Getting Away With...

May 20, 2008 13:34

***re-post from www.TonyaJoneMiller.com***

Some of you may remember last year when the bank came after us and made us change a bunch of stuff on the Bay City Blues website in order to keep our merchant processing account. No references to incest, ageplay, bestiality, death, torture, or non-consensual sex of any kind on BCB itself, regardless of context. Included in the category of "non-consent" was rape (duh), hypnosis (huh), and sleep (uhh really?). What. The. Fuck. We'd just spent hundreds of dollars designing the Hypnosis Lounge and had to bag the whole thing. We had to fight to keep the chat room and girls' emails (again, wtf?). It cost us considerable time and money to get in compliance, because we had to revise nearly every girl's profile and edit out about 1/2 the entries in the City Hall forums. That's one of the reasons we decided to retire the forums- it was too hard to keep them ultra clean and not nearly as much fun if we couldn't say what we wanted.

The whole situation still upsets me when I think about it. For so many reasons. First of all, they financially forced us to conform to their beliefs and limitations. They don't tell restaurants what to serve or department stores what to sell, even though some of those foods and products are the direct result of animal cruelty and/or inhumane labor practices. Bookstores sell books about genocide, rape, and other assorted atrocities. But we're not supposed to talk about it, simply because we sell phone sex between two consenting parties of legal age.

What's the big deal, you ask? A lot of adult businesses use "cheat" credit card accounts and aren't quite being honest about their goods/services. But try to legally process credit cards for an adult business, and you can prepare for an arduous process akin to a papal election. Howard has run many businesses, been a member of the NJ bar and a trader on the stock exchange, and has excellent credit. It took him over two years to get us our own merchant account for Bay City Blues phone sex, and we are lucky to have it. The application was 60 pages of personal information and financial history. After all that, the bastards can still arbitrarily decide to censor our speech. Obviously, we have to be able to run credit cards. We had no choice but to comply.

Second, do they really think that by sweeping these things under the rug they can make them disappear? People have kinky sex and perverted dreams. The whole point of phone sex, in my eyes, is to give people an outlet for the fantasies they cannot act upon in "real" life, for whatever reasons. Maybe what they want to do is illegal or harmful, and being conscientious human beings, they would never really break the law or hurt anyone. Maybe the fantasy is not anatomically possible or involves imaginary creatures/beings. Maybe the fantasizer is physically handicapped or socially awkward and is able to interact less awkwardly on the telephone. The point is, when we as a society marginalize those we simply do not understand, we turn normally law-abiding citizens into criminals and force them underground where they are more likely to financially contribute (consciously or not) to human trafficking and the illegal sex trade.

Here's where I'm going with this...I have a ton of American Dad, Simpsons, and Family Guy episodes recorded on my dvr, and I often put them on in the background while I'm working at the computer. One thing I can't help but laughing about is what they get away with on those shows. I noted overt references to pedophilia, bestiality, and incest in just one episode of the Family Guy. A caller of mine told me the show is banned in a lot of countries, which I didn't know but which doesn't surprise me at all. They get away with murder, saying things on prime time network television that we cannot even refer to on an adult website. The inequity of it would piss me off a lot more if I didn't strongly believe that SOMEONE needs to be testing and poking fun at the easily offended who insist upon inflicting their morals and values on others. Denying the validity of others' beliefs, thoughts, and fantasies- to me, THAT is one of the most truly offensive and de-humanizing things a person can do.

Now I'll get off my soapbox. *chuckle* I have to work on my piece for the Masturbate-a-thon, which is coming up in less than two weeks. I've decided what angle to take and just need to work on the details. I'm really looking forward to this performance! Also have a few auditions coming up. I'm feeling pretty rested, and it would be nice to do another play soon. But I'm getting ahead of myself, as I am wont to do. In my immediate future is an elliptical machine, a hot shower, and happy hour with my friend Ingrid tonight...Hopefully followed by some seriously perverted, non-bank-sanctioned phone sex. Heh.

-Tonya
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