Purrversatility Has a New Home!

Please join me at my new home for both Purrversatility and my personal site! This exciting change means that soon I will be able to offer Clips4Sale and other content, along with having all the important things like my workshops, upcoming events, sex work information (both kinky and non) and media appearances in one centralized place.

I'll be maintaining this blog here and there as I remember, but April I expect to be only updating the new Wordpress, so please update your links accordingly and you don't miss out! All of your favorite articles are now here in this blog, so use the tags to find their new homes.

Outed.

So today my grandmother sat me down, looked deep into my eyes and told me I was disgusting. Disappointing. That she had seen my photos and I was a horrible person with no self-esteem.

She Googled my name.

Apparently she also shared my sex work name with one of her friends at her local community center, who said she was going to look me up. So she has also outed me to at least one, possibly more people. This of course puts me in a position of my home being dangerous, and the years of work to separate my legal and professional names potentially down the drain.

If one of those friends decides to "intervene", I could be arrested, raped, and beaten by the police. Many sex workers are. I could be restricted from getting an office job. I could struggle to find a place to lease.

I will write in a lot more detail on this later. I'm still reeling/processing/trying to figure out what to do. My parents, bless them, are going to speak to her and chew her out, as they know about my work and are incredibly supportive.

But til then- I want to say this:

Prejudices against how women have sex, and with whom, and under what conditions creates a world where people like me are made homeless, raped, abused, and murdered... and the world says "hey, it's an occupational hazard".

Show me another job like that.

SXSW and Other Adventures in Cowboy Boots

I've finally mostly recovered from South By Southwest, a big event where I presented to a bunch of geeks on sex work and social media, in a church no less.

You can stop laughing.

It was an amazing event, and I'm glad I went. A solid week of walking around, sometimes in the pouring rain, chatting with some fascinating people. I got to talk to LJ Rich about Essex, tech guys, and the best sushi ever. I got to hang out with both the founders of Suicide Girls, drinking beers and shooting the shit. I got to sing karaoke in the middle of the Austin night with a bunch of SF-based peeps on the RVIP bus, which was an epic adventure. I watched bands with Courtney Riot. There's so many awesome people I got to talk to, leaving me with a feeling that it was like Burning Man, except I spoke to people I would actually look up and talk to again later.

There were a surprising number of talks relating to sexuality, as it turned out. I particularly enjoyed a panel on pick up artistry and feminism, where I really got curious about Clarisse Thorn's new book "Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser: Long Interviews with Hideous Men" (expect a review soon!) and Charlie Nox's online guide to personal ads "The Babe Hack"- I was impressed that pickup artist coach Adam Lyons came to speak on the panel as the only guy and was incredibly decent and surprisingly pro-feminism. I would've loved to hear more from Adam's wife Amanda, who also does PUA coaching.

My "panel" was misleading, as it was honestly just me sitting behind my laptop talking about how sex work taught me about social media marketing and branding, the pros and cons of social media for sex workers, and the ways social media has become the new "street corner" according to the police. It was a decent presentation, if I do say so, though I didn't have fancy visuals and there was a sudden church organ playing in the middle of my talk. I felt pretty good about it and hope to have a panel (of more than one person) for next year- perhaps on internet porn? Maybe on the internet as the new wild west? Who knows? But I feel like I accomplished something rad and got compliments on it, so good for me!

There was tons of crazy food, including a savory waffle cone stuffed with jicama slaw and pulled pork- yum. And I had dinner with a bunch of women from the Huffington Post- I'm hoping I get to write for them soon. There was free booze everywhere. Man o man. I was glad, though, because it made asking a bunch of app developers what their position was on adult content a lot easier. Also, I ruled the roost at dartboards and beer pong. ;)

I also had fun talking about Ladies High Tea and Pornography Society in front of a cool crowd at a fabulous venue- all thanks to Femina Potens and Madison Young! It was amazing to sit on a panel about porn, art, and queerness with Dylan Ryan, Jiz Lee, Coral Aorta, and Rozen DeBowe. Talk about loving my life! Sometimes, I just have to pinch myself.

Next week I'm off to Momentum, the feminism and sexuality conference, where I'll mostly be talking on consent culture. I'm looking forward to it in some ways, but also kind of dreading it if I'm honest. There is a blog post brewing that will be a little sad and very personal about how talking about consent culture has impacted my relationship to sexuality... but the time for that is not quite yet. I'll need some quiet time and solitude for that particular post to emerge, I suspect.

Hopefully I'll be back to blogging more regularly. I underestimated how much Austin would take out of me!

But there's exciting things ahead- the Pampered Princess Pageant (read more on Fetlife here, and keep an eye out- voting is involved ;) ), the second Cum and Glitter (on June 2nd! mark your calendars!), possible trips to Vancouver and Atlanta... it's going to be a crazy summer.

Please Nominate CC for the Erotic Awards by Feb 29th?

Every year there's an event called the Erotic Awards that happens in the UK, and every year they take nominations. It's a great way to signal boost an event, activism work or a performance artist.

There's a fancy party, and it's fun, but it's also serious- it's a place where you can get recognized for the work you're doing.

I would LOVE to see Consent Culture nominated- but I need YOUR help!

Anyone can send in a nomination- doesn't matter where in the world you are. In fact, you can nominate in a couple different categories if you want! The form takes just a few minutes, and it would mean the world to us working CC- it's the sort of thing we can then use to catapult this concept into more venues and have it treated with respect.

You have until Feb 29th if you feel inclined to nominate Consent Culture for campaigner of the year at the Erotic Awards.

I mean, you can nominate other things too- Barelesque, which was a women-run cooperative show for charity is up for nomination, or maybe you want to nominate Jiz Lee's porn for charity Karma Pervs, or something else entirely!

But we'd be delighted if you could help us keep doing this work, and help us spread the word even further.

A Little Exhausted: Self-Care Struggles

So I haven't updated for a couple of weeks, in part because I've been really busy planning for upcoming events: this weekend's Cum & Glitter event, presenting at SXSW, doing a consent workshop in Austin, performing in Austin with Madison Young, tidying up my room before I leave, and, of course, tweaking details on this new website! Which, btw, check it out- I have banners now for link exchanges, some of my workshop offerings available, my various media work, and I've finally taken the plunge into having my Moonfruit content and this in one place. I'm slowly going to migrate people from here to there (so please, start updating your links and let me know if there's plugins I should use to make that easier... yay)!

It's all super exciting, of course, but also incredibly exhausting.

Adding to that exhaustion is trying to keep up with all the Consent Culture work, both on the site and on Fetlife. It's been quite honestly traumatic to keep posting on there. I'm trying to take a step back, partially because I need time off, partially because I don't feel that white cisgendered women should be the only voices and I want to make space for other people to step up, though I also worry that taking a step back for myself will also involve a step (or 5) back for the entire project. In a way, I'm grateful that March is so busy for me in real life, because I'll be doing this work in person and it will hopefully be less aggravating than arguing on the internet.

It's hard to stay inspired and not burn out when most of my days are spent calling people out on their victim-blaming behavior, explaining what privilege is over and over again, and keeping up with the flurry of posts. I mean, it's exciting that this discussion is happening all over the kinky 'verse (and I mean all over- multiple countries, multiple states) but it also means that keeping up with some of the busted bullshit is a full time job. I don't want someone to introduce it in their community and be shut down, so I feel like I'm on alert 24/7. I mean, here's an example, posted by a middle aged male Dominant (I wish I could be surprised, but, no):

"This whole conscent things seems to be a huge pissing contest. Is it really that bad that all this commotion is going on? Don't people have better things to do with their time that worry about what is what and attacking one aother over small disaggreements and misunderstandings? Its rather sad that people just cant act in a grown up manner and we need to analyize things like this. I see this as a case by case mild issue. These gropings do not happen that much. Far and few in between. I do not think that everyone should be putting THIS MUCH time into it. Seriously.... Get on with your lives!"

and

"I was non-conscentually poked in the ears today! I feel hurt, I feel violated, I feel powerless! Something MUST be done. This is aweful."

I can't wait for a day when I don't read something like this. One day, the idea that "rape is bad, less rape is good" will be universal. One day.

But I'm trying to cling to the positive. For every asshat that makes fun of this work or derails the conversation, there are more who are starting to ask questions they might not have asked before. And I'm trying to add self-care into my process so that it's not even more overwhelming to schedule and depressing to not have time for it. Like, for every 30 min I post online about consent I give myself 5+ minutes to look at humor sites and chat with friends about other stuff to keep me going.

Why do you think I'm so obsessed with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic?