Outing, Slut-Shaming and Very High Price of Freedom
To my knowledge, there has never been a time or a culture that hasn’t suffered its share of hypocritical stances. Ours, at the moment, mostly revolves around sex. We use it to sell almost everything, we valorize people who use it as a weapon, we crave it, we demand that others should want what we want. At the same time, we publicly punish those who do not walk the very fine and murky line of being sexually alluring but not overly vulgar. Conservative women secretly devour Regency Romances full of sexual innuendo by the boatload, and publicly condemn Miley Cyrus for twerking. We are dellusionally nostalgic for time periods when we believe things were freer, when in fact, there was always hypocrisy and for women, it historically came with far worse consequences than it does now.
I just finished reading “Slut-Shaming and the Duke Porn Star” in the Guardian, and it pissed me off.
Let me make this plain: I have no problem with sexual brazenness. I have a problem with stupidity. If you are stupid enough to believe that you can earn money for your tuition as a porn star and not have that eventually come to light, you’re stupid. I’m not offended about how she earned her tuition. I’m offended she was stupid enough to believe it would have no negative consequences for her.
Similarly, if you chose to fellate one or many people in public at an Eminen concert, and you actually believe no one is going to pull out their phone and video it, and post in on YouTube, you’re stupid. I don’t care that you’re a serial cocksucker. I think that’s fine. That you act like a victim of a terrible injustice for having to bear the consequences of that… that’s what offends me. Stupid.
When in comes to writing erotic fiction, or sex blogging, or taking pictures or videos of yourself and posting it to a public forum, or even sending them to another person… the same thing goes. I understand that you would like the freedom to be yourself and you enjoy the attention that being sexually outspoken, outwritten or outimaging garners you, but consider that our culture is still (for better or worse) very ambivalent about sexuality. There is a very good chance that you will be exposed at some point. You need to ask yourself, very seriously, if you can bear the consequences of that.
It isn’t fair that we’re so ridiculously hypocritical about sex, but as a culture, at the moment, we are. And that means that when you expose yourself sexually, you hand people, who may not have your best interests at heart, a tool with which to beat you. You really do need to understand this. Yes, it is an unforgivable betrayal to ‘out’ someone who does not wish to be outted, but you have to consider the worst case scenario – it may indeed happen. And if you can’t live with that, then you are better off living keeping your sexual secrets to yourself.
Publicly posting pictures, writing or discussing your sex life and your sexual fantasies is a form of exhibitionism. Please don’t fool yourself that you are being entirely altruistic. You enjoy the attention you get for doing it. But it is not without its price. The price is that you may not be able to control how much of yourself ends up getting exhibited. When it is more than you would like, when your desire for attention ends up getting you more attention than you want, or the wrong kind, please don’t pretend to be shocked and devastated. You KNEW this could happen because it has happened to many others. You took the risk. You enjoyed the risk. You got off on the risk.
It’s a bit like fucking bareback. It’s a cosmic injustice that there are venereal diseases. It’s a bit like skydiving. It’s a cosmic injustice that parachutes sometimes malfunction. It’s a bit like walking around in a conservative country with a miniskirt on and getting spit on and shouted at. It’s a shame there are cultures like that.
But there are. There are all these unfair things in life. And you have an obligation as a person who takes care of themselves NOT to be stupid and ignore the risks. You have every right to take them. It may be a revolutionary act to take those risks. But should it result in pain, please don’t pretend you didn’t know there was HIV or gravity or misogynistic cultures.
I decided to ‘out’ myself because I realized that if I was going to publicly argue for the value of erotic writing as a literary genre, I was going to have to put my name to that. I considered the consequences. I considered the consequences to those who were close to me. I decided that there is no freedom without risk, but that I was willing to suffer the consequences if they should come.
No revolutionary, no political activist, no suffragette or campaigner for equal rights will tell you that freedom is free. In order for us to get past our current state of deep cultural hypocrisy, we require people who are informed and willing to take the risk of being outed and condemned. We do not need another whining victim who is ‘stunned’ or ‘shocked’ that she couldn’t keep her porn-name secret.
