On coming back to Niteflirt and my unexpected hiatus
I’ll admit that I have been on the fence about sharing why I took a step back from Niteflirt back in November, just as engagement was beginning to pick up for me no less for my listings. Truth be told, the day after the U.S. federal elections, I had gotten virtually no sleep from the number of calls and text messages I recieved from deeply concerned and frightened friends, loved ones and comrades about what the result would mean for our collective safety as multi-marginalized people over the next four years.
Honestly — I felt too jaded to come onto Niteflirt, and act like nothing happened. I was angry, furious at the thought that some of the same people who had probably solicited my services through the different personas I’ve played throughout my career were the same people who voted for the authoritarian, fascist nightmare that we are currently living. I couldn’t stand the thought of giving racist, xenophobic bigots willing to put my community into modern day concentration camps an ounce more of my time, attention and precious energy, especially when so many needed of my full presence as an activist and organizer in my civilian life.
The time away gave me the opportunity to think meticulously over how I wanted to show up as a phone sex operator and sex worker. There was a time where I felt obligated to make work that I thought clients wanted. Work that often didn’t reflect my true values for the sake of appealing to the “widest audience possible”. The stakes feel too high now to continue down what feels like a very complicit path, in an industry where far too many still feel comfortable employing the same racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic stereotypes, tropes, and caricatures to make a buck over the dignity and humanity of real performers, artists, and people, and where there is a great need for those who can take a stand for liberatory values to set the example of what that can look like as we move into tomorrow.
I refuse to work as if things are fine. The United States is in a full blown constitutional crisis, and the current administration is doing all it can to amass unchecked power and barrel down further and further towards full blown right wing authoritarianism. I believe my job as a sex worker now is not to help you escape this reality; rather, I believe now it is my job to help others still be able to experience and seek out radical pleasure and joy inspite of it. Pleasure and sexuality can be acts of resistence in it of themselves if they are firmly rooted in embodying the values collective liberation, and it dares to radically dream of what is possible when we take ahold of the tool of the imagination for ourselves.
It is my hope with this re-introduction of who I am and what I’m all about, that I may find myself connecting with likeminded creators and clients who also believe deeply in these principles and values as well. We can’t afford to keep doing “business as usual” (not like it was anything great to begin with under racial capitalism, but that’s another post for another day!). It’s time to stand firmly for what we know to be true; that justice, equity and dignity is the unalienable right of all, and that our liberation is bound up in one another’s.
Business and how we earn our keep is deeply intertwined with the political, whether we like it or not. It’s high time I let my radical freak flag fly; to be honest, I think it’s probably what makes me charming– and intimidatingly hot, depending on who you ask. 😉
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