Paige teaches argument and rhetoric (aka "How to get what you want without using guns") while pursuing agents to represent her first novel. She's also an occasional fetish model and full-time transsexual sex worker. She blogs for Sex in Power on issues relating to culture, sex work, civil rights, and politics, so long as sex is involved. And when isn't it?
The movement for sexual freedom and the right of Americans to determine what is appropriate intimacy between consenting adults can often seem as though it takes one mincing step forward and two "fuck me running" sprints back. Utah creates model legislation for other anti-choice legislatures that nearly outlaws having a miscarriage. One Mississippi community goes to great lengths to hold a "decoy" prom in order to prevent a lesbian student and her friends from attending the main prom. In Texas, an ultra private swinger's club is infiltrated and its members harassed for weeks at work and play until some lose jobs and the club can no longer function. Fred Phelps's Westboro Baptist Church is not only allowed to continue vicious, vocal protests at the funerals of soldiers, (which the First Amendment to the Constitution clearly allows), but the grieving father who brought suit is forced to pay their legal fees, meaning he is now forced to actually support their message.
None of these tell the full story. The hard truth for sex-positive people to face is that the hate groups or conspirators responsible for these frightening headlines are not breaking the rules. They may not be playing fair, but they are playing legal. Litigation was once a kind of Swiss Army knife for defense of civil liberties, but activists have come to over-rely on it. GLBT activists in California found out just what happens when you fall asleep on the job, assuming that mass support for a presidential candidate translates into a safe win for marriage rights. Getting Proposition 8 rammed up their pert (but unguarded) asses should be a wake-up call.
Thankfully there is a new branch of the movement that understands this. Not in Our Town is about using sophisticated social media to link up people who care about their communities. The project allows individuals the opportunity to gather together as loving, accepting people, and target the sites of hate crimes and the demonstrations of hate groups, exposing them, and countering with nonviolent, public demonstrations of what sexual freedom advocates should be doing privately anyway: loving each other. Copulation optional, of course.
In their own words, the movement “began with a PBS documentary that told the story of how people in Billings, Montana joined together to respond to a series of hate crimes in their town. This simple, powerful story of citizens banding together struck a chord with audiences, and created a model that inspired viewers around the country to hold their own campaigns against intolerance. Now in its second decade, the Not In Our Town movement continues to grow.”
Youtube is already going viral with disparate but creative examples of people using the momentum of hate groups against them. One Bay Area student was inspired to use a Westboro demonstration in his town to fundraise, in their name, for causes that advance our freedom. However brilliant, working separately and passively trusting in the poll numbers to win out over time would be like the African National Congress looking around at the overwhelming majority of native South Africans and saying “any day now, white supremacists will just decide the power to screw us at will isn’t worth carrying around all that loot, because it’s giving them a backache.”
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