[Note: This a mirror of a post I did over at my Red Garter Club blog involving a rebuttal to sex worker activist blogger Furry Girl (from Feminisnt), who laid what I consider to be a highly wrongheaded and outright libelous attack on porn performer/sexual rights artist Madison Young over a photo of the latter breastfeeding her daughter. As you will read, I got pretty heated up at the end, because I find FG's response to be simply unconscious nonsense.
My original post was kinda nuked because my webhosting account is currently under suspension (I let my sub lapse too long, go figure), so I am reposting it here thanks to Google Cache. -- Anthony ]
Well…
Furry Girl has finally seem fit to respond over at her Feminisnt blog to the firestorm of criticism raining upon her for busting
Madison Young for allegedly using her
young child as a porn prop. I will go ahead and break down her rebuttal line for line.
To her credit, I guess, FG’s not backing down one bit from her fundamental beef of
Madison that she is dead wrong to use her baby in that way.
The big take-home point that some people are missing: It’s all about context. I am against breast feeding in places where people go to masturbate. Madison’s posting of
breast feeding photos and videos in her
Twitter stream and on other
sex-themed web sites is appalling to me. It’s no different than
breast feeding on stage at a strip club.
Madison
has spent her career making everything she does about sex. There’s
nothing wrong with that, of course. I’m a sex-loving pornographer
myself! But you can’t spend most of a decade purposefully building an
environment where people come to masturbate and then feign confusion
when someone like me “mistakes” that environment for being
sexual.
Now, that would be a legit critique if
Madison Young was using her child as part of her live
sex shows, or making explicit content including her child. Problem is, that;n not what
Madison has been doing. The only time she has even featured her child was in the explicitly non-
sexual
context of an art show, or in non-sexual general posts about her life.
That hardly counts as exploiting her child to sustain her career…unless
you happen to think that no mother should ever even be in porn to begin
with. Or, they should keep their life as a mother totally separated and
private from their porn personas.
Funny, but I really don’t think that people going to Madison’s
website or blog to get off on her nude pics are going there to gawk
after her child.
It’s hard to plead “there is absolutely nothing sexual about these photos/videos” when they are posted in sexualized spaces and/or crafted to look sexy. The most famous image shows
Madison as a Marilyn Monroe knockoff. I’ve seen photos of other women
breast
feeding, and none of them bothered to put on a sexy dress and get their
hair and makeup done first. For most moms with breast feeding photos, I
bet they’re probably wearing yesterday’s sweatpants and looking
exhausted, not trying to liken themselves to a famous
sex icon.
So, an art gallery where no
sex
is happening automatically becomes a sex space now?? Merely because a
porn starlet decided to breastfeed her child there?? Or, she decides to
emphasize a fundamental aspect of her life as a woman outside of her
sexual
persona?? I guess that according to FG, if you are a porn star, you
must BECOME a porn star 24/7, and any other aspect of your life must
either be shunted aside, hidden in private and apparently in shame, or
completely segregated to a point that no porn fan ever finds
out.
And…so funny that Furry Girl goes straight to the “Marilyn Monroe knockoff” card as a knock on
Madison. Goodness..she’s doing a freakin’ ART EXHIBIT. What does FG expect her to dress up as…Dorothy of
The Wizard of Oz???
I reckon that you just can’t look sexy when you are with your child,
then, because people will say stuff..and impressionable newborns might
get infected with…THE
SLUT GENE!!!!
Oh…I’m guessing that real live porn starlet mothers like Holly
Halston or Cindy Taylor (aka Jesse Jane) or Stormy Daniels would
probably want to have a word or five with Furry Girl on the realities of
being sexy and still managing to raise a child while doing porn.
Considering that FG is in fact still single, and is NOT an active porn
performer, she’d probably learn a thing or two.
I’ve been told that it’s beyond Madison’s control if sick people are aroused by her sexy breast
feeding images. But if she would never want to encourage people to
jerk off to photos of her baby, she should stop posting them in a place
where she typically posts porn. Aside from all the innocent masturbators who clicked a blind link because they thought it was going to be
kinky sex pics, who wants to see sexy
breast
feeding? Most of us would call them pedophiles. Best case scenario,
Madison’s sexy breast feeding schtick is an attention-getting ploy to
sell her persona’s “realness” so people will buy her “real” porn. Worst
case scenario,
Madison is knowingly creating
masturbation
material for pedophiles. Either way, it’s revolting. (At what point
does one cross over from sexualizing having a baby to sexualizing the
baby?)
Uhhhh….Furry Girl?? You do know that children are usually made through
sex, right?? Therefore, it’s kinda hard to say that
Madison is “sexualizing” her daughter any more than anyone else.
But here’s the stupid part: a person who masturbates to the image of a
newborn baby being nourished by her mother naturally most certainly has
some personal issues. In nearly all the cases, though, the
sexualization is NOT of the baby; but rather of the WOMAN nursing her.
It is the nipple, the
breast, of the woman doing the feeding, that is the real
sexual stimulant, and the
desire to suck on the nipple of the woman, which is the center of
arousal.
And, I’m pretty damn sure that Madison’s website is clearly marked so that those who are expecting to see the usual
kinky
sex pics and videos will be gracefully sent to the appropriate place,
Those who merely surf through to see other aspects of Madison’s life as a
mother who happens to be porn as a side hobby, will be able to tell the
difference between adult sex play and respect for a mother caring for
her child. Or….does Furry Girl always treat her own paying clients with
as much disrespect as how she assumes
Madison treats hers??
This issue is also about consent. The baby is not consenting to being used as a marketing gimmick for her mother’s porn persona. There is a huge difference between consenting
adults
engaging in exhibitionism, and forcing creepy, pedophile-courting
public voyeurism on a non-consenting baby. I am an exhibitionist
myself, but I would never drag anyone into my kinks who isn’t consenting
to be a part of a scene. For all anyone knows, Madison’s kid will be
traumatized by her upbringing in public, and end up feeling extremely
violated by the
sexual attention
Madison subjected her to as a child. Would you have wanted your mother
breast feeding you for attention from horny adults, and for evidence of that to be online and linked to you forever?
OK, so it squicks the hell
out
of Furry Girl to see a porn performer “use her baby” to promote herself
and her website. Fair enough…and actually, there is an honest concern
here abuut the welfare of the child being served…or at least there would
be IF the child was used in any explicit
sexual
nature. But, since the only confirmed use of Madison’s daughter was for
the art exhibit, in an mostly nonsexual context, I’d say that FG was
seriously overdoing her concerns. As far as I know,
Madison has NEVER used her daughter as part of any
sex scene, so that argument is simply bogus on its face.
And as for the concern about the emotional well being of the child:
well, newborn children probably aren’t that interested in anything other
than eating, sleeping, and dirtying their diapers for the first year of
their lives, so I’m guessing that unless the sounds of live sex is that
disturbing to her, she’ll probably make it out OK. Most of those who
subscribe to Madison’s site are there to see her first, not her child.
I am against people using their children as props to serve an agenda. Madison’s use of her daughter to push her politics is no different than when anti-
abortion
protesters or the Westboro Baptist Church uses their own unwitting
small children as props. Kids aren’t political tools to leverage for
shock value, they’re actual human beings who will one day be
adults
with their own set of opinions. To assume that Madison’s baby will
grow up and be thrilled that her mother used her to get attention for
her porn persona is offensive and sad to me. Several have pointed
out
that I’m “no different,” since I tweet photos of my cat. But, here’s
the key nuance they can’t grasp: my cat will never be a sentient adult
human with his own beliefs and a non-interest in being caught up in my
pervy internet trail.
Oh, really??? You mean that breastfeeding your daughter at an art
exhibit is the full equivalent of rounding up your kids and going to a
protest sponsored by Westboro Baptist Church protesting that God really
hates homosexuals that much that even good people who do no harm
deserve to die and should not be celebrated for their life on earth??
Or, having your kids carry placards saying “Get A Brain, MORANS” in
order to defend troops who are paid to kill others in battle?? Now, kids
can be persuaded or even brainwashed into some very nasty political
groups and causes…but other than learning through osmosis that
sex
can be pretty damn neat, just how in the HELL is a toddler harmed by
being exposed to the IDEA of nudity? (Note: I said IDEA of nudity.)
I can’t predict what will happen to Madison’s child when she grows up
to be a talking, breathing sentinent being, but I will assume that
Madison
is enough of a responsible adult that she will teach her basic
fundamental morality and critical thinking skills so that she will be
able to make informed decisions and avoid harm. That’s what being a
parent is all about.Again, I’m not sure why Furry Girl, who is single
and has not raised a child (or, at least, she hasn’t publically said
so), thinks she can lecture anyone else on that effect.
Having dispatched
Madison, FG now goes after those whom have defended her.
The sexy mommy mob doesn’t like these “anti-
sex worker” and “sexist” arguments, so they’ve turned it into a matter of rebutting things I never said.
I never said that no woman should be allowed to breast feed. I am not against
breast feeding in public or private, I am against doing it in
sexualized contexts. I would feel the same way if someone whipped
out a baby at a swinger’s club, so it’s not just about the internet or porn.
I never said that sex workers (or kinksters) should not be allowed to have children, or that mothers can’t be sexy. I have a number of
kinky and
sex working friends who are parents, and I know some sexy moms. They, however, possess
good sense and
boundaries and don’t force their offspring to be a part of their exhibitionism and work. The
kinky and
sex
working parents I know create separation between their lives, they
definitely don’t seek to combine them at every turn to prove how
transgressive they can be. Not because my friends are prudes, but
because they understand that it’s deeply
inappropriate to mix small children and horny
adults.
I never said that no one should be allowed to photograph their kids or photograph breast feeding.
I didn’t comb through the Flickr pages of strangers until I found a
random mother to criticize. I’m specifically talking about a porn star
who is using her baby as an attention-getting prop in
sexualized contexts.
Riiight…the “I’m not really a racist, since I have lots and lots of
Black friends, BUT….” card. Some people might then think that this is
merely a slightly more personal grudge due to prior dealings between you
and
Madison, since you give many of your “friends” the benefit of the doubt that you simply won’t give
Madison…but I’ll leave that thought for others to decide on their own. (And NO, FG, I use the
racism analogy only in a figurative way here, I KNOW that you are not a racist.)
I hate what stuff like this does to the credibility of sex workers and pornographers as a whole. People like me try to tell regular folk that porn and
sex work is about consenting
adults, not weird stuff with kids and/or the non-consenting. To the sexy mommy mob,
Madison is the greatest hero of her generation, but what about the
other 99.999999% of America, the
majority we need to get on our side in order to make any advancements for
sex workers? If you seal yourself in the safe bubble of San Francisco, surrounded by adoring fans, then
of course you’re not going to care how you might be damaging the movement for acceptance of
sex workers and porn.
So now Furry Girl switches over the the issue of credibility of
sex workers in public, because Madison’s actions, if not her very existence, is such a cosmic threat to the makings of
sex worker/porn activism that she must be ostracized, stigmatized as a dirty
slut
and pedophile enabler, if not a pedophile herself, in order that the
other “normal” sex workers (like, I assume, Furry Girl) can get on with
the business of destigmatizing sex workers alike. Yet, why should it be
the need for sex workers to justify their existence to the other 99.999%
of society…many of which will never be convinced of the full humanity
of porn performers or sex workers even if they performed acts of super
human strength or cured all diseases?? Indeed, the very goal of what
Madison Young
is doing is as much a part of the destigmatization process as any
billboard or protest; by showing that porn performers and sex workers
are capable of being far more than the sum of their
sexual personas.
You would think that a devout activist and libertarian like Furry
Girl would understand that and give at least some bit of respect to
Madison for being upfront about attempting to balance the scales between being a mother AND being an active and activist
sex worker.
Alas, it seems that FG is either more concerned with imposing her own
narrow constrictions about what sex workers should be..or this is just a
continuation of a personal vendetta.
But, it’s this concluding graph that has me climbing the walls with stunned open-mouthed astonishment:
I’m surprised that people like
Gail Dines and
Melissa Farley haven’t seized upon Madison’s baby
fetish as yet another way to attack all of us. This is
exactly the sort of thing they live to hold up as a non-representative example of how we’re all horrible people. Anti-
sex
work activist Donna Hughes threw a fit a year ago when a small
sexuality conference apparently allowed in a high school senior. For
this, the organizer was branded, basically, a dangerous predator going
after America’s helpless children. If letting a consenting 17-year-old
hear
about sexuality is enough for the antis to launch a campaign that says
kink bloggers are basically child molesters, I wonder what they would
think of a porn star sexualizing the
breast feeding of a baby? But of course, if the antis get wind of the controversy that
Madison
and her fans are so desperately trying to publicize, she will not be
the one addressing the hard questions. She has her feminist porn
“revolution” to worry about, and the rest of us – especially her baby
girl – can go eat cake.
WOW…just plain freakin’…WOW.
Here we have a supposed “
sex-positive activist” and sex worker
advocate, someone well respected and prolific and supporting to back to
the hilt the fundamental freedom of women to explore their own
sexuality, openly and deliberately throwing another sex worker under the bus and offering her to the most bitter reactionary fascist enemies of her own values….merely
out of personal pique and pettiness out of merely prejudging minor offenses. And all that on the basis of…a two year old child.
Damn, Furry Girl, what fucking GALL have you to say that another
woman should have to give up her right to tell another grown woman that
she must live her life to your narrow standards just to keep her
livelihood?? Who the FUCK made you the judge, jury, and executioner of
how another sex worker should care for her child? And, most importantly.. HOW FUCKING DARE you invoke the words of
Gail Dines and
Melissa Farley
(hell, FG, why not go for the gold and invoke Michelle Bachmann or
Anita Bryant or Maggie Gallagher or Laura Schlessenger??) .to shame
Madison Young for the mere crime of choosing to express herself as a full woman and a human being??
That “feminist porn revolution” that you so decry happens to be the
legitimate right of women to be seen and respected as complete and full
human beings, and not to have their personal
sexual
lives and experiences used against them to deny them their full human
rights. Yes, yes, FG, we know how much you hate and despise feminism;
that’s why you named your blog “Feminismt”, and I can see why you pit
your home base of Seattle against the supposedly “leftist” insanity of
San Francisco (and that in and of itself is a whole other issue); but
that is still no excuse to demonize a woman or her infant daughter and
project your own myopic fantasies on her out of personal vitriol.
I do not know
Madison Young
that intimately, except as an prolific alt.porn starlet, a progressive
feminist, and an eloquent spokesperson for the erotic genre. I do know,
though, that she does not and did not deserve the kind of absolute
slanderous, hate-filled, and fundamentally untrue nonsense that Furry
Girl unleashed on her
Twitter
stream…and this attempted reply has only reenforced my view that if
anyone represents the true positive nature of sex work activism, its
Madison Young, not the pretender and chameleonic double agent known as Furry Girl.
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