Sex Worker Literati

Even when I’m not having sex, I’m often listening to stories about sex, talking about sex, or reading about sex. Last night I went to Sex Worker Literati in Manhattan, hosted by Audacia Ray and David Henry Sterry. If you live near NYC you really should go. I had a wonderful time.
I met up with Diva and Tess beforehand for some inexpensive food picked up at the cheap dumpling place down the street. ($3 for dinner and I didn’t even finish it!) and brought to one of their usual bars for drinks with dinner. I got to meet Lucy Vonne for the second time and overall had a wonderful bit of hanging out with everyone. Later on, Twisted Monk showed up, and I got to meet him this time whereas I had only seen him at the sex blogger calendar party. I felt kinda left out though, as I was the only one there without a smart phone/touch screen. I’ve always been really behind with my cell phones. It was only 1 or 2 years ago that I finally got a phone with a camera in it. Yup, call me the cell phone luddite. I’m lusting after an iPhone right about now, but not sure on my librarian salary if I can afford the monthly data charge. I got to hear from Diva about some new and exciting plans she and Tess have. (Of course, I will keep schtum about these until they unveil their ideas. But they’re good ideas as always.)

Twisted Monk is nice, funny, sexy and cute. Damn. No wonder the man can make a living as a pro Dom. (He talked about this for his part of the readings last night.) Of course, his main claim to fame is his popular bondage rope company.

The readings were funny, enlightening and made me really think about why I support sex worker rights. We’re fed stereotypes by the media, but people aren’t stereotypes – they’re people. Sex workers are multi-dimensional human beings, regardless of what you think about the “morality” of sex work. I am happy and proud to have known a variety of sex workers in my life – they’ve been intelligent, (and often quite educated), nice and fun people to be around. When I first had the pleasure of meeting Audacia Ray she was doing sex work and working on her master’s degree. (I was working on my master’s degree at the time too, and wishing I had the cojones and business acumen to get into sex work. It would have paid much, much better than my part-time paraprofessional library jobs alone. But yes, there was the whole illegality thing to consider.) Heck, a while back I realized that MasterDoc and I getting paid to do our bdsm shows makes us sex workers. While we are among the privileged ones, (not all sex workers are middle to upper-middle-class and college educated) I still think the point must be made that sex workers are human beings, and as such they should not be treated like so much trash left out on the street. (It might even be helpful to remember that sex worker clients are human beings as well. And as all the political/religious sex “scandals” have shown, they are often people you already know.)

Making prostitution illegal has never stopped prostitution from going on. The only thing it really manages to do is make prostitutes more vulnerable. They become easy targets for the dregs of society as they can’t exactly go to the police when they’ve been blackmailed, assaulted, raped, and possibly someone has tried to kill them. I think the whole illegality of prostitution is rooted in sexism, homophobia and transphobia – after all, most sex workers are women, men who sell themselves to men, and transgender people. They are part of groups of people already marginalized by society and already vulnerable. If heterosexual men could make a living by selling their sexual favors, do you think that prostitution would be illegal? It’s just an opinion, but I don’t.

While I’m not a libertarian, I think I tend to like them since they’re usually quite supportive of all sex work being legal. (I’m kinda politically unaffiliated, having come from an extreme left/liberal ideology and was once fond of socialism (not anymore) and anarchy (still to a certain extent).)

So while having a fab time last night I was tweeting up a storm. As always, tweeting from my luddite’s phone is one-sided. After tweeting about the joys of chocolate martinis I received a text from MasterDoc saying, “not TOO much booze babe.” Darn. I had planned on one more drink, but I got a soda instead. It was cute when I told Monk about this as he tried to help me think of a loophole, “What if someone else bought you a drink?” Nothing like a Dom trying to help you circumvent your Dom. Hee hee. I said no, he would still be unhappy if I drank too much.

Now on the outside, it looks like I simply submitted to MasterDoc and did as he wished. But in my head went a whole thought process:

“Aw man! I wanted another drink! How much is too much alcohol? I’m not feeling all that drunk. Could I justify one more drink as not being too much? I think MasterDoc would be unhappy with me having four martinis in one night though. And I could never lie to him. Damn. Ok, I won’t have another.” It’s a struggle. In the end, however, I thought MasterDoc’s point of view was right. I was perfectly happy that I didn’t go for one more drink. He was watching out for me. Granted, one more drink probably wouldn’t have made a HUGE difference, but I really did not need another.

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Coming up is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers on December 17th. Please, let’s promote the idea of sexual freedom for all and safety for ALL workers. And to support the work of Sex Work Awareness, please buy a NYC Sex Blogger Calendar (there’s a special offer there for the month of December from Audacia Ray).