A Shark Full Of Tornadoes

This whole five minute interview about Lost Girls - a book that Alan created with his wife, and which he adamantly refers to as pornography - is absolutely worth watching.

I'd also recommend this short clip of him discussing the importance of the idea of porn as a genre and their particular approach to it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcWQLBRqit8

The idea that there is some kind of magical distinction between dirty nasty porn and clean, pristine erotica is stupid classist bullshit. It's no different than the people who insist that "movies" and "cinema" are different things.

Yes, obviously, most pornography is low grade crap written by and for sexist racist white men.

News flash; so is most of every other genre of media!

"Ninety percent of everything is crap." - Theodore Sturgeon.

The fact that pornography isn't immune to this isn't actually some exciting revelation. What were you expecting?

The difference is that because we can't talk about pornography - because it's deemed to be this dirty, filthy, shameful thing that has to be enjoyed in secret - it's impossible to find the 10% that's good. You can hear about Severance from that co-worker you barely even talk to, but you're not exactly about to hear about WARHOUND over the water cooler, are you?

Sex is as much a part of the human condition as love, death, money, crime and war. The idea that it's more acceptable to write about murder than it is to write about people fucking is completely deranged.

Kill the puritan preacher in your head. You will not burn in hell for watching people come. Sex is fun. Porn is about sex. Porn is fun. Get over yourselves.

“They’re not smarter or faster they’re buying up others’ lifetimes to do their chores”

I see this reaction a lot, and I gotta say, it always makes me a little sad. Whenever the conversation of exploitation of labor comes up, inevitably someone finds themselves struggling with the guilt of “It is so important to me not to contribute to exploitation but I cannot do this thing myself and need someone else to do it for me, so how do I even approach that?”

Exploitation isn’t in the hiring of a service worker. Exploitation is in the respect you show them for their ability to perform the service you need from them.

I have been on a cleaning service staff before, and also been someone who hired a cleaning service, and I can tell you for sure that a lot of cleaning crews (especially worker owned ones) absolutely LOVE their clients and are genuinely happy to be able to make their lives better. The clients they don’t like? Those are the ones who disrespect the workers.

When I was involved with a cleaning service, we had everything from little old ladies living alone to McMasions with five cars as clients, and I can assure you that whenever there was someone who clearly hired us because they were overwhelmed or unable to keep their space clean, those were the households where you put a little more elbow grease in and did a deep clean even when it wasn’t paid for, because you could see how much these people were trying and struggling, and they were always so kind and generous and often embarrassed when talking to you about the job.

I only hired a service a couple if times in my life, but whenever I did, I worked with the same people as often as I could, tipped as well as I could afford, and tried to be the kind of client I would want to have, and that’s how I often ended up with my baseboards cleaned too, or my fridge scrubbed and organized or a restorative clean done in a high use room even when that wasn’t what I had scheduled or paid for.

I’ve heard the same thing from all manner of service workers over the years. Many of us like our jobs! We enjoy the work. It’s the customers that can do a number on you.