Category Archives: whorephobia

Perks of Being A Camgirl

I am, like, the queen of shouting about how sex work is a job, not a form of empowerment. It doesn’t matter whether you’re getting in touch with your sexuality or freeing yourself from patriarchal sex-negative constraints or whatever! It is perfectly valid to do sex work because people will give you money for it, just as it is perfectly valid to stock shelves at Wal-Mart because people will give you money for it.

Therefore I am a bit shamefaced to admit that, in fact, sex work has empowered me and helped me get in touch with my sexuality.

I had a lot of body image issues. I was socialized female, I felt gender dysphoria every time I looked at myself in the mirror, and I was a shy socially phobic nerdy kid, which all added up to “people literally only want to have sex with me when they have no other options.” I was on my fifth or sixth sexual partner by the time I worked out that it is a bad idea to have sex with people I’m not attracted to because what if they are the last person who will ever be attracted to me and then I never get sex again.

On the other hand, while camming, I can put on a miniskirt and makeup and have a dozen people telling me I’m gorgeous and that they want to come on my face and they’re masturbating right now looking at my lips. I have been forced to admit that, in fact, people find me sexually attractive. I can totally hold out for sex with people I find attractive! It’s astonishing!

The other thing is… when I’m camming, I’m usually not enjoying myself very much. I pretend to really enjoy self-spanking or fucking myself with my fingers in the way that makes really nice noises but doesn’t actually feel like anything; I pretend that my vagina isn’t sore; I pretend that I find you, O dude on cam, incredibly attractive; I pretend to be super-into foot fetishes and racist-ass cuckolding and Magic: the Gathering. I fake orgasms. While masturbating. It’s that sad.

I also have had a bad habit of having sex that I don’t particularly enjoy because I don’t want to disappoint my partner. And then one day, part of the way through receiving thoroughly unenjoyable cunnilingus, I thought to myself, “…I could be getting paid for this.”

Seriously. I make four bucks a minute pretending to enjoy myself; why the fuck would I do that for free?

So I have instituted my new policy, which is that if I don’t want to have sex with you I’m not going to, and if I don’t enjoy a sex act I’m not going to do it, and so far it has led to far less sex but also I don’t have to stare at the ceiling doubling numbers in my head anymore. Thanks, camming!

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The People You Meet While Camming

So Scott (who is my boyfriend) pointed people to my blog and was all “Ozy writes about zir experiences as a camperson!” and I was like “shit, I have never actually written about my experiences as a camperson!” so now I have to do that thing.

So. Here are, as far as I can tell, all the types of people that come visit me in my chatroom:

1) The Guy Who Doesn’t Get That This Is A Job.

This is a conversation I have about ten times a shift:

Dude: Take your top off!
Me: You gotta give me a little bit of encouragement first, sugar.
Dude: I’m totally sexy, I have a big cock, I can show you a good time in private, just take your top off!
Me: Well, darling, take me into private and I’d be happy to take my top off for you.
Dude: TAKE YOUR TOP OFF I’M SO HARD FOR YOU RIGHT NOW
Me: (ignores him)
Dude: BITCH WHY ARE YOU IGNORING ME

I am not sure why those guys are here. I mean… okay, it’s called My Free Cams, but it’s not actually free. This is my job. Everyone else seems to understand that. Do they seriously think there’s a large population of attractive young women who are so desperate for sexual attention that they are going to take their clothes off, for free, for guys about whom they know nothing other than that he wants them to? Are these the same guys who holler “sexxxxy!” from cars? That would explain a lot.

Also, seriously, I don’t care how sexy you are. I am not doing this job for my sexual gratification; I’m doing it because fiftysomething divorcees have a lot of spare cash to spend on camgirls.

2) The Guy Who Is Hopelessly In Love With You.

So much so that he wants to hang around in your chatroom for two hours just sort of… watching. And occasionally asking you what your favorite book is, or telling you how pretty you are, or talking about how he’s going to take you out on a date to a country music hall.

Some of these guys are pretty good tippers, which makes me feel really guilty because I’m taking money from someone who is Hopelessly In Love With Me. Even the ones who aren’t good tippers can often make you seem charming and sexy, which means that other people will like you and take you into private. I always end up feeling outright contempt for them, which makes me feel like a terrible person, because it’s not like they did anything wrong other than have a giant crush on me. But pretending to have a crush on someone when I don’t makes me feel really icky, and so I end up dealing with it by disliking the guy so I don’t have to hate myself for taking advantage of him. Bleh.

3) The Guy Who Wants To Watch Girls Masturbate. 

I really really like this guy. He takes you into private, asks you to strip for him, and then wants you to come three or four times while talking about how much you want him to eat you out and fuck you. Usually he doesn’t even talk that much. I love this guy, because a show with him is basically being paid four dollars a minute to masturbate. Best. Job. EVER.

However, I always wonder if I should point him to the existence of porn. Like. There is a lot of porn where you can silently watch a girl masturbate, you do not have to pay me sixty dollars to do so. I mean, he must get something out of it, right? It’s not just that he doesn’t know that I Feel Myself exists? I mean, I can’t believe that someone’s been on the Internet for long enough to find a camsite but not for long enough to figure out that you can get porn for free.

…Maybe they just all believe in supporting our sex workers. I approve of that!

4) The Guy With The Really Specific Fetish. 

“I want you to stand there in your panties for twenty minutes and repeat the word ‘pussy.’” “I want you to spend half an hour talking about how big my cock is and begging for my come on your face.” “I want you to put the camera near your feet and just stand there. No, you don’t have to do anything, just stand there and occasionally command me to lick them.” “Slap your face for ten minutes straight.” “Put clothespins on your nipples. No, don’t masturbate, just put clothespins on your nipples and twist them sometimes.” “I want you to describe seducing me in a coffeeshop, except that I’m a girl.” (I actually suspect that that last one was a closeted trans woman, and I wish them the best of luck.)

I totally understand why those people don’t just use porn. I imagine even Rule 34 has difficulty with “thin small-breasted girl in glasses with unshaven pussy, in panties, repeating the word ‘pussy’ in a low yet sweet voice.”

5) The Cuckold Fetishist.

You would think, given that I’m always filed under the “barely legal” equivalent category, I would get a lot of ageplayers and people who want to fuck the babysitter and stuff. Nope. It is JUST CUCKOLD FETISHISTS.

Specifically, cuckold fetishists who want me to tell them about all the unprotected sex I’m having with men, preferably black or with big cocks or both, because their cock is too small to satisfy me. And then they lick out the come from my pussy and I make them have anal sex with or give a blowjob to the guy with a big black cock. Also, sometimes I get pregnant and become, quote, a “pregnant ghetto whore for big black cocks.”

That is a weirdly specific fetish and I do not understand why everyone in the world seems to have it. I am also worried because I seem to be absurdly attractive to cuckold fetishists, and yet in my private life I have never done any sort of cuckolding roleplay. Have all my partners been into cuckolding and not told me? Have I left them sexually unsatisfied? THIS IS A SERIOUS CONCERN!

Prudes’ Progress: Feminist Media Criticism

[Part of the Prude's Progress series, primarily responding to the section on Antipornography. You might be like "Ozy, you just skipped a whole section." That's because I pretty much agree with everything she says in it and thus have nothing to say. Consciousness raising, self-acceptance, and loving other women are all super-important feminist practices.]

Rad Trans Fem uses “pornography” to refer to “the sexualization of the oppressed class as they are seen by the oppressors.” However, I am (with apologies) going to use “pornography” to refer to “media (prose, pictures, video, etc.) that are intended for consumption while masturbating.” Partially, this is because that’s how the word “porn” is commonly used and I believe in using words as they are commonly used; partially because I hate the porn/erotica distinction. I think classifying some things as “porn” and other things as “erotica” risks neglecting the ways that things-called-porn may be progressive or subversively interpreted by the viewer in progressive ways, while shielding things-called-erotica from deserved criticism.

As far as I can tell, critiques of pornography tend to fall into two categories. The first is labor rights. The labor rights of porn stars are really really important, but given how often sex workers’ voices are silenced in conversations about sex work I feel like the responsibility of non-porn-stars is to step back and listen to porn stars. While I do earn money from videos of myself doing sexual things online, I’m not a conventional porn star and don’t feel like I have the right to speak on that issue. Go check out Maggie Mayhem. (If you know another porn star speaking up about labor rights, do tell me and I’ll link them.)

The second category is basically feminist media criticism as applied to porn. As Susie Bright said, solely criticizing porn for being sexist is like “tasting several glasses of salt water and insisting only one of them is salty.” On the other hand, I do see a lot of self-declared sex-positive people insisting that porn ought to be completely free from any social-justice-y criticism because it’s someone’s fetish and we don’t want to kink-shame.

There are basically two reasons one does feminist media criticism. The first is that the media itself may be really fucking sexist: this is your “wow, there aren’t any women in this movie” or “every woman in this movie could be replaced by a Sexy Lamp” or “if you put a real woman in that oversexualized position her back would break.”

The second, and the kind I find personally most interesting and will love you forever for doing, is using the media as a tool to talk about something else. You could talk about your ex-boyfriend Ted. The one who was sweet and vulnerable and probably a little bit whiny, but only because he was so sad and broken. You just want to fix him! Probably with blowjobs! And then in a totally surprising turn of events that absolutely no one could have predicted, blowjobs are entirely ineffective at fixing people, Ted turns into a vast sucking vortex that absorbs all your love and efforts to fix him and blowjobs and gives nothing in return, and you start saying things like “no, it’s okay he stood me up, I know he really loves me, it’s just hard for him.”

The problem with writing about Ted is that no one who’s reading your blog has even met Ted. We are not invested in his horrible Tedosity. That really awful diner story? No one has heard the really awful diner story! Even if you share the really awful diner story, we’re going to have to wonder if (a) you’re providing an accurate interpretation of events (b) maybe you shouldn’t be sharing this with your therapist instead.

Ooooor you could write that article about Weezer.

Weezer is a shared experience: you’ve heard the songs, or at least you can look up the lyrics. It’s public, so no one can criticize you for oversharing. You are not privy to information about Weezer that other people don’t have and you could conceal to make yourself look better. You can use Weezer’s music as a tool to identify and discuss interpersonal dynamics that it’s difficult if not impossible to talk about through reference to individual lives.

(To be clear: the point of this sort of criticism is not “Weezer is terrible and you are a bad person for liking Weezer.” The point is “hey, there’s this interesting trend in Weezer’s lyrics, let’s talk about it.” In fact, that kind of feminist media criticism is way more interesting if you actually like the media in question, because otherwise you’d have no idea what you’re talking about.)

Millbank talks about one type of this sort of feminist media criticism of porn by talking about pornotypes: i.e., the construct of the Lesbian Who Is Really Interested In Fucking A Dude, or the Submissive Asian Woman, or the Black Dude With A Giant Cock Who’s Probably Going To Sleep With Your Wife, or whatever. To be clear, I don’t really care if you get off on porn about submissive Asian women, as long as you don’t start assuming actual Asian women are like your sex fantasies, any more than I care if you like Weezer; that’s not what this is about. What it is about is using porn as a tool to analyze the ways sexuality is shaped by the kyriarchy.

International Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers

MASSIVE trigger warning for violence against sex workers.

This year we mourn:

15 women in Rwanda
4 women in Mexico killed in mass shooting at club
Amy Soule, 26, USA
Ashton John, Guyana
Bharati Devi, 42, India
Brandy Sheppard, 33, USA, body found near club
Brenda Chumbi, 22, Malawi
Brianna Gardner, 22, USA, gunshot wound to the head
Brittany McKinley, 25, USA, shot to death
Camille, Cameroon
Carolyn Marie Sinclair, 25, Canada
Cassandra, 39, France, strangled and burned
Celeste Fronsman, 29, USA, raped, tortured, burned, and left for dead with a rope around her neck by the side of a rural road
Chastity Starr, 27, USA, strangled.
Cherice Gordon, USA.
Dare Odumoye, Nigeria.
Demesha Hunt, 24, USA.
Fernandes Olufemi, Nigeria.
January Marie Lapuz, 26, Canada.
Jaren Lockhart, 22, USA, stabbed to death, dismembered.
Jennie Banner, 32, UK, strangled with belt by client.
Jessie Anne Wilson, Australia.
Julia, Ukraine.
Julie, 45, India.
Juliet, 25, Nigeria.
Kalisha Madden, USA.
Karima, France, suicide.
Keisha Powell, 42, USA, shot.
Kevin Ogwu, Nigeria.
Lau Suk-king, Hong Kong.
Liu Shuqiong, 49, China.
Mamata Sikari, 25, India.
Maria Felix, Antigua and Barbada.
Marland Anderson, 39, USA, unknown cause of death following altercation with the LAPD.
Mati Nhamo, 20s, Zimbabwe.
Mike, Canada.
Natasha Curtis, 29, USA, body burned beyond recognition.
Olga Potapchyk, Ukraine.
Pamela Will, 49, USA.
Patricia, France, fell from a window to escape a violent client.
Rachel Wilson, 19, UK.
Renisha Landers, 23, USA.
Robyn Few, 53, USA.
Roger Sturck, Sweden.
Rosita Hidalgo, stabbed to death.
Salma, Dubai.
Sasha Lee Gordon, South Africa, stabbed to death, no one has been charged.
Sheila de Silva, 24, Brazil.
Shelley Hilliard, 19, USA.
Solange, Cameroon.
Svetla Fileva, 30, Italy.
Tamara, 19, Peru.
Tiffany Nelson, 20, USA, stabbed to death
Troy Moe, Guyana.
Tyrell Jackson, 23, USA, shot to death.
Unidentified trans woman, 41, USA, stabbed but survived.
Unidentified trans woman, Kenya.
Unidentified woman, 46, France, raped and strangled.
Unidentified woman, 19, USA, shot in the face.
Two unidentified men in South Africa.
Another unidentified person in South Africa.
Vernithea McCrary, 28, USA.
Yannick Ouimet, Montreal, stabbed but survived.
All the sex workers who have been attacked, raped, or murdered and whose names are not on this list.