We Live In A (Horny) Society
In a follow up post I’m going to talk more about how this subject intersects with my understanding of decolonization. As someone who is living in a colonial context I’ve had to grapple with what it means to truly be free. For me this means refusing to allow my enemies to determine the contours of my morality. Keeping in mind that decolonization is not a metaphor, I’m not using that word as a stand in for sex positivity, sexual freedom, gender freedom, body positivity, destigmatizing sex work, destigmatizing HIV/AIDS, freeing ourselves from Christian domination, or any of the other very necessary solutions to our neurotic Western attitudes towards sex. When I say we need to think about sex and gender in terms of decolonization, I mean we need to learn more about the actual history of sexual and gender freedoms that once existed here on this continent where we live; we should work to resurrect these Indigenous perspectives and ways of being instead of thinking that our toxic racist society will produce all the answers. If you want a clue as to where I’m headed with this, look up the “Moche sex pots” for Indigenous views on sex and gender — views that were common here before colonization and the imposition of Christianity.
As someone who has studied climate change in depth and advocated for climate justice, I know more intimately than most how polluted and despoiled our environment is, and this includes our interpersonal/social landscapes as well. The era of European colonization brought new and never before seen diseases to this continent making sex and intimacy more fraught and dangerous. Imagine how much more sexually free we could be without having to fear the dozens of sexually transmitted diseases now circulating. Things were not always this way…
When we talk about “bearing witness,” this is part of it. And it concerns certain things that people refuse to acknowledge, like how Black people in Amerikkka are only considered worth anything in proportion to what we’re doing for white folks. We are generally viewed as resources, workers and tools for other people. We are not considered worth investing in or supporting on our own terms, and we do not have true self determination here thanks in large part to white society’s stranglehold on resources. Here’s an example of what I mean. Several years ago I was working at a well known public arts non-profit here in Philadelphia that will remain unnamed. This organization is not only deeply involved in gentrification and the ethnic cleansing of poor Black folks from our neighborhoods, they are also literally in bed with the feds and the police and have been for decades. So, when I discovered that their funders and board members were genocidal Zionists who are also heavily involved in real estate, I demanded reparations from this org. This was especially necessary because they had been using my image and my work as a smokescreen to deflect from the bullshit they’re doing. I was also under some kind of weird surveillance as I discovered. Instead of these folks being accountable for their predatory, spooky bullshit, there was no response to my reparations request even though I was clear that these resources were meant to support my artwork and give me a chance to develop my own point of view.
When the white privileged assholes at this non-profit ignored my request for reparations, I could have thrown up my hands and simply moved on to another non-profit job. There were in fact opportunities to do exactly that, but I did not pursue them. Why not? First of all, because the bullshit these genocidal exploiters are doing needs a proportionate response that has been lacking thus far; and I couldn’t focus on that response if I didn’t have the free time I needed. Secondly, as someone who is serious about social change, I realized that these corrupt organizations might deliver me a steady paycheck, but that it would come at the price of my free time, my radicalism and my freedom of thought and opinion.
I won’t pretend that I’ve had some master plan. Much of what’s happened over the past few years has been an intuitive response to what’s been going on locally and beyond. And I admit it started with feeling like certain people needed to be trolled. I wanted certain people to know I was doing onlyfans after they exploited me and then thought they were going to throw me to the curb like trash. I wanted certain people to know that white folks playing games about money and reparations is why there are so many oppressed people out here struggling unnecessarily and entering into the world of vice. And of course I realized that these devils would denigrate me and do what they usually do, which is categorize anyone who refuses to be tamed or controlled as “mentally ill” or “disturbed”. These genocidal pieces of anti-Black trash are in fact the disturbed ones! And they certainly look foolish as hell right now because the past year of disgusting, evil genocide has vindicated me many times over. I say I’ve been vindicated because you know what? Showing my body online to my fans who want to see me was always a better option than getting a paycheck from literal genocidal maniacs and manipulative, lying ass, fake ass hypocrites. Just look at what they are supporting and rationalizing; look at how it intersects with the issue of sex and tell me if this subject is a waste of time:
Rape, sexual abuse, molestation and sexual exploitation are well known tools and byproducts of settler colonialism. Remember that Columbus and his men brought rape culture to this continent, first unleashing it on pre-pubescent girls who were dragged back to their ships. And now today we have MMIWP (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People) as well as tens of thousands of missing Black women. Where do many of these people disappear to? Into the world of vice, and some never return. Too often systemically marginalized folks are literally forced into that world, unlike privileged people who get to be pure and respectable and have “good reputations” because they were not coerced into engaging with the world of vice to survive.
The fact that we live in a horny society meant that I was well positioned to separate myself from the genocidal maniacs and fund my project myself. And I felt comfortable doing this because my relationship to sex, nudity, body work, erotic art and so forth is a bit different from most people’s. My life has been anything but “normal”. As I approached the age of 21 I was aging out of being a ward of the state and was looking around for jobs knowing that all my benefits were about to be cut off. After filling out dozens of applications, literally the only place that got back to me was an adult bookstore in the gayborhood. After being fired over something dumb by one of my bosses who was upset that I didn’t want to sleep with him I ended up traveling to Germany where, shortly before my 23rd birthday, I began working in gay brothel in Frankfurt am Main. Remember Pinocchio? It was sort of like a real life “Pleasure Island”. I still need to put pen to paper about all that, but the point of mentioning these things is that long before I made a strategic decision to use my own body to fund my art project, I’d already been quite involved in this world of vice.
In 2009 I began getting involved in the online kink community in various chat forums which led to me eventually posting on Xtube. This was in large part a method of feeling good about my own body after surviving illnesses, seeing my body weight fluctuate, and noticing that I wasn’t able to live as carefree and easy as many others my same age in terms of sex and relationships. I needed my own particular outlet for my horniness; and yeah, I needed some attention. Giving strangers a little thrill in their life was fun — and still is. At some point I started posting on tumblr, and then when porn and nudity were banned from tumblr I migrated to Twitter. The contrast between my political Twitter page and my erotic Twitter page is very instructive in terms of bearing witness to what our society is all about.
It’s extremely funny to see how things work in this society. My inbox on “freak twitter” is filled with messages and propositions. My inbox on my political/social justice twitter is a ghost town except for a few spammers and feds trying to keep an eye on what I’m doing. Keep in mind that I’ve been on regular twitter for far longer than freak twitter. “Sex sells” is not only a truism, it’s a statement about this society’s priorities. People want to feel good more than they want to think and analyze. However, I’ve been able to make it work for me. Having a twitter page with tens of thousands of followers is what allowed me to transition from making content as a little hobby to making content as both a hobby and a side gig. This is what a lot of people are lacking when they wake up one day and decide to try their hand at adult content creation. It really helps to have an already established audience or a connection to popular content creators who can help you promote. What’s particularly noticeable during these times of crisis is that more and more people are being driven into the world of onlyfans and adult content creation out of desperation. Honestly, I hate this aspect of it. Because it is always obvious to me which content creators genuinely enjoy body work and which ones are reluctantly getting naked to pay their bills. They have a certain air about them that almost screams, “this is my last option, I’m out of options!”
While far too many people turn to content creation or other forms of sex work out of desperation or to fuel their drug habit, not everyone is approaching it from such a problematic angle. Some of us genuinely enjoy the human body, sex, nudity, feeling sexually free, etc. Some of us have bodies that other people like to look at. It is what it is. When there’s a certain confluence of circumstances some folks can find sex work to be liberating or in fact better than other alternatives.
When I realized that I was being forced to choose between focusing on my art or making a living, I decided that I didn’t want to play that game. I decided that my art and these perspectives I’m interested in resurrecting are too important to put on the back burner. For me personally, choosing to be “self employed” (quite literally) was the best option. I don’t have any regrets at all, especially considering the events of the past year and the mask off moment we’ve witnessed in the Western world.
And for those who might be curious, no I do not meet clients and have sex with them for money. I’ve never felt the need to clarify this anywhere because it feels like shitting on sex workers who do meet with clients, however, going a bit more public with this stuff means that I need to clarify a few things to neutralize the gossipers. The last time I actually met with a client was during the summer of 2006 while living in Germany and I’ve had no desire to return to that aspect of things. As someone who was always a fan of “show and tell,” a situation where I can be an exhibitionist and give folks what they want without interacting with them too much is ideal. But to be clear, while I believe in working smarter not harder, it’s still work. Finding the right lighting, the right angles, trying to keep things interesting, managing requests from fans, taking time to work out and stay fit/healthy — it’s much more involved than simply taking some random pics or vids and uploading them.
Lastly, let’s talk about diseases. An important consideration that I have not mentioned yet was my desire to avoid SARS-CoV-2. Covid was never “just a cold or flu” and is causing all sorts of problems for people. My ex partner in Germany experienced erectile dysfunction, chronic fatigue and personality changes after catching covid twice over a period of a few months. Unfortunately, he was in denial about it and this put a strain on our relationship on top of other issues. As someone who has been managing a chronic illness for twenty-five years I cannot live in denial about the threat that covid poses. I also realized that being damaged by covid could interfere with effectively doing my independent research and make me lose my progress in the gym. This was something that factored into my decision to lean into the counterculture world instead of going “back to normal”. Ironically, choosing to use my body to fund my project shielded me from the repeated covid exposures that certainly would have happened if I’d gone back to the world of non-profit work.
The subject of disease always comes up whenever sexual freedom is mentioned, usually as some sort of “gotcha” or as a way of proving that sex positive people are harmful or naïve. When I arrived in Frankfurt, Germany many moons ago, one of the first conversations I had with my Austrian pimp at the gay brothel was about another young man there who had just been put out of commission. Apparently, he had allowed a client to talk him into having sex without a condom and had gotten burned. Back then, condoms were almost mandatory for most gay men, something that is not as much appreciated today. That’s because today we have PrEP, Doxy-PrEP and the concept of U=U (undetectable = un-transmissible). This has led to people being able to live more normal lives, but it has also led to a resurgence in bareback sex and also a rise in treatable STD’s. It’s certainly complicated, but for the folks running around talking shit without knowing anything, they have to ask themselves a few questions. First of all, let’s recognize that I have been a semi-public activist whose face has been out there on the news, on billboards, at public events, on websites, etc. If over the years I had been going around harming people and giving them diseases, etc, would I have been able to live so openly? Wouldn’t individuals have come out of the woodwork to denounce me and warn people about me? Such a thing has never happened because I make people feel good, I don’t make them feel bad. Like everyone else I’ve made mistakes in the past, but I’ve always tried to be considerate and have gone out of my way to avoid hurting other people, striking a balance between meeting my needs and doing no harm.
In part two I’ll explain how the almost Klemperer explore more deeply into how the art project I’m working on intersects with my body work and erotic art in some surprising ways.
