In Which I Over-Share, And We Talk About Slut-Shaming

Fair warning: This post likely contains way more information than you will really want about me. Feel free to skip this one, if you aren't prepared for a frank discussion of topics including sex, porn, erotica, sex workers, and some other stuff I'm sure will offend someone. (Also, long.)

Apparently, there's a trend out there that I never really thought about specifically, but totally makes sense given the American obsession with youth and our comically overwhelming preference for so-called "teen" porn. That being, teenage and recently teenaged girls doing porn to pay for college.

Why the hell didn't I think of this?

Well, for starters, I'm not a 19-year-old girl.

But apparently this is a thing.

I will return to this shortly.

Now, some of you know that I do hypnosis as a hobby. (Hobby as defined as, in my free time, strictly for entertainment, and no significant portion of my income derives therefrom.)

Anyone who's delved into this themselves has likely found out what most people who look into hypnosis on the internet know, which is that for every "hypnotherapy" place or worker, there are five more websites promising some variety of erotic hypnosis.

Erotic hypnosis being - to state the obvious - any use of hypnosis which involves sex, whether it's to make someone feel good, or to perform Stupid Human Tricks: The Sex Version.

Now, while my screen name is a hypnosis joke, which plays off the (surprisingly common) sexual interest in mind control, I actually try to keep that part of my life separate from the rest. (Granted, not very hard, but then, I'm lazy when and where I can be, and after the Facebook fiasco, the secret's kinda out.)

So.

A "sex worker," according to common parlance, is someone who takes money to engage in sex acts, or perform in a way which is primarily sexual.

And since I have, on rare occasion, taken money in exchange for doing a dirty trance for someone, that lumps me right in with everyone else in the "porn industry." Not only that, but I know, or at least am acquainted with, people who are much more a part of the porn industry than I am, even if in alternative ways. (Whose names, out of respect, I will not tie to my opinions on this.)

So my perspective on what I'm about to talk about is maybe a bit different from the typical "man on the street but annoying know it all" from which I normally blog.

A while back, there was a small scandal, which has been gaining steam, stemming from one young girl's decision to use porn as a means of paying for college.

Now, my first reaction to the story was, "why are people upset over this? That's like mocking fat people at the gym, where they are specifically trying to correct what you see as a problem."

But that, for me, isn't enough.

Because as I thought about this, I got pissed off.

Because people, as individuals, are funny, smart, engaging, and I like quite a few of them. As a group and a species, people suck monkey balls.

Circling around the drain once more back to the topic at hand, this particular young girl is a student at Duke.

Duke is quite expensive. I mean, all colleges are, but Duke is up there. They estimate $61,404. (The page doesn't specify by year or by semester, but either way, what the fuck.)

So needing help is totally understandable.

I will note here that, in specific response to this so-called "scandal," Duke said that they have no regulations regarding off-campus employment, so that's if not admirable, at least not totally douchetastic of them.

At any rate, this young lady, who happens to be quite attractive, elected to use her looks and body to pay off the schooling which will, hopefully, allow her to use her mind for the rest of her life as the basis of her career. As such, she signed up with a company called Monarchy Distribution, under the screen name of Belle Knox.

Sadly for her, the porn industry doesn't exist in a vacuum; in order for there to be porn, there has to be someone watching it.

Enter Thomas Bagley.

Mr. Bagley watches porn.

He watches porn to such a degree, and at such length, with such focus, that he was able to recognize Ms. Knox off-camera, fully dressed in her street clothes, while attending class.

Now, you may not have previously seen any of those slide shows of porn stars in and out of their screen makeup, but I have, and the difference is striking. Movie makeup - even in porn - is pretty dramatic.

So you really, really have to be familiar with someone's features. Specifically, the kind of familiarity that comes from endless hours of masturbation while watching a particular person on video. More specifically, the kind of familiarity that comes from endless hours of masturbation looking at a single individual, and then meeting them in real life in a totally different situation, like, say, school.

Did I mention that our esteemed Mr. Bagley also goes to Duke?

So, Mr. Bagley, who watches porn with sufficient obsessive masturbatory interest to recognize a particular performer out of makeup, in street clothes, and in a totally different situation while at college instead of studying, finds out that he has classes with a girl who appears on one of the websites he frequents. How does he respond to this?

By telling everyone he can find in the whole school, of course.

Because why wouldn't you do that.

The expected torrent of abuse levelled at the girl in question materialized. When she brought some of the actual threats of violence to the police, they reacted with the kind of amused contempt that is absolutely to be expected and absolutely reprehensible in such cases, and provided her with absolutely no real, actual support.

Thanks, government! Serving your primary purpose of protecting the citizens, there, for sure.

Now, the girl in question wrote a couple of essays, which I am linking here, in response to her detractors. I think she makes several very good points, but one in particular I want to just run the fuck away with, so bear with me.

That point is, slut-shame all you want; Thomas Bagley watched. No-one's carrying on about what a useless little weasel he seems to be, despite the fact that he demonstrably had no motive other than malice for telling the world about this woman's decisions, and the fact that he demonstrably materially contributed to those decisions by paying her for making them.

As a group, the level of sheer, unmitigated, categorical hypocrisy displayed by anyone who watches (or consumes in any form, as I will mention later) porn, who then denigrates the performers in any way, revolts me.

To see that revolting hypocrisy play out in the form of threats of physical violence to one of those performers is morally disgusting on a level I've never really experienced before.

You pay them to act a certain way. Then you threaten to kill them, or assault them, for acting the way you paid them to, and follow that up with sweeping declarations of their utter worthlessness, as though they are not actual people, but ambulatory sex toys with no more human feeling or value than a vibrator.

Well, you're a prize, aren't you.

Now, you may be one of those people who personally doesn't consume "mainstream" porn.

How great it must feel, that lofty moral superiority. After all, you're not one of those perverts.

Ever read fan fiction?

When my lovely wife writes erotic fan fiction, and you read it, you're sharing a part of her fantasies, a part of her innermost sexuality, which you can vicariously experience.

Fan fiction is, in an absolute sense, more intimate than any video porn could ever be. Whether or not you're talking about erotic fiction, the fact remains that you're talking about someone else's fantasies, ideas, thoughts, their innermost self being shared with you.

And you gain enjoyment from that.

By extension, ever watch a movie or read a novel?

Same thing.

You've shared, to whatever extent, a window inside someone else's thoughts, and there can be no more personal contact between two persons than that.

It doesn't matter if you've masturbated to it.

It matters if you've experienced it.

You've been inside another person to the deepest extent it is possible for human beings to be, certainly more so than you accomplish by seeing them naked. Even if you've seen them having sex.

Slut-shaming a porn performer is the logical and moral equivalent of calling an author a whore because they share something personal with you.

Thomas Bagley pays for porn. Specifically, he pays for the porn in which Belle Knox appears. More specifically, he pays $200 a month to watch Belle Knox in porn. He watches it enough that he was able to recognize her. And somehow, society thinks this gives him a moral position from which to accuse her of some sort of failing.

Society is sick indeed.

You have, on the one hand, an attractive young lady who is willing to use everything she has, including her body, to get ahead, thereby potentially securing for herself and her future family a life in which none of them have to make those kinds of choices; on the other, someone who is spending his parents' hard-earned money, expending their effort and their sacrifice, their irredeemably lost time, and all their hard choices, on watching so much porn he can recognize performers in their street clothes.

Somehow, society considers him more admirable because he's not naked.

Well, except when he's obsessively masturbating to the point of single-handedly raising the price of Kleenex stock.

Your parents must be proud, Mr. Bagley.

After all, you're not a porn star.

That last is not through lack of opportunity, however. Mr. Bagley has received - this is the promised "comedy gold" part of things - a letter from the CEO of Monarchy Distribution, inviting Mr. Bagley to come join their team.

After all, if you can't *ahem* beat 'em, *cough* join 'em.