Ahem. Anyway.

Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop
Saturday, April 14 (usually 2nd Saturday of Every Month (2-4pm)
LOCATION: CSC, 1349 Mission Street (at Grace Street between 9th and 10th streets) in San Francisco
Sliding scale $10-$20 (more if you can, less if you can’t, **nobody turned away** — if you’re broke you should still come write with us!)
Workshop facilitated by Gina de Vries

This is a writing workshop for current and former sex workers to share their writing and get honest, non-judgmental feedback. Workshop participants are not obligated to write exclusively about sex work, but writing about work in the sex industry (as well as writing about other topics) will be welcomed. This is a place where people can write and share about their sex work experiences without having to censor themselves or explain every detail. Beginning writers are encouraged to attend along with more seasoned wordsmiths.

Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop is all-genders. We define the term “sex worker” broadly, as people who have exchanged erotic labor for money/food/shelter, including but not limited to:

+Street and Survival Sex Workers
+Escorts and Personal Companions
+Sensual Massage and Sensual Body Work Providers
+BDSM workers; pro-dommes, subs, and switches
+Adult Film Actors; Porn Models and Performers; Nude Models; Cam Girls and Boys
+Exotic Dancers; Strippers; and Peep Show Workers
+Phone Sex Operators
+And many other Sex Workers and Adult Entertainers!
(If we’re forgetting your area of the industry in this definition, tell us!)

**Email questions, volunteer inquiries, etc, to queershoulder@gmail.com.
**While we can’t guarantee a scent-free space, we ask that all attendees please refrain from wearing scented products to ensure that workshop members with chemical sensitivities can attend.
**We ask that our non-sex worker friends, lovers, partners, allies, and clients respect that this space is FOR SEX WORKERS ONLY.

kittystryker:

So today my grandmother sat me down, looked deep into my eyes and told me I was disgusting. Disappointing. That she had seen my photos and I was a horrible person with no self-esteem.

She Googled my name.

Apparently she also shared my sex work name with one of her friends at her local community…

—-

Girl Talk: A Trans & Cis Woman Dialogue
Thursday, March 29th, 2012
7:00pm - 10:00pm
San Francisco LGBT Community Center - Rainbow Room
1800 Market Street between Octavia & Laguna
Tickets: $12-$20 (no one turned away)
WEB: http://queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/HealthyC/girlTalk12.html
BUY TIX HERE: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/223538 (We strongly recommend that you get tickets in advance — we sold out very fast last year.)
FACEBOOK INVITE: http://www.facebook.com/events/217563091671401/

Curated by Gina de Vries, Elena Rose, and Julia Serano.
Generously supported by the Queer Cultural Center Healthy Communities program.

Queer cisgender women and queer transgender women are allies, friends, support systems, lovers, and partners to each other. Trans and cis women are allies to each other every day — from activism that includes everything from Take Back the Night to Camp Trans; to supporting each other in having “othered” bodies in a world that is obsessed with idealized body types; to loving, having sex, and building family with each other in a world that wants us to disappear.

Girl Talk is an annual spoken word show fostering and promoting dialogue about these relationships. Trans and cis women will read about their relationships of all kinds – sexual and romantic, chosen and blood family, friendships, support networks, activist alliances. Join us for a night of stories about sex, bodies, feminism, activism, challenging exclusion in masculine-centric dyke spaces, dating and breaking up, finding each other, and finding love and family.

Performer Bios

Charlie Anders hosts and organizes the award-winning Writers With Drinks reading series in San Francisco, which was namechecked in Armistead Maupin’s latest Tales of the City novel. She’s had stories in Best Lesbian Erotica 2010, Sex For America: Politically Inspired Erotica, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2009 and 2011, and Tor.com. She co-founded other magazine: the magazine for people who defy categories, and currently blogs at io9. She won the 2010 Emperor Norton Award for “extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason.”

Dominika Bednarska is a postdoctoral fellow at U.C. Berkeley, where she completed her PhD in English and Disability Studies.  Her writing has appeared in Wordgathering, The Bellevue Literary Review, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity, The Culture of Efficiency: Technology in Everyday Life, What I Want From You: An Anthology of East Bay Lesbian Poets, Ghosting Atoms, and Cripping Femme. She is currently working on expanding and revising her solo show, My Body Love Story, that will be performed this spring and summer. For more information, go to dominikabednarskaspeaks.blogspot.com or become a fan on Facebook.

Gina de Vries founded and co-curates “Girl Talk” with Elena Rose and Julia Serano. She’s thrilled that the show is still going strong after 4 years. Gina has taught Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop since 2008, and you can find her work anthologized all over, from the San Francisco Bay Guardian to Coming & Crying. A graduate of Hampshire College, Gina is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing and Master’s in English at San Francisco State University. The Record, her experimental fiction novel about sex, adolescence, music, San Francisco, and growing up queer, should be hitting bookstores in 2013. Find out a whole lot more at ginadevries.com. Twitter: @queershoulder. Tumblr: queershoulder.

DavEnd is a tenderhearted, genderqueer, costume designing, accordion wielding songwriter, performing artist and designer based in San Francisco. Ms. End has released two studio albums (How To Hold Your Own Hand, Fruits Commonly Mistaken For Vegetables) and for the past 5 years, has been touring extensively in the U.S., performing at queer teen centers, festivals, colleges, theatres and backyards. DavEnd’s current project, Fabulous Artistic Guys Get Overtly Traumatized Sometimes: The Musical!,brings together the worlds of music and radical performance art in a theatrical extravaganza, exploring the effects of heterosexism and street harassment on the development of queer identity.  

Thea Hillman is a mother, writer, and performer. Her book of poetry and fiction “Depending on the Light,” was published in 2001. Her Lambda award-winning memoir, “Intersex: For Lack of a Better Word” came out in 2008 and is taught at universities around the country.

Nomy Lamm is a writer, musician, performance artist and voice teacher.   Her band, nomy lamm & THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, is a flexible platform for collaboration with everyone and everything, including other musicians, artists, poets, puppeteers, spectators, and the moon.  She performs regularly with Sins Invalid, creating musical dreamworld performance art about disability, sexuality and social justice.  She is currently working on her MFA thesis, a collection of short stories called “515 Clues,” and writes an advice column for Make/Shift magazine called “Dear Nomy.”

Emily Manuel is a Greek-Australian becoming-Jewish writer, blogger, editor, sometime academic, musician, partner, mother to four cats, and beekeeper.  She found a bee and she kept it - that’s the first rule of beekeeping.  She is editor-in-chief at Global Comment magazine, and her work has also appeared at Questioning Transphobia, Tiger Beatdown, Billboard magazine, Bitch magazine, and many others.  She has a PhD in English from Murdoch University in Australia gathering dust in the corner.

Elena Rose, a Filipina-Ashkenazic mixed-class trans dyke mestiza, rode stories out of rural Oregon and hasn’t stopped making words since.  In her second year co-curating “Girl Talk” and fourth as a performer, she writes online as “Little Light,” travels the country as a preacher and poet, and has dedicated herself to the work of radical love, queer theology, and justice for those who live at the edges.  Her work has turned up everywhere from college classrooms to bathroom mirrors to protest marches, in magazines including Aorta and Make/Shift, and on the acclaimed spoken-word album It Is Better to Speak!  Rose is currently finishing her first book, Mountain of Myrrh, forthcoming from Dinah Press, and attends seminary in Northern California, where she resides with her wife and a small but well-loved pomegranate tree.

Julia Serano is an Oakland, California-based writer, performer and activist. She is the author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, a collection of personal essays that reveal how misogyny frames popular assumptions about femininity and shapes many of the myths and misconceptions people have about transsexual women. Julia’s other writings have appeared in anthologies (including Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, Word Warriors: 30 Leaders in the Women’s Spoken Word Movement and Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape), in feminist, queer, pop culture and literary magazines and websites (such as Bitch, AlterNet.org, Out, Feministing.com, and make/shift), and have been used as teaching materials in gender studies, queer studies, psychology and human sexuality courses in colleges across North America.  juliaserano.com.

Jos Truitt is a Boston native and recent transplant to San Francisco. She joined the team at Feministing.com in July 2009 and became an Editor in August 2011. Jos attended Hampshire College where she coordinated the school’s annual national reproductive justice conference. After college she worked in the reproductive health, rights and justice movements in Washington, DC. Jos has spoken and trained at numerous national conferences and college campuses about trans issues, reproductive justice, blogging, feminism, and grassroots organizing. Jos is currently pursuing an MFA in Printmaking at San Francisco Art Institute.

—
ginadevries.com /// queershoulder.tumblr.com

So, I am watching the new BBC Sherlock while recovering from this root canal, and I kinda LOVE it! Especially the Irene Adler character re-written as a queer sex worker genius spy who is complex & tough & bad-ass, not a victim & not a martyr. It would have been really easy to veer into so many stereotypes with her character, but she just keeps kicking ass. (Literally & figuratively, I guess — she is a domme.) But anyway, all in all it is a decent portrayal, and I’m really psyched about her storyline.

A THOUSAND TIMES YES. Bless you, wonderful comrades, for making this video!

Hey folks!
Two things:
1) LOCATION CHANGE for tomorrow only: Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop tomorrow will be at the **San Francisco LGBT Center** at 1800 Market Street at Octavia, Room 307.
2) I’m reading at Books Inc on November 29th to celebrate the release of Tristan Taormino’s new anthology, Take Me There. Come see me & lots of other cool folks!
xxx,
g.

—-

Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop
Saturday, November 12th (usually 2nd Saturday of Every Month), 2-4pm
THIS MONTH ONLY: SF LGBT Center, 1800 Market Street @ Octavia
Sliding scale $10-$20 (more if you can, less if you can’t, **nobody turned away** — if you’re broke you should still come write with us!)
Workshop facilitated by Gina de Vries

This is a writing workshop for current and former sex workers to share their writing and get honest, non-judgmental feedback. Workshop participants are not obligated to write exclusively about sex work, but writing about work in the sex industry (as well as writing about other topics) will be welcomed. This is a place where people can write and share about their sex work experiences without having to censor themselves or explain every detail. Beginning writers are encouraged to attend along with more seasoned wordsmiths.  

Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop is all-genders. We define the term “sex worker” broadly, as people who have exchanged erotic labor for money/food/shelter, including but not limited to: 
+Street and Survival Sex Workers
+Escorts and Personal Companions
+Sensual Massage and Sensual Body Work Providers
+BDSM workers; pro-dommes, subs, and switches
+Adult Film Actors; Porn Models and Performers; Nude Models; Cam Girls and Boys
+Exotic Dancers; Strippers; and Peep Show Workers
+Phone Sex Operators
+And many other Sex Workers and Adult Entertainers!
(If we’re forgetting your area of the industry in this definition, tell us!)  

**Email questions, volunteer inquiries, etc, to queershoulder@gmail.com.
**If wheelchair access is needed, please contact mail@sexandculture.org in advance of workshop.
**While we can’t guarantee a scent-free space, we ask that all attendees please refrain from wearing scented products to ensure that workshop members with chemical sensitivities can attend.
**We ask that our non-sex worker friends, lovers, partners, allies, and clients respect that this space is FOR SEX WORKERS ONLY.  

INSTRUCTOR BIO:
Gina de Vries is a genderqueer femme, a queer Paisan pervert, and a writer, performer, and activist with a long history doing political organizing in and with queer, trans and gender-variant, intersex, and sex worker communities. She co-edited the queer youth anthology [Becoming] with Diane Anderson-Minshall in 2004, and her publications include The San Francisco Bay Guardian, $pread, Curve, Coming & Crying, Take Me There: Trans & Genderqueer Erotica, and The Revolution Starts at Home. Gina is the founder and co-curator (with Elena Rose and Julia Serano) of “Girl Talk: a trans & cis woman dialogue,” a spoken-word show fostering and promoting dialogue about relationships of all kinds between non-trans and trans women. She has performed, taught, and lectured everywhere from chapels to leatherbar backrooms, and university appearances include Harvard University and Yale University. She is the founder and facilitator of Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop, a writing class for current & former sex workers at San Francisco’s Center for Sex & Culture (where she also serves on the Advisory Board). A graduate of Hampshire College, Gina is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing at San Francisco State University, where she is working on a book of short stories. Find out more at ginadevries.com, and keep track of her on the daily at queershoulder.tumblr.com.


****November 29, 7:30 pm****
Books Inc. (Castro/SF)
Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica book reading
Readers will include editor Tristan Taormino, plus Julia Serano, Gina de Vries, Shawna Virago, Michael Hernandez, Dean Scarborough, Evan Swafford, and more!
Location: Books Inc., 2257 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 415-864-6777 (Twitter: @BooksIncEvents)
Admission: Free and open to all.

I love all of this. Especially this passage right here. I’m not trans, so I can’t speak to what it is to enter into trans activist spaces as a trans sex worker and hear this stuff. But I’ve experienced a very similiar dynamic in many queer activist circles and reproductive justice activist circles. It’s “cool” if I do queer, feminist porn (which, for the record, I have done & like doing — but it’s not the only kind of sex work I’ve done). It’s very much NOT cool if I talk about my other experiences working in the sex industry.

Here are some of the dumbass things you’re probably going to hear regularly when you enter non-sex working trans spaces, especially trans activist spaces (and these activists will, of course, lament the lack of involvement from sex workers in their efforts).

Sex work is perfectly fine as a choice, but we need to talk about how survival sex work and “trafficking” are hurting our community!

What they’re actually saying here is that sex work is fine if you have an MA in Women’s Studies and work in queer feminist porn (which they can happily jerk off to without feeling like bad feminists). These same people usually have only a tenuous grasp on the concept of trafficking, probably don’t have any sex workers in their close circle of friends (unless they have the aforementioned MA in Women’s Studies). They are quick to become angry if you suggest that coercive sex work is actually rare, statistically, or that you chose street sex work because it made sense for your life at the time.

All sex work is survival sex work, in exactly the same way that I could describe all jobs at McDonald’s as survival food service jobs.

Hey folks,
I’m on the mend, and I’ll be teaching Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop tomorrow — come out!
xox,
g.

—-

Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop
Saturday, October 8 (usually 2nd Saturday of Every Month, 2-4pm) 
THIS MONTH: WILL BE HELD AT GOOD VIBES, 1620 POLK ST (between Clay and Sacramento) – in the gallery
Sliding scale $10-$20 (more if you can, less if you can’t, **nobody turned away** — if you’re broke you should still come write with us!)
Workshop facilitated by Gina de Vries

This is a writing workshop for current and former sex workers to share their writing and get honest, non-judgmental feedback. Workshop participants are not obligated to write exclusively about sex work, but writing about work in the sex industry (as well as writing about other topics) will be welcomed. This is a place where people can write and share about their sex work experiences without having to censor themselves or explain every detail. Beginning writers are encouraged to attend along with more seasoned wordsmiths.  

Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop is all-genders. We define the term “sex worker” broadly, as people who have exchanged erotic labor for money/food/shelter, including but not limited to: 
+Street and Survival Sex Workers
+Escorts and Personal Companions
+Sensual Massage and Sensual Body Work Providers
+BDSM workers; pro-dommes, subs, and switches
+Adult Film Actors; Porn Models and Performers; Nude Models; Cam Girls and Boys
+Exotic Dancers; Strippers; and Peep Show Workers
+Phone Sex Operators
+And many other Sex Workers and Adult Entertainers! (If we’re forgetting your area of the industry in this definition, tell us!)  

**Email questions, volunteer inquiries, etc, to queershoulder@gmail.com.
**If wheelchair access is needed, please contact mail@sexandculture.org in advance of workshop.
**While we can’t guarantee a scent-free space, we ask that all attendees please refrain from wearing scented products to ensure that workshop members with chemical sensitivities can attend.
**We ask that our non-sex worker friends, lovers, partners, allies, and clients respect that this space is FOR SEX WORKERS ONLY.  

INSTRUCTOR BIO: Gina de Vries is a genderqueer femme, a queer Paisan pervert, and a writer, performer, and activist with a long history doing political organizing in and with queer, trans and gender-variant, intersex, and sex worker communities. She co-edited the queer youth anthology [Becoming] with Diane Anderson-Minshall in 2004, and her publications include The San Francisco Bay Guardian, $pread, Curve, Coming & Crying, Take Me There: Trans & Genderqueer Erotica, and The Revolution Starts at Home. Gina is the founder and co-curator (with Elena Rose and Julia Serano) of “Girl Talk: a trans & cis woman dialogue,” a spoken-word show fostering and promoting dialogue about relationships of all kinds between non-trans and trans women. She has performed, taught, and lectured everywhere from chapels to leatherbar backrooms, and university appearances include Harvard University and Yale University. She is the founder and facilitator of Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop, a writing class for current & former sex workers at San Francisco’s Center for Sex & Culture (where she also serves on the Advisory Board). A graduate of Hampshire College, Gina is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing at San Francisco State University, where she is working on a book of short stories. Find out more at ginadevries.com, and keep track of her on the daily at queershoulder.tumblr.com.

Dacia is giving away copies of $pread to sex workers (for the price of shipping)! Read on!!!

audaciaray:

Do you want copies of $pread magazine to distribute to sex workers in your community? I just sent 160 of them to estringsgstrings for the price of shipping - which totaled a little less than $60. Message me and I’d be happy to send you some as well. I have hundreds, and want them to be in sex workers hands, not in my bedroom. Fun fact about this pic: the mag in the middle, issue 2.1, features me on the cover. I was art directing the cover shoot and the model didn’t show, soooo… There I am. The most fun part of that shoot, though, was walking into a currency exchange in NYC and saying “give me one of everything.” And then returning the money after the shoot.

D00dZ!!!1! I CAN HAZ NEWZPRINT! 

Lust for Life (my new column for the San Francisco Bay Guardian) debuts in the print version of the newspaper this week. If you’re local to the SF area, pick yrself up a copy! The column is also available online — click on that link to read & comment.

It’s called “Fetish & Armor.” Discussed: Growing up queer & fat; teen sexuality; clothes as fetish & armor; femme resilience; reproductive justice conferences; sex work; and Andrea Dworkin. I’m particularly proud of this piece, and I want to say a special thanks to my Paisan Toni Amato and members of the WriteHereWriteNow Writers’ Workshop, spaceykate, and mappingindiana, all of whom saw this column in its early stages. Enjoy!

Additionally? There is something marvelous & thrilling about picking up a magazine, a newspaper, or a book with my work in it. I like seeing my work on the web, don’t get me wrong. But something about actually holding my own writing in my hands gives me shivers.

This is a writing workshop for current and former sex workers to share their writing and get honest, non-judgmental feedback. Workshop participants are not obligated to write exclusively about sex work, but writing about work in the sex industry (as well as writing about other topics) will be welcomed. This is a place where people can write and share about their sex work experiences without having to censor themselves or explain every detail. Beginning writers are encouraged to attend along with more seasoned wordsmiths.

Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop is all-genders. We define the term “sex worker” broadly, as people who have exchanged erotic labor for money/food/shelter, including but not limited to:

+Street and Survival Sex Workers
+Escorts and Personal Companions
+Sensual Massage and Sensual Body Work Providers
+BDSM workers; pro-dommes, subs, and switches
+Adult Film Actors; Porn Models and Performers; Nude Models; Cam Girls and Boys
+Exotic Dancers; Strippers; and Peep Show Workers
+Phone Sex Operators
+And many other Sex Workers and Adult Entertainers!
(If we’re forgetting your area of the industry in this definition, tell us!)

**Email questions, volunteer inquiries, etc, to queershoulder@gmail.com.
**If wheelchair access is needed, please contact mail@sexandculture.org in advance of workshop.
**While we can’t guarantee a scent-free space, we ask that all attendees please refrain from wearing scented products to ensure that workshop members with chemical sensitivities can attend.
**We ask that our non-sex worker friends, lovers, partners, allies, and clients respect that this space is FOR SEX WORKERS ONLY.

INSTRUCTOR BIO:
Gina de Vries is a genderqueer femme, a queer Paisan pervert, and a writer, performer, and activist with a long history doing political organizing in and with queer, trans and gender-variant, and sex worker communities. She co-edited the queer youth anthology [Becoming] with Diane Anderson-Minshall in 2004, and her publications include Coming & Crying: true stories about sex from the other side of the bed, Take Me There: Trans & Genderqueer Erotica, Bound to Struggle: Where Kink and Radical Politics Meet, The Revolution Starts at Home, $pread, Curve, make/shift, and On Our Backs. Gina is the founder and co-curator (with Elena Rose and Julia Serano) of “Girl Talk: a trans & cis woman dialogue,” a spoken-word show fostering and promoting dialogue about relationships of all kinds between cis and trans women. She has performed, taught, and lectured everywhere from chapels to leatherbar backrooms, and recent university appearances include Harvard University and Yale University. Gina regularly presents on issues ranging from sex work to intersex activism for the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program and the Reproductive Rights Activist Service Corps, and works a day job fundraising for St. James Infirmary, the nation’s only clinic run by and for current & former sex workers. She is the founder and facilitator of Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop, a writing class for current & former sex workers at San Francisco’s Center for Sex & Culture (where she also serves on the Advisory Board). A graduate of Hampshire College, Gina is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing at San Francisco State University, where she is working on a memoir and a book of short stories. Find out more at ginadevries.com, and keep track of her on the daily at queershoulder.tumblr.com.

Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop
This month: May 14th, 2-4pm (2nd Saturday of Every Month)
Center for Sex & Culture, 1349 Mission Street (yay! new space!), San Francisco (cross street 10th)
Sliding scale $10-$20 (more if you can, less if you can’t, **nobody turned away** — if you’re broke you should still come write with us!)
Workshop facilitated by Gina de Vries

This is a writing workshop for current and former sex workers to share their writing and get honest, non-judgmental feedback. Workshop participants are not obligated to write exclusively about sex work, but writing about work in the sex industry (as well as writing about other topics) will be welcomed. This is a place where people can write and share about their sex work experiences without having to censor themselves or explain every detail. Beginning writers are encouraged to attend along with more seasoned wordsmiths.

Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop is all-genders. We define the term “sex worker” broadly, as people who have exchanged erotic labor for money/food/shelter, including but not limited to:

+Street and Survival Sex Workers
+Escorts and Personal Companions
+Sensual Massage and Sensual Body Work Providers
+BDSM workers; pro-dommes, subs, and switches
+Adult Film Actors; Porn Models and Performers; Nude Models; Cam Girls and Boys
+Exotic Dancers; Strippers; and Peep Show Workers
+Phone Sex Operators
+And many other Sex Workers and Adult Entertainers!
(If we’re forgetting your area of the industry in this definition, tell us!)

**Email questions, volunteer inquiries, etc, to queershoulder@gmail.com.
**If wheelchair access is needed, please contact mail@sexandculture.org in advance of workshop.
**While we can’t guarantee a scent-free space, we ask that all attendees please refrain from wearing scented products to ensure that workshop members with chemical sensitivities can attend.
**We ask that our non-sex worker friends, lovers, partners, allies, and clients respect that this space is FOR SEX WORKERS ONLY.

INSTRUCTOR BIO:

Gina de Vries is a genderqueer femme, a queer Paisan pervert, and a writer, performer, and activist with a long history doing political organizing in and with queer, trans and gender-variant, and sex worker communities. She co-edited the queer youth anthology [Becoming] with Diane Anderson-Minshall in 2004, and her publications include Coming & Crying: true stories about sex from the other side of the bed, Take Me There: Trans & Genderqueer Erotica, Bound to Struggle: Where Kink and Radical Politics Meet, The Revolution Starts at Home, $pread, Curve, make/shift, and On Our Backs. Gina is the founder and co-curator (with Elena Rose and Julia Serano) of “Girl Talk: a trans & cis woman dialogue,” a spoken-word show fostering and promoting dialogue about relationships of all kinds between cis and trans women. She has performed, taught, and lectured everywhere from chapels to leatherbar backrooms, and recent university appearances include Harvard University and Yale University. Gina regularly presents on issues ranging from sex work to intersex activism for the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program of the Reproductive Rights Activist Service Corps, and works a day job fundraising for St. James Infirmary, the nation’s only clinic run by and for current & former sex workers. She is the founder and facilitator of Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop, a writing class for current and former sex workers at San Francisco’s Center for Sex & Culture (where she also serves on the Advisory Board). A graduate of Hampshire College, Gina is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing at San Francisco State University, where she is working on a memoir and a book of short stories. Find out more at ginadevries.com, and keep track of her on the daily at queershoulder.tumblr.com.

Not that there isn’t stuff that could be considered porn on this blog (because there is, especially when it comes to the written word), and not that I won’t still talk about porn & sex work on this blog (I will, fer sure).

But I’m starting a seperate porn tumblr for a couple reasons:
1. I want a blog that can serve as a quick & dirty (heh) portfolio to potential photographers & directors. (I’ve also got a website in the works.)
2. Much more importantly: As much as is possible, I want posts on this blog to still be accessible to youth, especially queer and trans youth, youth who are working in the sex trade, and youth who are doing peer-based sex ed. I mean, I am a realist, and I am sure that queershoulder will still not pass through a lot of NetNanny-esque filters (esp. filters with settings for queer content, or with settings for discussions of sex in general). But still. There is a better chance of younger folks who might want to read this blog being able to do so if I keep the photo & video posts non-nekkid and just post that stuff over to my other tumblr.

Both this tumblr and my Gloria Divine tumblr feed to my twitter account, so if you’re on my twitter feed, you get to see everything, and if you are on tumblr and you decide to follow both my tumblrs, you get to see everything. Only this tumblr feeds to my facebook account, though.

I’m a porn performer. I’m out as a sex worker in pretty much all areas of my life, but up till about a year and a half ago I was fairly quiet about the specifics of my sex work. That’s been changing for me as of late, as I’ve been performing in porn that means a lot to my politics and personal ethics (as well as my pocketbook).

I could say a lot about my work in the porn industry in this post — what I get out of it, why I keep doing it — and perhaps I’ll write about all of that at some later point. But what I want to note here in this post is that I’m very privileged to be as out as I am about my work in the porn industry, and to have performed in pornography that links back to my real name and indentity. I’m very deliberate about that choice, and it was a decision I came to after a lot of thought: The way I see it, people can’t “dig up dirt on me” if I’m already out and proud about being, well, dirty.

This choice absolutely limits some of my work/career choices down the line, especially in the academic/teaching sphere. I’m currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing, with a correlative in teaching, and a hope to some day teach at a university level. However, I’m honestly not as concerned about the “limitation” factor of being out about my porn work as I would be about having to hide a big part of my identity. The way I see it, if a particular school’s Creative Writing Department would have an issue with my work in the porn industry, or my work in the sex industry in general… Well, then they’d probably also have an issue with me teaching a writing class for sex workers and working at a clinic for sex workers and being a pervert and writing porn & erotica, and they’d probably have issues with sex workers in general, and you know what? Then that’s probably not a department I want to be teaching in.

I don’t blog super-frequently about my porn industry experiences here. I usually tweet more about porn than I blog about it. This is mostly because my work in the porn industry (like that of many folks who perform in porn, especially those of us performing primarily in queer & indie porn) waxes & wanes. I’ve had months where I’ve done 4 shoots in a week, and I’ve had months where the Porn Well has been completely dry (so to speak). My tendency is to tweet about shoots “on the go” as they happen, and then slack on doing further publicity till the footage comes out months (or sometimes years) later.

But in any event: Several porn movies I’ve shot over the past couple years are finally seeing the light of day, and I’m feeling excited about this and want to tell you about them.

Note to platonic friends, family members, and others who don’t want to watch me having sex: All trailers & links feature explicit sexual footage. You have been warned. ;)

First off, Doing It Ourselves: The Trans Women Porn Project (which I blogged about when it first came out a year ago) finally has a trailer up on the internet! DIO is also available for purchase at various locations, including but not limited to directly from Handbasket Productions.

To steal from the back of the DVD:

“Doing it Ourselves is a hot collection of trans women and their partners of all genders engaging in sex the way they want to be represented.  Starting with a group of trans women who are tired of the way that they have seen trans women portrayed in porn, this film tells the story of its own creation when they decide to, well, do it themselves.”

I think this trailer is beautiful, and I’m very proud of both my sex scene (with the amazing Tobi Hill-Meyer) & my interview for this film. Take a look:

Secondly, The Genderfellator (a very silly, campy, sci-fi porno parody of The Gendercator) has a trailer up and will be available for purchase over at Handbasket Productions very soon. The Genderfellator just won an Honorable Mention at the Feminist Porn Awards (DIO also won an FPA in 2010!), so I’m especially excited to have a role in it. In this film, I play (I am not kidding) an Evil President who gets the revolutionary furvor fucked back into her (by the very dreamy Texas). Performing in The Genderfellator is pretty much the campiest thing I have ever done. (And I have done many campy things in my life. So that is saying a lot.)

Thirdly, GUSH: The Official Guide to the G-Spot & Female Ejaculation* is out, and I’ve got a scene in that (with porno newbie Altair Shadow — it was hir first scene, what an honor for me!) that I am stoked to finally get to see. :) The cast & crew are having a release party at the Roxie Cinema on May 5th, so if you are local, you should come out. I’ll even sign your DVD!

Also, amusing GUSH notes: 1) I went to college with Mirabelle Hayes (one of the lovely starlets who is featured in the film) and 2) I went to high school with one of the owners of The Roxie. So this will be a weirdly nostalgic porn screening for me. Also, I was bemused to find a picture of my tits up on FleshBot last week as a part of the GUSH promo — 38,000 views? Jebus!!!

* Foxy folx, what are some alternative words/phrases for what is commonly referred to as “female ejaculation” that don’t specifically gender the act? The term “female ejaculation” has always bugged me for that reason — plenty of men and genderqueers and non-binary-id’ed folks have g-spots and can ejaculate that way, you know (not to mention that plenty of trans women “female ejaculate,” just in a different way)? All I can think of is just referring to ejaculating, squirting, coming, etc… but I’m wondering if other folks have other words/ideas. I’d love to hear so if you do. Thanxxx!