Tag Archives: Nix 66

An Open Letter to Meghan Murphy, fwiw, from an Other Side of Feminism.

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Editorial Note: This was originally posted by Nix on her tumblr on July 1, 2015.
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Hi Meghan,

I hope you’ll permit me to address you by your first name.  I do so not out of any disrespect or desire to minimize you or your work, but because I want to speak with you directly, a bit intimately, as one woman to another, as one Feminist to another, as one human being to another.

I’d like to tell you a bit about my life and the experiences that led me to choose sex work at the comparatively late age of 33.  I sort of want to confide…

I’m 34 years old, white, and from a Leftist, activist, middle class background (in Southern California).   My family has been torn apart by all manner of deceit, greed, abuse (including sexual), and hypocrisy, but I can assure you that there has never been a conscious moment in my own life when I wasn’t a Feminist.   I wasn’t permitted Barbie dolls unless I worked for the money to buy them for myself. I was given unlimited puzzles and books. I was told I could be anything that I wanted to be.  And I was encouraged to invest in my intelligence and physical capacities, as opposed to being “pleasing” to men.

I was not raised to see myself as an object.  I was raised to see myself as a subject, and a talented one at that.

Anyway, in 2008, I found myself in the very uncomfortable position of reporting two of my colleagues for sexual harassment at Northwestern University.  I was two years into a PhD program there.  One colleague had grabbed my ass at a bar (he was married and I thought we were meant to be discussing Deleuze) and another had told me that he had raped me and I didn’t remember it because I had been so drunk the last time he saw me (and technically, that was possible).

I did not want to ruin anyone’s career. But I did want to report for record, in case this sort of thing happened to someone else. I also requested sexual harassment training for my entire department in an effort to make sure that it would not.

Unfortunately, the Chair of my department was a woman who would not permit any training session to occur unless she knew which students were involved.  Conflict of interest much?

I had planned on letting it all slide.  I wasn’t about to out myself like that, as my department was so tiny and gossipy, and there would undoubtedly be negative repercussions.   Further, I was TAing for the Chair with that married colleague who had grabbed my ass.  I figured that I just needed to make it through the quarter… Until she asked me to compare grades with him at a coffee shop.

So I confessed to her, for lack of a better word, because I wasn’t about to meet with him off-campus.

She told me: “People get grabbed.”  She told me: Rape was “unthinkable” and “why would anyone say such a thing?”  She told me: “The Sexual Harassment Office is just an excuse for a sad, incompetent woman to hold a job and drink from her Northwestern coffee mug.”  She told me: “Americans are too uptight about being touched… Why, even her yoga teacher had to ask before touching students!”  She told me: “Reporting sexual harassment is a weak act.”  She told me: I needed “to take better care of myself and not worry so much about other people.”  She told me, in short, that: The only problem was me!  I was just too sensitive, weak, and fragile.

I’ll be honest with you, of all the words used to describe me over the course of my life, that is the only time I’ve ever heard “weak.”   She maintained this line and I eventually reported her to the Office of Sexual Harassment Prevention for gender discrimination and a toxic work environment.

She was investigated over the course of a 24 hour period, which is an amazing turnaround, don’t you think? And then, nothing happened!  So I eventually attempted to report the entirety of Northwestern University to the Office of Civil Rights for violation of Title IX, arguing that NU has absolutely no protocol to speak of and pointing to their own lack of staff, myriad conflicts of interest, and lack of training, generally.

I still maintain this. And they’ve had three public scandals since I attempted to file a complaint against them with the OCR in 2010: one concerning a fucksaw, one concerning Ludlow and an undergrad, and the latest over this piece of pablum.

Of course, the OCR didn’t take my case.  I wasn’t raped, or at least, I don’t think I was.  And nothing that happened to me was a big enough offense to move a federal agency like the OCR, even if I was pointing to NU’s bureaucratic structure and lack of training as the root cause of my problems which would necessarily produce more problems for others.

So, by 2012, after fighting within the system with everything I had, I dropped out A.B.D.  I couldn’t justify writing a dissertation for a university that didn’t care about my own bodily sovereignty and safety, particularly as a “Feminist.”  And how was I supposed to be an authority on any topic whatsoever if I wasn’t the authority of my own personal space?  The entire experience was immensely disempowering.

I moved back to Southern California and I set out to get a job.  Any job!  Because I was starting my life all over!   Clearly, the academic route had been a terrible, terrible mistake for me.

As you might imagine, though, no one – and I mean no one – is inclined to hire someone who left their last post because they found out their institution had no functioning sexual harassment policy.  It’s too likely that you’re… fragile, weak, and sensitive.  And you’re a whistleblower.  Who the hell wants to hire someone that you know will blow the whistle on you if she deems it necessary, according to her own lights?

This left me in the position where I would have to fabricate a biographical lie for job interviews, which frankly I see as censorship and a disavowal of what happened to me.  This seems resolutely anti-Feminist to me and I was unwilling to make prospective employers comfortable with me, my past, or Northwestern.  I was unwilling to deny what I saw to be a fundamental injustice that must necessarily perpetuate itself by way of an almost willful negligence on the part of NU admin.  Not having a functioning sexual harassment and assault policy at a major university seems to me like a fucking crisis if ever there was one.  People should know.  And why should I be ashamed?  I left. I didn’t stay like some obedient slave. That would have been truly shameful, in my opinion.

Thus, I was unemployed for a good 6 months before I started my first business – which failed – after which I finally got into phone sex and camming as an independent domme in August of last year.  I’m a newbie, but the decision to do sex work was a long time coming and there are two important moments/thoughts that brought me there, and which I’d like to share with you.  (I thank you if you’ve made it this far.)

The first was when I was still at Northwestern.  I told a few of the professors, in 2010, that in light of the Chair’s clear policy on ass-grabbing, they really weren’t paying me enough and, indeed, I didn’t think they could afford me, and even if they could, it certainly wouldn’t go down like this.  I am not some unoccupied lot of land waiting for some intrepid male moron to come squat on me!  My existence is not an invitation to anyone for any reason!  I am not your Lady Everest!

The second thought occurred to me in April of last year.  I was very much unemployed and sort of psyching myself out for homelessness when I realized – If I was an exotic dancer at a reputable club, my ass would not be grabbed against my will because there would be bouncers.  Any ass-grabbing would only ever happen on my terms, with my consent, for money.

How in the hell is it that I’d be better protected from sexual assault taking my clothes off as sensually as possible in a designated area for money than as a PhD student at Northwestern University interacting with colleagues?  That’s a very sincere question.  How is that possible?  What insane fucking world is this?  But there you have it.

So, about four months later I spent an entire week researching my sex work options and deciding what I might commence with, what I was willing to do, what I was not willing to do.  I bought stock photos of sexy ladies – no shortage of those! – and framed body parts as if I was creating examples for a Mulvey lecture.  That wasn’t hard, as I’m sure you can imagine.  (I use my own image now, but I didn’t start that way.)

And you know what I thought? If this works, I’m finally going to profit off of the very thing that has been harming me my entire life.  It felt like grifting a system that had only ever grifted me.  And that felt really good.

The clients were not at all what I expected.  There are creeps, to be sure, but most of my clients are not even remotely abusive or rapey, because the most entitled men don’t pay for sex at all.  They just take it.  There are no boundaries with them, only overarching entitlement.  Ratio-wise, though, I encounter far more of these rapey men in my day-to-day than at work.  And I think there may be a plethora of them in academia, but who knows?  Still, there does seem to be a suspicious trend.

This all leads me to making the online acquaintance of Noah Berlatsky, a man you clearly hate, I understand… but I do think you have the wrong end of the stick here.  Please bear with me and grant me the possibility of a free (and stubborn!) will. I do appreciate your consideration and time.

Noah wrote an article that I became a little obsessed with on the UVa Rolling Stone scandal and Eden.  I was reading it because I was a sex worker and his work had been referred to often enough. I liked his articles.  But what struck me the most with this one was how it related to what I had experienced at Northwestern.  What happened to me was quotidian, not a big deal, something I was supposed to suffer under to prove that I was “tough.”  In it, he quotes Jessica Luther as telling him that:

 “We are saturated by a culture that sexualizes women but also demonizes them, that celebrates fuzzy consent and certainly doesn’t punish it, that blames victims for the sexual violence done to them, that is sometimes willing to ask people to intervene but is never willing to directly say to men that they should not rape. This kind of saturation makes it so people don’t really want to hear another story about a woman being sexually assaulted—and even if someone is willing to listen to story after story, what has to change to make it so these kinds of violent acts don’t happen with such regularity feels insurmountable. So there is this idea then that to get people to care, the story of that violence that you share (either as a journalist or a survivor) has to shock people so that they say, “Damn, even in THIS culture that doesn’t care much for women, THAT is bad.”

This quote seemed to exactly sum up my problem at NU and with the OCR.  And Noah seemed to be tracking two problems of which I was, and am, particularly aware – Sex worker stigma and sexual assault.  Or to put it another way – If I use my sexuality to extract cash from men, I’m a victim.  But if male sexuality is aggressively thrust upon me, that’s somehow my fault.  It honestly feels to me like my limited agency within this jackass culture is completely inverted, and whatever I say about myself will be turned upside down by those who “know better” than me, about me.

So I tweeted at Noah and told him how much I appreciated his articles.  And that was that.

I’ve had a ton of online exchanges with him and one chat by phone.  He has not once commented on how I look, referred to me by any diminutive, called me food items or pastry titles, solicited my services, pried into my personal life, condescended, or even ignored me, the latter of which wouldn’t be gendered violence so much as modern busyness and I-can’t-even.  That is pretty rare.

And that’s why women, and perhaps sex workers in particular, are willing, and even enthusiastic, to speak with him.  He isn’t objectifying us.  If he was objectifying us we would most certainly be charging him, or he’d end up listed as a loser by STUPIG or some other service like it.  It’s that cold, jim.  It’s that cold.  But there is nothing of the kind.

This leads me to the travesty that you think sex work is.  It wasn’t because I wanted to be an object that I got in to sex work.  It’s because I found myself sexually objectified even in places wherein I was meant to be valued for my intelligence.  It’s because I’m supposed to interpret an invitation to discuss philosophy as a sexual overture by virtue of me being cast as “girl” and my colleague being cast as “boy.”  And this ridiculously heterosexist garbage passes as “common sense” and even “professionalization” amongst people certified in the Humanities.  Ha!  Great. Why would I ever want to finish my degree?

So you tell me: What made me a whore?  It wasn’t sex work. I got into sex work because I wanted bouncers, distance, control, agency, choice, money, and all that freedom that I’m well aware you don’t like.  I got into sex work to capitalize off of what was always and already, my objectification. And before you call me a capitalist, please know that I am not.  But this is a capitalist society.  And I do seem to be reduced to my sex no matter how smart or competent I might try to be.

No.  I got into sex work because I don’t care what men think.  I don’t want their love.  I don’t want their approval.  I don’t want their advice.  I just want their cash, after which point I want appropriate behavior, and then I’d like them to go away.

As for Playboy… I get it.  It’s probably the premiere magazine in which the Beauty Industry and the Sex Industry overlap most overtly.  And that is a problem.  But it does have an impressive readership as well as a history of fabulous interviews with intellectuals.  Further, the sexism is not denied and the women do get paid.  It’s not free as you indicated in The New Statesman.  Sex workers are hustlers, if nothing else.  We want money, not to be told by the 50 billionth schmuck that we’re “fuckable.”  We know we’re “fuckable.”  As dumb as you might think sex workers are, we’re crystal clear on this.  That’s the business.

But this business doesn’t function with quite the stringent “boy”/”girl” beauty standard bullshit you might expect.  Really, this industry is built on fantasy, fetish, and to be perfectly frank, I think shame.  There is a performative quality to sex work that has the potential to be very subversive and very political.  But mainstream crap is generally just that, and it’s always been regressive and propagandist, not just in the sex industry.  My point is – It’s not the only type of sex work out there, even if it is the “norm,” which is, of course, a fiction.

With that said, I can’t say that I have a problem with a fantasy sex world existing, pending it is circumscribed and designated between consenting adults.  But I do have a problem when those fantasies start being projected on real people trying to live their lives in peace.

Personally, I am much more disturbed by The Chronicle of Higher Education. This is a supposedly non-sexist, sober-minded American standard that has continuously and seemingly willfully made errors of fact concerning specific allegations of rape and sexual assault on my former campus against one professor in particular.  These two cases don’t concern me personally in the slightest, but the negligence with which The Chronicle has addressed them here, here, and here – and the way in which every other news source has parroted Kipnis’ thesis again and again, from Jezebel to NPR to Reason just yesterday – is distressing to me,  to say the least.  I don’t know what to call it, save a snow job.

I think Kipnis, who repeatedly calls herself a Leftist and a Feminist and then gives not one whit of proof by way of any of her arguments is more damaging to Feminism than Playboy, because she’s more sinister and covert.  And if I were to be mad at Noah Berlatsky for being published in Playboy I’d likewise have to be miffed that he’s published by Reason.  I mean, Kipnis actually says in her latest interview that she feels sorry for men making 98 cents on their past dollar when women currently make some 70-something cents.  Ha!  Wow.  I honestly can’t wrap my head around this. And she also re-uses the same example of an “anonymous prof and student dating” which she was specifically taken to task for here because it’s from the professor’s testimony only and concerns a rape case that is still being considered.

Anyway, while I do understand that you’re angered by the existence of Playboy, I’d be really happy if you might consider those day-to-day factors which might lead a woman to choose sex work and attack those much bigger issues, as opposed to attacking sex work, itself.

Because, ultimately, I think the main reason that you and Noah butt heads is because you’re trying to deconstruct Femininity and those with less power, when you really might want to start with Masculinity and those with more power.  Masculinity is a far more damaging and destructive force than Femininity at the moment, as the two genders are currently culturally coded. And Femininity is put down all the time. Indeed, it’s hard for me to see Whorephobia as anything other than internalized hatred that originates from male violence.  Because let’s be honest: We’re called “whore” no matter what we do.  Or to quote Emma Goldman:

“Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but rather as a sex. It is therefore almost inevitable that she should pay for her right to exist, to keep a position in whatever line, with sex favors. Thus it is merely a question of degree whether she sells herself to one man, in or out of marriage, or to many men. Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible for prostitution.”

Anyway, I’m rather sorry this is so long and I sincerely thank you if you made it to the end.  I don’t want to start a feud with you and I don’t want to convert you.  Indeed, I don’t really expect anything from you.  But I did want to share my perspective with you because I am angry, I am Feminist, I am activist (albeit despite myself), but my traumas and targets seem to be a bit different than yours.  It sort of seems a shame that we should be on different sides.  But then, I suppose it takes all kinds.

Take care, and thanks for your time, Meghan. – Nix

Acting as Sex Work, Sex Work as Acting

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(Editor’s Note: I (that’s me, Noah) interviewed Nix 66 about performance and sex work for this piece at Pacific Standard. Nix said a lot more in response to my questions than I was able to use in the piece, so I asked her if she’d reprint the whole thing here.)
 
Noah: What sort of sex work do you do? (I know you said phone…is that something with visuals? That’s different from camming, right?)

Nix 66: I’ve been a fetish sex worker for a year now, starting with my own phone line, doing occasional private camming sessions (not on open platforms), and just now having made my first two clips. And my first two clips look like my first two clips. (Egads, that lighting!)

Writing, directing, acting, lighting, costuming, etc. — Independent Adult Content Providers are responsible for all of these things, not to mention promotion and letting people know that you exist. Coming off with a polished-looking alt-porn or fetish clip is no easy feat. I am certain of this because I’m currently grappling with it, and have yet to achieve it. Maybe some day.

But mainly I do phones.

Most of my clients (all sexed male at birth w/ one exception – a couple – in the past year) fall into one of three classes: 1) Those struggling with issues of gender and sexuality (in light of our current culture, a huge market); 2) Those who want ongoing companionship (literally, an alternative to dating with no marriage at the end); 3) Those who want detailed sexual descriptions of a genuinely Sadean nature (shock talking; the dirtier and more detailed the better).

If you want freedom of speech, you call me. The worst thing that could ever happen is that I hang up on you and block you because you haven’t abided by my limits. But those limits are generally much more broad than one could expect to find with a psychologist, a partner, a priest or equivalent, a best friend, a family member, etc. Mainly because culturally normative notions of masculinity are narrow, limiting, silencing, and damaging (to everyone). I think sex workers are, in large part, confidantes and secret keepers. That’s one of the main social functions. And it’s a damn important one. Society dispenses with it at its own peril.

I listed my main classes of clients because I have cultivated them. Any SW-er who is doing well has a persona, a list of unique skills that s/he brings to the business. They have cultivated that persona and those skills no differently than any actor, particularly the Hollywood variety.

When I first began, I didn’t want to use my image at all for fear of stigma and violence. I bought stock photos that didn’t deviate *too much* from my own body type and said I was brunette because I don’t like men who prefer blondes.

That’s visual. It also has to do with character. I am not a Princess, a MILF, a co-ed, or even a Dominatrix in the most stereotypical sense. I am terrible at getting men to take me to the mall because the mall is the last place on Earth I’d want to be. Persona and experience. You gotta play to your strengths and you gotta create a mythology around those strengths.

Do you see a similarity between what you do and acting, or performing? How is your work creative (or how is sex work in general creative?)

I think of the different branches of sex work as the Greek Muses, personally. Meaning if you were to combine the many different forms and mediations of sex work into a whole, you’d end up with something that looks very much like the “Humanities” or “Arts,” writ large.

I feel like a performance artist, actually. But what I do, specifically, I see more in line with raunchy comedy and improvisation, as well as psychotherapy. I’m a great conversationalist, an ex-literature major, with life-long interests in power, violence, class, and sex. That’s my shoo-in. But other sex workers bring different skills to bear.

Full service providers and pro-dommes deal in touch, presentation, smell, and conversation. I have also been made to understand that they spend a great deal of time doing laundry.

Porn performers must master scripts, characters, and camera angles – and that’s just if they’re in front of the camera.

Cam models improvise on the spot much like I do, but they generally rely more on visual presentation than narrative description. They also might do cos-play and scripted shows.

And exotic dancers… dance! (Is now the right time to mention that I once worked as a professional Egyptian bellydancer in my early 20s, until I was informed that it didn’t matter how well I danced because people just wanted to see me naked? And I quit. On the spot. Cuz we all know there’s no art to nudity and/or sexual desire… right? Right? Amirite?)

Roleplaying is inescapable in sex work, because ultimately – much like actors — we’re hired fantasies. The only difference really is who is doing the hiring.

Do you see a similarity between actors like Lena Dunham and Anne Hathaway and sex workers? Is sexuality part of their performance, in your view?

Ha! What a question. Lena Dunham has built her entire identity on sex and her body type. Pretty overtly. Can you imagine “Girls” stripped of casual, random, unpaid sex premised upon profound self-loathing on the part of 99% of its characters? There goes Ms. Dunham’s “edge.” Here are the top three links I found googling “lena dunham girls sex,” some with great visuals that come directly out of porn:

One.

Two.

Three.
 

Screen Shot 2015-08-24 at 10.08.25 PM

 
Why should the cast of “Girls” be paid for raunchy sex scenes? Shouldn’t they be doing this for free if their heart was really in it? If they loved it? If it was a true passion and calling?
All the more so since Lena Dunham has never believed in paying (poor) people for their labor anyways.

Anne Hathaway, well… Her entire career has hinged upon the Princess because she’s playing to her strengths just like the rest of the savvy purveyors of high class (and overwhelmingly white) “pretty.” That seems to be her range, her persona. She’s a Disney Princess. Check out some cam platforms and alt-porn and you’ll see some folks being far more creative with that role than her privileged little mind could ever conceive. But then, I only ever enjoy seeing Princesses set against the backdrop of the Terror. ;)

And Kate Winslet, why should she have any more right to all that hideous kinky? I know her body almost as well as I know my own.
Ultimately, celebrities *are* sex workers. It’s just that they sell to studios and call it “art,” which makes the masses feel much more comfortable with the fact that they’re consuming sex day-in, day-out, by the millisecond.

Do you have other comments on the actors who signed the petition for criminalizing sex work, or on that situation in general?

Yes, concerning the situation in general:

  1. Some people may try to discount what I have to say because I engage in sex work that is currently legal in my region and have not met a client in person (though it’s not completely inconceivable). Firstly, sex work is so thoroughly stigmatized, despite the fact that it’s a booming industry, that sex workers who currently operate legally have difficulty getting paid for online services. See here. That’s just one slice of the day-to-day, structural discrimination we have to deal with. De-crimininalization and de-stigmatization of sex work, in whatever forms, benefit me directly.

    2.  

  2. Anyone who has been in sex work (regardless of medium) for any length of time has undoubtedly been propositioned for other services, in other media. I recommend clients to other sexual service providers when they are seeking services that I do not provide personally. That means that I know and respect sex workers in a variety of media. It also means I skirt the line of procuring, most probably. Even being legal, you can’t be a sex worker without stigma and criminalization touching your life, so that friendship might implicate you as a “pimp.” And I’m not even addressing the laws that affect property and the like.

    3.  

  3. Tara Burns recently wrote this article wherein she talked about how, at the age of 15, having been trafficked by her father, the DA said that her testimony against him would be unreliable because she had been a “child prostitute.” Firstly, there ain’t no such thing. But survival being what it is in a callous, child-hating, capitalist, sex-obsessed/deprived culture such as ours, it will take way more nuance and care than a brute law to address survival sex work, sex trafficking, and the sale of sexual services by minors.

    Still, that’s rape culture. That’s the same treatment Kipnis has dished out to the survivors of Ludlow. That’s why it took multiple decades and 35+ women (many ridiculously high profile) to finally accept that Bill Cosby is a rapist. And some people still don’t.

    Similarly, Meg Munoz gave a great interview to Tits and Sass on being blackmailed as a sex worker, which lead to her being trafficked as a direct consequence of criminalization of sex work.

    4.  

  4. Lena Dunham tweeted that “I recognize that I’m not a sex worker or a trafficking survivor. But I’m blessed to have a platform that many close to this issue do not.” Sex workers and sex trafficking survivors are all over the internet. You can’t miss us. She is co-opting our stories for her own fame, just as Hollywood co-opts our tales for passive, easy, guiltless titillation by way of disapproval.

    5.  

  5. I joke about being a “moneysexual,” but I mean it. I LIKE being paid for sexual services, even if that like is more about power and grifting a system (actually, it’s plural: systems) I hate. Still, I like it! Really. And I love the creativity and engagement that I have with clients. That I don’t do full service has to do with personality and preferences, not morals. Anything consenting adults agree to — whatever conditions an adult wishes to place on their attention, time, and companionship — is no one’s business save the people involved. And that anyone else should judge it or condemn it is fundamentally inhumane, hypocritical, prurient, and cruel.

 

Thoughts on Bree Newsome and the United States of America

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Bree

Anarchy is.

We can insist in the “existence” of laws until we’re blue in the face. But the truth is: There are none. There are only traditions, conventions, norms, and prejudices that have been passed down to us by our ancestors.

Our ancestors… who seemed to have been greedy, violent, racist, colonialist, competitive, cookie-monster Patriarchs frightened by their own shadows. Or at least, the loudest and most talky-talk of them were.

This makes me think of Bree Newsome and how she faces three years in prison for:

A. Committing a crime.

B. Heroic acts in the face of national terrorism.

Q: Who or what did she violate?

A: “Federal Property,” I assume. Which is to say: “Our Property,” collectively.

Q: And how did she violate this property?

A: Trespassing (OK) so as to take down a national symbol of racism, hate, violence, and subjugation that commemorates the ongoing, and historical, national “self” constitution wherein one segment of the nation’s citizens systematically attack, oppress, and destroy another segment of this nation’s citizens under the pretense of some essentialist supremacy.

Are we, as a Nation, comfortable with the thought of Bree Newsome being locked in a cage for 3 years after gifting the American people with freedom from the Confederate flag?

And do we really want to lock up one more Black Civil Rights leader? Seriously?!

I really hope not. Because up to this point, it seems like the previous generations have given their offspring really great reasons to hate them. I’d like it if we stopped doing that.

We could even start celebrating Bree Newsome’s courageous living right now. Nationally. While we can still show her how thankful we are. I mean, wouldn’t that be something different?

Yippee-Ki-Yo-Kipnis

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Northwestern_Arch

 
I want to start out by congratulating Ms. Laura Kipnis.
 
I want to congratulate her for making it into menopause without ever having been sexually harassed, assaulted, stalked, or raped.

I’d like to commend her on her heterosexuality, on her cis-gender, on her white skin, and her evident comfort with (and indeed, ignorance of) all that these markers might entail.

I’d like to toast her for attending universities and colleges at a time when the average student debt was at half of what it is today, when a Humanities degree was not considered an utter wash of one’s time, when 1/3 of the student body did not take medication for depression and/or anxiety, when paper tablets were all the rage, when porn was something you had to purchase in a real-life sex shop, when no one even knew what ‘bukkake’ meant.

What foresight this woman had in the circumstances of her birth!

I curtsy her supreme majesty at not having been born in an abusive home or in poverty.

And I salute her stolid mental health.

May this Great Impenetrable continue to satisfy her narcissism in harmless, minxy flirtations with younger colleagues, while tickling her own fancy with the naughty high school thought that the very man who is meant to be teaching a Sexual Harassment workshop might be substituting masturbation with coin-jangling right in front of everyone! Tee-hee-hee…

What a saucy girl that Ms. Kipnis is. How great her imagination on the masturbation front, but occluded to literally all else.

It must be comfy… That whole ignorance thing.

To never have to wonder why all the training she received was voluntary (according to her own article), to entirely miss the seemingly singular incompetence of those running the workshop – and to miss it so thoroughly that the lack of preparation on the part of the man running it, “David,” becomes proof positive of her own superior intellect.

It is not that Northwestern has a muddy, ill-conceived Sexual Harassment and Assault policy with little-to-no training for its members, which is further executed (and exacerbated) by people who cannot answer the most basic questions pertaining to universal policy. It’s just that she’s a psychoanalytic genius perceiving the unconscious masturbatory signals of “David”!

Way to turn a potentially PTSD’ed frown upside-down, Kipnis!

May all us fragile, mentally-ill, pattern-perceivers bow down to your prurient ingenuity and robust one-track-mind!

Unless, of course, Freud was also right about that whole cigar thing… You know, about it not always being a penis?

At which point Professor Kipnis, herself, becomes evidence of the very lack of training and education that she failed to note during the voluntary Sexual Harassment workshops that she attended at Northwestern University; indeed, a symptom of the institution, itself.

This latest Kipnis fiasco is the third public scandal her esteemed institution has seen in the past five years alone, with Ludlow and a public fucksaw demonstration preceding it.

But I am certain that such mass hysteria is in no way linked to the fact that the people leading the only (read: voluntary) Sexual Harassment and Assault workshops at NU are unable to answer the simple, and daringly querulous question posed them by the ever astute Ms. Kipnis. Namely:

“How [does one] know that [their sexual advances] are unwanted until they try?”

Yikes! What a stumper! The answer to that couldn’t possibly be:

“Is this honestly your first try?”

Unfortunately for both NU and Ms. Kipnis, that would take some form of memory, and memory is so frighteningly close to PTSD, what with its pattern recognition and all, that I hesitate to recommend such a guideline for fear of contaminating Northwestern Professors’ collective mental health.

And certainly, that could never be my intent. Oh, no. All hail.

Besides traditionally powerless people/students now have such insane, castrating, vagina dentata powers that, as Kipnis points out, a married male editor in his undies of her acquaintance got on Skype with a writer and because of his undress suffered… absolutely nothing save the loss of one book contract. And for his part he got to repeatedly present himself to an accomplished, 30-something, woman writer as if she were an unpaid Cam Model cruising the interwebs for some sad-sack ‘pleasure’ worthy only of a Todd Solondz film.

I mean, imagine if this “nebbish” editor, and all the other quotidian creepers like him, were to be fired for their lack of professionality? Or for not doing their jobs? Or for (gasp) sexual harassment?!

My lord, it might be a veritable holocaust of male sexual entitlement in the halls of the hoity-toity.

And how thoroughly embarrassing for all the white, straight, cis-men! To actually have to conduct themselves with the same level of professionality expected of the hysterically unbalanced “survivors.”

But Kipnis, bless her simple heart, wouldn’t really know. She’s no “survivor.” (yuck!)

Rather, she’s got an iron uterus, having never suffered such an onslaught of psychotic male attention in all her mentally stable days! Or, at least, none that she cares to serve up publicly.

She only ever serves up other people’s traumas publicly.

And for such courage, as well as her willingness to speak for, and over, those with less power than herself, I salute her!

After all, why should Professors be held to the same professional standards as Therapists and Medical Professionals by students paying $50,000+ a year? The very idea is infantilizing to all grown-ups everywhere!

And so, I hail Kipnis and her rousing, pom-pom performance for the old-boys’ club that is academia. I was really worried for a second that it might actually die off. But thanks to Kipnis’ new Estroven regimen, I now know that there’s not a chance.

Stay free, Kipnis. Stay true. Stay privileged!

And don’t ever let your own students’ experiences sway you. After all, it’s your job to teach them (the hysterical child-sissies), not the other way around! Your brave fight is the stuff of which ballads are made, Sister.

The System works

                        Cuz I got Mine.

                        My Solidarity extends

                        Only as far as My own Behind.

Update: Northwestern has issued a notably unenlightening statement about recent sexual assault findings.

The Way Her Body Lies: 8 Minutes, Violence Against Women, and the Extrapolation of Truth from Flesh

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“Oh, yeah… Look at that! I bet that’s a victim right there!” – Pastor Kevin, as he hangs out his car window, cruising the streets of Houston looking for sex workers (8 Minutes, S01E01).

A&E’s 8 Minutes is a reality show whose fundamental premise is the divination of meaning from the female form. Combining the obsessive-compulsive voyeurism of good cop/bad criminal/mangled naked lady shows like CSI and Law & Order SVU, with the endless translation of muted behavior that one expects to find on Animal Planet, Pastor Kevin and his team of “Advocates” are possessed of the notion that they know victims. And what is more, every woman that they lure to their hotel room is a victim prior to her having been baited by the show. The word “victim” is used incessantly throughout the series.

8min-s1-kevin-castnav-338x298Of course, this relentless labeling functions as speech act, at once instantiation and incantation, as Pastor Kevin is a predator who dissimulates his intentions so as to catch sex workers on camera. But then, this lie is meant to reveal “the truth” of his designated Other. And who better than an unmarked Pastor/Cop to divine both the secrets of souls and their bodies of evidence? He’s almost a blank page!

Pastor Kevin is the John from hell, a “Knight with Shining Hard-On” (Juliana Piccillo, “Vice,” pp. 139-152) whose holier-than-thou concern for trafficking victims is limited exclusively to adult cis-women. And that’s interesting! No transwomen. No kids. And no men. As far as I can tell. On a show that claims to care about trafficking victims writ large, what are the odds?

The hypocrisy, pretension, poor judgment, perversion, and very real harm caused to victims of the show have all been commented upon here and here and here and here and here.

Likewise, the distinction of choice, conflation before the law, and consequent cross-contamination between full service sex work and sex trafficking are elucidated here, here, and here.

And finally, the show’s death knell was recently sounded over the span of two articles by BuzzFeed. Grassroots reports and fundraising are ongoing for the redress to those who were promised false help by the show. Please donate here!

So why in the hell am I writing about it this late in the game?

It is not my goal to attempt a reiteration of what has already been said. But I would like to offer a reading of the relentless narrativizing of the feminine form and the implicit belief in a hidden corporeal authenticity that 8 Minutes enacts, because I see it elsewhere. I see it in the Laverne Cox/Meghan Murphy uproar, in the furor over teen girls sexting their naked image, and in the treatment of sexual assault victims, writ large.

What I keep noting in the mediatized representation of the semi-nude female form is a need to further unveil “Her” and interpret “Her.” A belief that the words that fall from Her mouth mean something other than what She says about Herself, so that female sexual agents are translated as victims and female sexual victims are translated as agents.

This isn’t Mulvey’s Male Gaze. It isn’t even Metz’s Scopophilia. It’s more like a pinhole camera wherein the self-proclaimed meaning of a woman’s behavior and speech is consistently revealed, unveiled, and exposed as the inverse. Nakedness is a ruse. Nudity is a lie. Her true intention must be wrested from her inert, dumb body. And weirdly, the “Truth” is always the exact inverse of what she says. The speech that comes from a woman’s body is never as is. It is consistently, rigidly upside-down.

Sexual assault victims are ventriloquized as agents. Sexual agents are ventriloquized as victims.

That’s my thesis.

Let’s see how it plays out in 8 Minutes.

The Photos/The Bodies

Each episode commences with the choosing of a victim, and as Pastor Kevin loves to reiterate, all these women can be found online! Scrolling through what appears to be Criagslist, Kevin and his “three little girls” who were once trafficked (yup, that’s a Charlie’s Angels reference) examine the myriad photos and copy whilst explaining the tell-tale signs of a sex slave.

These signs are:

  • Provocative Posing — According to Pastor Kevin, a woman is not born knowing how to pose pretty for the camera. And that may be true. However, to the extent that it is literally impossible to conceive of an un-posed femininity thanks to both art and the singular commercialization of the female form, the only pimp here is Western culture. Pastor Kevin is literally disavowing the only version of femininity of which we can collectively conceive, and calling it an indicator of sex trafficking. Again, that might be true, in a flamboyantly academic sort of way… But in that case, femininity is always already a sex slave and to be a woman is to be a victim; the one implies the other.

 

  • Concealed Faces – This “sign” is so ridiculous it’s embarrassing. Violence against women is sufficiently rampant in this culture so as to merit a National PSA. Sex work is stigmatized to such an extent that many sex workers who provide legal services elect to hide their faces, and full sex work, at least in America, is illegal. You go to jail for it! Wouldn’t you hide your face? Pastor Kevin is calling a very reasonable attempt at self-protection an indicator of abuse. But really, it indicates the anticipation of abuse and is an attempt to avert it before it occurs.

 

  • The Imagined Presence of a Photographer/Pimp – Or a timed camera. Or a webcam. Or a selfie stick. Or a friend. Or a hired professional. Or they could even be fake! Beyond Pastor Kevin’s homosocial obsession with pimps, there are whole slew of other, more probable alternatives.

 

  • Tattoos – According to Pastor Kevin, tattoos are often an indication of a woman being owned. You know, like whenever someone tattoos another’s name on them. Dare I say it, I’m tempted to call these inky scrawls “pimp sigils.” And according to an old Fox News poll, 47 percent of women under the age of 35 have one. Damn! That’s a lot of lady property!

 

  • Lastly, Injuries – This is the only overt indicator of abuse named, the only one for which I have any sympathy. And yet, even this assumes far too much to be an indicator of anything. Maybe this woman does MMA or Rollerderby. Maybe she’s a Masochist. Maybe she self-harms. Who knows?

You’d think the woman would, right? (hardy-har)

The Interviews/The Narrative

Although sources have come forward stating that the interview section is staged, 8 Minutes, like any other show on TV, is an exercise in storytelling. Veracity comes second to mythos, and fictions have very real effects.

On the show, Pastor Kevin has been consistently amazed at the ease with which the women on his program, once trapped in a hotel room with a stranger, spill their stories of past hardship. He interprets this as a supernatural sign that the women know they are safe and trust him, a byproduct of his warm, cuddly, pastor/cop air.

I do not. I attribute this to the fact that many of the victims of the show routinely recount never having been listened to anyway. And there’s no need to hold your tongue if no one ever listens.

Courtney, in the first episode, states: “The molestation started as a child. That’s probably why I got into the night life.”

Pastor Kevin leans in and responds breathlessly : “You shared this very traumatic thing and you didn’t even, like, flinch.”

Cut to Pastor Kevin addressing the audience: “Some of the things that you hear from these women will take your breath away. For them, it’s become normal.”

Later, en route to a supposed safe house, Courtney recounts being raped by a John and going to the police only to be told that she’s a “whore.” She says that she’s tried to get help numerous times. This basic structure is repeated again and again throughout the show. These women seek out help of their own accord and are ignored by the authorities who are meant to aid them.

Both Domina Elle and Tara Burns have correctly dubbed such narratives “trauma porn,” meaning that these are abuse stories meant to titillate their audience, not elicit empathy for any one specific woman. But I think there’s more going on here, as well.

In the last aired episode (5), Candi states that she began sex work after a divorce. She discusses an abusive romantic partner and states that he hurt her so bad that “he killed a part of [her] beautifulness.”

Cut to “Advocate” Stephanie on the verge of tears, stating: “I understand where Candi is coming from. This life can really kill you because it takes your life. You just lose a piece of you every day.”

Wait, what!? What “life”? Candi was speaking about what led her to sex work, not sex work itself. Any trauma she has suffered began before “the Life,” in the vanilla/straight/civilian/normative world to which Pastor Kevin & Co. are so eager to return her.

So is the problem sex work? Or is the problem widespread violence against women? Because the one is not the other, despite the nonstop, sloppy conflations made by the “rescue” team. And what are they proposing to rescue these women from? Molestation? Domestic abuse? Unemployment? An unresponsive and nonchalant police force? The threat of homelessness?

No. No. No. No. And no. The only thing 8 Minutes is rescuing these women from is their source of income. The sexist and violent sociological factors that make sex work seem attractive and/or normal and/or necessary are all left intact. In fact, these very real sociological issues are all deafly subsumed into Pastor Kevin’s own sex trafficking narrative, so that “the Life” precedes “the Life” and is indistinguishable from it. Quotidian violence against women has now been localized as a problem of sex trafficking. Oh, wow. That’s great. So as long as I’m not involved with sex work, I’ll be safe. That’s good to know.

Lessons/Conclusions

“Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but rather as a sex. It is therefore almost inevitable that she should pay for her right to exist, to keep a position in whatever line, with sex favors. Thus it is merely a question of degree whether she sells herself to one man, in or out of marriage, or to many men. Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible for prostitution.” – Emma Goldman, The Traffic in Women