I got a vasectomy. My first-ever comedy performance explains why.
[Content advisory: verbal descriptions of extreme taboo role-play between consenting adults.]
Performed 7/8/18 in Oakland, CA as part of Alicia Dattner’s Solo Showdown comedy workshop.
[If you’re a CA citizen reading this, and you’re outraged by what you read, please contact any/all of the CA State Senators listed at the bottom of this Open Letter before 9AM, Tues 4/24 and explain to they why you oppose SB 1204. You don’t need to be their constituent to contact them, though if you’re a constituent of one of them, let them know that when you call.]
Summary: California is about to pass a bill that severely criminalizes all speech that “encourages” sex work. This is a brazen encroachment on the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, and all citizens should rally against it, no matter what their opinions are on sex work. If this bill passes, as an author who cherishes my First Amendment rights, I will openly break the law with my speech, in an act of principled noncooperation with a clearly unconstitutional law—risking jail time of necessary—and will not stop breaking it until the law is overturned for the unconstitutional mess that it is.
Dear Members of the California Senate Committee on Public Safety (including Nancy Skinner, Joel Anderson, Steven Bradford, Hannah-Beth Jackson, Holly Mitchell, Jeff Stone, and Scott Weiner),
I am writing to you as an author or co-author of three published books, and a life-long resident of Kensington, CA, in the district represented by your chair Nancy Skinner. As an author, I take legislative threats to free speech very seriously, and I am writing to express my strong opposition to Senate Bill 1204, on free speech grounds.
SB 1204 radically re-defines the long-standing definition of “pandering,” which has historically been conceived as providing financial inducement to someone to begin engaging in prostitution. The new definition, under SB 1204, will expand the felony to include any “encouragement” whatsoever towards engaging in prostitution, even if that “encouragement” takes place only in words and opinions, with no financial inducement.
This is an obvious violation of my First Amendment right to express my opinion as to whether a person should become a sex worker or not.
This week [3/21/18], the Senate will vote on legislation that would effectively force many Internet companies—including web hosts, classified sites, and social media platforms—to ban consenting adults from advertising or promoting any sex-related services whatsoever. The law would very likely lead to a ban on advertisements for perfectly-legal adult services such as stripping, adult modeling and performing, and BDSM services (which are legal insofar as they don’t not involve genital contact.) The ban would also extend to adults advertising illegal but victimless services, such as the non-coerced exchange of sex for money between fully-consenting adults. It may even lead to censorship of consenting adults talking about these practices with each other–including discussion of how to reduce harm associated with these practices–on the Internet. And among all this, to the degree that pimps and traffickers advertise trafficked victims online, it would prevent those ads as well.
This last category—which we can all agree is a truly vile phenomenon, which must be stopped one way or another—is the putative reason for the bill. Like the “USA PATRIOT Act,” it has one of those politically-charged names that makes it damn hard to oppose, or even question, without seeming evil. The act is entitled the “Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act” (SESTA, which is the Senate version of the House’s similar FOSTA bill.) Could anyone oppose the USA PATRIOT Act, and still be a considered a patriot of the USA? (The answer is “Yes.”) And could anyone oppose the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, while still being opposed to sex trafficking?
The answer to that question is also “Yes.” Not only could you be opposed to FOSTA-SESTA without being evil, but you should be opposed to it, as the law is breathtakingly destructive—including destructive of the very aims it purports to address. The remainder of this piece will be aimed at persuading you of why this is so, and why you should call both your senators today and leave them messages in opposition to the bill, urgently, before they vote tomorrow.
The Consent Pledge
(for men who have sex with women)
I’m a man, and by signing here, I am publicly making this “Consent Pledge” going forward:
I commit to making sure all my sexual encounters are fully consensual. I commit to getting a clear verbal or non-verbal “yes” from my sexual partner(s) before sexual escalation. I commit to not pressuring her to say “yes,” to stop if she says “no,” and to ask if I’m unsure. I commit to stopping if–in my most honest assessment–I don’t believe that she is sober enough to give full consent.
Guys–sign the Consent Pledge here.
(Screen shot from the first film interpretation of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” in “Neptune’s Daughter,” 1949)
The “Courtship Script” is a set of assumptions–with a long history and widespread social acceptance–about how heterosexual men and women go from being strangers, to lovers and/or long-term romantic partners.
In its most basic and caricatured form, the Courtship Script goes something like this: Boy meets girl. Boy desires girl. Boy chases girl. Girl may or may not desire boy back, but either way, she rejects his advances, and “plays hard to get.” Boy persists in hot pursuit, in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Eventually, girl gives in to his devotion, submits to his penetrating desire, and surrenders to the love/sex she actually wanted all along.
There’s no question that many men and women find some version of this basic Script “hot” and “romantic.” There’s also no question that it flies in the face of the new standards of consent—sometimes called “yes means yes” or “affirmative consent”—that are fast becoming consensus on the liberal side of the political spectrum.
What happens when a newly-evolving standard of consent flatly contradicts widely-held notions of romance and eroticism? Do we de-prioritize romance, sexual tension, seduction and eroticism (which I refer to loosely as “Eros”) in the name of safety? Or do we develop new notions of Eros that fit with our evolving standards of emotionally-safe, non-coercive sex? And what do we do about the fact that, for thousands of years, it was precisely the unsafety of Eros–its adventure, forbidden temptation, wildness, unpredictability, tension, and transgression–that made it so damn hot?
I don’t believe there are easy answers to any of these questions. I do believe, however, it’s crucial that we start discussing them more widely.
***
There is perhaps no better entryway to understanding the Courtship Script, and the problems with it from a consent perspective, than by examining the annual controversy that occurs—right around this time of year—over the holiday classic “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” written by Frank Loesser in 1944.
While many people are wearing plastic witch costumes today that they bought from Walmart… Here’s REAL-LIFE witch Adey Bell, in Episode 2 of my web series, “Our Witchy Little Matriarchy: The Goddesspell of Adey Bell.”
In this episode, entitled “The Daughter of Swords and the Son of Cups,” Adey reads cards from the audience at her recent gig at Jackson Wellsprings, interspersed with candid behind-the-scenes clips- then blesses us with a gorgeous rendition of her song “The Light.” Get your Wishcraft on… Happy Halloween everyone!
You’ll see in this video that her song choice matched the message she gave in her reading right before the song. She was doing this all night. I thought she was adjusting the readings to fit her preconceived setlist, but it turns out, no, she didn’t have a setlist. She was choosing her songs in the moment based on the readings. That just blew me away. A real-life live divination jukebox. Adey, you never cease to amaze….
For free music, tour dates, and new album updates, get on Adey’s list here
“Our Witchy Little Matriarchy: The Goddesspell of Adey Bell” – the new web series I’m creating. This episode is entitled “Moon Blood,” and it’s very… um… witchy. In the episode, we cover earth magic based on menstrual cycles, the suppressed role of Mary Magdalene in the Jesus story, the proper role of men in a matriarchy, and you also get to see a smoking-hot rendition of Adey Bell‘s song “Power,” live at Orcas Center, WA, 8/26/17.
This web series is a fan’s backstage perspective, replete with plenty of concert footage I’ve filmed over the years, documenting the journey of a masterful musician, and infinitely colorful character, who is gearing up for 2018 to be her breakout year.
At an event I attended last weekend, I happened to meet an actual, currently-working judge (the first judge I’ve ever met in person.) I asked her for her opinion on Prop 60, and she’d never heard of it, and she had no opinion on condoms in porn. But the more I started telling her the legal details, the more she literally started to both laugh and gasp at the outrageousness and legal absurdity of what she was hearing.
She said laws that encourage so-called “taxpayer lawsuits” initiated by citizens to sue alleged violators of regulations were common. But she had never heard of a law or proposed law that offers large financial bounties to citizens to initiate these lawsuits. She said this was an incredibly dangerous and ominous prospect, because once it passes it becomes standing legal precedent.
Imagine if one single man had the power to censor all Hollywood films showing car chases, in order to promote the message that viewers should always drive 55 MPH. Imagine if this man could censor all films showing drug use, to send a message to viewers to lead clean and sober lives. And he could censor all films showing murders or thefts, to send a message to live on the right side of the law.
In less than a week, Californians will vote whether to give one single private citizen, Michael Weinstein, head of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, such censorship powers, not in Hollywood, but in the adult film industry.
Michael Weinstein has gone on-record numerous times arguing that porn should be required to show condoms, in order to promote safer sex among viewers. In one Huffington Post article, he wrote, “The fact that most straight porn is made without condoms sends a horrible message that the only kind of sex that is hot is unsafe.”
It’s a great message. But his solution to get this message out might as well be a plot-twist in 1984, with Weinstein playing the role of Big Brother. Via absurdly disproportionate and rabidly aggressive legal manuevirng in Prop 60, is he is trying to bully an entire segment of the entertainment industry into becoming one giant PSA for his preferred message that you should always use condoms.
I don’t usually revisit my past writing. But I feel it is now time to write this 4-year follow-up to one of my most popular pieces I’ve written, “How I Overcame Bipolar II–and Saved My Own Life.”
When I wrote that article in 2011, I had been symptom free for 4 years previously. This summer of 2015, looking back on it now, I had a major recurrence of mania. (You probably noticed if you were following my Facebook around May, June and early July!)
I say “looking back” because I didn’t realize something was wrong–you rarely realize something is wrong while in mania–until I crashed.