from: http://www.sfbayguardian.com/truth/55.html Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.sfbayguardian.com/truth/55.html">sfbg.com | The Truth Hurts: BDSM advice from Mi�</A> ----- Born again Why so many has-been porn stars turn to right-wing Christianity. By Mistress Marisha Dear Mistress Marisha, I've known several sex workers over time. One, for example, made hundreds of porn movies and was America's sweetheart until she turned into a Christian identity Nazi type, adopting David Koresh's orphaned children. Why do so many sex workers become right-wing political maniacs? Why does Venus abandon them to Mars in a white hood? Bewildered Dear Bewildered: There are multiple causes for the type of sexual about-face that you describe, but the most common culprits are burnout and disillusionment. The sex industry attracts many young and inexperienced women and men who are lured by the fast money and who stay because they think they've found a profitable career. But after a few years, instead of being valued for their experience, older adult actors find themselves pushed out by newer, younger, prettier faces. When stars suddenly find themselves has-beens, the disillusionment is bound to have consequences, even to the extent that they rewrite their past in far less rosy tones. Sex work puts a tremendous influence on how you look. Physical beauty and exaggerated physical attributes are part of the industry. Many porn stars go through extensive cosmetic surgery � liposuction on the thighs, breast implants, lip enhancements, etc. � in order to be more sexually appealing and marketable. But when one's entire concept of self-worth is based upon one's looks, insecurity and vulnerability are a way of life. On at least one occasion, an actor who was involved in a car accident, which altered her appearance, wound up committing suicide. People who decide to engage in sex work may become pariahs, shunned from ordinary society. In the movie Boogie Nights such problems were illustrated succinctly. One porn actor is repeatedly turned down for a business loan when he attempts to get out of the profession. Another loses custody and even visitation rights with her child. Another is emotionally crushed by a "fan" who knows too much about her school days. The characters band together into a family of outcasts, creating their own support group. But what happens when one loses the only family one has left? If a male actor can't get a hard-on at will, or if a female actor loses her sex appeal, what possibilities are left? Certainly someone out there is making money off the adult movie industry, which grosses about $2.2 billion in revenue a year. Not much of this goes to the actors. Add to that the risks associated with promiscuity, like during the height of the AIDS epidemic, when many adult actors contracted HIV or saw coworkers die. As in professional sports, the players have traditionally been paid far less than the owners, yet they suffer the injuries and the constant threat of early retirement through sudden disability. Athletes offset their income through product endorsements, which is not nearly so profitable in the adult industry (a Nike contract for footwear will pay many times more than a Doc Johnson contract for endorsing vibrators or dildos). Like the athlete who parlays a successful career in sports into a lucrative sportscasting contract, a porn star has some options. Some porn stars marry wealthy admirers. Some find the funding to start their dream business (locally, former stripper Carol Doda runs a lingerie shop on Lombard). But if one is willing to "repent" and join the anti-pornography right, there is still money and fame to be had. A new family will open their arms with forgiveness and righteous anger about how you were used and thrown away by the evil pornography mongers. The more twisted details of your checkered past that you reveal, the more you help their fight against pornography. And lurid expos�s by embittered porn stars can become best-sellers. So it could be that your friends have turned informant for the political right and forsworn their former profession because of being badly treated by the industry over time. But there is another, less obvious reason why some former sex workers become anti-pornography zealots and right-wing activists. They carry the seeds of conservatism within them, like some dormant virus, requiring only a little emotional weakness to spring into a full-blown disease. Then their budding sexual enthusiasm is blighted by a scourge of repressive ideologies and forgotten catechisms from their own past. Sometimes young people aren't sure of their own identity or beliefs until they are forged in the furnace of experience. Where did your friends come from? Were they raised in the South, or in small town America? Was open sexuality a part of their natural persona or a rebellion against strict or religious upbringing? Sometimes people try something naughty or daring to define themselves as opposite in every way from the beliefs of their parents. But such extreme stances may be difficult to maintain. When the novelty wears off, a porn star may find that her new lifestyle conflicts with her basic beliefs and moral values. Her sexual experiments, by the very nature of their extremity, may even accomplish what her parents' warnings could not: pushing her in a pendulum swing back to conservatism. And many a young wanna-be starlet, disillusioned in Hollywood and trying to make ends meet, makes a few porn movies just to be noticed, to get her foot in the door, to keep her options open for better roles. Pornography is not (for her) a lifestyle choice or an expression of personal freedom but a means to an end: fortune or fame. And if that sex work does not accomplish her goals, she can still find money, friends, and fame of a sort by joining the harbingers of doom, those self-proclaimed guardians of our national morality who denounce all sexuality except the missionary position between married adults for the purposes of procreation. Not unlike young women who have had abortions and allow their own guilt to limit the personal freedom of others, these women say, "I tried this, and it is wrong; we should outlaw it." Their very hypocrisy makes them the most effective speakers against pornography because they have tried it, so they speak from experience. Unfortunately, they got into sex work for the wrong reasons, so their views are clouded by prejudgment � they didn't even have to try it to know that they wouldn't like it. But because they did try sex work, we're supposed to heed their warning? Not all porn stars have a negative view about sex work. Many powerful and vibrant women are drawn to this industry for their own reasons and stay because they find an opportunity to disseminate information, to express themselves fully, and to grow in new areas. Local celebrities like Nina Hartley, Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle, Pat Califia, and many others work tirelessly to promote sex-positive images, provide amazing how-to videos, entertain, educate, and raise money in support of their persecuted sisters within the industry. I have learned much more from working as a dominatrix than I did in school. When people guess my degree, they often assume psychology, and they are correct. But they are not correct in assuming that I learned about psychology in college. My real education began when I embraced my deepest desires and became a pro-domme. Being a dominatrix taught me the other side of femininity, allowing me to become the empowered, whole woman I had always wanted to be without becoming a shrew. It also taught me more about men than I thought possible to learn in one lifetime. Sex work is not for everyone, but for those of us who have found it as a "calling," it is the only work worth doing. Mistress Marisha Mistress Marisha's video pick of the week is Lina Wertmuller's Love and Anarchy (1973). Lina loves to show scenes that take place in a whorehouse, so this entire movie is set in a brothel in Rome. The bickering, behind-the-scenes jokes, the love-hate relationship with clients � it's all here in the raw, brutal and beautiful. The film stars Giancarlo Giannini as an anarchist trying to assassinate Mussolini, but the bitter lessons of fascism are sugarcoated in sex and humor. Mariangela Melato portrays a prostitute with heart, mind, needs, desires, vanity, and soul. Well worth seeing. ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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