Carnival of Curiosity: I Have More Than One Pseudonym

No, I don’t have one as famous as Chuck Tingle or anything, but I have used multiple ‘nyms in multiple ways for the past 25 years, including 2 that have published erotica and porn, as well as friendship stories that made humorous use of erotica’s and porn’s tropes without ever having the characters engage with each other sexually.

I did it for many different reasons, but one of the most important was that it raised funds for activist work I was doing at the time. In one of my more notable successes, I auctioned off a single, autographed story (on paper, like I was a common Gutenberg, can you believe it?) for over $900 to fund an important conference trip.

So when it became time to make a major push to retire the debt with which Richard Carrier’s lawsuit saddled FreethoughtBlogs, I thought to myself, “Self,” I thought, “what was the most successful thing you’ve ever done when you needed to raise money for a good cause?” And, obviously, I thought of porn.

So I have decided to once again auction off my skills of an artist. In this case, however, I’m offering you more control over my keyboard and less paper and autographs. For this fundraiser, there will be an auction and also a separate, flat-rate bonus round.

For the first, the winning bid will entirely and solely commission me, Crip Dyke, to write a story, humorous or serious, in which main characters the winner outlines engage in friendship, romance and/or hot steamy sex, as specified by the winner alone.

My custom stories have been used in the past as birthday, anniversary, or other gifts for friends, partners & spouses. They have been used to open up dialog about including new kinds of sex in a relationship when bringing up the possibility directly seemed scary, or to share a fantasy that someone felt as though they could not adequately describe. Other times a custom story can be used simply to tell a person how much you care about and appreciate them. One was even used to embed a confession and apology – a strategy that appeared to work in restoring that relationship’s balance. (Though please, don’t mistreat anyone just for the opportunity to get more from one of my stories!)

If you are the winner, you can expect the final story to fall between 2000 and 6000 words and to be actually edited, unlike the work I typically post to my blog. For best results, I will expect you to be actively involved in imagining what type of story would make you most happy and to e-mail back and forth several times to make sure the final product does not violate any important ideas you hold about who the characters should be and how they should experience their shared world. Because both communication and art take time, allow 30 days from first e-mail contact about the story to delivery of the final product. While I expect to take significantly less than this, total time required will depend in part on the prompt return of e-mails asking for your custom parameters.

You may use this story as you like, so long as you do not sell it for publication, include it in your own for-sale publication, put the text up on a paywalled website, or put any part of it on merchandise for sale. This is slightly broader than unlimited non-commercial use as you should feel free to include choice quotes on your business website or in other free but commercially related venues, perhaps even in your personal bio, so long as the quotes themselves are not behind a paywall. At your whim the story can be published on this blog or delivered privately to you for your exclusive use.

As a (former) erotic/pornograhic professional short story writer who has taught workshops on short story writing generally and sex story writing specifically, my excellent work does not come free, or even cheap. I expect to spend more than 8 hours on this project, and at the US$15 minimum living wage that I support, that would mean that the absolute minimum value of this project is US$120. If there is no bid matching or exceeding $120, there will, sadly, be no custom short story delivered to a single person this month – though if the monthly fundraisers continue, there will be future opportunities to win this rare and coveted Crip Dyke custom work.

The winner of this auction will be determined according to rules developed by my FtB friend and generous mailer of curiously light cardboard boxes, Marcus Ranum: You may bid in the comments below or via e-mail (sent to CripDyke on Gmail) for more privacy. All bids will be assumed to be denominated in US dollars. The highest bid will take the prize for the price of $1 more than the second highest bid, or $121 if there are no other qualifying bids. So feel free to bid what you’re willing to pay without worrying that you are overbidding.

But wait, that’s not all! 

If the second-highest bid is over US $200, I will write a custom story for that bidder as well, for exactly the amount of the bid.

But wait, that’s still not all!

Of course, as worthy of support as both the arts and FtB might happen to be, not everyone has $200 or even $121 to spend on the effort. This is why I am also offering a community story. For this effort, every single person who donates $10 and/or sends me a really good sob story about why their under $10 donation should be sufficient (“really good” judged by my whim, of course) will get to contribute one single detail of character, setting or plot to a community creative effort where all the details provided are woven into a single NSFW story, probably intended to be humorous, though I’m reserving artistic freedom here, to be published right here on this blog. Donations in excess of $10 to this effort entitle the donor to specify one detail per $10 given (rounding up or down at my whim, but larger donations are more likely to be rounded up).

Let me be clear here: I fully expect people to try to use this fundraiser to suggest details that appear hard to incorporate into any short story, or even details that appear to contradict other suggested details should they appear in the comments. There will be no detail, silly, nonsensical or contradictory enough to be omitted. My mind is up for this challenge you trolls, so bring it if you got it.

If this effort fails to raise $120, donations will be kept and suggested details will be held over to the next fundraiser, with a community story being written as soon as donations exceed the $120 minimum. If the community story raises $500 or more for the effort, I will also record a dramatic reading of our collective’s story and upload the audio here for unlimited non-commercial use.

All donations for the auction or the community-created story are expected to be verified by screenshot or other reasonably suitable method. There will be no FBI investigations here, but as this work is undertaken on behalf of FtB I have a duty to the network to make a minimal effort to verify that people are donating what they have pledged.

Good luck and good bidding!

Trouble Keeping Up

Yes, I know I’m cynical a lot of times, and it seems like the times when it all goes to complete shit that I would be in my natural element. But I’m not. I’m just feeling terrible about all this the last couple weeks, and my usual snark and satire feel poorly suited to our current moment.

But this has a lot to do with how I practice it. My snark and satire, when it’s not used for self-deprecating humor, is most targeted at authoritarians and their supporters. Writing merely factual pieces feels useless right now, and you can get news from other places than this blog. Writing satire and snark feels completely inadequate, since there appears to be nothing short of exploding a nuclear weapon on US territory that Trump and his supporters won’t do.

So, I haven’t been contributing much to FtB lately. But I have found a bit of humor that does make me feel better in this moment. it’s not by me, and I haven’t been able to trace the source yet, but I place it here for what enjoyment you might be able to take in this otherwise horrible and sad moment:

 

…an anarchist and her mom prepare for a protest…

I’ve Been Gone A Few Days

Part of it is the normal cycle of health stuff & part is that a friend needs some help right about now & the last part is that I’m teaching myself to bake sourdough bread from scratch. That wasn’t time consuming when I was just feeding the sourdough starter a couple times a day for a week, but the actual bread making is quite time consuming. I’d upload a picture, but WordPress hasn’t been letting me do that for the past few days and I don’t quite have time to figure out what’s wrong.

I’ll be back to a more regular posting schedule soon, though! See y’all then.

 

Want to Celebrate Rape? Don’t Do It In My Comments.

My settings require the first comment by any commenter to be approved, regardless of content. I approve most of the comments that reach me, and then folks’ comments are almost always automatically approved thereafter unless they trip the spam trap. The exceptions are rare, and so far they’ve always end up approved after I read them. Because of that, I’ve never yet needed to create a specific comment policy. Today though, in response to the Aaron Persky post, someone decided to wish rape on someone else in a comment:

guilty in a forcible rape for which he served 3 months? i devoutly hope his white ass is no longer virgin. and the judge should be deeply deeply ashamed. i wonder how he can look his daughter or grand daughters in the eye. for shame. for you too. the job is bad at his job. he needs to be fired, which in an instance like this, is a recall. bye felicia! [emphasis added – cd]

I understand the outrage. I obviously share it. Here at Pervert Justice, though, wishing rape on someone will get your comments circular-filed every single time.

 

I Get Spam: Religion & Meaning

It is often said that religion gives meaning to otherwise meaningless things. I’m of two minds about the claim. On the one hand, religion doesn’t add information in the sense of giving you more facts about the universe than you had without religion. On the other hand, it certainly is true that if a person speaks in religious code, familiarity with the religion certainly helps decipher quite a lot.

My tendency, though, is to come down on the side of those who believe it is false to say that religion gives meaning to otherwise meaningless things. This is because knowing the religious codes and conventions does not require actual belief.

[Read more…]

Moving Day Requires Procrastination … but not too much

So I’m moving on Tuesday, and it’s been very hard to write anything for the last 10 days because of the upcoming move, but rest assured, we’ll be getting back to important topics soon.

In the meantime, I was reminded of Helen Pluckrose’s work at Aeromagazine by someone whom I will not blame, because I’m taking the high road here.

As a result, I feel compelled to write about how wrong Pluckrose is about certain important aspects of intersectionality. And yet, I don’t actually have time right now, plus I have an aversion to giving Pluckrose’s thoughts any more specific attention (such as might occur during an actual critique of any specific article).

Thus, I will limit myself to saying that the metaphor/theoretical model of Intersectionality was introduced by Crenshaw in the late 80s, but not the concept. The concept of intersectionality is at least as old as, “Ain’t I a woman?” as anyone questing for Truth might easily find.

I will also say that Crenshaw’s metaphor/model of intersectionality was not invented as a way to encourage listening. Nor was it crafted because she was opposed to the idea of a future society devoid of power structures that encourage scrutiny of race or gender. Intersectionality was crafted as a response to a practical problem in lawsuits seeking remedy for discrimination against Black women in the workplace:

If it is not completely obvious, what the courts have constructed, and what Crenshaw decries, is a series of justifications that both protects those who discriminate on the basis of (legal) sex if it just might be that the bigots discriminated against a particular plaintiff on the basis of race and also protects those who discriminate on the basis of race if it just might be that the bigots discriminated against a particular plaintiff on the basis of sex. Of course, Black men were not required to prove that their discrimination was racial only, not a combination of race and sex, vice versa for white women.

If you haven’t already, go back and read some of the other articles in my series On the Corner, so you don’t end up having conversations just as misconceived and misinformed as those of Pluckrose.

Off to make lunch and do more packing and cleaning!

 

 

 

Lost Days: Wrist/Thumb Edition

So, once again I’ve gone without posting for a few days in a row. This will happen for nearly all writers, of course, but happens a bit more frequently here at Pervert Justice. I have a bone condition that causes chronic pain, this is most noticeable in my knees and lower back where humans carry a great deal of skeletal stress. It doesn’t leave me unable to walk but makes all walking painful. I use a variety of techniques to avoid or minimize that pain, including using assistive devices and personal vehicles (like wheelchairs and scooters) for longer distances, more painful days, and other unusual situations. But in most cases, I still have good contact with the outside world because of the marvels of personal computing.

Alas, despite the bone problems being most noticeable in particular places, they aren’t limited to them, and last week I dramatically aggravated my right wrist & thumb (though how I did it, I don’t know) leading to a complete inability to type without screaming agony. Though I am still having higher pain than normal in that area, I’m back to typing again with regular content resuming later tonight or early tomorrow. Sorry about the gap & thanks for reading.

Feminist Friday: Countdown

Feminist waves have been endlessly debated, and wave theory has been perpetually (and perhaps deliberately) misunderstood amongst the public generally and anti-feminists specifically. To give feminists the credit they are due and also to help clear up consistent misunderstandings, I have encouraged you all, my wonderful readers, to name feminists about whom you’d like to know more.

My series on the ethics and thought of various feminists will (I hope) be a regular Frigga’s Day feature here, but for various reasons it will not start until next week. In the meantime, I hope that you celebrate this Friday by reading (if you haven’t already) my post on the Seneca Falls convention which gave contractarian feminisms their initial shape, the document produced by the Seneca Falls attendees, my writing on why Crenshaw first elaborated the metaphor of intersectionality and how it is/was useful, or my thoughts on the limits of her initial articulation of intersectionality.

Or, perhaps, you could simply give me more ideas for which feminists deserve the attention of Pervert Justice in the comments of this post or the original announcement of this effort.

In the meantime, have a good Friday and a good weekend!