Eyebeam Assembly | Hacking//Hustling: A Platform for Sex Workers in a Post-SESTA World

Thursday, September 20, 2018

I will be speaking on a panel called Hacking//Hustling: A Platform for Sex Workers in a Post-SESTA World, hosted by Melissa Gira Grant and Mistress Blunt @ Eyebeam Assembly in Brooklyn, NY. I was invited to speak as a sex worker & technologist on my experiences navigating fintech development as a sex worker & activist + the ways I’ve been specifically targeted for being successful in those efforts.

The event is full, but you can watch a livestream or add yourself to the waitlist. Info below.

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Watch the livestream here

A new federal law called SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) has endangered sex workers and resulted in their erasure from online platforms that once provided work, community and safety.

Organized in collaboration with Melissa Gira Grant and Danielle Blunt, Hacking//Hustling: A Platform for Sex Workers in a Post-SESTA World is a two-day program of conversations and tactical skill sharing led by sex workers to generate knowledge that has been erased in the wake of SESTA. Hacking//Hustling is a space for digital rights advocates, journalists, and allied communities to come learn from sex workers and better understand the developing effects of SESTA on internet freedom for all. This program was organized with the belief that sex workers are the experts of their own experience and an internet that is safe for sex workers, is an internet that is safe for almost everyone.

A panel organized and moderated by Melissa Gira Grant and Danielle Blunt, will feature presentations from sex workers and sex worker rights advocates with a discussion on censorship, discrimination and policing in the wake of SESTA.

Following the panel, a half-day workshop (in collaboration with t4tech) will take place Saturday, September 22. Sex workers and digital rights advocates will work together to address the harms of SESTA legislation with a collaborative approach grounded in principles of harm reduction. We will learn how to to protect data, have safer communications, and build stronger online communities.  

More information about SESTA:

Sex workers and survivors of trafficking oppose SESTA

Congress passes SESTA, despite opposition from sex workers and survivors of trafficking

Crackdowns on sex workers begin before SESTA is signed into law

SESTA supporters say sex work can never be safe

Sex workers protest SESTA nationwide

A constitutional challenge to SESTA is filed

About the panelists and moderators:

Melissa Gira Grant is a senior staff reporter covering criminal justice at The Appeal and the author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work (Verso). She has been a contributing writer at the Village Voice and Pacific Standard, and her work has also appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, BuzzFeed News, the New York Review of Books, and the Nation, among others. Her essays are collected in Best Sex Writing, The Feminist Utopia Project, and Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo. She lives in New York.

@melissagira

Danielle Blunt (she/her) is a NYC-based Dominatrix, a full-spectrum doula and sex worker rights activist. She studies power dynamics through kinesthetic modalities and researches the intersection of public health, sex work and equitable access to tech. Her work has appeared in Kink & Code, Tits & Sass and Psychology Today. She enjoys watching her community thrive and making men cry.   

@mistressblunt

Kiara St. James, has been a community organizer and public speaker for over 20 years. She has been instrumental in changing shelter policies that were discriminatory towards the Trans community. Kiara is the Founder and current Executive director of the New York Transgender Advocacy Group (NYTAG inc), A grassroots  501c-3 non-profit organization, that is Trans-led and intent on creating new opportunities for the Trans community, through various partnerships and innovative initiatives.

@kiaraditmas

Bardot Smith is the alias of an analyst, producer, and demimondaine living on the East Coast. She focuses her time on private consulting, erotic media production, and writing on economics and sex under capitalism. She enjoys pissing on men. She is currently studying for her Series 65.

@ICONOCLASTIAE

Lorelei Lee is a writer, sex worker, and activist. She began doing sex work in 2000 and has worked both on and offline. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Salon, The Rumpus, WIRED, Denver Quarterly, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Buzzfeed, The Establishment, and $pread Magazine, as well as in the anthologies Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys, Off the Set, The Feminist Porn Book, and Coming Out Like A Porn Star.  

@MissLoreleiLee

Ashley Paige is an International Travel Companion & Connoisseur of Kink

@AshleyPaigeNYC

“Whores Will Rise: Protest Art & Resistance Ephemera Against FOSTA/SESTA”

There will also be a community art show, curated by Brit Schulte, highlighting protest art/resistance ephemera from recent demonstrations against SESTA/FOSTA and calling for decriminalization, and labor rights for all sex working/trading people.

Brit Schulte (they/them) is a community organizer and under-employed sex working art historian currently splitting time between Chicago and New York City. They are a member of the Support Ho(s)e collective, Survived & Punished NYC and are the lead coordinator for the Justice for Alisha Walker Defense Campaign. Brit’s current organizing efforts center criminalized survivors, prison abolition and the decriminalization of all sex work/trade.

Eyebeam respects your safety. If you are interested in RSVPing and do not feel comfortable putting in your personal address, phone number, etc. please input the following information (Eyebeam’s contact information).

Street address: 199 Cook St.

City: Brooklyn

State: NY

Country: US

Phone: 347 378 9163

Appearance on IWantRadio July 20, 2018

I will be on air today, July 20 @ 5pm EST with Dr. Lovejoy & Bratty Nikki to talk all things fetish and femdom for the iWantRadio from iWantClips. The show will be aired on Sirius XM channel 415. Tune in, send tribute, & tell me how it made you feel to hear my voice live on the radio...

A Bitch in Operations.

A note from @subbanker on his newly tenured servitude: 

It is not often in life one gets a genuine opportunity to question "why" they are doing something and then guided to find the answer internally. I have been given that opportunity, to think and explain just why I am, consensually, enslaved by Ms. Smith. Every rational being, and even men eventually do manage to gain some rationality over time, will undertake something only if it rewards them.

After consideration the best explanation for why I am enslaved by Ms. Smith is that simple, it improves my life. She educates me daily. She opens my eyes to society and what is happening around me. She provides me focus. She provides me clarity. Being a slave to Ms. Bardot Smith has made me a better person. And for that I am forever in her debt.

A secondary question would be why her? Throughout history humans have worshiped and idolised everything from the Sun to other humans and animals all because of the strongly held belief that that entity is superior, that the entity they worship has a higher power. Spend 10 minutes conversing with Ms. Smith (after contributing capital to make it worth her time of course) and you will quickly come to the same conclusion as I have.

Ms. Smith teams her incredible beauty with an intelligence unmatched by anyone I have spoken to. And she knows this. She leverages it. And in doing so Ms. Smith provides us with a being worthy of worship. A person whose instructions are easy to follow, whose command is easily obeyed.  And for that I will be forever thankful.

I was nervous when approaching Ms. Smith for the first time, conflicted even. While I found myself constantly in agreement with her Tweets and her website enthralling I knew it would be a serious commitment, not simply buying a clip and moving on. One of the main reasons for hesitation was that the required capital commitments were far beyond anything I had even contemplated before and that it felt a risk to make an introductory payment when I had barely interacted with her. 

I knew what I was opening myself up for when I filled out the introduction form, or at least I thought I did.

During the first days I struggled with a feeling of guilt, of regret, of believing my lust had temporarily clouded my judgement. Mental conditioning make this seem so counter-intuitive. But through her counseling and guidance it became clear that there is no need to feel shame for something which feels right, there is no need to be afraid of making progress on any chosen path, that to be in service to her is natural.

When presented with such a person one must then ensure they do all they can to show their deference, to acknowledge their standing and to provide use of some kind. I know that Ms. Smith does not need me in her life so I must work hard to ensure I remain of use to her. I will continue to transfer capital to her, for capital is a symbol of power and as such the power she holds over me demands that it be recognized.

I work hard to make her life more enjoyable.

I will strive to ensure she can focus on causes worthy of her attention by reducing the menial tasks she faces and continue to complete tasks promptly and to an excellent standard whenever she requires. By doing this I hope to remain worthy of her attention. 

I am here because Ms. Bardot Smith is my superior. She has enlightened my mind and I am grateful for that. 

in plain sight,
SB. 

Official correspondence: concierge@smithnoir.com

Adoration.

YOU ARE ON THE LEDGE. AFRAID TO STEP OFF.

With each second that passes. The weight of your thoughts becomes heavier. 

You are coming undone. 

You've fought for a long time now to prevent yourself from falling. 

You understand that some powers are impossible to resist, and

some forces are inevitable. 

your trajectory is sealed. 

and as the clock ticks off the seconds of your life...

you know that you owe each one to me. 

XO, BARDOT. 

p.s. With each item, the story unfolds...

The Mechanisms of Control: Capital and Influence.

Influence is a matter of compelling subtleties.
Control is leveraging them creatively.

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My professional experience is obscured from view at this point. Some of it is classified. This is my outlet to the extent that it can be. My training, initially, was quantitative...understanding the relationship that things have to each other mathematically, dynamically. My natural skill is in the analysis and statement of these relationships through language, in whatever manner I choose. 

I am an anomaly. Off the charts. Outside of the bounds of what's allowed, especially for a woman. Gifted. Furious. And, fed up. 

I will make no further apologies for it.

When I started this site, it was an offshoot of my existence. It was a channel of my thoughts on the subjects I was discussing. As an extension of my perennial fixation on the excessive force of capital. 

I grew up in the bubble of 1980's America. By the late-eighties crash, my family had fallen into that burst and the real-estate bubble that followed. I observed my father's contraction and witnessed the effect that it had on the male ego. I spent my saturdays reading the Barron's from as soon as i could understand what it was. You could say that my financial fetish started from an early age. I understood that CAPITAL was the manifestation of power, a function of influence. Not debt, not prestige, not alleged status. Whether on a micro- or macro-scale, it represented choice and leverage. 

CAPITAL FOLLOWS INFLUENCE. 

Being born female, I had an interesting conflict to reconcile. By 15, I had to escape the blue-collar outskirts. Instead of running away, I secured myself a scholarship to an elite prep school. Academics, themselves, were always easy. I was more concerned with observing the mechanisms of wealth and power around me. I applied it with the distinct advantage of being unexpected, underestimated. A dark horse. I followed it into the ivy league and its secret societies. I quickly assimilated the relationship to the male ego, and my turnkey status in that triangulation. 

Equipped to convey ultimate pleasure. Or ultimate pain. 

With ease, I achieved what many struggle for. I am infuriating. I realize this. And, for a while, I felt insecure about it. I had only wanted to find a purposeful place for myself from an early age.

But, I had overshot. I was out on open ocean, as it were. No longer an object, having achieved a degree of command of my own mind and in the world that most men will never dream to achieve. Yet becoming increasingly attractive as I matured. 

I am a weapon. 

A turning point occurred when I realized I could not apologize for having been given these skills and having created the opportunities to leverage them. I had to take them to their full expression. So here we are. 

I entered the demimonde that is financial domination at the end of 2013. But I had been executing its practice since adolescence. Quickly after I built this platform, copies arose, appropriating my style of communication as it is particularly compelling. They carry on, not understanding that this is no act, not merely a fetish, not meant to be contained in the demimonde itself. But a means to an end, gravity, the assemblage of critical mass.

Beyond fetish. Beyond any one industry.

A DEVASTATING EXPRESSION OF TRUTH... 

Those lines are, after all, imposed by the limited to be limiting. Seems....like a waste of natural ability, in my opinion. While the internet has made it simple for anyone with a pair of tits to perform the superficial machinations of domination, the artform is in the complete capitalization of its underlying tenets.

Financial domination is not crystalized in the seizure of funds, it is not in building a following of perverted sycophants begging you for attention (or worse, humoring them). It is not in status. 

It is the magnetic draw, the unwavering influence of the mind. 

And using that influence to press your full advantage. Elite successful men have been performing this for years. This is my venue to educate the feminine equivalent. In that sense, it is staggering. I do not perform. I do not dress up. I do not "cam" and I do not quid-pro-quo with perverts. I've found that men-at-large are so used to getting things on their terms that they believe even their submission should come with levers which they can control. This is reaffirmed by the cadre of women available online who will acquiesce to the desires of the "customer" online. That betrays the nature of this practice and it is not what will ever occur here.

I offer the opportunity for total loss of control. The purest expression of power exchange. 

The complex power of the feminine is so overwhelming that, even in submission to fantasy, males prefer to retain control of the practice or to contain it and set terms. Society has been built around this, after all. But the realm on the edges of sexuality and power exchange is where men are *specifically* at a disadvantage, easily knocked from their sense of power.

For this reason, even the illicit businesses of fantasy and sex have been contained to the terms prescribed by mainstream business, even when hiding in plain sight. Whether legal or not, they mirror the norms of that world. It is based on familiarity or the belief that women are at an inherent disadvantage so the interaction between she and a man needs to be contained to protect her. Or worse...extorted at a premium for the profit and advantage of men running the industries.

A strong businesswoman can become successful by approximating a business man's behaviors, but she was still accommodating men on their terms. Society has been built around their interests, and here they will find the reverse.

I am interested in total subversion. A freedom of sorts. 

This is not for the masses, the faint of heart. I realize that I am terrifying. That's fine. My practice is sane, but I tolerate nothing but adherence to my terms. Not many are prepared to present at my doorstep, to learn the truth of their natures, to witness the outlines of their vulnerabilities. The dynamic is not sealed before your arrival into it. I could give a fuck less what your cock does. This is not about you. This is not a service; it is an education.

Natural dominance is alive and well. And it's got nothing to do with the superficialities. When you let go, you will experience a meeting of MINDS.  

WINNER TAKE ALL. THE NATURAL ORDER. 

Do you even dare?
xo, Bardot.