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Kitty Stryker Needs Your Help: Get Sex Critical Presentations to SXSW!

kittystryker:

So last year I presented “En/Forced Femme- Sex Workers and Social Media” at SXSW, and it was really a big step for me as a presenter and as someone moving into the social media field. I knew I wanted to go again, so I created two presentations focusing on sexuality, queerness, feminism and privilege this year, and I’d love to get your help voting them up!

Voting is open from August 13-August 31st, so please signal boost, blog, write articles, anything you can do to help us get there next March!

First up is “Principled Porn: Is DIY Changing the Industry?”, a panel I’ll be moderating featuring the geeky, sexy, and whipsmart Ned and Maggie Mayhem, the incredible and inspiring producer Shine Louise Houston, and the lovely and driven Kelly Shibari. I am so amazed and humbled to have such a great panel of people together, and they really need to be heard at SXSW Film. Here’s the summary of that presentation:

Porn prohibitionists assert that pornography is inherently destructive for both the performer and the viewer. Yet some studies suggest that with decreased institutionalized sexism in a society comes increased variety of pornographic imagery available and the increase of positive limpact on relationships.

In the age of internet video and conscientious consumption, independent porn is getting a leg up- direct access to consumers is increasing questions about how work standards being applied to the world of XXX. With the blogosphere reflecting an increasingly diverse audience for adult materials, how is this changing the perception of who is the exhibitionist and who is the voyeur? And is this impacting the way we interact with porn on a personal, professional and academic level?

These panelists, some working within and some outside of the mainstream industry, will examine how porn is produced, marketed, and consumed, and if a fair trade option is in our erotic futures.

Secondly, I put together a solo presentation called “50 Shades of Complicated: The Web, Feminism, and Kink”. Here’s the description of that one:

Kinky sex has always been a point of contention among feminists, with some arguing that it reflects and glamorizes patriarchal values and others that women should have the right to enjoy whatever sex they want. The internet has been a fierce battleground for this discussion, as women from all walks of life find themselves able to anonymously weigh in in front of a large audience.

For the last year, “50 Shades of Grey”, a series born from fanfiction, has been tossed around as the greatest example of women openly being willing to admit to having kinky desires. But is this book the best gateway? Is it legitimizing submissive fantasies among women? Is that at the cost of delegitimizing other sexual preferences? And is that anti-feminist?

Kitty Stryker, founder of Consent Culture, will disentangle how this popular novel, the internet, and multiple feminist theories have made women’s desire for kink 50 shades… of grey area.

I really need all the help I can get for both these panels to be accepted. There’s so many panels, and your vote really does make a difference! You have to log in to vote, but it takes just a second of your time, and would mean the world to us all!

Please tumble, tweet, FB share, etc! 

(via kittystryker-deactivated2012100)

Kink.com’s Cam Models Resist a Wage Cut

SFWeekly Exhibitionist Blog:

But now, as a labor dispute heats up at the company’s cam site, KinkLive, some people are taking a second look at that reputation. Maxine Holloway, a local artist, activist, and adult performer, is alleging that she was fired from KinkLive last month when she tried to organize her fellow performers in opposition to changes in the payment policy that would eliminate minimum payments for each shift in favor of a commission-only plan. The new plan, according to Holloway and her supporters, would amount to a drastic reduction in wages for most of KinkLive’s performers.

According to Holloway, she was fired from Kink.com immediately after she started trying to get KinkLive models to sign a letter protesting the new system of payment. Peter Acworth, CEO of Kink.com, denies that she was fired at all, instead saying that she was asked to take a temporary leave. “It was only a temporary thing,” Acworth says. “We asked her to take a break because her shows had turned nonprofitable. If she’s no longer on the site for a while, then she comes back, maybe it’ll be a different story.” According to Acworth, Holloway has already been invited to perform on KinkLive at the end of June. She acknowledges the invitation, but says she received it only last week, after the situation had gone public.

“I really enjoyed my job working there,” she says. “But I’ve seen things and heard a lot of things that make me really uncomfortable. And then, having this whole payment policy thing go down and then being let go … illustrates the fact that they consider us to be disposable. I think it is unfortunate that they are going to publicly say that they don’t treat their models that way at Kink.com, but in actuality, they do.”

If Kink.com was, in fact, trying to shut Holloway up by giving her the boot, they failed miserably. The letter was ultimately delivered via the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) without individual names. It was then posted and re-posted online via Twitter, Tumblr, and sex blogs. For a few days, the headline “New Kink.com Policy Disrespects Models” seemed to have become a mantra of every pervy Twitter feed in the country. The news of Holloway’s firing just gave the letter an extra signal boost.