Tuesday, November 13, 2007
You Can Tell Now That the Sex Bloggers Have Arrived
filed under: We Are The Sex Media by Melissa Gira
Stigma, said sexuality & kink educator Graydancer, of one of the first sex podcasts, Ropecast, checking in from BlogWorldExpo.
Graydancer’s sum-up details how conversations he struck up with other bloggers were shyly broken off, how one of his models — previously down to be tied up for a performance at a conference party — declined at the last minute over fear of having her startup’s image tarnished, and of how little formal attention sexuality & new media were given on the program. Sad, but common, for sex people doing work outside our niche, whether that’s in or out of web circles. Then at a pajama party as part of the same conference, the owner of Vibrator.com was asked to leave by event organizers for giving out promotional stickers. Was this due their sexual content, or because, as Libby Durfee, co-founder and event producer of BlogWorld said, they were unfairly competing with exhibitors who had paid significant money to be there with their own products? Yes, it’s gross, but that’s the big business of blogging — not unlike the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, also held in Vegas. Now some sex bloggers are questioning Facebook for not permitting a sex blogger to have a profile under her professional, but not legal, name, and yes, I’m asking those questions, too.
But I fear that one of two things is coming to pass, and pass fast:
• The sex bloggers, they have arrived at web celebrity
• The sex bloggers, they have arrived, and my god, some of us are acting just as douchey as the rest of the web celebrities
In other words, important contributions, in the name of improving sexual health, relationships, and pleasure, and of better understanding the sex culture we all play a part in, are being made, and deserve recognition. Unfortunately, just having something smart to say isn’t enough, and so we get some of the behaviors of the so-called New Media Douchebags, that we love to hate but still sometimes indulge in ourselves: starting faux-controversies to get traffic, or worse, to build a brand around. Who wants to be known as “that blogger who had that big problem with [x]”? Some apparently do, and are trading on that sort of flamey attention gladly.
This might be why we can’t have nice things, blogosphere, and sex bloggers are no different. We have no greater claim than anyone else to authenticity or transparency just because it’s about sex with us. We feel just as alien and ostracized — more so, some — from the mainstream and our shoulder chips are significant, and we’re no kinder to one another for it. Though we might fuck really hard, or type really fast about the hard fucking we wish we were doing, just like the rest of the New Media Mafia, we’ll still plunk down a few hundred bucks for a sweatshop labor lanyard with a few dozen logos on it… so we feel like we belong? That we matter? That sex matters?
No schwag, no matter how many planes we had to Twitter we were waiting on to get it, can do that if we lose our inspiration and our wits along the way.
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Took me a few minutes to try and figure out if in the course of this article I was being called a N.M.D., but I think I’m secure in the idea that I’m not.
Truthfully, I was more sad than anything about the reaction, in the same way I would be sad at any reaction to sex that was less than unashamed and honest. When I teach about bondage, one of my strengths is that I do not project creepy spooky guy. I project polite, cheerful, fun guy who happens to like doing neat things with rope.
I think in the blogosphere the same thing is necessary. I have not slammed or made snarky comments about the people who I talked to - just more of a “Hmm, wonder what they’re really thinking?” while at the same time honoring their wishes not to be mentioned in the same web page as me.
We need to be the most polite people in the room. It won’t help the critics like us, but the audience will see who the real N.M.D.’s are.
I hope I called myself out enough in the post to make it clear that we’re all potentially culpable — though in the Vegas case, and it’s not my place to judge, I think you handled the conference and its social landscape very well.
My fear is that we’re basing our definitions of success on some weak, boring, competitive model of what it means to be “taken seriously” or “make a living.” Death to the NMD, but also, long live the NMD, as we’re stuck with the trope now — so the question is, how do we do better?
i’m not seen as an alien.
i talk about sex
i have no problem with that
my friends too
and sometimes it’s really “crude”
sex bloggers exist.
some of them are good
Some of them are just asshole to be polite
if to improve sexual health, internet must must be the media n°1, why not?
why sex is always hide like this?
people show it at TV as a bad-acting-against-society.
With my work i travel a lot
and the only sexual health i can teach is how to use condoms.
I went in some country where 60% of the population had aids, so if internet can improve that i’m okay.
And the civilized-one could continue their small game with boundage and other stuff.
But internet is the futur of sex.
And Sexerati i love reading.
xav
I’m a little confused, Melissa. Are you saying Graydancer was being douchey? To me, his post didn’t read like he was expecting a hand-out, or like he felt he was entitled to something. But maybe it’s just because I can relate to that stigmatization, and I’m arguably not even a “sex blogger.” I don’t think pointing out reality makes one douchey.
I should blog about this myself…
To be blunt, the NMD behavior set is something we’ve all engaged in. Does that make us terrible people? No. Can we do better than to limit ourselves by holding ourselves to the rest of the (white, tech, moneyed) blogosphere’s definitions of greatness? Hells fuck yes.
And not just because we can use bad language.
Looking forward to your post; you always nail issues of community & sex blogging so well!
Well, I don’t think it’s necessarily about holding ourselves to the rest of the blogosphere’s standards. For me, anyway, it’s about wanting to be treated with the same baseline of respect as any other random blogger one meets at a conference or event. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be pissed off when people immediately dismiss anything I say just because I write about sex sometimes.
Blog post coming eventually, I swear! THanks for the ego stroke.
We do deserve respect, as much as any other blogger.
What concerns me is when, in the pursuit of being seen as relevant, or having integrity, or building community, what we spend time on isn’t exploring and educating about & entertaining with sex, but what’s being mistaken as blog-biz-as-usual: using these slights as opportunities to build brand and readership, rather than acting with grace.
And with that, I’m turning my attention back to blogging for now. This has been useful, but lest it get too insidery. I think we’ll get into this more at/around Sex 2.0.
But one more thing — the way sex is being changed by the internet, and how it effects people outside the sexblogosphere, is so much bigger and more important than how any of us is treated at a conference. Yes, it’s a drag to be looked down on, but look who’s doing the looking-down-on. Compare that treatment with the stigma we face outside the web scene. How does it, as a million guys in striped shirts have said before me, scale?
Well I guess my thing is, I don’t think it’s ever okay to be looked down on,and I don’t think it needs to be a contest of who’s the most oppressed.
[…] You Can Tell Now That the Sex Bloggers Have Arrived : Sexerati: Smart Sex. Behaviors of “New Media Douchebags that we love to hate but still sometimes indulge in ourselves: starting faux-controversies to get traffic, or worse, to build a brand. Who wants to be known as “that blogger who had that big problem with [x]”?” (tags: blogs ethics controversy publicity problems media+evolution culture) […]
[…] social media community. See Graydancer’s post about his experience at the BlogWorld Expo, and Melissa Gira’s Sexerati post from today. (Why yes, they are both session leaders at Sex 2.0, why do you […]