My Most Exhausted Moment of Excitement

Me in 2005. Photo by Lara Wolfson

I am dead tired and feel as though I have a week’s worth of deadlines and scheduled events coming to a head in these last few hours of May. Deadline upon deadline for this project or that, and most of the work isn’t paid. It must be PRIDE month coming up though because the paid gigs, on this last day of the month at least, are definitely queer.

I have two gigs in Boston today. The first is a corporate cocktail hour. I’ve been hired to be fabulously “out”, schmoozing a room full of (mostly) straight laced strangers. I’ll roam around meeting people and answer questions about gender, sexuality, and identity. The intent is to encourage allies to support the company’s participation in PRIDE this year — attend, march, contribute! Fun, but what shall I wear?

My second gig is to act in a short PSA film. The subject is conveying how important it is to recognize and support LGBT people in the workplace. It’s important not only for company morale, but for better industry.

Today I do my part for Queerdom as, “Fancy Creature: the Out and Proud Fey”. I love my job. Even though I can never just leave it at the office, and sometimes I get some kind of anxious about it, I’m proud. I’ve worked hard to create this strange niche of a working reality where I’m professionally out and am asked to talk about sex and kink, to dance and dress up, to teach genderplay and performance skills, and to support others on their own journeys discovering identity.

It also feels great to know that I’m actively “doing” something when I have gigs like these. I often feel like I’m shouting into a void or not doing enough (whatever “enough” is). I too frequently worry that I’ve let my communities down because I haven’t logged onto social media in a while, or I’ve posted too many cute face pics rather than links to hard hitting news stories with well critiqued commentary as introduction. I fear showing my depressed moments publicly, or I measure the balance of all my faces too intensely. One thing about being a minority person is that when you’re in the limelight it’s easy to feel responsible for towing a line and maintaining active and positive visibility and helpful articulation for all.

Did I ask for it? Yes (not everyone does). Exhausting? Yes. Also rewarding as fuck, scary at times, and disheartening. When sexy-funky-queerdo-glitter-parties don’t manage to equal out the emotional and educational labor put out on the daily, things can get tiring real fast. The mostly glossed over reality of Queerdom: glitter parties can’t fix everything, it’s a myth. In good news though: Unicorns are real. They usually just need respectful communication and to actually enjoy their seekers to come out and play.

People who live outside the norm can get cranky and short tempered or seem really uptight sometimes. I’m sure you’ve had your panties in a bunch about it at some point. We all have. Nothing will get someone to go from diplomacy to judgement faster than a fear of being wrong or judged for being so. It takes a lot of work to answer questions, politely yet assertively correct, articulate, explain, research, think deeply, and reflect on your own experiences in a wholistic manner all the time just to feel accepted, respected, or a like a valuable part of a community that doesn’t look like you (or seem to return the favor). Minority people are people too. While we may have more experience translating a million little things to fit our realities, and practice actual survival far too frequently, we are not necessarily better at diplomacy when feeling our feelings or asking for recognition and space.

It’s energizing and validating to be hired to dress up as myself/”Fancy Creature” at an event, or to say things I already believe and know about on camera for pay. These are wonderful examples of being valued for the social and emotional labor I manage in my personal life and in my career every day. I wish I had gigs like these more regularly.

I want to shout out to all of the people who read this blog and support me through my Patreon Campaign. On the subjects of validation and financial support: without my patrons I wouldn’t have the time or energy to write about the things I write about here. I wouldn’t have the ability to reflect on issues I care about, do further research, or to turn that work into connected conversations which invite the general public to learn and participate. If you have followed me in the past or are new, if you have recommended my writing to others, or if something I’ve written over the years has stuck with you, please become a patron yourself. Even a little amount goes a long way, and I’m grateful for those who are able to offer more.

Signing off to learn my lines and pack!

(Oh, and I need to decide what “historical femme” I want to portray in an upcoming fundraiser for sex workers effected by FOSTA/SESTA… Thoughts anyone?)

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

Please support my work on Patreon, or for one time: Support the Artist or email me.
~Thank you.

Sex Work, Emotional Labor, Feminism, Gender Diversity, and… Hi again!

Photo by Davis Aquilina

Photo by Davis Aquilina

When I wake up at 6am it turns out I get some good thinking/articulation done. I think it also helps that I recently moved to a wonderful sex-positive household, and unpacked more in the week after moving in than I’d unpacked in the past three years… I think I’m… Happy?! Happiness does my brain and body good, and a little while ago, early in the morning, I found myself responding to a friend’s musings about sex work online, I also found myself responding to some of the negative and dogmatic responses she had received — her post being pro sex work. As I was responding I thought of you, my readers here at ABC’s. So I’m sharing my thoughts from that conversation; I hope you enjoy reading on…

CONVERSATION ABOUT SEX WORK — specifically pertaining to sacred sexuality within chosen and ethical working conditions: Here’s a general summary of the conversation: “Legalize Sex Work, especially Sacred Sex Healers!”, and then “But why pay for something that’s supposed to happen between lovers for free — that’s the one twoo way and righteous”, and then some “But what about God?! Don’t waste your seed on multiple people, make it to the afterworld and save yourself for the love of [insert deity here]… and then “But massage is paid for and that’s intimate touch too and healing”, and some “Women do this service to men who need it for reasons of advancement and sexual healing and it’s a sacred path for women to choose taking,” then more “but really monogamy and not paying for sex ’cause… um… not paying for sex!”… 

Here’s what I had to say: There are two points I would like to make on this post that I don’t see being discussed but that I feel are extremely relevant to this topic, and they pertain to Gender and Labor. These ideas intersect in different ways but are related. As long as we look at sex work as “women’s work for the benefit of men” it will not be regarded as the deeply spiritual and healing thing that it is. It will continue to be headlined under the dogmatic false-duality heralded by patriarchy and never be seen as a just function within the industry that it is a part of: (a viable and much needed aspect of) the Healing Industry. That said there is also a need for us to look at the fact that people — regardless of gender — take on the roles of both sex workers and clients. Men, Women, Transpeople, Intersex people, Genderfluid individuals… All of the peoples both heal and buy healing when it comes to sex work for varied and personally important reasons. This is relevant because sex work is not an industry (when worked within freely and ethically and intentionally) that can be defined as a dogmatic function of patriarchal oppression, especially when we look at the reasons people both provide and seek out these services. I believe sex work can be (at least) a radical reclaiming of the body for people who are giving and receiving within sex work, sex work can provide an important function for individuals who desire and need it, and in fact be the antithesis of a repressive labor of exploitation.

The other point I’d like to give some time to is concerning gender — because we regard and speak about (contemporarily and historically) sex work as “women’s work”, the worn path of discussion about whether or not it should be paid for is an entirely tired and generally insulting downward spiral into the depths of (again) dogmatic and patriarchal thinking. There has been a cultural discussion for decades (recently re-energized) about how our society does and does not find value in work we consider to be “natural to the feminine instinct”. A great article for reference: “Where’s My Cut?”: On Unpaid Emotional Labor

I, for one, am all for people capitalizing on their talents and passions regardless of gender for the benefit of both themselves and others in this lifetime. Should sex work be legalized? Yes. Should sex work be paid for? Yes. Should people who engage in sex work and sex workers be stigmatized for their connection to an energetic flow that our society would have us repressed and segregated from? No! Should scumbags who use the reality of societal repression of sexuality as a way to demean and control others in the sex industry be viewed as criminals of the state and prosecuted accordingly? Yes! Do we deserve safety while exploring our sexual energies/bodies/desires in this lifetime? Yes! Is sex work gendered? Hell no. Are people who need and find and benefit from services within the sex industry a single gender/sex/orientation/identity? You better believe it ain’t so…

So, where are we left? Well, I think at: respect people for the journeys they take in this lifetime even if those journeys are foreign to you. I don’t need a pacemaker, and you might not need sexual healing from someone other than your primary partner. I’m not judging you for your heart condition; walk a mile in my shoes and you might not find yourself with much steam to judge the needs of my vagina… My ultimate hope is about safety though, and building a better industry to carry out its essential core values: healing, wholeness, and happiness… Which cannot happen if the very discourse we have on the topic is rooted in sexism, homophobia, religious and/or sexual repression, cis-centrism, false dichotomy, and by abandoning mention of rape culture and the effects of trauma on a person’s ability to develop a safe and healthy sexuality to begin with… Sexual Healing might just be the oldest profession in the world because we desperately need it.

To Breath and Being,
~ Karin 

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~Thank you.

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