If you’ve been following my twitter, you’re aware that for days now I’ve been engaged in what I’m calling “The Great Twitter War of June 2014″. I did not want to fight this, but I’m also not somebody who will allow myself to be bullied with accusations of bigotry for either my sexuality or my artistic expression. To some extent this has been an SF vs LA battle, but it’s also been a grown ups vs children battle.
There’s more to this, and I may get into later. Certainly I’m archiving some of these tweets. Here’s the basics: Chelsea Poe, a pre- or non-op transsexual woman (a human being with a penis and testicles) asked me to cast her in my lesbian porn. I said no, and she accused me of transphobia, and it could have been left at that, but people piled on and piled on and I stood there and fought it because this whole thing is coming from a place of refusal to face reality… and I don’t believe in suffering delusion.
Frankly, I still don’t think Chelsea and Thelma and all these other uptight, immature people understand why I went to war with them. I tried nuance and I tried grace and I tried everything in my arsenal but if you can’t grow up I can’t drag you kicking and screaming into the light.
What Chelsea asked me to do was to spend my capital, my energy, the trust of my fanbase that I have built up over six years in porn, to fight for her cause: her cause of proving she is attractive. Chelsea asked me to give her work in my movies. Every time I cast a movie I can’t include all my friends and lovers and the women I think are beautiful and the women who I like fucking, but Chelsea demanded that in the name of “equality” I give one of those roles to her and pay for someone to fuck her, so that she could wave her dick in the faces of my lesbian porn fans to make some point about how they should stop being bigots and accept that she’s hot.
Attraction isn’t bigotry. I fully support the creation of porn that speaks to all kinds of people. I do to some extent, and have many friends who, create porn that features non mainstream looks, that showcases new things that maybe people didn’t know they were into, and speaks to some larger truth about the world. I’m not exactly Brazzers. I don’t make assembly line porn.
There is tremendous amount of creative energy that goes into the creation of a movie. If you’ve ever been on set with me, or honestly, if you’ve ever been on any set, you have seen this. I don’t just shoot a scene; I write scripts, I book locations, I choose pairings who bring something to the scene I want to see. I make stories that speak to me, and I make porn that I think is hot. So there’s the artist side; here’s the whore. Honey, sweetie, darling, let me try to say this so you can understand me: I’m not the only director in porn who won’t shoot you if you don’t make my dick hard. To make what I make is a collaboration. My sexual energy is all over my work, whether I’m in the scene or not. Chelsea, if you want to make porn that speaks to you I wholeheartedly support you as my fellow artist, but your work is not my work.
Why should I fight your battle? Why should I risk the ire of my fans for you? What the fuck has Chelsea Poe ever done for me other than come at me with accusations? This is profound entitlement, and it’s disgusting, and I chose not to back down because I do not let people tell me what to do. I have fought too long and too hard for this little patch of ground I stand on. This isn’t about civil rights; this is about believing that just because you want something, other people have an obligation to give it to you.
This went, over the course of three days, from me saying I liked RuPaul and that I didn’t want to suck dick to a whole bunch of people suggesting using the law to force “inclusive casting” onto me as a director/producer…as if I don’t discriminate against all sorts of women all the time because I don’t think they are pretty or I don’t like them as people. I think it finally broke over last night when a lot of people I know, both trans and not, joined in to point out how utterly ridiculous the concept of fighting “employment discrimination” in porn truly is. I do not owe anyone validation, and if you’re seeking that from outside yourself anyway, you really just need to step off the battlefield and get right with yourself.
The process of growing up doesn’t happen overnight. It happens in fits and starts and sometimes by fire and blood. Part of becoming an adult is running headlong into failure, in having NO slap you in the face, and accepting that some doors stay closed. I talk about this thing I call “looking into the void,” which means understanding and accepting the bad so you can focus on the good. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, death comes for all of us and we all fall short of our dreams. You must love yourself anyway, because lasting happiness comes from inside. Let’s bring this full circle, bitch. It all comes back to RuPaul: “If you don’t love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love somebody else?” And how the hell is anybody else gonna love you?
It really IS just about validation isn’t it?
This invading of female naked space.
This invading of female safe space.
This appropriating of sexuality.
Seriously, some of these idiots even feel daily sexual harassment, catcalls, and the “eye fuck” are all validation of their “identity”.
It’s sick, and where would its logical conclusion end . With rape being the “ultimate” in validation of their “womanhood”.
I mean, if they’re SO SURE they are women, then why seek outside validation in such a twisted, fevered manner?
I’m sorry you had this shitstorm.
I can only posit that this is a very male way of infiltrating the ultimate rejection of the male, and all it stands for , which is lesbianism.
Can’t stick your dick in? Tell her you’re a lesbian.
She won’t play? Call her a bigot.
It’s bullying, and so entitled, so rapey, so male.
Great editorial. I used to follow Chelsea. I like a lot of TS porn & the scene she did with Bailey Jay was good. In the past couple of weeks she started getting hardcore about this issue. Don’t know where it came from but it seemed odd. She was, is, so adamant about. Penis aside, her look is more Burning Angel than Filly. Not to mention that she has that penis and they are not something you see in a lesbian porn.
Glad Filly posted a link to this.
“To some extent this has been an SF vs LA battle”
I’m in the SF area, and I’m totally on your side on this one. In fact, Chelsea Poe’s sexual politics (and, truth be told, that of Courtney Trouble and Kitty Stryker, two far more influential figures who have been egging Chelsea on in this) embody a strain of Bay Area politics that I really don’t like. It plays out in particular in local porn, in sex positive spaces, and in tech, and of course, gets a lot of reinforcement via Twitter and Tumblr. It’s a kind of immature radicalism that continuously seeks to position itself as the truest, purest, biggest fucking radicalism that there ever was, and if you don’t agree with this or that ridiculous position they’ve affected, then you’re the worst transphobic misogynist ever.
As I said on Twitter earlier, there’s no small irony in Chelsea Poe’s chosen stage name.
I think this is just a really, really immature person stuck in the SF bubble. She compares getting hired in porn to getting hired at Starbucks and talks about how she’s always gotten to choose her own scene partner http://chelseapoe.tumblr.com/post/89131409706/this-week
This is all very well and good, but it has nothing to do with LA porn where we book girls through agencies and I pick my pairings and abso-fucking-lutely nobody would try to make it an issue of “discrimination” if she wasn’t booked for a scene. There are a lot more girls than there is work.
I’m all for equality but this person is fighting the wrong battle. People are very specific about their porn, I know I am.
Lesbian porn is something specific. A transgendered male having sex with a woman is also very specific. They are two different kinds of porn. Plain and simple.
Mainly this point…
When I said on twitter it’s the end industry, this is what I mean.
Now, if someone was like ‘I only shoot g/g and everyone has to have a pussy’ then, I think, post op trans *should* be welcome based on what YOU said. I challenge that and will challenge the mission of your thing if I don’t see it represented.
However, I’m not trans, so I really don’t know what it is like to be turned down after some disclosure = totally sux. At the same time, I wouldn’t leave that piece out. But again, I don’t know what that is like. My only similar experience, is being turned down as a BLACK bbw.
And while we are talking about stereotypes, phobias, and -ism’s, I know women in Porn whose whole job it is to be the little white girl raped by the black thugs. All day making money on this outdated, but scintillating concept that black men are coming for our women with their giant cocks… oh how inferior we are in this moment.
Pointing to this comment “I mean, if they’re SO SURE they are women, then why seek outside validation in such a twisted, fevered manner?
I’m sorry you had this shitstorm.
I can only posit that this is a very male way of infiltrating the ultimate rejection of the male, and all it stands for , which is lesbianism.
Can’t stick your dick in? Tell her you’re a lesbian.
She won’t play? Call her a bigot.
It’s bullying, and so entitled, so rapey, so male.”
Is just another example of someone who previously had privilege and now all upset about the injustice!
Anyway, I don’t know how I got caught up in the sharknado on twitter, but I always get down when waste time fighting each other. We are all doing explicit activities on camera, THEY are coming for all of us, why make it easier for THEM by throwing ourselves under the bus.
We better make nice now since we will all be in jail and/or hell together xoxox
I really don’t want to fight anymore. I never really did. My position from the beginning was “I want to make porn that speaks to me, you make porn that speaks to you”. It was this whole absurd concept that Chelsea felt like she deserved to be hired because porn is a workplace that made no sense to me.
I also don’t think freaking out at people is a good way to change porn or get hired.
In terms of Drew, yeah, that wasn’t fun times…but I was fundamentally uncomfortable with shooting with her. I wasn’t turned on by the idea, and this isn’t Starbucks. I don’t have to fuck people I don’t want to fuck (which Drew got actually). Trans status really shouldn’t matter in most contexts, but the doctor’s office and the bedroom, these places where we surrender to our animal selves, are places where it can. I didn’t want to engage with a male body, even one which had gone through surgery. I couldn’t have let go with her. If people really want to cast this as bigotry and “Lily Cade hates people” and “you don’t see her as a woman” I think they are missing the point. There is nuance to all of this. None of us is the same, and it’s ok for the things that we love about ourselves, or the things we can’t change about ourselves, to be things that just don’t make other people wet.
The Law of Probability states that if you do enough things in front of enough people for long enough, half of them will eventually disagree with you. It has nothing to do with what you’re doing, how reasonable it may seem to Person X or Person Y or anything one would think would be something logical to throw into the scales. The more bizarre the responses you get to what you’re doing are, the more it means you’re doing.
It’s sort of like that old truism, “If you take an infinite number of monkeys and give them an infinite number of typewriters, an infinite supply of paper and an infinite amount of time, half those monkeys will eventuially become pregnant.”
Okay, less than half, because one must account for same gender preference monkeys, but it’s a lot like that, anyway.
I totally agree. It’s nothing more than validation for these warped out male penis bearing trans. It’s all about validating their so called womanhood with a penis. They not only invaded female spaces, they invated lesbian and intersex spaces as well. These men really don’t know what boundries are and will stop at nothing in overtaking everything that a woman does or touches.
Your perspective lacks nuance too, but what Chelsea and these peeps are doing is feeding your (and my) feelings of being attacked or invaded. These people are misguided. These people are delusional – but it’s really not everybody who looked at the body they were born in and said “fuck, this isn’t me”.
My understanding of myself as a lesbian is just as valid as anyone else’s self conception. I don’t have to include anybody in my bed. Making this – making fucking and porn – the frontier of acceptance is dumb. People just want to find shit they think is hot and jerk off to it.
I get why you’re falling into the “you’re not my real dad, you’ll never be my real dad” thing. I sometimes fall into it. If I didn’t have people I cared about who were TS I would have just said “fuck all y’all” after this. I want everybody to find their own truth in this BS world and live it – it’s just you’ve got to let other people do it too. We’re human. We’re these weird fucking creatures too smart for our own good who build mental castles for ourselves to live in because the alternative is madness.
Sex is fucking inescapable. Sex is cells. It’s small gametes and big gametes. Our bodies are shells to house them. Sex is older than us and will outlast us. The cell from which came your mitochondria was female. The cell which gave you your sex was male. Your mother was female and so was hers. Your father was male and so was his. Back past the the dawn of humanity we are cells that join and die and fucking and all of it is the extrapolation of this…but our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world is a lot more complicated.
I live in the margins. I live by nuance. I will abide your truth if you abide mine.
For me, I don’t fall into that line of thinking with the TS. Being biologically born Intersex, I too have been hounded and attacked by them because i’m born with something they wished they had. Like many women and lesbians that have been hounded by these TS people.
Intersex people like myself have been hounded because they want validation from a biological prospective that they can never obtain. They want legitimacy and validation for their fetish and fantasy. Their trying to do it on the backs of Women, lesbians and Intersex people. It’s why Women, lesbians and intersex people have been fighting back against them.
I totally agree with your stance and your RIGHT not to do a lesbian porn with a trans person. It’s something these trans people never understand and don’t understand the concept of boundries. It seems that they like to use their Male entitlement and male behavior to invade, co-opt and hijack women, lesbian and intersex people’s spaces.
It’s why I support what your doing and support your opinions and views. I totally agree with you that you don’t have to do a lesbian porn with a trans person and that’s your Right, I support.
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As lesbian for me this about how do you interpret “gay rights.” Is it JUST about fighting cultural homophobia so you can join “mainstream” American society? Or is it about fighting cultural homophobia alongside racism, sexism, and militarism? For some gay people “gay rights” are about gay people recognizing that they are being socially, economically, and politically oppressed by an oppressor that is not only antagonistic to homosexuality, but is EQUALLY antagonistic regarding all things that are not white, straight, middle class, pro-establishment. Queerness is about making your cause human liberation, of which homosexual liberation is just ONE aspect. Its about ADDING another level of understanding about the nature of the oppression that we’re up against, instead of using your privilege to disregard the other forms of oppression that don’t personally effect to you. It’s about recognizing that institutional oppression arranges society to benefit one group at the expense of others through the use of language, media, education, religion, economics, etc. What does it really COST you to be affirming and use affirming language instead of derisive language? What has it really COST heterosexual people to now be identified as “straight”and “objective” as opposed to “normal”and “subjective”? Taking offense to being called cis, would be like straight people saying that the word straight is offensive, because “OMG, I’m NORMAL, NOT STRAIGHT”. Queers have a VESTED interest in social and economic justice for all, and gay activists see their movement from a single issue “I’ve got mine” assimilationist standpoint that I literally find absolutely disgusting as a queer person of color.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lucas-waldron/seeking-queer-visibility-_b_4525703.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2013/11/18/gay_art_mentorship_and_aids_gap_qam_against_assimilation.html
Mainstream gay groups are consistently ONLY about finding ways to “integrate out gays and lesbians” into “normal” society and seeking to portray people in the gay community as “just like everyone else ”, instead of fighting an oppressive social structure that hurts everyone else in the LGBT community who is not EXACTLY like them. This is why I can’t STAND HRC, who had the nerve to act like they spoke for the entire LGBT community when they endorsed a version of ENDA that didn’t provide protections for trans people. They have repeatedly and systematically disrespected transpeople, LGBTs of color, poor, and basically anyone who isn’t a gay or straight white male since that debacle. Even worse was that the Professional Gay ASSHOLES at HRC appeared to conveniently “forget” that there are MANY masculine female and feminine male L.G.B.s. that are subjected to many of the same forms of discrimination that transfolks are because of their liminal gender presentations. http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/04/why-trans-community-loathes-hrc.html
As lesbians we are ALL aware of WOMEN that catch hell for being butch and androgynous —so being protected from job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation alone isn’t going to cut it for ALL GAYS. Essentially what I’m saying is that being conscious of how gender liminalism effects different groups, not only helps transfolks but it ALSO helps the women that we love and care about. I think that’s why you’ve previously said that you understand where transfolks are coming from, because of your OWN gender liminalism. I personally love and have loved people who live in that liminal space, and I feel it’s absolutely abhorrent to have my “gay rights” at the expense of trans inclusion. I mean, I’m lesbian who has dated transmen and I also have trans friends. These are people that I LOVE and people who I feel are more than tangentially related to my community.
Oops, my comments have a few typos, but I feel compelled to really clarify a sentence that is germane to what I was attempting to convey: “What has it really COST heterosexual people to now be identified as “straight” and “subjective” as opposed to “normal” and “objective”? ” I hope you got my meaning the first time, lol.
I believe in gender liminalism. It’s all over my work.
What I don’t believe in is playing ladder games with people’s desires. It’s a profoundly fucked up. “If you fuck women but you won’t fuck transwoman you’re a bigot” reifies everything the anti-trans, anti-porn feminists have been saying about trans “invasion” of lesbian space. It goes against everything that I believe in as a gay person. I am utterly disgusted by this whole line of activism. It’s the reason I “went to war”. How dare these people, honestly, how fucking dare anybody sit in judgment over other people’s sexual desires?
You talk about being a lesbian who has dated trans men. According to this whole nuance-killing, myopic, line in the fucking sand activism brigade, you can’t call yourself a lesbian. Trans men are men, trans women are women, but there’s a lot of nuance to all of this.
Sex and gender are different. Sex is cells. Gender is a box that doesn’t really fit anybody, and fits some people especially badly.
“If you fuck women but you won’t fuck transwoman you’re a bigot” reifies everything the anti-trans, anti-porn feminists have been saying about trans “invasion” of lesbian space. It goes against everything that I believe in as a gay person.”
I think there are three components to this: A) using affirmative language B) having sex with trans women C) working with trans women in porn
I think the MOST important thing here is component A): Using affirmative language. That’s it, really. It doesn’t really COST anything, and it’s a relatively easy and visible way to be supportive of other people who are extremely marginalized and are facing epidemic levels of violence, murder, homelessness, and unemployment. When I first heard the term “cis” I was like “WTF” but as a femme that mainly dates masculine of center folks and trans guys I quickly became acquainted with all the fucked up shit that people with liminal gender expressions and identities go through that I don’t because I identify as a woman, present myself femininely, and I am biologically female.. As for defending the use of the word “tranny”…come on now. Transsexual women are saying that this word is being used as an epithet to dehumanize and to the marginalize them. And that this marginalization translates into their higher vulnerability to many things, not the least of which are hate crimes, suicide, and domestic violence. http://psp.sagepub.com/content/34/2/159.abstract; http://gpi.sagepub.com/content/17/2/178.abstract It’s been shown that using derogatory epithets in reference to marginalized groups dehumanizes them and increases hostility towards them. This makes it easier to commit violent acts against them. Trans women are murdered at a higher rate than any other group in the country and they are more likely to be the victims of violent hate crimes than any other LGBTs. All that they are asking is that people refrain from using slur that perpetuates their oppression–ESPECIALLY on national TV. I don’t think it’s hysterical to request that people—particularly *OTHER* LGBTs—refrain from using a term that society habitually uses to devalue the humanity of a group that is ALREADY facing an obscene amount of murders, rapes, arrests, and assaults just for existing.
As for B) I DID see one particular lunkhead on twitter who accused lesbians of being cissexual for not wanting to have sex with pre-op and no-op trans women with penises—but um, Lily I AM a freaking lesbian too, LMAO! The notion of having sex with someone who has natural born, anatomical man parts sounds like some nasty, unrealistic shit to me too, lol! I thought it was SUCH an unrealistic, insane, and inflammatory argument that I checked out the account of the person who said it, and I seriously think the douchebag who fixed their fingers to tell you that shit is a 4 chan troll. This person hasn’t had their account for long and I think that’s a tip off. I think you should check out some of these “activists” before you truly engage with them because these sick little 4 chan assholes have been trolling womanists and feminists since like LAST OCTOBER, smh. Other than that jerk, I don’t think anyone actually really said that it was cissexist not to touch a dick. I think what I heard more of, is that trans lesbians NEVER seem to be viable romantic/sexual partners no matter whether they’ve had sex reassignmnment surgery or not. And tbh, it IS curious that POST-OP trans lesbians are having such a hard time dating any queer cis lesbians or being included in cis lesbian/queer spaces, while trans guys are. They’re saying that they are constantly being given specious reasons (such their ‘supposed’ post-op vaginas ‘really’ inverted penises and being socialized with a ‘male’ upbringing) that inhibit them from ever being a part of the lesbian community in a meaningful way. Mainly the the ‘cotton ceiling’ argument that Drew Devereaux came up with when she noticed that while many queer women love to talk about the trans community, their positive relationship to it and how much of an ally they are, they still don’t want to touch anyone who’s a trans woman. Yet and still, regardless of what anyone’s said OF COURSE I don’t think that you’re obligated to sleep with anyone EVER– LET ALONE someone with a fully functioning penis when you’re freaking GAY. The thought of semen disgusts the hell out of *ME* and the idea of having to put someone’s natural born/biological dick in *MY* mouth, is a hell the fuck no proposition. I *DO* think some people think gender identity is the ONLY basis of sexual attraction rather than biological sex—which isn’t true by a LONG SHOT for many people. You are more then allowed use biological sex as the basis for your sexual attraction. It’s your fucking right, it’s your body, and it does NOT mean that you are transphobic. People can always be as choosey as they want to when it comes to the bedroom. It is their right. Most times, those preferences extend to the rest of their lives; and THAT is the best place to pick apart why people exclude others. Who you lay down with is way too personal a decision to be expected to defend to the public. It gives people an easy way to put up their defenses as opposed to thinking critically about their actions and their desires. As for MY sexual orientation being challenged, lol. Sexual behavior, sexual identity, and sexual orientation are three different concepts…I’m mainly attracted to masculine folks, which mainly includes butch/stud/boi women and that includes trans men. My sexuality can’t be defined by others, using who i fuck as the only criteria. Would I get with a trans woman? Definitely not a pre-op or no-op trans woman. And in my experience, most trans women tend to be feminine when it’s quite obvious that I have an affinity for masculine women. But I *AM* open to the possibility of meeting a more masculine trans woman who might strike my fancy…I’m not completely ruling it out, and I think (I hope) that’s what more trans lesbians want from lesbians. To think more critically about it.
C) From what I saw with Chelsea Poe was that she just wanted to WORK with you, not have sex with you. Personally, I think it would be great for inclusion and access, because even if we have equal of opportunity we DON’T have equality of condition. And I’ll reiterate, no one gets to decide who women will and will not have sex with. Ever. Yet, where preferences extend to the rest people’s lives in the larger community THAT is the best place to investigate and make grievances about WHY people are being excluded—and they ARE being excluded. But questioning people , particularly WOMEN, about who they sleep with…it’s an unproductive way to truly begin a conversation about the social and sexual exclusion that trans women are experiencing. But at the same time, on some level, I can completely understand where you are coming from: you have a woman centered mentality and you only want to produce and direct porn with cis women. I think what YOU, Lily Cade, can really do to ameliorate a lot of the tension is use affirming terms and language in reference to trans women.
I can’t address all of this right now, but I do want to make sure that you understand that Chelsea Poe, Drew Deveaux, Courtney Trouble, Kitty Stryker and numerous other people that I have met in person repeatedly said that I was bigoted for not wanting to fuck trans women. This is becoming a thing in queer circles – either be willing to include everybody or you’re a bigot.
Chelsea literally responded to me saying “I have never sucked a dick and never will” with “that is SO SO SO SO SO TRANSPHOBIC”.
Drew said that being a lesbian who doesn’t fuck transwomen is hate speech.
This has been going on for a long time – since I turned down a scene with Drew last minute after finding out she was trans like 3 years ago. Chelsea referred to Drew as my “victim” because I backed out of the scene after much soul searching (fuck, man, I’ve been victimized a lot by all those flaky bitches who’ve no showed on me). Drew got paid and worked with someone else. These people REALLY, TRULY do not think it’s ok to not want to fuck transwomen.
As far as working with me, yes, Chelsea supposedly wanted me to hire her…after calling me a bigot. I suspect she really just wanted to cause a scene, not shoot one. Chelsea has a penis. I shoot GG porn. My audience doesn’t want to see a penis in that porn and neither do I.
I’ve seen some of the more recent discord you with Chelsea Poe on twitter and I agree that she [and some of the other queer porn activists] are talking about more then access and inclusion in lesbian porn. They’re talking about lesbians not wanting to sexually engage someone’s natural born, anatomical, biological dick. These people are literally arguing that if cis lesbians don’t want to have sex with pre-op and no-op trans lesbians, they’re transphophic and transmisogynist–which is mind-boggling. It’s just not realistic. Sexual attraction isn’t only about someone’s gender identity, gender expression, or gender cues. Sexual attraction can also encompass someone’s genitals and their biological sex. I’m a fxcking lesbian, I’m not touching someone’s biological dick whether they are trans or not. That doesn’t make me transphobic, it makes me freaking GAY. I’m at the point where I’m ambivalent about what this particular group is doing, because I feel like I’m being put in the position of defending my sexual orientation…again. I’ve had to defend my sexual orientation to my family and society for years. I got kicked out over it–in fact I only have ONE friend who wasn’t disowned or kicked by their family for being gay, trans, or both. I don’t like the idea of us being back to sexual preference again. My sexual orientation is JUST as natural as someone’s gender identity–I’m naturally repulsed by the idea of touching ANYONE’s natural born dick. Period. http://civilliberty.about.com/od/gendersexuality/g/sex_orientation.htm. I say I’m ambivalent about all this because I feel that it’s paramount to address the lack of social inclusion and the shocking amount of violence that trans women are exposed because they transgress so many social norms. I STILL feel that it’s absolutely abhorrent to have my “gay rights” at the expense of trans inclusion. I just don’t know what to think about any of this right now.
As for Dan Savage AND for Rupaul….I’m sorry to say that it appears that you have more of an issue with them being called transphobic [or Dan Savage being called] racist, then with the racist and transphobic oppressive shit they may be saying, facilitating, and supporting. Honey, people have been calling Dan Savage a transphobic racist for YEARS, does he *STILL* have a job? Is he STILL [unfortunately] a public spokesperson for ALL gay people no matter what anyone has said? Yep. He’ll live. No one’s discarding him, no matter how many black people of ANY sexual orientation have said he’s a disrespectful racist, because he has RACIAL privilege. Same thing with Dan Savage, Rupaul, and transphobia, BOTH of them have cissexual privilege. Rupaul had some segments of his tv show removed, but he’s STILL a gay spokesperson and icon and he STILL has his tv show. And don’t get me started with the racist blackface fxckery that Rupaul defended, SMH. Essentially, what I’m trying to impart to you is that EXPERIENCING racism is worse then being called a racist and EXPERIENCING transphobia is worse then being called transphobic. I might be called transphobic for some of the shit I’ve said here about dicks, but I do know that being called transphobic it’s a DAMN SIGHT better then actually having to live with transphobia. There ARE relevant social privileges that apply within the LGBT community, and the LGBT community has NEVER truly been *that* cohesive. I’m sorry, it REALLY hasn’t. I’m from NYC and Sylvia Riveria is one of my icons because she never let the shit that white middle class assimilationist gays were trying to pull slide. I belong to a black lesbian activist group that was created before I was born. Guess how old the group is? It dates back to STONEWALL. Some of the original members ALSO belonged to the original Black Panthers. Did they belong to any mainstream gay or lesbian groups? Nope. Because they were racist. There would have been no necessity for this group if they felt like their issues were being adequately represented by the mainstream [white] gay community. I’m just asking you to be more socially aware and cognizant of this shit, Lily.
Oh and I wanted to add: It’s actually NOT “immature” to be radical and push for the impossible–it just FEELS that way because of the way “the left” has changed since the 1990′s. I’ve actually been doing a lot of reading about politics in the 90′s to figure out how the left managed to get to such a pathetic place that we’re about as radical as Republicans in the 80′s. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her, but I discovered a REALLY prescient political writer named Ellen Willis (who unfortunately died in 2006) that addressed the bullshit that the mainstream centrist left was doing by trying to branding anything that wasn’t straight white male centered as “divisive identity politics”:
“No mass left-wing movement has ever been built on a majoritarian strategy. On the contrary, every such movement- socialism, populism, labor, civil rights, feminism, gay rights, ecology-has begun with a visionary minority whose ideas were at first decried as IMPRACTICAL, RIDICULOUS, CRAZY, DANGEROUS, and/or IMMORAL [Emphasis mine.] By definition, the conventional wisdom of the day is widely accepted, continually reiterated and regarded not as ideology but as reality itself. Rebelling against “reality,” even when its limitations are clearly perceived, is always difficult. It means deciding things can be different and ought to be different; that your own perceptions are right and the experts and authorities wrong; that your discontent is legitimate and not merely evidence of selfishness, failure or REFUSAL TO GROW UP [emphasis mine, again.] Recognizing that “reality” is not inevitable makes it more painful; subversive thoughts provoke the urge to subversive action. But such action has consequences-rebels risk losing their jobs, failing in school, incurring the wrath of parents and spouses, suffering social ostracism. Often vociferous conservatism is sheer defensiveness: People are afraid to be suckers, to get their hopes up, to rethink their hard-won adjustments, to be branded bad or crazy.”
“It’s not necessary, as many leftists imagine, to round up popular support before anything can be done; on the contrary, the actions of a relatively few troublemakers can lead to popular support. The history of movements is crowded with acts of defiance by individuals and small groups-from the 1937 sit-in of workers in a Flint, Michigan, auto plant to Rosa Parks’s refusal to get up to radical feminists’ disrupting an “expert hearing” on abortion reform-that inspired a wave of similar actions and a broader revolt. When militant minorities also have radical ideas, they capture people’s imaginations by presenting another possible world that appeals to the secret hopes of even THE RESIGNED and CYNICAL [emphasis mine.] They mobilize people by providing the context in which winning small changes is worth the time and effort because it is part of a larger project. They attract publicity and make it difficult for the authorities to keep on telling the lies whose credibility depends on uncontradicted repetition. The people in power know all this and are quite wary of the potential threat posed by an organized minority; their impulse is to make concessions (albeit as few as they can get away with). As a result, radical movements that articulate a compelling vision have an impact far beyond their core of committed activists.”
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Political/Radical_Left.html
Hey Lily,
I just want to say that you make the best lesbian porn ever! My wife and I watch your work because your scenes most accurately reflect what really happens between two women fucking, and you and the women you cast get us both hot. We love role playing some of your scenes.
That said, we couldn’t realistically role play a scene between you and a pre/non-op transwoman. Neither of us have dicks. So we’re 100% supportive of you not having transwomen in your casts. They would literally ruin what you’ve created. We don’t like dick. 99.99% of lesbians don’t like dick. The other 0.001%… I don’t know, I guess they just see pre/non-op transwomen as they do any woman with the right junk, but I seriously don’t get it. Neither my wife nor I have anything against transwomen, but we do have issues with dick and transwomen are just unfortunate enough to have them. Dick doesn’t belong in true lesbian porn like you create.
It’s also disgusting that this transchick called you a bigot for not wanting to suck her man junk. That’s just beyond wrong, and it’s also very forceful and aggressive… and kind of misogynistic and very masculine. That’s something we’ve noticed about some of these transwomen. They’re so fucking forceful and aggressive in trying to get normal lesbians to accept them and fuck them. It’s all very dude like.
Stay strong and keep making pussy-only porn because that’s what you and your fans love and want to keep seeing. If we wanted dick in lesbian porn we’d be straight dudes instead of lesbian women or straight women (I’m sure you have a large hetero female fan base too. Straight women love us gay ladies doing each other apparently).
I’m a non-op / pre-op t-girl close to SF, and I am cheering you on.
I like your eloquence, logic, attitude, candor … and the points you’re making. I’m seeing a lot of b.s. “sense of entitlement” among t-girls. Instead of making t-girls become more accepted, that sort of “you owe me” attitude is burning, and burning out, the folks who are most tolerant and the most likely good allies for t-girls. Being included in any commercial endeavor, including your productions, is a privilege that morally you have a 100% say about — by right.
This explains so much. I hate how things get construed over the interwebs and such. Yes there is the equality sense but you arent just running a business you are expressing yourself. As a non-op Gender Fluid female leaning person I feel that you are in the right and some people need to realize that just because they are part of a minority does not mean that they will get the job or that if they don’t its discrimination. Keep on keeping on Lily.