by Naomi K

Created on: April 24, 2008

I'll shoot straight from the hip here. I've earned my bread in various facets of the sex industry: professional dominatrix, smut writer, fetish model, phone sex actress, and now I work for a website that provides a valuable service to professional escorts.

I've never been an escort myself, only because I choose not to for my own comfort. I have no moral objection to it in general. It's not what I wanted to do at that point in my life, and I frankly don't think I'd enjoy that much in-depth physical contact with total strangers on a regular basis. I wouldn't want to be a massage therapist for the same reason.

Also, like most places in the U.S., it's not legal here, and I'd rather not have to risk incarceration (one of my worst nightmares) to make a living.

Similarly, I have no moral objection to the porn industry or any other mode of sex work as long as no one is being forced into it against their will or abused.

And here's where it gets sticky, when I espouse these unpopular ideas and people find out that I call myself (sort of) a feminist.

The "sort of" is due to the fact that all too often, the "feminist" label is appropriated by people who may believe that women are superior somehow men in general. They use the word as a justification for reverse-sexism. Genuine sexism is never okay in my book, no matter which gender is being targeted.

I apply the term "feminist" to myself to mean that I wholeheartedly believe in women's rights and responsibilities to empower themselves, to reject traditional stereotypes that may limit them as human beings and powerful intellectual creatures just because of their chromosomes. If you want to argue semantics, I think men should demand the same, so perhaps I should be a "humanist".

If I had a dollar for every time I've had some judgmental party tell me that I can't be porn-positive or sex-work-positive and be a feminist, I'd be advancing Trump a few bucks to hold him over until payday.

So here are the things that I would tell every nay-sayer if I was actually bored or insecure enough to try to convince them otherwise:

I'm opposed to the criminalization of prostitution. If you've ever seen the Penn & Teller's Bullsh*t episode on the topic, you may already know why. Their points mirror my own greatly. (If you HAVEN'T seen it, check it out. It's handled beautifully, with humor, sensitivity, logic, and respect.)

If women in this day and age are expected to be assertive, smart, self-possessed, and self-sufficient, why on earth would you not

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