I became aware last night of a sex worker on Twitter going by the name of @furrygirl, who was attacking a friend of a friend, Madison Young, for posting a portrait of her breastfeeding her daughter, which came from an art project she did about her journey to motherhood.
Kitty, who witnessed the event that kicked it all off (which @furrygirl didn’t attend) also offers some extra context:
Madison did a performance at Sizzle wherein she breastfed (with two other women, all clothed) and talked about how moving breastfeeding was for her. They then talked about the Great Latch-On, a breastfeeding awareness day. Now, normally, Sizzle can have some erotic content- I’ve been a lingerie-clad figure model before, for example. But this particular one had [the breastfeeding], and Maggie [Mayhem] talking about taking AZT in Africa, and the organizer from Slutwalk talking about rape, and Maxine [Holloway] talking about Hep C, and me talking about consent being sexy. Not exactly erotic, certainly not a space where people were being voyeuristic.I think that’s important context cause it’s not just an image, it’s a performance and I think what she MEANT to say was “It’s fitting that a drama for western feminists is deciding if there’s a line between fetishizing having a baby and just fetishizing a baby.” – had she said that in the beginning it would’ve been a different discussion!
@furrygirl initially began her tirade against Madison by calling her a paedophile, and then broadened her attack to San Franciscan sex workers and pornographers in general, and then feminist porn industry for supporting kink with non-consenting beings and even the consumers, feminist kinksters themselves.
These could be fair enough complaints of Madison and her supporters, if only the image were in any way erotic. But it’s not: it was taken as part of an art piece, of a fully clothed woman breastfeeding her child, where the only hint of sexuality is the shape of the breast. You can’t even see any nipple.
“It’s funny to see how many feminist kinksters don’t think consent matters when it comes to creating erotic art w/ a baby. SICK, end of story”
Now, consent matters. Oh, hell, consent really fucking matters. The fundamental problem with @furrygirl’s argument is that that photo isn’t in any way erotic: it’s a shot of a mother, with her baby, produced for an art project. The thing about being a pornographer is it doesn’t have to be your life 24/7. Not every photograph or video you appear in is pornographic. Especially if you also happen to be an artist who produces work about your own life, as is the case with Madison.
Before she started this war, @furrygirl would probably have struck me as a pretty awesome person; founder of the Sex Work Activists, Allies and You project, she seems like she might have a lot of good things to say about sex and politics. Only now, I see her as someone who doesn’t do her research, and refuses to lose an argument. (When I replied to her from my public personal Twitter account, she blocked me without bothering to respond.)
As a final dig, she leaves this note:
It seems to me as if she said something other than what she meant to say, but didn’t want to admit that she’d got it wrong so kept fighting her original battle, even after several people pointed out obvious flaws in her attack.
So, I have some better offers of takeaways from this story:
- Before you fight, do your research. Find out what the thing that stimulated your anger is actually about.
- When arguing, if you realise that you’re wrong, back down and apologise to those you’ve insulted un-necessarily.
- Blocking those who disagree with you from communicating further with you is not good form when attempting to debate serious topics like consent, especially not if you want respect.
And of course: consent matters. Always. No exceptions, no excuses.
There’s a lot of people who seem intent on finding breastfeeding offensive. You’ve got Livejournal trying to ban images of it because they found it pornographic; you’ve got my weird acquaintance who said he’d ban breastfeeding anywhere apart from the home (because he thought breasts were disgusting, apparently); and you’ve got Furrygirl who seems to think a swaddled baby eating is sexual. Cripes.
The portrait itself is quite clear to me: we’re unused to seeing images of mothers being anything but who they are. This woman holding a baby should be tired, ugly, grey-haired, possibly with a mop in hand – but instead she’s still a complete, whole woman, who, yes, is attractive, but this is not a sexual portrait. She is clothed; there is nothing provocative about her stance, and nothing about her says “fuck me.” (Anyhow, didn’t we just have this debate over how a girl can look good and not be inviting sex?!) She looks like a strong and capable female.
My admiration of the portrait asides, it’s clear that Furrygirl has got her wires crossed. I’ve love to know what she thinks paedophilic pornography looks like. Clearly One Born Every Minute needs to be removed from our screens; ban this filth! I hate seeing what our natural bodies look like at any age! Remind me to shop my mother for still having my baby photos. I think in one I might be in the bath. How obscene.
Breasts are a lovely natural things that I think are kind of alright because they do lots of stuff like feeling good when I consent to people doing an assortment of things to them. Should the unthinkable happen and I end up with a child, their role in my life will morph and I’d use them to feed my child if it’s suitable for the situation. Just because a child now lays claim to my boobs it does not mean that my partner must give up theirs; oddly enough I imagine I could let my child suckle without finding it a sexual thing, just as I could let my partner without feeling he’s now an adult baby. It’s very sad that Furrygirl either finds breasts so abhorrent when used for one of their natural roles; either that or she actually does find the whole thing a bit sexual and is overcompensating.
Longtalk is long; my apologies.
Furry has a past issue with Madison related to money. She wrote on one of her tweets, which I think she’s since deleted, about Madison ripping her off. So, it’s entirely possible that she doesn’t even really have a problem with Madison’s work or photo. She has a personal issue with her and has chosen to attack her in the nastiest way possible.
I’ve always had issues with @furrygirl – I approve of her SWAAY project, her veganism and her positivity towards porn, but when she decides she’s going to take umbrage at something, she will basically rant for a long, long time about it, without entering into an actual debate, her tone being that what she says is automatically right.
It’s a shame in this way that @furrygirl effectively shoots herself in the foot by acting in such a way, as she does seem to have some influence in the sex worker world (she certainly acts as if she does) and could easily do the necessary research and present herself as open to debate and reason, thus providing a platform for people to talk, as opposed to a brick wall.
I followed these tweets regarding breastfeeding myself and, although I didn’t attempt to take her up on it, I did wonder exactly where she was coming from and what she hoped to achieve. So I stayed well out of it, because it wasn’t my place. She could have too, of course… but didn’t.
The main problem I have with @furrygirl is that she is a militant atheist, and although that’s fine, she has said some things which imply that anyone of a religious or spiritual bent should not be involved in sex work or sexuality debate at all – something like “we need more rational thinkers and less spiritual woo-woo” – and as a lifelong Christian who is sex-positive, that offends me. But, unlike her, I rise above it. I think she should probably do the same.
A very thought-provoking post. I agree with everything you’ve said here, although I would question whether it’s possible to say that an image is or isn’t sexual or erotic simply because it doesn’t involve nudity. On the contrary, it seems quite popular these days for mainstream couples to get arty photographs taken of themselves naked with their newborn. I find this a bit odd, but it’s none the less very widely accepted from what I can tell.
Construing this image as sexualising of the child seems to need to involve one (or more) of three suppositions:
(a) that there’s something about the way that Madison Young has presented herself in this image that sexualises the situation
(b) that because Madison Young is a porn star then every photo of her should/will be construed as sexual, so there is an onus on her (that isn’t on the rest of us) to avoid having her photo taken in this way
(c) that something about the context in which the photograph was used (that would have to be intentionally used, and by Madison) sexualised the image.
The only one that seems rational to me is (c), but then it’s not exactly an open-and-shut argument either. Anyway, great site Katie <3