A good majority of the visits to this blog are people searching for things like, “Love God, love people” or “fulfill the law.” It makes sense why Google would send them here; it is the title of my blog after all.
If you are one of those searchers, you probably quickly figure out that this blog isn’t what you were searching for. But please, don’t let that stop you from reading. Don’t you want to hear the ramblings of a gay ex-Christian girl?
I wasn’t one of those lukewarm Christians, either. Even my very Christian mom called me “fanatical” when I threw away all my R-rated DVDs (that I’m now having to buy back… gah!). I’ve been on international mission trips. I have a Bachelor’s degree that focuses on mission work! I went to Bible College because I wanted to explore the Bible so much deeper than my church was taking me. I wanted to serve Jesus more than anything. I wanted to make Him happy. He was my whole identity… my whole life… my passion… my love.
I had “lingering doubts” about God throughout my entire born-again life, but I always shoved those to the back of my mind, attributing them to Satan or my fallen nature. When I fell in love with my best friend, and she actually fell in love back, I had to confront a part of me I had also shoved to the back of my mind: the nagging feeling that I liked girls, and I had no interest in the boys. After many prayers and tears, I finally accepted that gay is just what I was, and I would never be happy trying to play it straight. However, this was in great conflict with my church’s teachings.
To make a long story short, I considered myself a gay Christian for about a year, but I could not ignore how hated I felt by my so-called spiritual family… people who were supposed to be closer than blood. I also had to confront that other nagging feeling in me: that Christianity was a lie. It was a long process, one I’m still going through, but I can honestly say that I feel much “freer” now than I did when I was supposedly free in Christ. My brain just cannot believe in him anymore. It conflicts with my reasoning.
But I’m not here to convince you lurkers to leave your faith. I couldn’t do that anyway. I would just like you to read some thoughts from someone who used to be one of your own… but someone most of you would damn to hell if you met in the streets. The reason I want you to read is not so you can sort of get to know ME… but because someone close to you is probably going through the same things I did. Please, don’t hate them. Seek to understand.
Some people – women especially – just hate what you do for a living. Their distaste for your profession is completely out of sync with any personal impact it could possibly have on their lives. If you have ruled out jealousy, competition and/or fear of the unknown – what is left to explain the almost rabid and allergic reaction to the way you pay your rent or mortgage?
Recently it dawned on me that very much like the gay rights movement, our movement – the sex worker rights movement – suffers its worst insults from closeted whores and johns (If you find those words offensive I invite you ask yourself why. Personally I am all about reclaiming the words used to oppress us). Let’s face it the men who are most adamantly opposed to decriminalization often turn out to be regular clients of sex workers. The most publicized example of this is of course former New York governor Eliot Spitzer who had built his career with a promise of “ethics” and the prosecution of prostitution rings but was later found to be a regular client of prostitutes.
And what about the women? I have often envisioned them as insecure wives – worried that I and my sex worker colleagues were out to fuck their men – for free if necessary – just to show them up as the incompetent and unalluring losers they worry they are. But I don’t think jealousy is the big motivator we have allowed ourselves to believe it is. Instead I wonder if our most vehement opposition comes from women who have more in common with us than they would like to admit.
When I recall the cruelest and most dismissive reactions to my choice to become a sex worker, it has often been from female “friends” who were former sex workers or extremely promiscuous or at least prone to dating for money. The truly asexual or bashful female friends have usually been more curious than offended by my choice in careers.
Recently I began attending a church well-known for its tolerance of all lifestyles and beliefs including atheism and paganism. I didn’t imagine that my former identity as a working girl would hold much interest for the congregation. After all, I have been semi-retired for over five years and live modestly as an author and couples consultant. My motivation for attending church was twofold: I hoped to find a venue for my workshops on peace and I wanted to add a little ritual to my life. For instance when my dog got cancer I found the “Blessing of the Animals” to be of great comfort.
So imagine my surprise when the witch in charge of the pagan meetings (no, I am not trying to insult this woman, she really is a witch) launched an effort to expel me from the church. Initially, I thought she was simply offended by my approach to world peace: polyamory as modeled by the bonobos. Yeah, this is another topic and not really relevant to this blog entry but suffice to say that I believe a lot of violence results from a sex negative culture and I have a lot of research and evidence to back up that claim.
But even after I abandoned any aspirations I had to teach workshops at this church and simply attended the pagan meetings as a student in search of more knowledge of the various forms of paganism, the witch persisted in her campaign to drive me from the congregation. She called one day to suggest I attend pagan workshops at a local bookstore where their approach would be more “adult.” For the umpteenth time she told me how her workshops would be “family friendly.” I told her this might come as a shock to her but I have a family and I am a mother to four step-children. The silence on the other end of the phone was deafening. What was she thinking? Was she shocked to think former prostitutes might have families? Or was she offended to think I had ever been allowed to parent children? Who knows but she certainly choked on the news.
Since I have only been to about five church services and my interactions with this woman have been brief and polite, I am quite certain that her reaction has very little to do with me personally. But I do represent something that appears to terrify her. For one of the pagan rituals she held at the church, she wore a costume which reminded me of the ancient sacred prostitutes. The skirt was constructed of sheer chiffon adorned with beads and coins. I couldn’t help but wonder if she understood what her costume signified in days of old. How could she sport coins on her person without comprehending the significance of money sewn into a garment? True, some will argue that this was “dowry” money but the fact remains that the coins were sewn into the garment as a reminder that the dancer expected to get paid for her performance while she was performing – very much like strippers are paid today.
We could now have the argument of whether belly dancers are sex workers or we could ask ourselves why it is so important to draw this arbitrary and nonsensical line in the sand between the “good girls” and the “bad girls.” And that really is the point to this blog entry. Women are insanely invested in distinguishing themselves from the “bad girl” and the more closely they skirt the “bad girl” lifestyle, the more obsessive this drive to say “I am NOT a whore” becomes.
A similar phenomena is well documented in the gay rights movement. It is now common knowledge that some of the worst hate crimes against gays are often perpetrated by closeted homosexuals who are full of self-hatred and denial. Similarly I believe our sex worker rights movement would do well to understand the self-hatred and denial which fuels hate crimes against sex workers. I think we will find that our most vocal opponents are quite literally in bed with us as clients or metaphorically as self-hating closeted sex workers.
What might we do to win these closeted clients and sex workers over to our struggle for civil rights and the dignity of choice? I’m not entirely sure. If I find a way to assuage the terror my existence has created for the witch at church I will let you know. I DO know this though. Every effort to decriminalize or legalize prostitution has been blocked by the “good women” of the community in question. Historically both prohibition of alcohol and prostitution have been feminist endeavors as championed by many of the suffragists of the early 1900’s. So although present day feminists might think their stance against prostitution reflective of political evolution, it is instead a fairly old-fashioned and conservative take on the oldest profession.
Many political movements will dissociate from other more controversial causes for fear that their primary objective will be lost. Early feminists were afraid of accepting lesbians and the gay rights movement didn’t want to champion transgender rights. This fear of being associated with others perceived as “less deserving” of civil rights is a noxious but all too human failing. I wonder if it has its roots in basic human survival and perhaps that is the impediment we battle when we seek to assert our civil rights as sex workers. Or perhaps the broader issue here is that neither men nor women possess a sexual bill of rights and rather than fight to assert their rights alongside sex workers (who are working for the rights of all adults to have sex as they see fit) they recoil with the fear of losing what few freedoms they do have.
What do you think? What is is that fuels the disrespect and even hatred we often encounter from second wave feminists, from wives and girlfriends, from concerned parents, from law enforcement, from landlords, from child protection services, from neighbors, from family, from former friends and even from our own clients?
Today I ran into my last (ever) ex-boyfriend, my first (ever) ex-girlfriend, and the love of my life (mystery female referenced in my last blog, in the event you’re just tuning in now), in that order, in the space of about five hours. I won’t lie to you I kind of wanted to throw up. As possibly indicated by the ‘last’, the ex-boyfriend deal was not a good experience. Not at all. The ex-girlfriend… well turns out she was crazy, but seeing her was still hard… She was majorly depressed when we were dating and I realized our relationship was really unhealthy and she wasn’t ready for a relationship… Gah, but it’s so hard to resist the urge to pick up my phone and at least text her… I didn’t think I had any sort of residual feelings for her, except maybe resentment, and then I saw her face… heard her voice… This sucks. I need to get out of here. Christian school + lesbian = misery. That’s the conclusion of this week. My life = misery.
Ok, that’s dramatic, but you get my point. It seems I am resigned to be on guard to avoid awkward exes and looking for even the tiniest seeds of hope that the likely ’straight’ love of my life might have the potential to be interested… Ay la le.
A while back I posted about how Fresno has some deep-seeded problems that need addressing. Well it seems that the entire Central Valley is looking down the barrel of a very long and troublesome gun. An article entitled “The Appalachia of the West” in this week’s Economist details that the Valley’s problems could just be beginning:
Farming will not disappear, but whether it will be as big as it is now is a question, says Mr Phillimore, adding that “If the agriculture goes away, there is nothing.” In the San Joaquin valley agriculture provides almost 20% of the jobs. The alternatives are depressing and scant. For example, many of California’s prisons are sited in the Central Valley’s wide expanses, in what is sometimes called an “archipelago”.
A big problem is that the workforce in the Central Valley is badly educated, says Carol Whiteside, the founder of the Great Valley Centre, a not-for-profit organisation whose aim is to improve the region. The largest farms are often still owned by the families that arrived a century or so ago—the descendants of Portuguese and Dutch immigrants are big in dairy farms, for example. But most of the whites tend to be “Okies” who arrived from the dust bowl of the Great Plains during the depression, such as the fictional Joad family in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”, who drove up and down in search of work on the stretch of Highway 99 where Paramount Farms now sits.
Economically, socially and educationally, their descendants have barely moved up. Nor have more recent immigrant groups such as the Hmong, Thai and Mien, who came to work in the fields during the 1970s and now live in Central Valley cities such as Stockton, Fresno and Modesto—or, of course, the Mexicans, who have been coming since then and are now the majority of workers in the fields, where Spanish is the common language.
These demographic trends, combined with the water shortage, are causing worry. The Central Valley is already one of the poorest regions of the country. And its population, about 6.7m in 2008, is among the fastest-growing; it is expected to double in the next 40 years, as new immigrants continue to pour in looking for farm work.
This has led to comparisons with Appalachia, which has also relied on a declining extractive industry (coal mining) and has suffered from high unemployment, poverty and a relatively unskilled workforce. A report commissioned by Congress in 2005 argued that the San Joaquin valley is in some respects behind Appalachia’s coal country in diversifying its economy.
I love Vanessa Williams. She’s a great singer and actress and I have to admit, I do aspire to be like her. But before she became the class act we all know like below:
She was on the freaky-deeky tip….like this:
Her famous (or should I say infamous) Penthouse pose that cost her the Miss America crown back in 1984. But I do believe she did pretty well for herself (albums, movies, TV), so don’t feel too bad for her.
We have been in therapy since we began having flashbacks in 1996. We were with the same shrink until this past October. We were stuck. Had been stuck for years. The Shrink was not very concerned with what had been done to us or to our constant dissociative interruptions. Death by CBT.
All of life, we heard, is about making smart choices. Trauma work? Bad choice. It’s ovah now, nothing to do but move forward. Dissociation? Poor choice.
So. Transference issues really never came up with Shrink. She appeared to be inhuman. We would prattle on about these horrific acts done to our body mind and our soul. Nothing but silence. Stone, cold silence. No reaction of any kind. We were so afraid of her that we never thought to ask why. The message we received was that there is no horror, no good no bad no nothing. PerhAps the woman was thinking that she didn’t want to encourage us to feel badly about it. Whatever. We heard that she just really never cared.
So. It never occurred to us to get attached. We carried on, thinking of all the ways our head was screwed to be sad or angry or confused. We failed to understand why we couldn’t just choose to be one soul.
For reasons currenly unimportant, we chose this past fall to switch things up, to see a specialist in trauma and dissociation. See how we could get “past it” jiminy quick and get back to the nightmare who was, to us, our unfeeling savior but our savior nonetheless.
Hum. We saw T once and all plans of going back to the evil CBT flew out the window. The woman listened. She told us that trauma actually IS a bad thing. She explained why we couldn’t just will away the alters that were the screaming howler monkeys of our mind.
Wow. See, when somebody tells of some horrific event, T actually reacts. She tells me that yes this was bad. She talks to our alters and makes them feel better. She has put to sleep a poor little seven year old girl who Had never slept before.
T is solid. She tells us that sometimes she is sad about the things that bastard did to us but that she can handle it, tha that is her job. To sit with us and hear the shite and take care of herself All at the same time.
She does attachment therapy, T. And if has totally changed our life. After over 45 years of hiding blaming laughing blanking out self-harm splitting our mind and personality and otherwise not dealing with it, we are finally just doing that. Dealing. Beginning to feel the rage is what is coming out first.
We are able to do this because we have a place to go that we can trust. That place is with this woman. T, T, T. She knows what she is doing. The whole trust thing is such a novel concept that it gets confusing. But from the first time we talked with her face-to-face we knew. She is strong enough to take if and she cares. Finally, finally. Somebody gives a shit.
You can probably see where this is going. red, the little 5 year old, has a total crush. She keeps bringing T little presents so she doesn’t make her sad. To make her happy. Pomegranates so she doesn’t get the flu. Hah, what can one say. The kid’s only five. T says let red know that she doesn’t have to do that, that I can take care of myself that she doesn’t have to have that job. But red will persist for as long as she can. Because she doesn’t know how else to say I need you and I trust you. Mostly because it’s never happened before. Not from good people.
There are others, of course. They have varying degrees of suspicion. But in time they will be having red’s experience and then of course the shit will hit the fan.
T is asking for it and this is how:
I will never hurt you I will protect you from your uncle Norman he will never find you here. No bad people will ever hurt you here. Yes it was a horrible thing he did to you. Tha was just awful. It was not you fault it has never been your fault. Bodies just do what they do. That doesn’t mean anything good happened from it. You could not control that it just happens. No dissociation is not a choice there are many very traumatized people in you and that is REAL. Who am I talking to? Well I’m very glad to meet you I’m happy that you came to tell me this. It wasn’t your fault. Who is taking care of you? How does that work? I want for you to heal. I want for you to be happy. If it’s too hard you don’t have to tell me I will just sit with you, okay? Uh, how awful. That must have been terifying. It was terrifying, wasn’t it? I know how you feel, you know. I care about how you are feeling. Do you feel that. That physical pain right now? I know you hurt. Yes. Yes I do I know that you are hurting.
Yes, that’s what I hear. Well, she asked me not to discuss it and I will honor her privacy, just like I will honor yours. You need to get together with them so we can work this out. Can you let the adults have Their Time? Take turns? Yes I’m sure that it was scary seeing that but that is something that adults can do as long as it Makes them happy. That is not time for you. I care about you all, about all of your parts.
I want for you to stop hurting her. You are being counter-productive by re-traumatizing her when the system’s upset. Can you try that, just for three days until you’re back here. Yes you can comeback. Why do you think you can’t come back? You think I feel differently about you because you have told me that horrible thing? Well I don’t. I do not think any less of you because of what they did to you. No I don’t because you are not what has happened to you. Your essential goodness has nothing to do with those awful, awful things.
You are strong. You are brave. You are working so hard and I want you to know that as much as I know you hurt right now that this is a good thing. This is a sign of major progress that you are creating within yourself.
This is not funny. Do you know that, do you know that this isn’t funny? I notice that you do that, that you laugh alot about it. But what happened to you was totally, totally vile. Your humanity was stolen and your childhood. Your ability to trust, to bond, to feel. This. Is. Not funny. Stop hiding.
I know how much you hurt, you know. I do. I know how much you hurt and I am very, very sorry.
Do you see? Do you see now how she begs for us to get the Transference Bug? Hahahahahah.
I start this blog with the definition of compersion for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term. For those of you involved in Polyamory, no doubt you are more than aware of it.
“Compersion is said to be a non-sexual state of empathetic happiness and joy experienced when an individuals romantic partner experiences happiness and joy through an outside source, including, but not limited to, another romantic interest.”
Last week saw a very busy weekend where I was ‘booked’ for Fri with the girlfriend, Sat with the boyfriend and Sunday with a (I know it’s hard to believe) platonic friend. Fri night my husband offered to go out with a friend and Sat, he offered to sleep on the couch. As many times that I ask if he’s okay with this, he whole-heartedly assures me. I know that he experiences compersion but it is also mixed in with envy, a touch of jealousy, and aloneness. Being committed to being emotional support for him, I tell myself that booking myself solid for an entire weekend doesn’t really work. It is a very delicate balance and I always want my husband to feel completely loved and supported. Most of the time he does, which is why I have the liberty to pursue these relationships.
In a monogamous dating scenario, as the feelings grow, there is a desire to spend more and more time in the relationship. I may feel that, but I must balance that with my love and support for my family. I will not stretch my time so thin that my family starts to miss me.
