I shouldn't. I guess my point, though, is that things really shouldn't be this way. One of the things about privilege is that it allows you not to be aware of things like money or race or gender or sexuality.

If you're white, that's supposedly the default race and most white people don't even have to think about their race until they're confronted with a minority person who's bringing it up. I think white people who give in to this option of ignorance are socially irresponsible. I think financially privileged people who give in to the option of ignorance about money are socially irresponsible.

I hate that my parents didn't talk about money just because we didn't have to talk about it. Just because we didn't need to discuss what we couldn't afford or what we needed to miss out on due to lack of funds doesn't mean we shouldn't have been talking about what we could afford and how special that was. It's something I needed to be aware of.

Yes, I heard from time to time that we were lucky people and that we shouldn't take it for granted, but the taking for granted was happening on a daily basis and that's a much stronger message.

I probably won't ever be truly poor. I won't know what that's like. I don't want to let that stop me from feeling empathy for people who are poor or from appreciating what I have. I don't want to let it spoil me, which it seems in part to have done. I don't want it to keep me from being a good, responsible person. I don't want it to stop me from helping people.

So I've got to figure this shit out.