I am utterly baffled that I have to explain these things, but the sexy mommy mob is still hysterical after my comments on Twitter last week that feminist darling Madison Young is creepy-as-fuck for how she uses her baby as a non-consenting prop for her sexual politics and porn marketing. I don’t expect to change any minds, and I’m not allowing comments on this post because I was sick of this topic days ago. But, since people are asking me for a “statement,” and the sexy mommy mob is intent on growing this “story” into some kind of national outrage, I might was well clearly explain my position in one place. (I do appreciate seeing how, as this “story” moves out of the feminist porn scene, some other people share these opinions.)
The big take-home point that some people are missing: It’s all about context. I am against breast feeding in places where people go to masturbate. Madison’s posting of breast feeding photos and videos in her Twitter stream and on other sex-themed web sites is appalling to me. It’s no different than breast feeding on stage at a strip club. Madison has spent her career making everything she does about sex. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. I’m a sex-loving pornographer myself! But you can’t spend most of a decade purposefully building an environment where people come to masturbate and then feign confusion when someone like me “mistakes” that environment for being sexual.
It’s hard to plead “there is absolutely nothing sexual about these photos/videos” when they are posted in sexualized spaces and/or crafted to look sexy. The most famous image shows Madison as a Marilyn Monroe knockoff. I’ve seen photos of other women breast feeding, and none of them bothered to put on a sexy dress and get their hair and makeup done first. For most moms with breast feeding photos, I bet they’re probably wearing yesterday’s sweatpants and looking exhausted, not trying to liken themselves to a famous sex icon.
I’ve been told that it’s beyond Madison’s control if sick people are aroused by her sexy breast feeding images. But if she would never want to encourage people to jerk off to photos of her baby, she should stop posting them in a place where she typically posts porn. Aside from all the innocent masturbators who clicked a blind link because they thought it was going to be kinky sex pics, who wants to see sexy breast feeding? Most of us would call them pedophiles. Best case scenario, Madison’s sexy breast feeding schtick is an attention-getting ploy to sell her persona’s “realness” so people will buy her “real” porn. Worst case scenario, Madison is knowingly creating masturbation material for pedophiles. Either way, it’s revolting. (At what point does one cross over from sexualizing having a baby to sexualizing the baby?)
Madison’s loyal fans have spent the last few days calling me an ignorant and cruel monster for taking Madison to task, but what about the actual victim, Madison’s baby?
This issue is also about consent. The baby is not consenting to being used as a marketing gimmick for her mother’s porn persona. There is a huge difference between consenting adults engaging in exhibitionism, and forcing creepy, pedophile-courting public voyeurism on a non-consenting baby. I am an exhibitionist myself, but I would never drag anyone into my kinks who isn’t consenting to be a part of a scene. For all anyone knows, Madison’s kid will be traumatized by her upbringing in public, and end up feeling extremely violated by the sexual attention Madison subjected her to as a child. Would you have wanted your mother breast feeding you for attention from horny adults, and for evidence of that to be online and linked to you forever?
I am against people using their children as props to serve an agenda. Madison’s use of her daughter to push her politics is no different than when anti-abortion protesters or the Westboro Baptist Church uses their own unwitting small children as props. Kids aren’t political tools to leverage for shock value, they’re actual human beings who will one day be adults with their own set of opinions. To assume that Madison’s baby will grow up and be thrilled that her mother used her to get attention for her porn persona is offensive and sad to me. Several have pointed out that I’m “no different,” since I tweet photos of my cat. But, here’s the key nuance they can’t grasp: my cat will never be a sentient adult human with his own beliefs and a non-interest in being caught up in my pervy internet trail.
The sexy mommy mob doesn’t like these “anti-sex worker” and “sexist” arguments, so they’ve turned it into a matter of rebutting things I never said.
I never said that no woman should be allowed to breast feed. I am not against breast feeding in public or private, I am against doing it in sexualized contexts. I would feel the same way if someone whipped out a baby at a swinger’s club, so it’s not just about the internet or porn.
I never said that sex workers (or kinksters) should not be allowed to have children, or that mothers can’t be sexy. I have a number of kinky and sex working friends who are parents, and I know some sexy moms. They, however, possess good sense and boundaries and don’t force their offspring to be a part of their exhibitionism and work. The kinky and sex working parents I know create separation between their lives, they definitely don’t seek to combine them at every turn to prove how transgressive they can be. Not because my friends are prudes, but because they understand that it’s deeply inappropriate to mix small children and horny adults.
I never said that no one should be allowed to photograph their kids or photograph breast feeding. I didn’t comb through the Flickr pages of strangers until I found a random mother to criticize. I’m specifically talking about a porn star who is using her baby as an attention-getting prop in sexualized contexts.
This is not some kind of anti-“lesbian” hate crime. Madison is married to her male dominant/master, and I mostly fuck men, too. She and I are basically in the same boat, the difference being that I don’t obsessively market myself as queer. I fail to see how my criticizing her constitutes an attack on “being queer,” but some people are really grasping at straws for new ways to frame Madison as a victim of an injustice.
Stepping back…
I hate what stuff like this does to the credibility of sex workers and pornographers as a whole. People like me try to tell regular folk that porn and sex work is about consenting adults, not weird stuff with kids and/or the non-consenting. To the sexy mommy mob, Madison is the greatest hero of her generation, but what about the other 99.999999% of America, the majority we need to get on our side in order to make any advancements for sex workers? If you seal yourself in the safe bubble of San Francisco, surrounded by adoring fans, then of course you’re not going to care how you might be damaging the movement for acceptance of sex workers and porn.
I’m surprised that people like Gail Dines and Melissa Farley haven’t seized upon Madison’s baby fetish as yet another way to attack all of us. This is exactly the sort of thing they live to hold up as a non-representative example of how we’re all horrible people. Anti-sex work activist Donna Hughes threw a fit a year ago when a small sexuality conference apparently allowed in a high school senior. For this, the organizer was branded, basically, a dangerous predator going after America’s helpless children. If letting a consenting 17-year-old hear about sexuality is enough for the antis to launch a campaign that says kink bloggers are basically child molesters, I wonder what they would think of a porn star sexualizing the breast feeding of a baby? But of course, if the antis get wind of the controversy that Madison and her fans are so desperately trying to publicize, she will not be the one addressing the hard questions. She has her feminist porn “revolution” to worry about, and the rest of us – especially her baby girl – can go eat cake.
