Mo' Porn

Originally the Talking Porn comic was going to be six pages and I had left in more of Leia's "colorful" language, but then after a test-viewing to a friend and further consideration from Matt and me, we decided to ax the fifth page (on the left) and tone down Leia's dialogue a bit more. "I hear it and I want to rip a motherfucker's jaw off" on page four (not pictured) became "I hear it and I get irate". The page on the left is even edited a bit; every time you see the word "fucker" originally it was "motherfucker" and the part where I'm talking about getting burned had a mention of motherfucker as well. All in all, in came off as too aggressive and we were worried it would be a turn off to the casual reader who has never considered the shit that sex workers get from the public. So, page five got axed and I re-used the bottom two panels for the top of page six (pictured on right)!

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So speaking of porn.

One of the reasons I listed for choosing not to do it is because of my fear of increased Internet Asshole-ry. So literally the day after this comic went up, Matt and I went to a friend's Back to the Future pt. II movie party (October 21, 2015!) where we were introduced to a handful of new nerdy-comics-reading people.

Now, before I continue with this story, I wanna clearly state that I am not upset. This is not some kind of call-out post and I don't want you folks jumping in to call this guy names or anything. It's just a dumb decision that was made, it's really not a big deal, it's been dealt with, apologies have been made and accepted, life has gone on. So why share it? Because it so immediately and cleanly illustrated that I had made the right decision (for me) about being in porn.

Alright, so back to this story.

The night the comic went up, I shared on Twitter that though I'm not gunna be fucking online, I am still a Naked Girl Online and linked people to my archive of old artsy n00d photos I've posed for. (You gotta be logged in to Flickr with your settings enabled you to see adult content to see the butts and boobs pictures)

Matt and I were sitting at our friend's kitchen table when a handful of new guests arrived. As we were all saying our "nice to meet yous" the lady-half of a couple told me she'd really appreciated reading the Talking Porn comic. Then the dude-half of the couple said something, but Matt and I totally missed it because the host poured a thing of ice into a container. "Sorry, what was that?" He repeated himself, but as fate would have it the exact same ice-pouring thing happened and I had to ask him to repeat himself again. The third time was the charm as he declared loudly and proudly to the entire room, "I SAW YOUR BOOBS LAST NIGHT."

In the moment I made myself awkwardly laugh and make a quick, deflective joke to cover-up the embarrassment I felt. I was mad at myself for even feeling ashamed, because I'm not embarrassed of those photos so why should I feel this way when a man I am meeting for the very first time loudly brags to a room full of people I don't know that he's seen my Girls? (Their names are Bo and Jangers, by the way) What kind of sham sex-positive, body-lovin' feminist hack am I that this would make me uncomfortable? But now that I've had time to think about it, I realize I wasn't embarrassed that he'd seen them. I was embarrassed by how he expressed himself. If he'd said, as a handful of other men had respectfully tweeted to me that night, 'Really loved those photos!' or 'You did such a good job modeling!' that would have been a perfectly lovely compliment.

But that? "I SAW UR BEWBZ LAST NIGHT" shouted across a room of strangers?

What the fuck is that?

It's... maybe not dehumanizing, but it's definitely reductive of who I am as a person. "I want this whole room to know, the only notable thing about you is that your breasts can be seen online."

And that's just for being naked.

That's just my boobs.

If you could see video of a dick in my pussy? A finger in my ass? My mouth on a cock or a cunt?

Can you imagine what kind of declarations would be shouted at me at parties?

When you talk about sex publicly, when you make photos of your body available, people assume you have no boundaries. They think that normal social conventions don't apply to you. They can blurt out whatever observation or confession that they normally know is not acceptable to share and it's ok because the rules of good behavior don't apply to you. It's not just me either, it's a universal experience for people who work with sex in some capacity.

As we drove home, Matt observed, "This is what it would be like all the time if you were in a porn."

We had really discussed how to get away with doing the porn with James Dean and not having it burn us too badly afterwards. Even though the potential negatives were more than I want to take on in my life, Matt and I will still look at each other and say, "Maybe it can happen one day..." But that tiny little incident? What a perfect example to have served up to us literally the day after that comic went live. I am cool with doing porn, but society is not cool with people who do porn, and I just... don't want to regularly deal with strangers treating me like I'm not a person.

I really meant it when I wrote on the comic's update day that if you were tweeting me to congratulate my "bravery" for just talking about porn, I really, really encourage you to also send a nice, supportive note to an actual porn actor as well. They provide a valuable service that is in high demand, that thousands (millions?) of people seek out and enjoy every day. And they have to put up with so. much. shit. That tiny blip of an experience at that party? It was over in ten seconds. That's nothing. But I didn't like it and I don't want to invite more of it by doing more explicit work. It's such a simplistic note to end this one, but I can't think of a fancier way to say it: Treat sex workers like they're people who matter. Because they are.