Sex Gets Real 138: Kitty Stryker on consenting to sex work, polyamory libertarianism, & what community really means.

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Content note: talk of suicide.

I always love when I get to have nuanced conversations about topics like sex work, porn, consent, and polyamory. So, when Kitty Stryker said she’d come on the show, I knew the discussion would be a gritty one.

Kitty is currently working on an anthology book all about creating consent culture that comes out in 2017. We dig into what that looks like and how she’s centering marginalized voices.

Then, we talk about what consent means within the context of capitalism and work. If you can’t leave sex work because traditional employers won’t hire former porn performers and you have to remain in sex work even if you’re ready to leave, can you truly be consenting to the work? If we started focusing more on labor issues and capitalism, could we bridge the gap between anti-sex work feminists and pro-sex work feminists to find a common ground where nuance was encouraged?

Kitty also shares a personal story about suicide and how it ties into kink and poly communities. What does a community actually mean, anyway?

At the end of the hour, we field a question from a listener about polyamory and whether it’s right for her.

Follow Dawn on Instagram.

In this episode, Kitty Stryker and I talk about:

• Her recent community-based activism, post-election. Specifically around queer culture and support culture that doesn’t involve the police.
• “Ask: A Discussion of Consent Culture” her new anthology on consent in gaming, LARP, parenting, and other spheres of our lives that we don’t typically talk about consent. There’s even an essay about the ethics of necrophilia.
• Kitty’s recent exit from sex work and porn performing. She has a complicated relationship with porn performing and consent, and offers some deep insight into just how much nuance there is to these labor issues around sex work.
• How she wanted to leave porn back in 2012 and found that she couldn’t get a job outside of sex work, and so she stayed in porn even though she didn’t really want to. It’s unfortunate that you can work in a legal industry and then not find other work because of stigma.
• Capitalism and work are coercive by nature, and if anti-sex work feminists and pro-sex work feminists can embrace that, there might be a chance to meet in the middle and create more space for pluralistic experiences and truths about porn and sex work.
• How consumers can change the porn industry to be anti-oppressive, anti-racist, and more inclusive of various bodies. Hint: it involves PAYING for your porn. It also means talking with porn producers about what you want to see.
• Anti-porn churches who go to porn events to try and get porn performers to stop doing porn, but when you ask them for support around finding a new job or companies who will work with former sex workers, they have nothing to offer. It’s all lip service.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s abusive relationships (even though I live-breathe-die that show) and the emotionally unavailable men we see romanticized in pop culture. We also touch on Secretary, Twilight, 9 1/2 Weeks, and Fifty Shades of Grey.
• Kitty’s article on radical self-reliance killing people – which touches on poly and calls out communities who aren’t helping folks who are suicidal and suffering because it’s too inconvenient or scary. Read it here. Also, what not to say to folks who are suicidal.
• Poly libertarianism and why Kitty really struggles with a lot of the poly advice to be islands where your emotions are your own and you aren’t responsible for anyone else’s feelings.
• Lonely in Love wrote in with a question about polyamory. LiL isn’t getting their needs met in their marriage, and they’ve been talking about poly. How do they consider this option? Kitty has some strong suggestions about whether that’s the right path for them.

Resources from this episode

Kitty’s article “Porn Didn’t Ruin Your Sex Life. Sorry.”

“So Someone You Love is Suicidal” by Kitty can be read here, too.

The Five Love Languages

About Kitty Stryker

Kitty Stryker is a writer, activist, and authority on developing a consent culture in alternative communities. She was the founder of ConsentCulture.com, a website that ran for 4 years as a hub for LGBT/kinky/poly folks looking for a sex critical approach to relationships and which will be relaunched on 2017. Kitty also cofounded the artsy sexy party Kinky Salon London, as well as creating the award winning Ladies High Tea and Pornography Society, the SF based kink party Whippersnappers, and acting as head of cosplay for queer gaming convention GaymerX.

Now working on “Ask: A Discussion of Consent Culture”, an anthology through Thorntree Press coming out in 2017, Kitty tours internationally speaking at universities and conferences about feminism, sex work, body positivity, queer politics, and more. She lives in Oakland, California with her fiancee and two cats, Foucault and Nietzsche.

You can find Kitty at kittystryker.com, on Twitter @kittystryker, and on Facebook.

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Episode Transcript

Dawn Serra: Hey, everyone. Dawn Serra here with Sex Gets Real. I am cooking up that new intro thanks to all of your lovely voices and voicemails. I thank you so much to those of you who participated and contributed your voices. I think it’s going to be so fun to hear all of you at the beginning of each episode. One of the things that I’m constantly getting emails about is mismatched libidos. You’ve heard me field these questions so many times on the podcast. After talking to Emily Nagoski, who was on the show a couple of months ago, you know that a big part of what impacts libido is stress. And the perfect solution for stress is, of course, putting yourself and your needs first, clearing things off your plate, asking for support, taking some me time, and also setting aside some time for you and your sweetheart to do something that’s a little outside the ordinary – where you can pamper each other and maybe roleplay. 

This episode’s sponsor hotelsbyday.com is perfect for that. Not only do you get to stay for a daycation, which means you book a hotel through hotelsbyday.com, and you get around 9am until about 4pm or 5pm. It also means that you can escape from your life for a couple of hours, treat yourself to a spa day. Maybe you just need to get some work or some writing done, but you want to get away from the house and your normal distractions. Maybe you and your lover just need to do a little rendezvous in the middle of the day, and roleplay doing something sexy. Whatever your reason is for needing to get away from it all for a couple of hours, hotelsbyday.com is the place to go if you want a hotel just for the middle of the day. Of course, Sex Gets Real listeners get 5% off with promo code SGR5Off. So be sure to check out hotelsbyday.com for being such lovely sponsors of this podcast. 

Dawn Serra: The rest of this episode is a really deep chat with Kitty Stryker. I just want to give everyone a heads up, that in addition to fielding a listener question about polyamory and talking about sex work, and some of the nuance of doing sex work when you don’t really want to – we also dive into some really deep topics including Kitty’s experience with suicide, and how so many communities like poly communities and kink communities are really failing some of their members who are struggling or feeling unsafe, and some loss of life that Kitty has experienced. So if you’re at all sensitive or triggered by talk of suicide, just be aware that there is a small section of this interview where we do go into that topic and I just wanted to give you an opportunity to either opt out or to skip over that part if you need to do that to take care of you. So here we go with the rest of the show. 

Kitty Stryker is a writer, activist, and authority developing a consent culture in alternative communities. She was the founder of consentculture.com, which was a website that ran for four years as a hub for LGBT, kinky, and poly folks who were looking for a sex critical approach to relationships and that’s actually been relaunched in 2017. Yay. Kitty also co-founded the artsy sexy party, Kinky Salon London, as well as creating the award winning Ladies High Tea and Pornography Society, The San Francisco-based kink party, Whipper Snappers, and acting as head of cosplay for queer gaming convention GaymerX. She’s now working on Ask: A Discussion of Consent Culture, which is an anthology through Thorntree Press coming out in 2017. We’re going to talk about that for sure. Kitty also tours internationally speaking at universities and conferences about feminism, sex work, body positivity, queer politics, and more. So it sounds like you have your hand full and welcome to the show, Kitty. 

Kitty Stryker: Thank you so much and absolutely.

Dawn Serra: Wow. Well, I know that you are relaunching consentculture.com in 2017, and you’re also working on this anthology Ask: A Discussion of Consent Culture. So I would love to start there. Can you tell us a little bit about Ask and what that’s going to have in it and be about?

Kitty Stryker: Yeah, sure. I’ve done a lot. Since doing content culture, the blog and website, I’ve done a lot of content-related activism, learning and talking a lot about restorative justice models, and community-based interventions as opposed to going to the police. Because, for a lot of people I know, the cops aren’t really safe. So I wanted to help construct some alternatives. And that made me think about what are issues around consent not just in BDSM or in sexuality, but also in places like education, child rearing, LARPing, which is live action roleplay, gaming generally – other venues where consent is still important, but we don’t necessarily talk about it as much. 

So the idea of “Ask” was that I wanted to create an anthology that prioritized trans, and non-binary people, and people of color as writer. Then, sort of fill in the blanks with other people. So that way we have about a 50-50 in some cases, more 75-25 marginalized voices over the voices that we commonly hear. Because I feel like with a lot of these issues, we hear a lot from white feminism. That’s great, but that’s also very narrow. So I wanted to open it up a little bit more.

Dawn Serra: That’s really exciting. I saw some of the names associated with it and I was immediately excited.

Kitty Stryker: We got a lot of really great writers for it. I’m so excited that Laurie Penny is going to be writing the foreword, Carol Queen is writing the afterword, which is super exciting. Virgie Tovar is writing for it. God, who else? Jiz Lee is writing a piece. So it’s really exciting. I very purposefully put a white feminist as the forward and afterward, because I wanted to trick people. I wanted people to look at me and look at Carol Queen and look at Laurie Penny, and be like, “Oh, okay. This is going to be very accessible to me as a middle class white feminist.” Then damn hit them with a lot of really subversive content. I tried to make it very clear to marginalize people that that was the plan, that there was a method to this, and it wasn’t a judgment. But I wanted to make sure that it got into the hands of people who would not seek these things out normally. Because I think that it’s really important for us to challenge white feminism and I think that sometimes you have to be a little bait and switchy about it for that to work. People tend to read things that correspond with their own biases.

Dawn Serra: I totally agree. I love that you’re purposely centering marginalized voices in this conversation. Because I think you’re right. I’ve interviewed a number of people whose sole purpose in life, in their entire work and income comes from doing consent work. So many of those voices tend to be either upper middle class white cis folks. So being able to bring in voices of color and non-binary and trans voices; also I love that you’re focusing on things like LARPing, and parenting, and places where– Most of the conversations I feel like are either about dating, or consent and relationships, and emotional labor, or BDSM. Expanding that conversation is exciting.

Kitty Stryker: Yeah, for sure. I think that’s really important too. The prompt that I gave to my writers was, “You can write about whatever you want. I’m not going to edit your voice. You can be angry, you can be disappointed. You could be really excited – whatever, that’s fine. It’s all fine.” I have one person writing about the ethics of consent and necrophilia, which was really interesting. It could be part of the medical area, sort of when are you considered lacking consciousness enough or should that even be a question that we ask? I think that that’s really interesting, because it’s not really the question that we normally do talk about or do ask. So I’m interested. 

I didn’t want to tell people that they had to give a right answer. I just wanted them to offer their solution or an idea of how – they would write about an issue of consent, and then write what they thought would be a potential way of solving that problem. So that way, it’s like I wanted each essay to end with, “And here’s how we can do it better, maybe…” Because I think that that a lot of books about rape culture tend to be very doom and gloom about how horrible everything is. With this election, we get plenty of that. I really wanted to focus on what can we actively do about that? And to leave it open to, “This is my idea, but maybe you have a better idea.” Because I think that it’s also very easy to become prescriptive. So yeah, I’m excited. The essays are really interesting and very varied. There’s a lot of different types of voices, which is really nice.

Dawn Serra: That is really exciting because I think that it’s easy to fall into the trap of like, “Let’s write about consent,” and then you get 12 people who are all touching on very similar things. So to have someone who’s talking about necrophilia and LARPing, and parenting and offering lots of different – not only lots of different problems, but I love that you’re asking them to end their essays with, “How do we start solving this?” Because I think so often the solution is, very personal, and so having all these different types of solutions offered up, I think will give people so many different ways of feeling like they can have an impact.

Kitty Stryker: Yeah, exactly. I want it to be something where people feel moved to do something. That was the whole idea of consent culture as a blog – was that it was a way to do something. That here’s the problem. We are seeing it in kink spaces, we’re seeing it in polyamory, we’re seeing it at Burning Man, we’re seeing it in sex parties. So what are we going to do about it? It’s one thing to say it’s a problem. It’s another thing to implement solutions.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I’m so excited for this to come out and to read it and to share it with all the listeners when it comes out. That’s really exciting. Do you have a release month yet or a time of year? 

Kitty Stryker: I’m still working through the final edits. 

Dawn Serra: Awesome. 

Kitty Stryker: I’m supposed to have it sent in December. With the election, I’ve been doing a lot of grassroots organizing so a lot of my time and attention has been focused on offering medic training to people who are going protests, or I’m currently helping organize a safety protocol. I’ve also been doing patrolling to help people feel safe if they’re walking home for Bart. In the bay, we’ve had some neo-nazi attacks. That’s a little bit more of my focus.

Dawn Serra: Yeah.

Kitty Stryker: But I need to work on the book too. They’re both really important.

Dawn Serra: Yes, yeah, very important in different ways, but also touching in the same themes in the same communities. Post election has been surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, but exhausting for me. I love that you’re doing all of this community-based grassroots activism around safety and protesting and things like that. That’s amazing.

Kitty Stryker: I mean, it’s a lot of hard work. It’s really emotionally exhausting. But I’m also – and this might end up being the piece that I write for the book, I might want to talk about having a good relationship with consent for yourself in terms of advocating for yourself when you want to do activism. Because I think it’s very easy to say yes to a lot more than you can handle, because you want to do all the things and you want to solve all the problems. But you can’t. If you burn out, now you’re the community’s responsibility to take care of you. So there’s a certain amount of self-care is community care, that I think often gets missed. There’s a lot of like, “Oh, I’m doing all the things and now I do none of the things. Now I’m going to do all the things and I’m going to do none of the things.” The problem with that when it comes to activism, or really any project, is that stopping and starting means that you lose momentum. Oftentimes, if you’re doing it with a group of people, you lose people. So I think it’s important to start small and steady, and then maintain a pace that you can keep up with.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Well, speaking of activism, I saw on your website, something that you said about you leaving sex work. One of the things that you mentioned was that after 14 years of doing sex work, you’ve less left the industry. One of the reasons is because you felt like you could be a better advocate and activist for the sex work community if you weren’t in it. I would love to hear how that journey has happened for you of leaving porn and what that meant and why you left, and what’s ahead for you now that you’ve left this 14 year career behind.

Kitty Stryker: It’s really interesting. I have actually wanted to leave the industry for a while. I think I first wanted to leave, probably in 2012, maybe 2013, and found that I couldn’t – found that as somebody who was a vocal sex worker and vocal sex work activist, that made it very difficult for me to find any other work, despite the fact that I was working in porn, a good portion of that time, and that’s legal. I think it’s really unfortunate that you could work in the legal industry and then not be able to find other work because of stigma.

So I stayed in sex work from 2012 to 2016, because I didn’t really have other options, which is a difficult place to be, and I feel taught me a lot about the ways in which capitalism works to coerce people. And how, again, how complicated consent is. I can consent to doing sex work to an extent, but I also have to pay rent. If that is a pressure that I’m working under, if I don’t feel I can say no, how much does my yes mean? And I think that that’s something that’s really important to remember. If sex work activists on both sides of the fence of the anti-sex work feminists and the pro-sex work feminists – if we can come to a place where we realize that work is coercive by its nature and capitalism is coercive by nature, especially for women. I think that maybe we can both meet in the middle. And realize that it might be a great option for you for a myriad of reasons, but it might also be a limiting option or it might not be a great option for other people, but it’s the best out of the choices that they have or think that they have. I use “choices” flexibly there because, again, you’re going to do what you have to do to survive.

Dawn Serra: Right. 

Kitty Stryker: So, I don’t hate my time as a sex worker, but I have a very complicated relationship to it. When I was escorting, I really loved my clients. I thought they were fantastic people. I also had a lot of privilege where I was able to turn people away if I didn’t feel they were safe. That definitely influences my experience, as well as a lot of escorting I did when I was in London, where it was legal. And that definitely impacted not only my personal experience and feeling of safety, but also the way clients treated me. 

I also think porn in particular is very complex if you are not a cisgendered, white, young, slender woman. If you are literally anything else, able bodied as well, because you have to be flexible in certain ways. There’s not really space for a lot of other types of people in porn, despite the fact that the consumer seemed very interested in a variety. The producers generally seem very stuck on this idea of like, “This is what sells. We’re just going to sell this thing.”

Dawn Serra: There’s so much about what you just said that I really want to roll around in because it’s so important and amazing. I know that in previous episodes, I have had guests that have touched on the complexity around consent, and being a sex worker or a porn performer in that… One of the examples that was given on a previous episode was, you may tell the company you’re working with that you won’t do double fisting. But if it’s made clear that if you don’t do this double fisting scene now, then the next time they have a $2,000 slot available, they may not book you for it. Because they don’t consider you to be game for working with the production company, then you’re going to say yes to something you don’t want to do in order to guarantee that you’re going to get paid the next time. And how that can really – is that really consent if you’re basically having to choose between your livelihood and what you’re comfortable doing? 

So I think it’s really fascinating how you’re using your experiences as a way to help bring to light some of the complexity around this. I think, too, that there’s that danger of people already vilify sex work and porn so much that it can be difficult to talk about the nuance. Because if we are talking about working in retail or working as a nurse where you’re very exhausted all the time, there’s such a different feel around people aren’t going to vilify nursing for that. But people will vilify sex work in porn at the drop of a hat. So how do we make space for these bigger conversations of – so many of the performers you see, may be choosing sexual sex work, like you said, because it’s the best option available to them. But what if they have limited options? So then is that still really truly a choice?

Kitty Stryker: I think that it actually does expand outside of sex work quite a bit. I think about the times that I’ve worked as a marketing associate at a big business, and I’ve been sexually harassed at work. The response to that is often “Why don’t you just quit? Just quit and take another job somewhere else.” Like that’s so easy, first of all. Secondly, the fact that if you’re only with a company for three months, that looks bad on your resume. Also, a three month gap looks bad on your resume. I think that there’s ways in which we can have this conversation about work in general. I think that the difference is that people don’t tend to vilify the work itself in those circumstances. They vilify you for staying in an abusive relationship. With sex work, there’s more of a sense of like, “You’re kind of guilty, but you are also a victim.” That makes it more complicated.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I know that the issue is more about labor work and capitalism than just porn. But as you’ve been unraveling this for yourself and finding words for it and sharing, do you see a way to start changing this? Or do you see a way that consumers can be more aware and involved in the process? I feel like so often consumers don’t get considered when we’re talking about these issues, but like they can they have so much power with their dollar.

Kitty Stryker: That’s the best thing that they can do is they can pay for the porn that they want to see. I think that it becomes very difficult when the only people paying for porn are paying for the standard porn like tropes, because then companies say, “Look, that’s what’s selling.” If you could subvert that and be like, “It’s not what selling actually, what selling is trans, lesbian fist fest.” That’s what’s selling. Then I think it would force them to change. If you want to be a supportive anti-racist, don’t buy porn that uses racist slurs. Especially in their marketing, don’t buy big black cock porn. Buy porn that happens to have a diverse cast and doesn’t make that a taboo. I think that that is probably one of the best things consumers can do. I also think that you can write to these companies and let them know, “Hey, I really like your vision in a lot of ways but this really sucks. It turns me off, it actively turns me off.”

A lot of companies, especially in porn, are very self-absorbed. They will read everything that you send them. Especially if you are not overly aggressive. If you’re like, “Fuck you, fuck porn.” Maybe they’ll be like, “Yeah, whatever.” But if you come from a place of being genuine and say, “I really want to like this thing, but this is what’s stopping me.” There’s a lot of ego at play, they’ll read that and they’ll think about it. You’ll be surprised how much impact you can have by approaching producers as people and being like, “Dude, that’s not cool.” versus, “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.” So I think that that really helps. I think supporting porn performers who are making their own work independently is super important. A lot of porn performers do that now. So going to their personal websites and supporting them, supporting the cam shows – that’s the sort of thing that can help change the industry from a consumer point of view.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. It also occurred to me as you’re talking, to anybody listening, who is an entrepreneur or an employer, I think that it’s important also to make sure that you take a stand in that your company doesn’t actively discriminate against people who have a history of sex work. I can’t stress that enough. And I totally agree with you – I’ve talked to a couple of people who have done porn and done camming, considered it myself a couple of times; and a lot of the feedback I’ve always gotten is, “You’ll never be able to speak in high school again.” “You’ll have trouble finding employment if they can match your face to your name in any way.” So think about that from a 30 year perspective, before you choose to come in. I always thought that was so frustrating and disappointing, that even has to be part of the conversation instead of looking at skills, we’re looking at, “Oh, god, this person did porn. We don’t want them part of our company.”

Kitty Stryker: Yeah. I mean, especially in an era where a lot of people are doing porn or doing cam work to get through college… It is worth noting that men who do these things are not penalized to the same extent that women are. They are sometimes penalized, but not in the same way. I have definitely noticed that friends of mine who work at kink.com in the tech fields at kink – they do the marketing or they do the editing, or they do IT. They don’t have a problem finding work elsewhere. So it’s fine to watch porn all day, but it’s not fine to actually be in it. I don’t understand. If you have this stigma against porn, I feel like that should cover porn as a whole thing, not just the people who are working in it. Frankly, you’re in it a lot less often than an IT worker who is around it all the time.

Dawn Serra: Right? Exactly. The editors, the IT folks who spend hours and hours and hours on the websites and doing fixes, and cutting the film together versus the performer who may be spent eight or 16 hours filming.

Kitty Stryker: Right. I mean, not that anyone should be stigmatized against. 

Dawn Serra: No, but it’s like “This doesn’t make sense.” It’s also fascinating to me, because I’m thinking for people who are anti-porn, you would think that logically if you don’t agree with porn, or you feel like it’s objectifying or you feel like that’s not a legitimate way to work, that if someone from porn comes to you for a job, you would be like, “Yes, I can give you a job. You don’t have to do porn anymore.”

Kitty Stryker: You would think. 

Dawn Serra: You would think, but instead it’s like, “Ew, porn stay away. You might contaminate the other employees.”

Kitty Stryker: Yeah. That’s actually one of the things that I’ve been trying to challenge a lot is I’ve heard a lot from whatever various porn churches, who basically spend all of their time going to porn events, and trying to be fun to be like, “Hey, come to Jesus and stop doing porn.” And I’ve definitely hit them up with like, “Cool. I’m going to stop doing porn. How are you going to help me make that transition? Are you going to look over my resume? Do you have a list of employers who work with ex porn performers? And it’s just radio silence. They want to give you t-shirts and cupcakes, and free makeup, and not do any actual work, but then make you feel bad for being in this industry. I don’t have time for that nonsense. 

Dawn Serra: Yep. I totally agree. I love your suggestion to write to companies. Listeners, at this point probably, they dream of me saying, “Pay for your porn, pay for your porn!” But I love this idea of actually writing to producers and letting them know like, “Hey, I found this problematic. I’d love to see more of this, I’d love to see more bodies that look like this.” That hadn’t occurred to me because I guess I assumed they wouldn’t be open to it, and they’d be chasing the dollar. But knowing that there’s a chance that they might actually say, “Well, hey, if this person took the time to write, then maybe they’d be willing to pay. Maybe we should try this out or make some changes.” That’s a fantastic idea.

Kitty Stryker: Yeah. Anytime you get feedback, sandwich it, make it like, “Here’s a nice thing is my critique, and here’s the nice thing.” You’re going to get through a lot more often that way. Also, honestly, producers are a lot more likely to listen to you if you are paying for your porn. If you’re like, “I have been paying this subscription for a year, and I’m going to stop because I’m having issues with this and this” I think that that speaks a lot louder. So make it about money. That’s totally fine. Use whatever techniques you can.

Dawn Serra: So while we’re talking about porn, I would love to quickly touch on something that you wrote that I totally loved. So you wrote an article that went on Medium.com. I’m sure some other places talking about like “No, porn didn’t ruin your sex life.” This little piece that you wrote, I think, captures what you were talking about so beautifully, and I’d love to roll around in it a little bit. You wrote, “It’s frustrating because we’re so quick to demonize porn for ruining sex, but don’t think nearly as much about how media ruins our idea of romance. Toxic masculinity is present in almost every romantic comedy, but it’s seen as cute, not problematic.” 

I love that so much. I want so many people to wake up and actually see what’s really happening when you’re talking about rom-coms and the way that relationships and dating are portrayed in so many of these super popular shows and movies – how totally not consenting they are and how much they just reinforce these really problematic models. Yet, we’re not blaming mainstream Hollywood – TV shows and magazines, and movies for how fucked up all of us are about romance, jealousy, love. And instead people are pointing at porn as being this thing that’s completely running people’s lives, and addictions, and all this kind of stuff.

Kitty Stryker: It’s sort of socially acceptable or socially easy to hate on porn for that. I mean, I do think that there is some pushback against media – against the whitewashing of media, against the way trans characters are portrayed. Sexism in general in media. But I also think that there is a lack of real conversation happening, that if if you believe that porn can ruin your sex life because it shows people having sex, then why then would you not also complicate your relationship to popular media in general? Which has a lot of really messed up relationships. I mean, Buffy is a really great example. As somebody who grew up on Buffy, I realized that the two relationships that are given the most airtime and most romance are the two relationships she’s been with vampires who are abusive in completely different ways. One is a hot and cold Declan Hyde type, and the other is just an asshole. They’re both shown as, “Oh, that’s sweet.” Or like Twilight, “Oh, he stalks her because he loves her.” 

I also came across this when it came to 50 shades, which caught a lot of flack – well deserved for being a manual of abusive behavior that is framed as romantic. But let’s be honest. Look at Secretary – her boss basically takes advantage of his position, not just as her employer, but also she’s recovering from mental illness. I don’t know, but it’s seen as very sweet and cute, and not predatory, which in real life, it would be. Nine and a half weeks is another great example. Especially considering in the book, the main character – the main female character is a well earning executive. In the movie, she is an art gallery worker. Her class changes drastically, so that the relationship is uneven in the opposite way. In the book, she actually has more financial and social power than he does. So to give up that power is a big deal, but it’s also something that she has the privilege to take it back. But in the movie, she doesn’t. We regularly see these things. Yet, we don’t… We can point to 50 shades be like, “That’s definitely a problem.” But we’re not looking at what the problems are with Harry Potter when it comes to romantic ideas or whitewashing, or heteronormativity. We’re not looking at… I don’t know, what’s one of those movies that the kids are watching nowadays? The Hunger Games! That’s another example of this idea of relationships are sort of a godsend. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah, I’m just thinking like when you mentioned Buffy and Angel, Gossip Girl popped into mind to some of the relationships there. It’s like what we romanticize is the brooding emotionally unavailable male and it’s the woman’s responsibility to open him up and show him the way of being in love. And what that is is glamorizing and romanticizing someone who’s completely emotionally unintelligent, and not self aware, and all the emotional labor that the women in these heterosexual relationships end up having to do to eke out some sort of recognition and appreciation.

Kitty Stryker: And are expected to do, and it is treated as a way of expressing love. Don’t get me wrong. I do think that emotional labor can be a way of expressing love. However, the men in these situations never recognize that. They’re never like, “Wow, you did a lot of hard work. I am so sorry. Let me reward you for the labor that you’ve done.” They’re like, “Cool.” I mean, the manic pixie dream girl is a perfect example of that. Because not only did she do all of that, but then she just disappears. So he doesn’t even have to be grateful, or offer anything in return. She just pops in, does all of this work on him, and then vanishes. How convenient. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. I’m just thinking about what it really reinforces when we’re talking about toxic masculinity, is that it shows, boys, you know, since these are all very heteronormative models, but it shows boys that all they have to do to get a girl is be broody and mysterious, and she’ll do all of the work. And if he has to do any work, then something’s wrong or she’s not worth it, and he’s going to move on. It’s like, “I just have to be here and that’s enough. She has to be the one that’s pulling in opening up doing all the things.” And I feel like that’s just such a perfect, perfect reinforcement of this toxic masculinity where men really feel like all they have to do is be a “man”. Then the world should open to them and give them everything they ever wanted.

Kitty Stryker: I would add to that, also, I think that there are some examples I could think of where earning money, so that you can provide, is both seen as something that men should do. But also seen as something that if the woman wants the gift too much, she should be punished for that. Which is interesting because there’s a situation where it’s like, if you’re doing the emotional labor, but he’s buying – he’s paying for that through services or whatever. You get your own credit card to buy whatever you want, but then you do that emotional labor. I’ve been a sex worker for a long time. It seems like a reasonable exchange as long as you’ve negotiated that. But the fact that men get to be pissy about paying for the emotional labor that they’ve already received, is just like nah, no. There’s sort of back and forth. 

There’s some media that also suggests Men’s Fitness is very important. Not just their physical fitness but also their sexual prowess. Definitely one of the things that I have had the biggest problem with, that I think I wrote about that piece actually, was the issue I’ve had with men who believe that they are God’s gift to women, who believe that, yes, I may never have orgasm through having my pussy eaten ever in my life, but they are going to be the one to change that. Not a woman, which, to be honest, would make somewhat more sense. Because at least another woman has – at least another cis woman has the same equipment, so has some idea of how it works. No, it’s always men who believe this. I think that in that piece I wrote about my boyfriend and how he was like, “Let’s have disappointed sex for our first sexual encounter.” And how much of a relief that was, that he wasn’t trying to perform masculinity in the bedroom.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Yes, I love that, “Let’s have disappointing sex.” It’s like, “Okay!”

Kitty Stryker: Yeah, I don’t know. That, to me, the sense of playfulness that came with that, sense of ownership like, “Let’s call this what it is. We’re going to be learning each other’s bodies. We don’t necessarily know what makes each other tick yet.” “Let’s not put the pressure on ourselves to be fucking perfect.” As a porn performer, that was so nice. The last partner was a porn performer and every time we had sex, it was a performance in a lot of ways. I appreciated that there was something to that. The idea that we were performing for each other has its own erotic appeal.

Dawn Serra: Sure.

Kitty Stryker: But to be able to be like, “Actually, I have a leg cramp.” or “Ow, you just elbowed me in the face.” To be really clumsy and awkward and weird is useful.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, I totally agree. It feels good. I think we often feel if there’s the awkward, then that equals not sexy. But I think that so many of us especially that are either sex educators or sex workers know that sometimes inviting that awkward in and being that silly can be so sexy because you’re actually seeing each other and getting to fuck up together and giggle about it. I don’t know, to me, there’s something really sexy in a different way around being able to just drop the, “Let’s make this super hot,” and instead, “Let’s just see what happens.”

Kitty Stryker: Yeah, there’s a vulnerability to that. There’s a willingness to accept that you might be wrong. That you might try this thing and it goes terribly, which I think is really important. I have to say, I have definitely encountered other sex educators who are very good teaching that but are not very good at practicing it. When you are a sex educator or a porn performer, there is almost an expectation that because you do this for a living, you know about this stuff for a living, you will have it on lock. But none of us do. We all have this weird self-esteem problems and have moments where like, “Oh, my toenail is weird.” “My hair looks ridiculous.” Whatever. We all have these things. I think that was what was so nice about the disappointing sex thing. It was that, “Oh, I don’t have to be Kitty Stryker, porn performer, Kitty Stryker, sex educator.” I can just be a person who may or may not be good at sex today.

Dawn Serra: Let’s leave room for that. Oh, that just brings me so much delight. I love that. So I have one last thing that I’d love to share with our listeners that you wrote and talk about a little bit, because one of the questions that I got that I thought we might be able to answer today is about poly. You wrote this amazing piece that I encourage everyone to read. I’m gonna put a link on the dawnserra.com/ep138 website for this episode, so everyone can go read it. But it was your article on Radical Self-reliance is Killing People. I’m just going to read a couple of paragraphs that you had that really hit home for me, and I thought was so important for us to talk about. Then if we want to talk about it, and maybe take the listener’s question, we can do that. 

So you wrote, “The attitude that everyone is an emotional island and that no one’s behavior affects anyone else, that we can all completely manage our own needs independently. That taking care of other people is at best a hassle and at worst, a threat is fucking bullshit. It’s emotionally abusive, and it actively hurts people. It pits partners against each other. Having to continually feel like I have to earn my partner’s love by being “good, giving, and game” which so often means not having boundaries, or having the right boundaries puts me in a situation of constantly second guessing myself. How far am I willing to push myself before breaking up is the only option? Am I just being jealous and should I challenge myself? Or am I actually needing to trust my gut? Is this a question of us having our freedom and independence? Or is this a question of just blatant disrespect? Whose needs are being met and at whose expense? I found myself asking these questions while I sobbed alone, my partner ignoring my pleas to even acknowledge that I was unsafe. Because at the end of the day, a sex party was more important and I hadn’t earned his attention or love. Poly libertarianism, y’all. And the worst part, it’s not really his fault he’s rewarded for it. We reward poly libertarianism. We espouse it in our literature.” 

Dawn Serra: Ah, I love this so much. I love what you’re talking about here. I think it’s so important that we have this conversation.

Kitty Stryker: Yeah, yeah.

Dawn Serra: What was the response to that piece when you wrote it? I mean, there’s so much in it. I mean, you’re talking about Burning Man and meritocracy – there’s so much in that article that you wrote about, including some experiences around suicidal thoughts and things like that. So I really want everyone to read it in its entirety. But I’d love to know, what was it like reading that and calling it out and naming it, and the response?

Kitty Stryker: I mean, I had just attempted suicide a week before. I was honestly super pissed off at this false sense of community that I was experiencing – that I have tons of followers on Twitter and Facebook, and whenever I go to a party people are like, “Oh, it’s you.” But when the shit hits the fan, everyone was too busy. Everyone was like, “Oh, that’s uncomfortable. That’s messy. I don’t want to pick sides.” But there’s a sense of not wanting to take care of each other. I wanted to confront head on this idea that you can have a community based on shared interest. I don’t believe that that’s enough for a community. I think I say it in the piece. But, for me, community is about mutual accountability, mutual responsibility and mutual care. And if you don’t have those three things, I don’t believe you can call it a community. There’s a need for a community to take care of each other. Otherwise, they’re just a bunch of people who happen to like a thing, which is also fine. But it’s not really the same to me. I think we miss call groupings of people who share an interest communities, when they have not proven themselves to actually be available in that way.

The response, people really liked the piece. I think it resonated with a lot of people. There weren’t very many people who argued about it, frankly, which I think is very telling. It kind of goes along in some ways with my, I mean, it goes along absolutely with the activism I’m doing now, which is all about community care and making sure that everyone is getting some attention and feels safe asking for their needs to be met. Also a piece that I wrote specifically about suicide, which was, So Your Friend is Suicidal. I wanted to share from somebody who experiences suicidal ideation at times, usually from a place of anxiety and frustration of like, “I’m done.” Not from a depressive place often but like, “I do so much activism and I often burnout.” The self care struggle is real, for sure.

Kitty Stryker: So I wrote a piece to say, “Look, there are some ways in which people are trying to help people who are suicidal, that I don’t believe actually helps.” As somebody who has been through that a few times, and had people say, “But think of all the people who will miss you.” It’s one of the worst things you can say to a suicidal person, because they need to focus on themselves. They should not be staying alive to make other people happy. Because if those people disappear, or say something mean, that takes that thread away. You have to focus them on themselves. By making a suicidal person feel guilty for how they feel, you are actively making it worse. And that was something that a lot of people don’t think about. They think, “Oh, well, I just wanted to let you know that you have a bunch of people who care about you.” But in reality, a suicidal person hears, “Oh, see now you’re also an asshole because you don’t care about the people you’re going to hurt, even more reason why they’d be better off without you.” That’s what you get. 

 

I think that the Radical Self-reliance piece was also in response to – there’s been a few suicides that have touched my community in the last couple of years. And the response has been wanting. I think because, generally, when someone commits suicide, a bunch of people within the community tends to say, “Oh, how did this happen?” “Oh, I should have checked in more.” “Oh, I should have done all the stuff.” Meanwhile, there are people who are saying, “I feel unsafe”, who are alive who aren’t getting those things.

Dawn Serra: Yeah.

Kitty Stryker: So we have to stop bemoaning our lack of attention on people who are now dead, and focus that on people who are still alive and need help. I feel like mourning after the fact, while an important part of the grief process can also be a way to avoid responsibility for how we take care of each other as a community. Now, I don’t think that a community is a replacement for therapy or medication or other types of resources at all. I don’t think it should be anyone’s responsibility to keep someone else alive. But there is something that rings really untrue to me about the way that we mourn our dead, but don’t fight for the living. I wanted to point that out and be like, again, what are we going to do about that? Because we could stop this. We could do something about this, or we can continue to do what we’re doing, which isn’t working. 

Specifically about poly libertarianism, I have a massive issue with the way a lot of poly books talk about how you should manage your own feelings. Because I feel that while there is truth to that, and you should manage your own feelings; you should at least be aware of what your feelings are, and be able to talk about them in a non-combative way. I also think that it’s your partner’s responsibility, and it’s your metamour responsibility. If the collective is unstable, everyone is unstable.But if you can create coercion, I think then it’s a lot easier to deal with issues as they come up. 

Kitty Stryker: Some people, I think, do very well with poly libertarianism. That’s preferable for them – they need that space. I do think that there’s ways that it can become inappropriate and abusive. But so can what I jokingly call non-monogamous communism, which is a joke that I practice – that I can also be abusive, because if everyone’s checking in on everybody else, then you’ve got this crazy Big Brother strategy happening. Anything can become an issue. 

Dawn Serra: Absolutely. 

Kitty Stryker: I definitely found that now, my girlfriend and my boyfriend hang out together and we all go and do activism together, or we play games or we watch movies. I hang out with both of their– or I have hung out with both of their metamours. I still hang out with metamours from my ex-boyfriend ‘cause we became really good friends. So even though he’s not a part of my life, my metamours still are. I think that for me that feels much more comfortable. It makes me feel safer as someone who struggles with mental illness that my partners can call each other, and support each other, and check in with each other and say, “Hey, I think there’s an issue. Can we work together to help Kitty get through this?” Or if someone’s feeling jealous – if I’m jealous that one of my partners is visiting a metamour more often, the metamour and I can talk about it. We can reassure each other and we can negotiate together. So then there isn’t any other woman or any bickering, fighting over property. It’s just everyone’s like, “Oh, if that’s your need, here, let me do that for you. Then you can maybe do this for me.” “Oh, cool.” You can have a more communal feel..

Dawn Serra: Yeah, I think it’s so important to constantly remind people that no matter how much you may love one particular book or one particular approach, because that works for you – there’s no one right way of doing relationship, of doing poly, of doing monogamy, of talking about your needs. You have to find the ways that work for you and the people that are in your life, and you can’t prescribe to others like, “This is the right way”, or “This is how I do it.” Then wonder why people feel hurt or betrayed, or their needs aren’t getting met if that way doesn’t work for them.

Kitty Stryker: I think that that’s a big part of it honestly, is you have to reassess with each relationship. Just because this thing worked really well in your old relationship, does not mean that it will be the best way in this relationship. Some of my metamours, we hang out a lot. We talk on Facebook, and we’re very active with each other. Some of my mentors, maybe see each other at the bar once in a while. We don’t have to be best friends. But depending on the person, our relationship shifts, and we do what works best for us. We check in about it and say, “Is this still working for you? Would you like to change anything?” So I think also treating your relationship to your metamours as a relationship, whether or not your friends, it is still a relationship that you have and taking care of it in that way is really helpful for me.

Dawn Serra: I know we’re a little bit past the hour, but I’d love to know if you have time to field this poly question with me? 

Kitty Stryker: I’ll do my best. 

Dawn Serra: Okay, great. So I got an email from someone called Lonely in Love, and the subject line is “Polyamory”. The message says: “Hi, Dawn. First, I love the show. I’ve been bingeing eight hours worth every day at work to get caught up. I’ve heard you talk about poly in the sense of how to get started, managing jealousy, and different ways to do non-monogamy. But what about the main relationship? My gal and I have been talking about poly since before we became a couple – off and on for over a year and a half now. I’m open to it. But my main concern is keeping our relationship healthy and loving. As of now I don’t feel my needs or wants are being met, and I wish our communication was better. I’ve tried talking and will continue to keep trying because us is really important to me. Thank you so much for your time and for any ideas and information you might have. Lonely in Love.”

Kitty Stryker: I think that you are right to not pursue poly yet. Not just because it will make you – it’ll focus your attention, but it’s really unfair to bring somebody else into that. It’s sometimes tempting to think that, “Oh, my needs aren’t being met, so I’ll just date someone new who meets those needs. And that’ll solve that problem.” No, almost every time, if not every time, it makes it worse. For sure, no doubt. I have found the five love languages to be really helpful when I felt like my needs weren’t being in a polyamorous relationship, because I’ve been able to figure out what would make me feel loved and communicate that to my partner. For those who aren’t familiar, the five love languages is this kind of weird Christian book, but if you ditch all the Christian stuff. It’s actually decent.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, there’s good stuff in it.

Kitty Stryker: Yeah, kind of like the Bible. There’s some good things in there. There’s also a lot of not so great things. With the five love languages, it’s the way that you can express or receive love would be giving gifts, acts of service, words of affirmation, physical touch, and quality time. For me, I am somebody for whom physical touch does not have anything to do with what makes me feel loved or not loved – I could take or leave it. But acts of service are huge for me, and if somebody wants to show me that they love me – washing the dishes, or while I’ve been doing this podcast, my girlfriend’s been cleaning out my car, so that I can pick up some chairs for a dining room. That’s the sort of thing that makes me feel really loved – more than gifts, more than being told that I’m a good person, more than anything else. More than the words I love you – that action really does it. For her physical touch and words of affirmation are really important. So the way that I like to receive love is not the way that she does. So it helps us maintain that and feel like we care about each other. 

It’s also been helpful between my two partners because even if they don’t love, love each other, they know how to take care of each other in a way that feels really comforting. And honestly, that cuts down a lot on jealousy, because they actively do things and say things to each other that show that they care about each other, as well as me. So I would say, that’s a really good talking point to work with, because it has a formula already. It has a structure already. And that might give you some information that can then help you get your needs met. You might go through that and find that some of the needs are things that your partner doesn’t want to meet. A good example, my girlfriend has some fetishes that I do not share at all. One of the things that we can do with poly is she likes having casual sex with people and doing these fetishes with them. Great. I am relieved of that responsibility of having to be good, giving, and game for something I really don’t want to do. And she gets to have the fun that she wants. So that’s a way that we can do that and it is actively loving for each other. 

Kitty Stryker: Now, I think that it’s also important to make sure that when you do something like that, that you are making as much space for the relationship as you are for the pursuit of getting other needs met that your partner doesn’t want to meet, or is unable to meet. I personally prefer not to have another relationship that does that, because I feel when you form a relationship with someone, and the way that you start it is just to fill a slot, it becomes very transactional. And that feels very invalidating or alternately, your partner will be very comfortable with the fact that it’s transactional, and then it becomes more of a love relationship, or maybe you want to live together and that becomes really messy. So having stuff like that, where it’s on a more casual basis makes it a little easier. The stakes are lower. 

It also depends on why you want to be poly. What is it about poly that feels good for you? Because if the reason you want to be poly is because your partner isn’t meeting your needs, you may want to reconsider why you’re with your partner. And that sucks. I’m really sorry to be the tough love girl about that. But if your partner is not meeting your needs, that’s not a good sign to me. Now, one thing that you can do as the person who is expressing the issue and, again, that might help with your talking points – after my breakup with my porn performer partner, I’ve made a spreadsheet like the bureaucracy nerd that I am, that had my relationship needs on one side, and my relationship deal breakers on the other. I wrote out all of my needs and desires. I wrote out all of my deal breakers and my deal breakers were things like, hate cats or wants children with me or poly libertarian, or I don’t know, only wants to have vanilla missionary sex – those are things that for me would be deal breakers. Now, it’s okay for me to date somebody who maybe hits one or two of those deal breakers, as long as the deal breakers do not outweigh needs. If they’re meeting more of my needs and they are hitting my deal breakers, then I generally feel pretty comfortable with the relationship. If that changes, and I find that the deal breakers are equal to or outweighing my needs, then we check in. That’s sort of a way that I can, again, this is terrible phrasing, but I can assess threat level. Where I could be like, “Oh, okay. Look, we’re actually, we’re hitting about a 90 to 10 ratio right now. Cool. That’s great.” Or, “Oh, we’re now hitting like 40-60, and that’s a problem.” Because I have a list, I can physically show it to the person and be like, “So here are the things that I care about. These are the things that I cannot deal with, and this is what’s happening.” So it creates a visual map, which could be really helpful.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think that it’s important, too, to remind everyone who’s listening that Lonely in Love said, “I wish our communication was better.” So I definitely think like there’s something there to work on and there’s so many ways to work on that. But I also want to put out there, I feel like a lot of times people are trying to find a way to communicate, where it doesn’t feel awkward or bad or scary. And sometimes it just has to feel awkward or scary, or like, you’re going to fuck it up and you don’t want to have the conversation but you have it any way. I think that’s just part of being in a committed relationship is it’s not always easy to have that check in because something isn’t working or because you fucked something up. But you still have to be able to have the resilience to feel shitty and have the conversation. 

Good communication isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes good communication is super uncomfortable, but important. So don’t try to avoid the discomfort,Ii think, is what I’m trying to say because you’re offering these wonderful suggestions. But to actually be able to sit down with somebody and say, “Hey, something’s kind of out of whack. I’ve noticed some of my needs that I really need aren’t getting met. And some of the things that I’m not okay with are starting to outweigh it.” That’s not going to be a conversation that feels like you’re watching cat videos. I mean, that’s probably going to feel kind of icky. But then if you can have the conversation on the other side, there’s the potential for wonderfulness.

Kitty Stryker: Yeah. So I joke a lot that I run my relationships like a business, and that’s why I have spreadsheets. We joke a lot about having a six month review, so every six months, we get together and have a review of the relationship, which is a playful way of doing these things, but it also provides concrete spaces to renegotiate and to reassess, which is very useful. 

And yeah, is it awkward? Yeah. That’s why we make it funny, that’s why we have jokes around it. But it’s a lot less uncomfortable than just sitting with being miserable. That’s a lot of emotional labor that’s not being seen. It’s much better to have the conversation and to put it out there. I generally think that it is better if you are going to have a conversation about needs and deal breakers to give the other person some warning, so that they can come to the table also prepared. Because if you’re both coming to the table with a list of needs and deal breakers, then it’s a little harder to feel accused or like you are being scolded. If you just spring it on somebody, then they’re going to be like, “Whoa, well, you don’t do these things for me.” It’s easier to be like, “In a week, let’s do this thing. We’ll have brunch and we’ll do this.” I definitely found that that bit of formality really helps take some of the pressure off. 

Dawn Serra: I hope Lonely in Love that all of Kitty’s advice and experience gives you some things to consider and to chew on, especially about why you’re interested in poly and what this current relationship is meaning to you and what needs are getting met, and finding new ways to communicate around them. I think that there’s so much self-awareness in your email around communication and your feelings, and then finding ways to actually air those and move through those, I think, is the next step. But I want to thank you so much for listening and for writing in. Kitty, I know we’re well past our hour. 

So first, I just want to thank you so much for not only helping me to answer this question from Lonely in Love, but for sharing all of your experiences and your thoughts. There’s so much amazing work you’re doing and so many encouraging articles I want the listeners to read. I love that you came on and contributed in such a rich way.

Kitty Stryker: Oh, thank you. It feels incredible to here.

Dawn Serra: Good. I would love for you to share with everybody how they can find you online and stay in touch.

Kitty Stryker: Absolutely. So, I am @kittystryker on Twitter. That’s Kitty Stryker – it’s also kittystryker.com. I’m on Facebook. I friend a lot of people so you don’t have to be my real life friends to be on my Facebook. It’s sort of a public forum. There’s also a group called Officially Kitty Stryker, which is where I put up articles or podcasts that I am on, and stuff like that. So if you want to get the professional updates, that’s really good for that. I have a Patreon.

Dawn Serra: Oh, yeah, you do. 

Kitty Stryker: I should remember that more often. Yes, I have a Patreon which is just patreon.com/kittystryker, and people who patronize me in various ways get special – they get to ask me questions one-on-one or some of the rewards are social media surfaces or, I don’t know, dirty pictures occasionally. But the Patreon that I have now really goes to fund my writing and also the the activism work that I’m doing for my local queer and POC community. If you like what I do, send me some money.

Dawn Serra: Yes, exactly. Yes, pay people for the amazing work that they do. So I will have links to all of Kitty’s social media and websites, and patreon on dawnserra.com/ep138 for this episode. I want to thank all of you for listening and, Kitty, for being here. It’s been such a fun hour. This is Dawn Serra, I will talk to you all next week. Bye.