(…) What it took me years to realise is that while I’ve changed a lot since writing these diaries – my life has moved on so much, in part thanks to the things that happened then – Belle will always be a part of me. She doesn’t belong in a little box, but as a fully acknowledged side of a real person. The non-Belle part of my life isn’t the only ‘real’ bit, it’s ALL real.

Belle and the person who wrote her had been apart too long. I had to bring them back together.

So a perfect storm of feelings and circumstances drew me out of hiding. And do you know what? It feels so much better on this side. Not to have to tell lies, hide things from the people I care about. To be able to defend what my experience of sex work is like to all the sceptics and doubters.

Anonymity had a purpose then – it will always have a reason to exist, for writers whose work is too damaging or too controversial to put their names on. But for me, it became important to acknowledge that aspect of my life and my personality to the world at large.

I am a woman. I lived in London. I was a call girl.

The people, the places, the actions and feelings are as true now as they were then, and I stand behind every word with pride. Thank you for reading and following my adventures.

Love, Belle

via Link

Cancel, unsubscribe, unfollow. Sort out how you want to react to the breakup only after you’ve canceled the relationship, unsubscribed from her Tumblr, or blocked him from Twitter. To undo a relationship that made it online in any form—whether you’ve got photos together all over MySpace or earned your own tag on Gawker—requires investing as much shared exposure as you put in. Make a cold calculation: in my case, that meant reframing a year-and-a-half long affair, across half a dozen online networks, and doing it in just a few days. This condenses everything: how much it hurts, how fast you have to react. You had weeks or months to attach to one another’s blogs, profiles, and endearingly staged snapshots. Now you have to delete or address it all, all at once.

Link

There is a new phenomenon in today’s information society, the anxiety of which becomes pervasive when one realizes the dangers and fragility brought upon by the interconnected Web 2.0 sphere. This is the problem of online oversharing: the tension in finding the right balance of what parts of one’s subjective identity should be put online. This is an anxious search, because, at first, it is understandably hard to realize that the internet is a totally new space with its own novel dynamics; any attempt to categorize it as public or private sphere or any of the classical categories would fail just as miserably as any attempt to introduce old-market commodity dynamics to the remix culture of intellectual property. As such, adapting to the new big Other of the internet becomes even harder.

How much should our online avatar, our novel cyber-embodiment, resemble our stupid, abrupt, physical identity of existence? Of course, we have all the big postmodern theories about how everything is no more than a simulacra, how reality and fantasy becomes blurred, that we live in a state of hyperreality, etc. But I think this idea is a little too naive for today’s society — rather than the blurring of fantasy and reality, is it not more true that the condition of our second embodiment, one I dubbed the monitor phase, calls for an inversion of fantasy? What I mean is quite simple: as our lives are today more and more lived on the other side of the screen, is it not, then, only logical that when the simulation is more real than the reality itself, reality becomes more and more like our fantasies?

Link

caro:

There’s been a lot of blogger-to-blogger drama on the Internet recently (Baron v. Calacanis, Rambin v. Frangry, what-have-you) and it’s all made me think back to a time when I was 17 and royally pissed off my ice cream store co-worker’s girlfriend on LiveJournal. I’d ranted about how she was suspicious of me being friends with her boyfriend, and how it was so unfair that girlfriends assumed guys couldn’t just be friends with girls, and blah blah blah. As I recall, she proceeded to flood the comments section of the post with hate messages from her friends.

(Don’t bother searching for it. It was locked up years ago. But Maria probably knows the incident in question, and katiebakes has inevitably visited the establishment where all this wild teenage drama went down.)

The fact of the matter is, once I was even a year or two older I wouldn’t have wanted to air that sort of grievance on the Web, no matter how convinced I was that the girlfriend in question wouldn’t find it. (She did.) Oversharing the details of your life (Gyno exams! PMS! Grocery lists! Penis lengths!) is one thing; actively carrying out feuds for all to see is a whole different can of Sour Patch gummi worms.

So anyway, now we have this missive. I’d prefer not to make a judgment call on either side because I don’t know Chaya and only know Nick through work, I don’t know exactly what happened, and obviously this deals with an extremely sensitive matter that I hope the two of them can resolve with minimal pain and angst. But look at how it all unfolded! Plurk? Twitter direct messages? Tumblr? Gchat? Things were so much simpler when all we had were AIM and LiveJournal.

Just reading these things makes me feel awkward, as though I’ve inadvertently listened in on a phone call or read someone’s personal e-mails. But clearly there was an active choice in making something so deeply personal available to the public, whether it’s a cry for help or a call for attention or even an attempt to get the Interwebs to take sides.

I’m sorry. It’s just that Tumblr has started to feel like a middle school cafeteria as of late. Remember when you were at a pre-self-consciousness age and were willing to say just about anything about anyone without concern for the consequences? Apparently that just doesn’t go away now.

As a woman who has dabbled with bisexuality myself, and written about my sexual adventures both on my blog and in a couple of sexual memoirs, I can empathize with Jefferson. Not so long ago, one of the UK’s biggest mid-market tabloids and self-identified upholder of “family values” — the ultra-conservative Daily Mail — implied I was a bad mother simply because my children had expressed their wish that their friends not find out about my sexual exploits. I regularly receive emails from readers as well — curious, not necessarily accusatory — asking how my behavior has an impact on my children.

Suzanne Portnoy: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Jefferson: A Sex Blogger Fights for Custody of his Kids.

Sex Work 101 was inspired by conversations that happened during the Women, Action and the Media 2008 conference held in Cambridge, MA from March 28-30, 2008.

I gave a talk at WAM called Sex Workers and Media Representation (click to see notes for the workshop), and questions during and after the talk made me realize that many people are curious about the sex industry and want to support sex workers in their struggle for rights, but they have no idea where to start. This site is an attempt to fill that gap in public education in an approachable, easy to understand, and engaging way – it’s also the first public education project from Sex Work Awareness, a new non-profit in NYC founded by four $pread staff members. Sex Work 101 is meant to add to public knowledge about sex work and to encourage discussion about the issues sex workers face.

Participate in Sex Work 101! I’m looking for questions non-sex working people want answered and their perceptions of/thoughts about the industry, as well as posts from sex workers who want to share stories about their work (a day in the life, how I got into the industry, reposts from personal blogs, etc)

The official email for the site is ask[at]sexwork101.com but people can also email me at dacia[at]wakingvixen.com. I’d also love to hear from people who want to help with the site – writing posts, answering questions, etc.

Hat tip to Jezebel for alerting me of the existence of Mike Cherico, a self-described “Edgy English Teacher” who blogs sex/dating for Glamour. Jezebel does a great job writing up his ignoramousness, so I’ll just copy-paste the highlights:

• First off, he accepts and embraces the nickname “Edgy English Teacher,” which, ew. Also, he hints that it’s because he likes the non-vanilla sex- which, please, a little spanking and light bondage does not make you edgy, dude (because I think we all know that that’s the extent of the man’s kinks).
• He also considers it edgy that he’s a dick to people, including his girlfriends. Being a dick doesn’t make you “edgy,” it makes you immature. And probably insecure.
• Also, no one legitimately edgy puts on a Boba Fett costume and poses with a bunch of dudes for Halloween.
• He takes pictures of himself with women he just met, and then puts one in a post when he talks about the other 2 girls he went out with that night. Classy.
• He posts pictures (and again) of the clothes that women leave at his place after fucking him.
• His ex’s friends call him “jerk boy.” This is never a good sign.
• He told a woman he loved her when he didn’t mean it and than explicitly took it back. Is he 12?
• Also, a week later he blogged that he’d decided they made better friends. Who wants to bet on whether he told her before he wrote it?

Question for Glamour: why serve up these asshole guys as examples of “modern dating” just to make women feel more insecure? OR is this… *shudder* normal d-bag behavior in the world of men?

Seriously, how does M.Cherico get that much pussy?

What do you think?

Not one, but three four of my blogger pals have nominated the Sex Carnival for a Rockin’ Girl Blogger Award. Wheee! Thank you Desire X, Sugarbutch, Engrailed, and Lolita. it is very appreciated.

I’ll be back, once I decide who in turn to nominate…

And Tom Paine of Polyamorously Perverse has named us one of the Blogs That Make a Difference:

Viviane, along with her fellow posters, not only keep us informed about most things sexual (sometimes too parochially focused on ones happening in the Big City or something they and their friends are doing), but also point out the hot-button issues in areas like LGBT rights, free speech, sex trends in the media and worthwhile facts and fun factoids.

Thank you, Tom.

(Lisa Williams of Placeblogger, Liz Rizzo of BlogHer & Rachel Kramer Bussel at the closing cocktail party at the Children’s Museum. More pics here.)

BlogHer was amazing. Meeting in person and spending time with brilliant bloggers and the dinners with the viviacious and engaging sex bloggers was amazing (sorry I can’t help being redundant). I think every other word out of my mouth was “awesome!”I have enough schwag (thumb drive, AOL laptop bag, toiletries, cereal, potholder) that I had to sit on my suitcase to close it. Great panels, great discussions both in session and in the hallways.

IMHO the schwag of the conference was AAG’s assemblage of sex toys at her panel (thank you J.T.’s Stockroom, Tantus Silicone, Afterglow, Devine and NJoy!). She brought 40 bags and lots of people were saying later they wished they had attended. I got a bag, but gave it to Blogher co-founder Elisa Camahort. The next day, she jokingly suggested there should be a BlogHer branded dildo. No problem, Elisa.

I brought a ton of smut of Chicago, which we didn’t have time to watch. But, Saturday night, a bunch of us trooped back to the W Hotel and we watched Passion and Power: The Technology of Orgasm. Based on the book by Rachel Maines, it interviews her, Betty Dodson, Dell Williams and others about the development of the vibrator. We (Rachel, Amber, Rusty, Susan, Lisa Williams, Amy and I) agreed that the overall the film and the interviews were really good. The repeated use of the metaphoric imagery (fireworks, lightning, swimming jellyfish) for scene transitions was a bit much, as was the tilting of the screen frame, superimposed against the antiquey background (I was tilting my head to watch it). Audacia has a writeup about the screening and panel discusison at the Walter Reade Theater. See it if you can.

And I’m kind of tired. 14 hours of talking, schmoozing, eating, typing, and Twittering 4 days in a row can do that to you. But it was gobsmackingly wonderful to meet in person Amber, Rusty, AAG, Susie Bright, and Cunning Minx. Susie, would you be my fairy godmother!? There were never less than 7 people each night at dinner. I regret there were so many bloggers and sex bloggers I didn’t get to meet.

The OpenSpace that my pal Susan Mernit and I conducted was what we hoped it would be and was a really good discussion. She taught me to use the word takeaway to describe learning, and not food and can sleep through anything, thank God.

AOL sponsored a lunch with their coaches, and AAG and I attended the lunch with the adorable and smart Ian Kerner.

The travel OTOH, was a nightmare. Did you know, if you use miles for a trip and don’t use the outbound leg, the return trip gets cancelled? I do now. But thanks to Susan, I learned about the aggreagator Kayak.com. The tally:

• Two cancelled flights
• 2 standby lists
• 3 cab rides
• Twice my suitcase was lost or misdelivered
• 1 cracked watch crystal
• 1 lost laptop ac/battery charger
• 1 Steve Winwood sighting. He was on the flight I was trying to get on.

I’m not sure how much more I’ll write about BlogHer. I posted a lot of links to del.icio.us (they are now set up to show here as a daily post) and have more to post, so you can get an idea of the bloggers I met and sites mentioned. There’s another Flickr set to post but I lost the power cord to my laptop. And updates on Twitter. I will do a roundup this weekend.

Plus I’m still playing with the blog. I removed “Recent Comments’ because it doesn’t live well with the Pictobrowser – it threw the entire template off and posts ended up after the template. I’ll repost those albums tonight.

There’s a ton of stuff coming up. A tea party in August. An overdue review of Audacia’s Naked on the Internet. Still undecided about Floating World. (registration ends Aug. 5th). Registering for Dark Odyssey summer camp. And Suzanne Portnoy is coming next month.

Packing the stuff for a trip always takes the longest for me. The chargers, books, equipment. The clothes? 10 minutes.

I’m bringing enough smut to run a mini-festival (Matt and Khym, The Bi Apple, Passion and Power: The Technology of Orgasm (showing this weekend at the Walter Reade with a panel that includes Betty Dodson) and Ho0kin’ Up. And Audacia’s Naked on the Internet, cause I’m a month behind on a book review for the blog book tour.

And we’ve got two events for the sex bloggers to meet up. I get to finally meet in person a ton of people, Amber, Always Aroused Girl, Cunning Minx a few others who wish to remain nameless, and Susie Bright. And I’m bringing a copy of Susie’s Best American Erotica 1993 for her to sign.

A friend said, “you’re go to a conference to talk about blogging? I thought folks just do it.” Oh, yes. It’ll be my first BlogHer. For this, I’ll get up early and go to the breakfast and try and attend everything. If you see me at, please come up and say hello. I’ll be the Asian woman juggling a Treo and a digital camera. ;-D

Chicago’s gonna be a real hen party!

Now it’s off to the airport to wait. They’re thunderstorms in Chicago. Our flights are fucked.

I’ll post updates to Twitter. And if you click on “With Others” you can follow Rachel, AAG, Amber, Minx, et al. And I like to bookmark sites that come up in presentations on my del.icio.us, with the tag “blogher07.”

Back on Sunday, sweeties.

Susan Mernit and I are going to facilitate a session at Blogher at the end of the month for bloggers who want to talk about Sex and Relationship Blogging–if you’re coming to the conference and are interested in this session, let us know. Here’s the description of what we’re hoping to facilitate:

Cloaked behind another name, bloggers are writing more freely than ever before about private personal experiences they might be hesitant to share publicly. In doing so, they are creating community and making their voices heard in powerful ways—but also dealing with issues of privacy and exposure.

This BlogHer session is for everyone at the conference who is using the web to share personal narratives about sex and relationships, and/or to share erotic fantasies and desires, so that members of this community and those supportive of them can talk freely with one another. We intend to offer a safe, facilitated space to talk about your blog, identify and privacy concerns, and share personal and community experiences related to blogging about sexuality, personal experience, and relationships and to create a safe space for those writing on these topics behind a veiled persona to speak freely in real time.

Other interested parties will be welcome at the session, but only on a space-permits, rules followed basis.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This session is committed to protecting personal privacy and facilitating open discussion; for that reason, the following protocols will be practiced:

Those Blogher conference attendees wishing to attend this session must send an email with expressing interest and agreeing to respect confidentiality to organizers Susan Mernit (susanmernit at yahoo.com) and/or Viviane (viviane212 at gmail.com).

In the email you need to affirm that you will follow the confidentiality guidelines and not share or discuss the session in ways that identify participants.

When you write, it is not necessary to identify your personal blog, but it would be appreciated; confidentiality protected.)

No photos, live blogging or audio recording—this is an off the record session.

During session, no identifying of participants or their blogs by speakers unless you choose to self-identify with a specific blog you write and maintain.

Shared commitment to maintaining a safe private space for honest discussion reaffirmed at start of meeting.

Participants admitted only at organizers’ discretion and as space permits.

My strawberry shortcake, made from scratch. More food porn.

Thousands of LiveJournal customers are rebelling against the company’s recent decision to censor hundreds of sex-themed discussion groups, a broad swath that has led to the removal of literary critiques and fan-written fiction about Harry Potter.

LiveJournal, which is owned by San Francisco-based Six Apart, confirmed Wednesday that it deleted around 500 journals this week in hopes of better “protecting children.” It said the deletion was prompted by activist groups, including one called Warriors for Innocence that claims to track sites promoting pedophilia, the sexual abuse of minors, and other illegal activities.

Legal experts say LiveJournal is clearly not liable for fictional stories and related discussions posted by its users. But despite customer outcry, Six Apart is standing firm in its position that the deleted journals violate company policy.

“We did a review of our policies related to how we review those sites, those journals, and came up with the fact that we actually did have a number of journals up that we didn’t think met our policies and didn’t think they were appropriate to have up,” Barak Berkowitz, chairman and chief executive of Six Apart, said in a telephone interview. The site boasts about 13 million journals.

Some deleted LiveJournal communities went by names like childlove and little_children (a community permits multiple LiveJournal users to post entries, while an individual account is limited to one user). Others, however, broadly fall into the category of science fiction, fantasy or user-written “fandom” stories–and it is those that have sparked the outcry.

“As a queer, feminist writer who explores the darker aspects of human nature, many of my stories deal with incest, rape and child molestation,” a LiveJournal member named “bitterfig” wrote. “As such, I belonged to and contributed to several of the communities which have been suspended and frankly I’m pretty offended. I don’t like being lumped in with rapists and pedophiles and other ‘monsters on the Web.’”

Practically any attempt to sort works of fiction into tidy piles of acceptable and unacceptable material, of course, is likely to invite controversy. Works by noted authors such as James Joyce, Henry Miller and William S. Burroughs have been lauded as masterpieces–and at other times prosecuted as obscene.

(Read more…)