As someone who has worked as a stripper and dabbles in all sort of erotica and alternate lifestyle stuff, I’m acutely aware that my personal interests do not always mesh with a professional personae. That’s one of the reasons I blog under an obviously fake name.
If it’s reasonable to expect that there is a time and a place for respectable or professional behavior, surely there must be a time and place for an identity that is off limits from those confines.
Who I am is always going to be a fluid and multifaceted thing. So I deeply resent the idea that just because the digital age can immortalize every cotton-pickin’ thing I’ve ever said or done, I should be held hostage by those things.
I cannot be pigeonholed, dammit!
I feel strongly about this because women have been historically shamed around sexuality in particular. I resent the idea that just because there are interest and activities that are not appropriate for children, a grown woman has to defend or explain herself if she engages in them.
Historically, women bear a terrible burden of a particularly nasty and potent stigma – that of being branded a whore. I may not work as a stripper anymore but I’ll be damned if I’m made to feel is if I’ve got to deny or bury that still very relevant part of myself.
There needs to be a reclaiming and a re-imagining of all the taboo powers in being fully engaged and in charge of ones own sexuality.
Reclaiming the word ‘whore’ will have to be a whole other post!
