As it turns out, the Internet is not the answer to everything

I realize that I haven’t at all given a proper update about my two weeks in California. And the truth is, it’s not gonna happen here. The play-by-play of my days is available on my Twitter (no sign-in required) and the visual version is on my Flickr (for which you do need a Flickr account – sorry, I’m working on getting my Flickr reviewed, it is apparently very naughty).

I’ve been thinking an awful lot over the past few weeks about media, culture, and sexuality – really that’s nothing new, but I think maybe I’ve been considering it all in different ways than I’ve thought about it before. As a “Jill of All Media Trades” (Clamor magazine called me that last year, therefore it is a legit way of presenting myself… I’ll just pretend for a moment that the media creates accurate representations of me and my work*), I see this interesting bit of dialog/competition/willful ignorance of and between different mediums of expression. This is not just with regards to sexuality, but that’s what I know best.

Tonight Lux Nightmare and I went to the world premiere of Passion and Power: The Technology of Orgasm, a documentary about the history of the vibrator, based on Rachel Maines’ very excellent book The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction. My review of the film will be up on Fleshbot sometime on Monday, so you’ll get to read my thoughts about the film there (instead of in this post, which is only tangentially related to the film).

The first question in the Q&A period after the film asked “what’s next?” in the struggle for women’s agency when it comes to sexuality. Though the answers were a little bit indecisive and all over the map, the main idea emerging was that the Internet is where it’s at. Although I owe most of what I’m doing now (in all mediums, actually) to the almighty innernets, and I think its an exciting new frontier, I think it is also very very much the playground of the middle class. When this comes to sexuality and women, this further reinforces the exploration of sexuality as the domain of middle class -and usually white- women. I think maybe (definitely!) that’s bad.

The Internet certainly provides new connective tissue for all kinds of movements, both political and personal (and those that are both). But there are also lots of people left out of the picture. The example I know best, and is a really great illustration of this point, is the sex workers’ rights movement – or in the less organized sense, the attempt to reach out to people who trade sex to make their living. There are plenty of sex workers who are not online, and I really don’t think that the Internet is the solution to their problems. This is why I think $pread is such a damn important project, and as much as I love the Internet, I will always fight to have some kind of print version of $pread. Veering away from print, which can be circulated until it falls apart and is a physical manifestation of this work, is dangerous because of the people who will then slip by the wayside even more so than now. Regardless of class, not all people prefer seeing things on a computer screen, and that should be respected (even if, for those of us who track changes in word and upload and share spreadsheets on Google docs, this seems like a pain in the ass).

For me and my various media endeavors, the Internet is the connective tissue – its my home media, really. However, other forms of media (book, movie, magazine, art shows) aren’t satellites, and they aren’t less important than the Internet. They each offer different keys to understanding issues – different people learn and absorb information in a variety of ways, after all. Certainly the Internet -and especially social media- can teach people who specialize in other forms of media a thing or two about communication of ideas and interaction with an “audience.” But there is still an awful lot of value in other forms of media.

*I was quoted in the same article as saying “Sex work should be fun!” – which I most definitely did not say. Not that I believe sex work shouldn’t be fun, but its a pretty flip and un-nuanced thing to say. I specialize more in the complex and slightly obtuse.

Also, here is some video I took of Dell Williams and Betty Dodson talking about the inspiration to start Eve’s Garden, one of the oldest women-friendly sex shops in the United States.