The Fifth Annual Vagina Beauty Pageant: A Judge’s Notes

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August 8, 2014

All photos courtesy Dick Hennessy Productions/Hypnox

ATTN: NSFW PHOTOS AFTER THE JUMP

At 10 p.m. last Thursday, I sat myself in the judges’ row at Club Rouge in downtown Portland for the fifth annual Vagina Beauty Pageant. There were six judges, two poles, 22 competitors and 23 vaginas. Wait, what?

“Didja hear the story?” pageant staff photographer Hypnox shouted over the music. “Apparently, when she was a young lady and used a tampon for the first time, she inserted it but the blood didn’t stop flowing.”

The Vagina Pageant has been criticized for its somewhat anatomically incorrect moniker. However, I’d like to state that while it might be called the Vulva Pageant, within seconds of the contest’s beginning I really did view the inside of a vaginal canal and would see several more throughout the evening.

I spied my coworker Juniper Knox from Lucky Devil Lounge across from me, fondling a blow up doll’s breasts and lip syncing to Aaliyah. Nearer, judge Rachel Reckless sat stretched and crossed her long tattooed legs, sipping her drink through platinum-capped teeth. Beside her was Jedidiah Aaker of Portlandia fame (he’s the bearded guy in the thong). To my left was Nik Sin, all 3’6” of him looking devilishly handsome. Nik has appeared on Oddities, Portlandia, Jerry Springer and Maury, and has toured the country doing his Mini Marilyn Manson impersonation. Judge Tres Shannon, of world-famous Voodoo Donut, looked across the room. “I should check on my friend, Poster Boy. He doesn’t know anybody,” he said.

“He smells bad,” I said.

“He has butter on his dick.”

That wasn’t what I expected to hear. Although I already feared that I knew the answer, I asked “Why?”

“He gets lap dances.”

Suddenly the house lights were raised, “so that the judges could see better.” I cringed at the thought of the inability to hide treacherous razor burn and blemishes. Red light absent, shit was gonna get real.

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“Lapdancing Nun” Ruins It for Everyone

By

Kat

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June 1, 2011

Or so most of the reports read. One ex-stripper nun and her emphatic interpretive dancing has caused the monastery at the Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, a basilica built around 325, to be shut down by Pope Benedict XVI. I see how her performances could be considered inappropriate. She does roll around on the ground, looking like she’s sliding into home with the cross. (What’s the protocol there? Do they have to burn it like a desecrated flag?) But, I have a hard time believing Sister Anna Nobili is the most scandalous thing to happen within the confines of Santa Croce in 1,686 years. We’re talking about the Catholic Church here. What does everyone think? I find her performances to be heartfelt and enthusiastic, albeit vaguely sexual in nature and not the most nunlike. Judge for yourselves.

Don’t Hit Women Or Whores: Whorephobic Domestic Violence and Its Discontents

By

Leigh Alanna

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August 18, 2014

War Machine's rationalizations (Screenshot of War Machine's tweet) — War Machine’s tweeted rationalizations—note the number of retweets and favorites (Screenshot of War Machine’s Twitter feed)

“Don’t hit women or whores” reads an oh-so-helpful comment under one of the many reports of the brutal assault and attempted rape of porn actress and dancer Christy Mack by her ex partner, War Machine (formerly known as John Koppenhaver), this past week. And that’s one of the nice ones. Most of the not-nice ones start with “what did you expect?” and get worse from there. Koppenhaver himself seems to see his role in the attack as a tragic victim of fate, a “cursed” man who had hoped to be engaged to the woman he broke up with in May, whose house he broke into in August.

While, in the face of the graphic and horrific story that Mack released, Koppenhaver’s view seems woefully out of touch with reality, the truth is, he’s right to predict sympathy for himself. Assaulting a sex worker, especially one that you once deigned to be in a relationship with, is viewed as pretty understandable. Just by watching TV or using the internet (ever), how many hundreds of jokes and not-jokes did Koppenhaver encounter excusing and encouraging him to do just that? It might be tempting, for the sake of our views on the state of humanity, to label his on-the-run tweets as a disingenuous ploy for public understanding, but I believe it is the less likely explanation of the two. What reason have we to believe that Koppenhaver was special, that he was somehow immune to the prevailing cultural narrative about the worth of those who do sex work? Why wouldn’t he think of himself as a lamentable casualty of an unfair system?

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Gender Critical Feminism is Fascism

By

Juniper Fitzgerald

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November 29, 2018

Meghan Murphy, a Canadian feminist writer who has spent at least five years on this site waging misogynist harassment campaigns against sex workers and trans women, as if it were all she had for a content strategy… is finally suspended. pic.twitter.com/lo9sW9niv8

— Melissa Gira Grant (@melissagira) November 24, 2018

Meghan Murphy was booted from Twitter recently for spewing transmisogynistic and anti-sex work garbage. Cue: Ding Dong the Witch is Dead! Meghan Murphy as an individual human person is a complete joke, having edited Feminist Current for nearly a decade, a site consisting of random pepperings of George Soros conspiracy theories muddled together with the language of feminism. Nonetheless, her “gender critical” ideas are gaining traction among so-called feminists and fascists alike, and that’s the part that worries me.

Many “gender critical feminists”—aka TERFs and SWERFs—have aligned themselves with violent allies, proclaiming, much like the alt-right does, that “men aren’t women” and “sex work isn’t a thing.” In a pitiful blog post with endless martyred complaint about her locked Twitter account, Murphy whines:

While the left continues to vilify me, and liberal and mainstream media continue to mostly ignore feminist analysis [sic] of gender identity, people like Dave Rubin and Ben Shapiro (and hundreds of right wingers and free speech advocates online), and right wing media outlets […] have attempted to speak with me and understand my perspective […] the left seems to have taken to ignoring or refusing to engage with detractors or those who have opinions they disagree with or don’t like [while] the right continues to be interested in and open to engaging.

Raise your hand if you see a lucrative YouTube rant about “Red Pilling” on the horizon!

The alliance between “gender critical feminists” and the alt-right has been forged on mutual bigotry: hatred for trans people and sex workers. “Gender critical feminists” are willing to sacrifice access to medical care, abortion, and self-determination in their alliance with the alt-right for the sole purpose of harassing, doxing, and generally inciting violence against trans people and sex workers.

Historically, factions of white feminism have flirted with fascism, from the overt racism of the Suffragists in the US to the Christian Temperance Movement here and abroad.

It’s time to give serious consideration to the fact that these factions are still alive and well.

Jason Stanley recently described fascism as having three distinct and alarming qualities: a mythic past, cultural division, and a targeted attack on truth. The alt-right exemplifies these qualities, from “Make America Great Again,” to the carefully cultivated division between “patriots” and The Other and ruthless attacks on the press wherein oppressors suddenly lay claim to victimization. Let us not forget that Hitler wrote an entire book about his “struggle,” detailing the myriad ways he believed himself oppressed.

Gender critical feminism is helping to perpetuate a mythic past, cultural division, and a targeted attack on truth, and it’s time for all the Meghan Murphys of the world to be exposed as the fascist bootlickers they are.

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Sex Working While Jewish In America

By

Arabelle Raphael

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November 5, 2018

We are witnessing the blossoming of a white nationalist nation. Being the person that I am is not easy in the United States right now. It’s not easy for my friends, my family, or millions of Black people, Jews, and LGBTQI people.

I’m an Iranian, Tunisian, French and Jewish sex worker. I immigrated from France to the U.S. as a child. I still hold a fair amount of privilege; my skin is light, unlike that of many of my family members, and I am a high-income sex worker. With that, I’m still confronted with Islamophobia—many people assume I’m Muslim because I’m Middle Eastern—and anti-Semitism both in my personal and professional lives.

I was raised with Judaism but I’m a secular Jew. I’m a Hebrew school dropout. My feelings about religion are very complicated and honestly, it often makes me quite uncomfortable. Every time I walk around New York and see white Hasidic Jews, I feel both otherness—we are culturally different and I’m not a nice Jewish girl—and a connection to them.

The thing that makes me feel most Jewish is knowing how much people hate us. People hate them as people hate me. I’ve been to Nazi death camps and I remember looking at a flyer in one camp’s museum. There were excerpts from a pamphlet the Nazis passed out during the war. It was titled How to Spot a Jew, containing several highly racist caricatures presented as what to look out for. Those racist caricatures all looked like me. I don’t need to have religious garb on to be recognized as Jewish, and I still see those caricatures being used in reactionary media today.

I’ve been conflicted about saying anything about anti-Semitism under my work persona. I struggle with being politically vocal while still trying to make money and remain appealing to wealthy clients.

But when I’m faced with these prejudices at work, it hurts to be silent. I feel like I’ve lost. My racial identities come up too often at work to ignore. I once posted a photo online of myself post-menstrual sex, and someone’s response was: “Now I know why Hitler gassed the Jews.” People frequently point out my big nose. I’ve been called a “terrorist,” “camel pussy”, and “kike” on client-facing social media quite a bit.

When I was younger and new to sex work, I was afraid to set boundaries and money was scarce, so I took jobs that I wouldn’t take now that I’m in a better financial situation. I think all performers of color are faced with this experience. I’ve been in a movie called Women Of the Middle East, and have been cast as a belly dancer many times. I was always being given the information that I would be participating in a racial fetish scene only after I had traveled, paid for testing, been booked, etc. I’ve had a director make jokes about needing machine guns as props for Middle Eastern vibes, and I’ve had to fuck a white man in a turban with black eyeliner. Clients still ask me to wear hijabs.

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