I’m probably never going to do porn again.

This makes me sad. It kind of ticks me off.

I want to talk a little about why.

Last weekend, I was at HUMP!, the totally awesome amateur- and- locally- produced porn festival founded by Dan Savage. Naturally, one of the topics of conversation that came up afterwards was, “If you were going to make a movie for HUMP!, what would it be?”

And I realized: I’m probably never going to make a movie for HUMP!. I’m probably never going to publish erotic photos that are any more revealing than the pin-up shots I did for the upcoming Skepticon calendar. I used to do this sort of thing fairly often (eight hundred thousand years ago in the pre-Internet days), and I got a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction out of it… but I’m probably never going to do it again.

I think it would be career suicide.

A lot of women — women atheists, and other women — have been writing lately about misogyny, and what it’s like to be a woman writer on the Internet. They’ve been writing about the fact that, if you’re a woman writer on the Internet, you’re going to be targeted with a huge amount of sexual and gender-based abuse. At best, you’ll be called ugly and fat: criticizing women’s ideas by insulting their appearance is a tradition that goes back for centuries, and it’s alive and well today. You’ll definitely get tons of gender-specific insults, like “cunt” or “bitch.” And at worst, you’ll be threatened with sexual violence and rape — often in very explicit, detailed, gruesome language.

I will acknowledge: I personally haven’t dealt with as much of this as many other women. I’ve gotten a couple of rape threats, and I’ve gotten quite a few “You’re ugly, who cares what you think” insults, both in public comments and private emails. And yes, of course, I’ve been called a bitch and a cunt and so on. But I haven’t gotten nearly as much of this as other women have. (I’m not sure why: maybe because, while I write about feminism a certain amount, it isn’t the main focus of my writing. Or maybe because I’m just not famous enough yet. Something to look forward to.)

But I’ve gotten enough of this kind of sexist abuse — and I know enough about the sexist abuse other women writers get — to know what would happen if I started doing porn again. Even occasionally. Even just once.

I strongly suspect that, if I did porn again, it would become the one thing anyone ever remembered about me.

Forget about the “You ugly bitch, who wants to look at you naked” comments. Forget about the “Now that you’ve done porn, you have no right to ever complain about sexism and the objectification of women” comments. Forget about the barrage of leering and come-ons and inappropriate jokes I’d get at conferences and talks and public appearances. Forget, even, about the rape threats and the threats of sexual violence. If I made a movie for HUMP!, or posted nude pictures of myself on the Internet, I strongly suspect that it would become the one thing anyone ever remembered about me. I strongly suspect that my writing about atheist anger, or diversity in the atheist movement, or Pascal’s Fucking Wager, would get lost in a sea of, “She’s that atheist who did the dirty pictures, right?”

Look at what Jen McCreight at BlagHag deals with. A year and a half ago, McCreight made a boob joke on the Internet that went viral. She didn’t even show her naked boobs: on Boobquake day, she wore a mildly revealing tank top. And Boobquake is still, by her own acknowledgement, the one thing she’s still most famous for. In a recent interview, when she was asked, “For what are you most known?”, she responded, “I’d like to say my wit and charm, but let’s be honest — my boobs. I could cure cancer and people are still going to make earthquake jokes at me.”

Imagine what would have happened if she had, in fact, shown her naked boobs.

Now imagine what would happen if I did porn, or posed nude.

It would become the one thing anyone ever remembered about me.

And this makes me really, really sad.

I used to do this stuff a fair amount, back in the “by women for women” feminist porn revolution in the late ’80s and ’90s. And I loved it. It was richly satisfying and hugely fun. It helped free me from a lot of the shame I experienced around sex. It helped free my from a lot of my low self-esteem about my body. It helped me claim my sexuality as my own. It helped give me courage for other sexual adventures. It helped me feel like part of a sexual community, and part of a social change movement for sexual liberation. (And a lot of the time, it was just hot.) My sexuality is a huge part of who I am: sex has always been very important to me, and it’s always been a prominent topic in my writing and my public work. Doing porn and erotic modeling was a big part of that: I have extremely fond memories of it, and I don’t regret a minute of it.

But that was back when I was primarily known as a sex writer. And it was back before the Internet made anonymous rape threats easy and cheap. Now that I’m trying to build a writing career around topics other than just sex, it’s hard to imagine that doing porn would be anything other than career suicide.

And that sucks.

I would freaking love to do porn now. I’m more comfortable and more happy with my body than I have been in a very long time. And I would love to share that… for my own exhibitionistic pleasure, and for the sake of others. There aren’t a lot of role models for women of my age — I’m turning 50 at the end of this year — being openly and brazenly sexual, being comfortable and happy with their bodies and their sexualities and proudly celebrating them. I would love to be one of those role models. If I was ever going to do porn or nude pictures, now would be the time.

And I just don’t think I can. Not if I want to be taken seriously as a writer.

This really pisses me off. It pisses me off that, in order to be taken seriously as a female intellectual voice, I have to hold back my sexuality. Especially since it’s such a no-win situation. Women who are too sexual aren’t taken seriously, and women who aren’t sexual enough aren’t taken seriously. Women who are conventionally attractive get valued solely for their sexual appeal; women who aren’t conventionally attractive get dismissed for their lack of it. Women who are conventionally attractive are assumed to be dumb bimbos; women who aren’t conventionally attractive are assumed to be either bitter or desperate. Women who are conventionally attractive get trivialized; women who aren’t conventionally attractive get treated with pity and contempt. We can’t win.

Performance artist Karen Finley used to have nudity in some of her shows. (Still does, for all I know.) Although she wasn’t an erotic performer, she often ran into convoluted local laws governing sexual entertainment. And in England, she was told that, in her stage shows, she could speak, or she could be naked, but she couldn’t do both at once. Quote (from “Pranks!”, published by ReSearch, page 96): “Scotland Yard told me that I could not talk and show my body at the same time — I could do a strip show, but I could not speak.”

That’s how I feel. I can be naked, or I can speak — but I can’t do both.

This pisses me off. And part of me wants to say, “Fuck it, I’m going to do it anyway.” Part of me doesn’t want to let my decisions about my career and my life be inhibited by hateful, misogynist trolls on the Internet. If I do that, then the terrorists win. As has been pointed out many times by many people in these conversations: The whole point of all this misogynist vitriol and threats is to shut women up, to make women feel constrained about what we say and do in public. If I don’t do porn just because of sexist assholes on the Internet, then the sexist assholes win.

But I also have to be smart. And I have to decide what my priorities are. If doing porn were hugely important to me, I’d go ahead and do it, blowback be damned. But I have higher priorities. Creating a career as an atheist writer and speaker is a higher priority than making a five-minute porn video for HUMP!. Duh. That’s a no-brainer.

It just sucks that I should have to make that choice.