Annie Sprinkle( a pro porn feminist) and Mae Tyme(an anti porn feminist) In Conversation
Mae Tyme: In 1995, there was a big story when I was in Europe about two girls, ten and eleven years old, who had escaped from a porn ring. They’d been kidnapped. The porn ring was busted, and they discovered other girls who had been starved, beaten and enslaved.
Annie Sprinkle:
That’s horrible.
Once I was making a little sex magazine with some friends, as a labor of love, not a big money making thing. We unknowingly hired an undercover police woman to be our typesetter. The people whose house it was had two kids, who were not involved in any photographs. The parents made a living making magazines from pictures that people sent them.
Twenty-five state police officers came into the house with guns drawn, arrested us and confiscated everything, from tampax to the dog’s leash. In the family photo album there was a photo of the two kids in the bathtub naked when they were three and five, the same photo every family has.
The newspaper headline said “INTERNATIONAL CHILD PORNOGRAPHY RING BUSTED”. The two kids were put in dreadful foster homes for several weeks which really traumatized them. That’s when I realized how much the press perverts the facts, and how sex negative attitudes are used to hurt innocent people.
Every time I do a lecture at a college or a reading at a book store, with my good intentions, inevitably this scary topic about children being abused comes up.
Mae Tyme: The same thing is used against lesbians. We are called child molesters. Undercover police used to bust us for what we were doing innocently, good heartedly and among adults. We view ourselves as nice people. We point out over and over that most molestation of children and others is done by straight males.
Annie Sprinkle:
I’ve been putting out sexually explicit images of myself for years. I know this sounds bizarre, but somehow it makes me feel safer.
Mae Tyme: Being very out as a lesbian makes me feels safer. I think blatant is best.
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The full interview is here. CW for outdated language use in some sections