truthpleasuretikkun

Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism!

You can write the story without the names. Prominent White Male gets caught with Extramarital Female-bonus points if she's profiting from the transaction. Prominent White Male steps down in disgrace, muttering and apologizing all the while. Extramarital Female rides the wave of publicity to launch or accelerate a career in modeling (Donna Rice), broadcast journalism (Paula Zahn) or perhaps even fashion accessories. (Monica Lewinsky's handbags did look so cute with silk stockings).

Public's reaction to the "scandal": shock. Sure, in part because that's all we know. But also in part because what we know comes from the media, who reproduce shock as the only possibly reaction. And sex workers, who help keep those same newspapers afloat, silently comply.

One need only peruse the back pages of weekly tabloids to get a sense of the enormous amount of ad revenue from sex work that floats these papers. Even major papers run thinly veiled prostitute ads under "massage." The same papers that run stories reproducing the shock at this unthinkable revelation get hundreds of thousands of dollars of advertising revenue from...sex workers. Who do they think those working girls' clients are? Someone isn't doing their math.

...read the rest of the story here.

"Because he's Black???"

I am referring to Geraldine Ferraro's offhand comment (which she later apologized for) about Barack Obama's success being because he is Black. How often do Black people get their successes--and their failures--chalked up to their "race*"?

When was the last time you heard someone attribute a white person's success--or failure--to their whiteness?  White people succeed all the time based on the privilege we get from our perceived whiteness.  Country club memberships, dinner invitations, confidential conversations, investment opportunities, job offers, private meetings, classified information, all come our way because people make assumptions about our trustworthiness, intelligence and loyalties when they perceive our whiteness. But instead of ever uttering the words "white privilege," we have a special word generally reserved just for white people: merit. Oh yeah, sometimes "suitability." He or she was just a "good fit."

Why is this glaring misperception hardly ever mentioned? Whiteness does not automatically equal anything positive though the whole culture conspires to act as though it does.  White people have done nothing to earn most of the privileged treatment we get, and we know it.  This is why we are so messed up, and, I would argue, why this culture is so screwed up about sex.  Witness the Spitzer phenomenon.  I was asked to write an opinion piece about that, which I'll share momentarily.

*I put the word "race" in quotes because biologically there is but one race--the human race. What we call race is a social division that has varied over time and still varies across cultures. For example places like Brazil, Cuba, Curacao do not draw lines between people in the same way we do.  In other words, "black" and "white" identities don't hold up across all geographical borders.

Impressions of Reggae on the River

See dozens more photos here.

Goodbye, Skipper Chuck: Peace, Love and Happiness

A belated one.  I got a wild bug in my ear to google "Skipper Chuck," whose kids show was a staple of my South Florida childhood. Oh,I know why...because my friend Leila signed off our gmail chat with "peace" to which I responded "love," thinking she would say "happiness." She didn't, so I typed, "don't forget 'happiness,'" but then I wondered if "peace, love and happiness" was a familiar trio for anyone other than those of us who raised our three fingers along with the studio audience when they sang "Peace, love and happiness..." at the end of The Skipper Chuck Show in South Florida in the 60s and 70s.

So I googled the guy and found out he died about six months ago at age 80.  After the article I clicked on the video (here) and to my surprise started bawling for my beloved Skipper Chuck...who I haven't thought about for more than five minutes at a time, in decades.  Tears, and more tears, flowed for this joyful, exuberant man whose show I appeared on at least once as a kid.

I think there was something about his energy where we as kids got that he was *with* us, as opposed to directing entertainment *at* us.  He was a fixture of my childhood.  Like Misterogers, another--probably first--love of my very young life.

Goodbye, Skipper Chuck.  You have left beautiful, deep lasting marks on tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of us.

Love,

Jill

Goodbye, Heather MacAllister

I had planned to do some exercise.  But instead, right now, I want to write about Heather MacAllister, who ended her three-year battle with ovarian cancer on February 13th, 2007.

Dear Heather:

I just love, adore, revere you.

We met in the summer of 2005, when you answered my ad for a Mary Poppins to my drag king persona, Dick Van Dyke.  Your performance experience, your verve and your beauty all attracted me to you.  And, I thought, how cool to have a fat Mary Poppins!

You played the prim and proper Poppins opposite my dastardly van Dyke, fanning and fainting at the appropriate moments, and eventually giving me a taste of my own medicine. We ate in the Mission talked through the performance and bonded around being white antiracist activists, and the loneliness of that. You shared your joys and frustrations of the Big Burlesque.  We talked about butches (and one in particular) and dating and women, and lovers and playmates.  You came to my party and brought us bath salts and groovy sixties' pins.  I was sad to miss your benefit.

I was also sad about one particular moment during rehearsal when I bumped you with my pelvis--too hard, right against your hysterectomy, and you winced in pain.  But only for a minute, then the show went on.  I remember your face, and know that that was only a fraction of what you must have gone through in the struggle to hold on to your life.

It didn't sound good, hearing that the cancer had already spread to your lymph nodes.  I was amazed at the tenacity of your lush hair, that you were performing, organizing, dating and living your life with such gusto.

I loved knowing you were in the world, walking your walk, talking your talk, dancing your dance.  Who else could create Fat Bottom Revue, the Big Burlesque, bring together Muslims and gays to talk post-9/11?

Thank you for your vision, your chutzpah and your love.  The world caves in around where you were.

Big, fat love,

Jill

We Made A Difference!

Just look at the microscopic margins by which the Democrats took the house, and the gargantuan numbers of phone calls made, and tell me there's no correlation: http://www.moveon.org/

I'm the last person anyone (except maybe a conservative) would call a liberal, and mainstream politics repel me, but any little step we can take away from running this planet from a base of fear and violence, and moving toward a system that actually bases itself in meeting all human needs, fostering connection rather than acquisition, protecting earth rather than assets, has my vote.  MoveOn  succeeded where other movements have failed: they helped mobilize thousands and thousands of people to make nearly seven million phone calls before and on election day.

Now let's get on to the real work :-).

If You Care About This Planet...

help influence politics right here.  I did it, and it was fun, empowering and exhilarating to know I was making a difference.

Five or ten phone calls, hundreds of thousands of us...do the math.  The right is extreeeemely well organized.  Now it's our turn.

If I could carve out ten minutes on my cell phone, so can you!  Click here to see the numbers rising faster than a gas counter, and to get your awesome user interface instructions, click on Call for Change.

Cheers,

Jill

Brangelina Wears Queer armband

Brad Pitt says he won't marry Angelina Jolie until everyone has the legal right to marry.  Full story here:

Orange you glad I love you?

Last weekend, Alex and I went to two weddings, one outdoors and one orange, and also hosted our own anniversary Shindig.  The first wedding was my beautiful brother- and sister-in-love, Davi and Nacha, on the side of a mountain in Pt. Reyes, with birds overhead, led by their friend Philip, a Lakota chief. Afterwards we went to Nana (Alex and Davi's mom, Cainan's grandma, my mother-in-love)'s housefor dinner and further celebration. Here's the two of them cutting their organic raw vegan cake from Cafe Gratitude:

The next day was Alex's and my own lovefest.  For months, we had been planning our "Help Us Scratch Our Seven-Year-Itch Spin-the-Bottle and Play Party."  With the house prepared, the baby safely away for the night, and our kissable beloveds invited, the party went oh so delectably. 

The very next day, we hauled ourselves into presentable mode, donned orange, and headed to Annie Sprinkle's wedding at the CSC, the second of seven. I always love going to the Center for Sex and Culture because I tend to encounter members of the microscopic pool of folks who know and admire my work.  On a recent visit, Carol Queen, one of the Center's directors, introduced me to one of their interns.

"This is Jill Nagle, editor of Whores and Other Feminists," she said.

The young woman got that star-struck look and covered her mouth.

So funny to receive this kind of reaction for something I did over ten years ago, and have so little active connection to now.  Yet I felt an ego boost I don't often get.  It made me want to do more worthwhile stuff.  I've been enjoying living and loving and writing without the pressure of a Book Project looming, but now I'm starting to itch to sink my teeth into something, metamix intentional. More on that later, perhaps.

This particular event included scads of people I hadn't seen in years, some I didn't even recognize.  It's Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephen's orange wedding, to represent the second chakra.  They're moving through all seven chakras, one per year, as part of their Love-Art Laboratory. 

I had wanted desperately to make them an orange wedding cake, but realized I had my hands full with Davi and Nacha's wedding and our Seven-Year-Itch spinfest.  So we went, and got filled up with bright orange love and ecstasy.  Here's Annie and Beth taking their  in front of their guests with Carol Queen officiating:

Annie and Beth made vows to all of us, written on oranges, trailed behind Annie like a veil and Beth like a cape (if I remember correctly), a handsome answer to how to render a butch counterpart to a veil.  The lovely gray head below is Juliet "Aunt Peg" Anderson, who made her porn debut some twenty years ago at age 39.

Each of the oranges had a different vow written on it, and Annie and Beth invited us up to pick an orange for ourselves.  I picked one that said, "We vow to be ecstatic with you."

A number of folks performed, read poetry, or had tattoo- or orange hair-dying booths. One of the many folks I ran into was Gabrielle, Wendy Chapkis' partner.  Wendy's book, Live Sex Acts, came out from Routledge (my publisher) right around the same time Whores did, so were doing parallel publicity, and even did a radio show together.  Here's Gabrielle:

One of the things I love most about Annie's events is that all these hot dykes my age and older (a particular weakness) seem to come out of the woodwork.  But my favorite attendee of all was the 6'3" "butch dyke" I arrived with and left with.  Things have been feeling awfully sweet with us lately after some weeks of confounding struggle. Nacha and Davi's wedding, our spinning love fest and now this orange sex chakra celebration was just the series of elixirs we needed.  And come on--who could not love this punim*?  Click and adore.

*Yiddish for face.

Brownies for Butches

Especially for You, with deep reverence and love for what it takes to move through the world as a butch.  We love the paradoxes you embody, the beauty you shine and the irresistible sexy energy that draws us to you.  Please accept these butch brownies, made by our own femme hands, as a small but passionate token of appreciation for your existence.  You are rare gems, and you rock our worlds!  Love, Jill and Melanie

All or most batches organic: unbleached all-purpose wheat flour, unrefined or refined sugar, unsweetened chocolate, butter, eggs, semisweet chocolate, cocoa, natural flavorings.

As ever, click on any image to enlarge it.  (Too bad this doesn't work for other parts of life.)

Saturday June 24th was a happy day in my life.  Before the Dyke March, when hordes of women gather in Dolores Park, I got to combine two of my favorite passions: brownies and butches.  With a little exhibitionism thrown in, its a wonder I didn't get sent straight to hell.

For a week, I made brownies.  Before the march, I went over to my friends Brett and Melanie (butch boi and femme respectively) and combined my brownies with Mel's.  We wrapped the brownies in a butch appreciation message (reproduced above) printed on colored paper with glittery designs on the back: red with gold, white with blue, pink with silver and so on.  As we walked out the door, the brownies nestled in a red satin box with a gold flap, on which we mounted the ingredients along with the butch appreciation message in a pink heart.  I can't remember the last time I was so excited.

Giving away the brownies wound up much less straightforward (so to speak) than I would have guessed.  For one thing, eight out of ten people assumed we were proffering "special" brownies.  Luckily, we ran into a woman doing just that, and she followed us around so we referred those clientele to her.  Strategic business alliances rock.

Secondly, femmes and men and (apparently) straight folks were mighty interested in brownies.  I explained that they were for self-identified butch women only. Brett chimed in with flowers for femmes some of the time, which placated a few, but a number of men went away empty-handed.  One inebriated young feminine woman went on and on about how she had a butch cousin.  I told her the brownies were made especially for self-identified butch women. 

"Oh, like YOU'RE butch!?  She said, looking me up and down.

Oh.  Like you have a brain cell left?

M weak attempt at explanation proved futile.  She repeated herself, gesture and all.  Finally she picked up a brownie.

"That's not okay with me," I said.

"Oh, well, we're all family," she said, and ate the brownie as she walked away.

Hello?

Meanwhile, the butches seemed delighted.  About half of them would reach for their wallets, and I explained that they were not for sale, that they were our gift of love to butch women.  They lit up with gratitude.  When they read the message we included, a few came back to personally thank me for my words.

Some clearly (to me) butch women arrived unsure if they qualified.  "Well, I'm sort of a soft butch," a few offered.  We told them their identity was up to them.  I saw a couple of out-and-out lies, chocolate-induced, for sure.  I finally interrupted the implausible yarn about identity being spun by one cleavage, makeup and miniskirt-sporting woman by asking her to please respect our intention.  She backed off, I like to think a bit relieved of having to sustain her awkward lie.

The thing that (at first) surprised me the most was how miffed some people got when they found out they could not buy a brownie for themselves.  In particular, one woman's face tightened up.

"That's discrimination," she said.

"I made these with my own hands and am giving them to whom I wish," I said.

"That's really racist," the woman retorted.

Huh?

Finally, I got it.  Those slighted (all white) felt entitled to have whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted.  The butch women of the world have to deal every day with judgment and exclusion, crude and subtle.  For once, here was something sweet offered ONLY to butch women, a direct reversal of the usual order of things.  It reminded me of similar reactions when years ago I charge white women and people of color less to come to some of my flirtation workshops.  Some white men got miffed, as if we were actually on a level playing field to begin with, and I was somehow introducing rather than repairing an inequality.  And here I was just wanted to give butches something yummy.

Brett and Melanie had the foresight to anticipate these awkward moments.  I did not.  I thought we'd just show up and the appropriate targets would identify themselves.  Instead I got a chance to become a sort of lingerie-wearing, brownie-toting anthropologist.

My m.o. in general, and for this gig in particular, was to share my love through food, not piss people off by denying it to them.  At the same time, I felt strongly that I wanted to stick to my intention.  I think it was really powerful for the butches who got to witness me telling men, femmes and straight folks effectively, No, actually, this is for her, not you.  How often does that happen to a butch woman?  I enjoyed that part of the dynamic, which helped make up for how the food withholding violated my Jewish Mama gene.

Oh, did someone ask about the lingerie?  The dress was a $1,000.00 Perla number that I borrowed from a friend.  I had tried it on weeks before just for fun, and was amazed at how it looked on me.  I don't think most lingerie looks that good on me, but I just loved how this dress, with its matching bra and panties worn underneath, flattered.  I wound up using my own undergarments, preferring a black lace thong and leopard push-up bra to their Perla counterparts.

Halfway through our time there, I swapped out my platforms for bedroom slippers, and toward the end, donned a long silk bathrobe my mom had given me for my wedding.  Little does she know.  I did take off the bathrobe and hoist myself back up on the platforms for a final brownie giveaway round, braving the San Francisco cold.

All photos, BTW, by Sweet Boi Brett, except those of Brett hymself.  I took these--view hir and drool:

Speaking of drooling over sweet bois, someone asked about the brownies themselves: There were, essentially, two batches, Sweet Bois and Diesel Fuel.  The sweet bois were a classic recipe, the kind most folks would be familiar with. Melanie used a Martha Stewart recipe and I went to Cooks Illustrated.  The Diesel Fuel were my adaptation of the CI classics, adding cocoa, semi-sweet chocolate, strong coffee and brandy.  I wanted something with the classic texture but severely amped-up chocolate content.  CI offers a triple-fudge brownie, but the texture of that recipe is more like a thick chewy fudge than a brownie, and you can't really eat more than one square inch of them.  My Diesel Fuel recipe is still in progress, but I've reproduced the current version below.  Please do tell me how they turn out, if you use it.

Jill's Diesel Fuel Brownies

Note: These brownies were developed specifically for Dyke March 2006 where the lovely Miss Melanie and I served them under a sign that read "Brownies for Butches"

Be sure to test for doneness before removing the brownies from the oven. If underbaked (the toothpick has batter clinging to it), the texture of the brownies will be dense and gummy; if overbaked (the toothpick comes out completely clean), the brownies will be dry and cakey.

When serving to butches, supply lots of napkins, and don?t take it personally if appreciation gets expressed primarily in monosyllables.

Makes about forty brownies when cut small

1 cup plain cake flour (or all-purpose; the texture will be just slightly different)

1/2 tsp table salt

3/4 tsp. baking powder

3 T Green & Black's organic cocoa (this is the most potent--add 1 T at least if you use another brand)

6-8 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped fine

2 oz semisweet chocolate

12 T unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks, cut into six 1-inch pieces)

2 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1/4 cup powdered sugar

4 large eggs

1T vanilla powder or crushed vanilla beans if possible, extract if not

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 325 degrees. Line a 9 X 13-inch baking pan with tin foil so that it hangs over the sides (you'll use it to lift the brownies out later) and grease it up with butter or your oil of choice.

2. Sift  flour, salt, cocoa, powdered sugar and baking powder together, then whisk to combine in medium bowl; set aside.

4. Melt both unsweetened and semisweet chocolate along with butter in a  large heatproof bowl set over saucepan of almost-simmering water, stirring occasionally, until smooth. (Alternatively, in microwave, heat butter and chocolate in large microwave-safe bowl on high for 45 seconds, then stir and heat for 30 seconds more. Stir again, and, if necessary, repeat in 15-second increments; do not let chocolate burn.) When chocolate mixture is completely smooth, remove bowl from saucepan and gradually whisk in sugar. Add eggs one at time, whisking after each addition until thoroughly combined. Whisk in vanilla. Add flour/cocoa mixture in three additions, folding with rubber spatula until batter is completely smooth and homosexual.  Um, I mean homogeneous.

5. Transfer batter to prepared pan; using spatula, spread batter into corners of pan and smooth surface. Bake until toothpick or wooden skewer inserted into center of brownies comes out with few moist crumbs attached, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool on wire rack to room temperature, about 2 hours, then remove brownies from pan by lifting foil overhang. Cut brownies into 1.5-inch squares and serve. Store leftovers in airtight container at room temperature or in refrigerator up to 3 days.  Or freeze--these taste wonderful and chew quite tenderly just out of the freezer and are delightful in hot weather.