You probably know that I try my best not to talk about international politics ever, on this blog but also pretty much in the real world. But the #Kony2012 hysteria–and a backlash so immediate that I actually knew about the backlash before the hysteria–has been really fascinating me for the past week or so.

The story, about Invisible Children, a group of Americans who produced a video calling for military action against a kidnapper in a country that most Americans would never be able to find on a map, gained a lot of traction almost immediately, thanks in large part to the Twitter-going ways of Jesus-loving teenagers in Alabama and also Invisible Children’s tactic of using Twitter to bomb the accounts of certain celebrities like Ryan Seacrest and Ellen DeGeneres,* whose opinions on African militarization are suddenly things we are meant to consider seriously.

But this story–to put it unsympathetically, a bunch of privileged white people go to somewhere far away and use exploited children as a means to feel better about themselves and their white privilege and their frankly rather dodgy organization–sounded eerily familiar. And then I remembered the article I read last month about The Grey Man.

That’s gotten very little coverage in the US, that I’ve seen, anyway, so let me give you some background:

The Grey Man is a relatively new Australian charity that claims to work on ending child trafficking and sex work in Southeast Asia. Their vigilante methods of capturing traffickers was profiled in a national news story in 2009 and their profile has been raised steadily since then. Funded entirely by donations, the group’s success stories haven’t been believed quite so easily by sex workers groups, who (correctly) tend to ask questions before believing every story that comes along about the rescue of child sex slaves.

So there was one problm: The Grey Man volunteers, men with military and police training, weren’t really telling the truth about their many rescue missions.

Thai media, actually, accused the charity in December of faking the rescue of 21 rural children, lying to the adults in the community about why they were there and then using photos of the children to ask for money via Facebook**. Andrew Drummond, a British journalist who independently investigated the story, said that the children never left their village, all lived at home and all went to school every day. More than that, he found that the children’s education was government-funded so that their education was paid for. He even took a photo of them to match the one that The Grey Man took; the children were never in any kind of danger at all.

Australian media, with few exceptions, were pretty silent about that news. But the Scarlet Alliance, a major group of Australian sex workers, has called them out on it. According to an editorial by the Alliance’s Ari Reid:

Apart from exploiting Thai children, causing damage to the reputation of an entire village and strengthening harmful and hurtful stereotypes, it is also being alleged that the charity conned the Australian public in order to get donations… it appears the Australian media is too obsessed with Asian sex slaves and white saviour stereotypes to do so…

So where does that leave everyone?

[I]t falls on sex workers, using a voice that is already marginalised, to compete for airtime against charities with whom we already compete with for funding, to ensure the media and public are educated on complex issues such as trafficking. Sex workers were the only people to review and critique the unethical Oscar nominated documentary “Born into Brothels”. Sex workers in the US are driving the response to Ashton Kudger and Demi Moore’s failed foray into “rescuing” a imaginary American child sex slaves, playing watchdog to Google’s funding of inappropriate rescue organisations, and warning Obama of the damage forced rescue reeks in the lives of sex workers in Cambodia.

*I really like Ellen DeGeneres, generally, but this is the third time in just the past month or so that the weight of her celebrity has been turned into a ridiculous public issue which, in every single case, makes her look clueless at best.

**Perhaps it’s not surprising that Invisible Children shows up near the top of their Facebook Likes.

Tonight at Brown:

Have you heard of Project Weber yet? They’re an amazing group in Providence, RI doing direct service and outreach to male sexworkers in our state.

Come find out more as Richard Holcomb, co-founder of Project Weber, gives us an in-depth look into the world of male prostitution on the streets of U.S. cities and abroad. Through lecture, documentary clips, and a panel, this presentation will cover data, personal and professional experiences with this population, and the barriers and challenges in providing male sex-workers with appropriate services and support. The panel will include Richard Holcomb, one of Project Weber’s fantastic outreach workers, and documentary filmaker Dio Traverso, with SNEAK PEEK CLIPS from the documentary “Invisible”.

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

Smith-Buonnano 106 [95 Cushing Street between Brown and Thayer*]

[Disclaimer: I haven't actually heard of Project Weber before and they don't seem to have a website, just a Facebook page with no real info on it; here's a profile of the founder, though. AIDS Care Ocean State sponsored a screening of this a few weeks ago, though, one I had to miss because I was hosting an event somewhere else. I'm hoping to go tonight and have a report tomorrow since this is, you know, a subject I'm very interested in...]

*It’s easiest to find it if you enter from Brown Street. If you’re coming from Thayer take the alley behind Blue State that doesn’t actually look like a street…]

[photo: Philip Lorca DiCorcia, from the series Hustlers, which has nothing at all to do with Providence or with this movie]

I first encountered the melody to “Never On Sunday,” without realizing it, as the base for late-nineties cheesefest “No Tengo Dinero,” a tinny sort of mariachi-inspired Shaggy-lite number that hit pop radio around my junior year of high school.  Years later, I’d encounter the song again as the lead track on Petula Clark’s truly fabulous 1965 album The World’s Greatest International Hits!  In the song, Clark tells a man how he can kiss her on any day of the week except Sunday, because by that point of the week she’s worn out from all the kissing.

I didn’t realize until much, much later that the song (which was originally performed in Greek with completely different lyrics) was the theme to Never On Sunday, an Oscar-nominated film from 1960 that’s part light-hearted Mediterranean comedy and part social drama about a prostitutes’ rebellion in Greece’s largest port city.

Never On Sunday was directed by Jules Dassin, the celebrated noir director who was blacklisted from Hollywood and who in 1955 made the tedious (though highly-regarded) French thriller Rififi.  Five years later, Dassin cast his real-life love Melina Mercouri to play the lead in the surprisingly cosmopolitan Never On Sunday.  With far too many Greek subtitles for an American film from 1960, there’s also far too much emphasis on the American character Homer (played by Dassin himself) for a film that sought only a Continental audience.

Never On Sunday centers around Ilya (or Elia, in the subtitled version I saw), a fun-loving prostitute who makes her living off the many sailors in Piraeus, Greece’s largest port city.  She works for herself, sets her own hours and her own rates, and in return the whole city looks after her.  The very hunky working men of Piraeus line up, without any hostility toward her or toward one another, to attend the weekly parties she throws each Sunday.

Mercouri (who in the eighties would go on to become the Greek minister of culture) is delightful as Ilya, the rare cinematic hooker with brains to match her charm.  When the other prostitutes of Piraeus are squeezed for money by their anonymous money-hungry landlord, only the independent Ilya can step in to save them.

Ilya’s relationship with her clients is perhaps a little unrealistic; in an early scene she taunts them, calling them slaves as she encourages them to ditch work and jump into the ocean with her.  (They do.)  In a classic Hollywood movie Ilya wouldn’t stand a chance against the American who shows up looking to save her soul.  But Never On Sunday isn’t a classic Hollywood movie, and the ending is actually handled quite well.

A friend and I were discussing the movie the other night and he mentioned his opinion that the film maybe goes a little out of its way to exoticize Greece, in a “that could never happen HERE” sort of way.  I can’t quite figure out whether I agree or not, though the film’s four Oscar nominations and the Best Actress award given to Mercouri at Cannes maybe suggest that the movie’s slightly less transgressive than I’m making it out to be.

In any event, though, there’s a lot going on underneath this movie’s sunny exterior.  Homer, the American, tries his best to squeeze Ilya into his romantic definitions of how modern Greeks should reflect the culture and philosophy of ancient Greek culture.  And Ilya’s justifications for ignoring this–she dislikes Aristotle because he didn’t have nice things to say about women, and she views classic the child-killer Madea as a comedic heroine–while seemingly flighty, are actually a pretty well-considered look at the mentality of modern Greece, at America’s desire to culturally colonize postwar Europe, and (very distinctly) about the rights of prostitutes to carry on without any outside meddling.

Never On Sunday is currently streaming on Netflix, if you’re interested.  Here’s one final version of the film’s theme, this time in Cantonese.  I have no idea what is happening here:

Look at me, all up and eating a healthy breakfast and starting my day before 9am on a Sunday.  Here’s some news and stuff:

New York approved gay marriage!  Although hopefully you knew that already.  I had an interesting discussion last week with a gay marriage advocate here in Rhode Island, one who has no desire to actually get married herself.  This really isn’t at all about marriage as a heteronormative institution or anything like that; it’s about the state not telling certain people that they can do certain things that other people are forbidden to do.  Rich Juzwiak, who was out in New York that night, had maybe the most thoughtful take on the New York issue I’ve seen this week.

But while all of that was happening, the NY Eagle was being randomly raided by the fire department?

Google pulled an ad from some Dublin-based sex workers concerned about their rights being possibly affected by a proposed change in prostitution law.  (Ireland, I hadn’t realized, is currently like Canada, where the sale of sex itself is legal but most other things affiliated with prostitution are not.)

The 2012 Rentboy calendar is now available for pre-order on Amazon, which is always sort of funny to me.  Sad that I wasn’t asked to participate!  (Not really.)

Damon Albarn has an opera.  Stephin Merritt, the Knife, and now Damon Albarn.  Who knew that every musician I’ve ever nerded out over would move into opera?  (Stuart and Jarvis, are you next?)

There is nothing I appreciate more than an overly serious blog that clearly takes a lot of time for someone (or several someones) to maintain, and I’ve been meaning to link to Gaga Stigmata, the Journal of Lady Gaga Studies, since Tremblebot first told me about it way back when.  But anyway, if you’re looking for something to read today, might I suggest their seven-part (so far!) series on the “Edge Of Glory” video.  (Personally, “Edge of Glory” is the first Gaga video that I’ve genuinely liked, though I know I’m basically alone in that.)

I’ve been trying to think of a summer cocktail for the house, and the cynar-St. Germain-lemon juice combo in the Take 3 definitely sounds like it’s worth a try.  (Cynar, the Campari-esque liquor made from distilled artichokes, is delicious.  Also, it comes from artichokes.)  The Take 3 is one of the drinks the NY Times put in their 3-ingredient summer cocktail feature.

HIV-positive Chicago man says that he was denied his meds while in jail.  And he isn’t the only one: according to the Sun-Times, there were 16 federal lawsuits last year nationwide, and experts point out that’s probably just the tip of the iceberg.

“Will Smith and Jay-Z are in negotiations with Oscar-winning screenwriter and actress Emma Thompson to re-adapt the screenplay for an updated version of the musical that would star Smith’s youngest progeny, Willow.“  “The musical” is, of course, Annie.

Some RISD designers have made a really eye-catching #2 pencil billboard in Providence.  Slightly overwrought explanation here.

Gays In The Military: How America Thanked Me is a Kickstarter project that sounds (possibly) really cool.  Also it’s ending in four hours and met its goal already.

Finally, some advice:  “If you’re harboring a missing $30 million Warhol in your home, try to take it off the wall before filming an interview for your new reality show.“

[video: The Male Nurse, "Magic Circle In The Sky" (1997)]

At long last, I can finally announce this reading I’m organizing in Providence on June 9th. I am very, very excited to have put this together. These are some of my favorite people (ahem ahem ahem ahem), largely because they are all smart and funny and interesting, and so I expect this event to be a big heap of fun.

The reading is part of Q30, which is this month-long queer art happening that a guy named Michael Kurt organized. He’s taken over a space downtown for the month and there’s readings and talks and music and films and a whole bunch of other stuff. It’s good that it’s happening in June because with the colleges out there’s often a shortage of interesting events going on.

Full performer bios after the jump:

AUDACIA RAY is a former sex worker and current media maker (and shaker). She has blogged about sexuality, culture, and politics since 2004 -including stints blogging for Fleshbot and the Village Voice – and spent three years as an executive editor at the Utne Reader award-winning $pread magazine. She is the author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration and won a Feminist Porn Award for her film The Bi Apple. These days, Audacia is the director of the Red Umbrella Project, which amplifies the voices of people in the sex trade through live storytelling events, media training, and advocacy workshops. Her monthly storytelling series the Red Umbrella Diaries and her blog Waking Vixen were named to the Village Voice’s Best of 2010 list. Learn more about her work at redumbrellaproject.org and audaciaray.com.

Born on the same day as Dolly Parton and Edgar Allan Poe, LOLA D. SORROW enjoys reading, writing, and driving very fast. She is currently studying to become Dr. Queer, Medicine Woman.

MARIA DIAZ is a writer who lives on the Internet. She currently works as a sex toy slinger in marketing at EdenFantasys.com.

MATTHEW LAWRENCE is a writer, curator, event planner and part-time dogwalker. He co-edits Headmaster, the biannual art magazine for man-lovers, and lives in Rhode Island with his dear friend Lady Catterley.

MELISSA GIRA GRANT is the co-editor of Coming & Crying, a collection of true stories about sex. Her work has appeared in Jezebel, Slate, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and $pread. She lives in Brooklyn and on the internet.

WILL VAIL is a blogger currently working as a clerk for a national chain of adult video stores. He is currently working on a hyper-text novel and will soon launch the experimental blog First Chapter.

Just a quick little reminder that you’ve only got until Saturday to apply for the night of sexy reading that I’m hosting in Providence on June 9th.  If you’re interested, send me an e-mail with your name, a very brief bio, and a sample of something you’re proud of.  More details are here.

Last year I took part in the inaugural Sex Worker Cabaret, the event to take place before the doors closed at the Slipper Room on the Lower East Side.  The event was a lot of fun, and featured such pretty and nice people as Lorelei Lee, Jodi Sh Doff, Essence Revealed, Inbred Hybrid Collective* and Adam The Terrible.  Everyone was very glamorous and glittery and fabulous and I read a story un-glamorous story about my godparents’ yard sale.

This June, all the magic is happening again.  This time it’s at Public Assembly in Brooklyn, and right now there’s an open call for performers (and also video artists!)  There’s not a ton of time, though; the deadline is April 7.

Sarah Jenny’s official press release after the jump:

Share Your Sex Worker Pride this June at the Sex Worker Cabaret on June 12th at Public Assembly in Brooklyn!

APPLY TODAY >>> http://www.sexworkercabaret.com/

** Please Forward Widely! **

We are looking for cabaret acts of 3-7 minutes each for an early evening (7pm -11pm) event: burlesque, performance art, literary readings, comedy, video art, musical acts, etc. are all welcomed.

Diversity encouraged! All genders, bodies, ages, and talents welcome to apply. We are currently looking for proposals that would be, on some level, about sex work: whether it be a story about your favorite/least favorite client, a burlesque number to She Works Hard For the Money, or a more abstract interpretation. Preference is given to current/former sex workers (self-defined) but we will also consider topical submissions from allies, partners of workers, etc.

Please submit a short proposal by April 7, 2011 about the act you are interested in doing. If we don’t know one another, please send a link to your website, facebook, etc. or a link to a video.

Compensation: This is a benefit for…you! Some overhead costs need to be covered but after that, all money received from the door will be pooled and split among the performers. (Each act is a share in the pool; each video is a half-share) We ask that you help promote as the more people we bring in, the more money for the performers. We can help out of town performers find housing, but are unable to provide travel stipends. We are also looking for go-go dancers who would be compensated with part of the pooled funds — but also receive tips. Go-go dancing is 7pm-8pm and during intermission. You may apply to both perform and go-go. Please forward to anyone you think might like to be a part of this very special evening.

Deadline: Please submit your proposal by April 7th.

Questions? Contact: Sarah Jenny & Damien at producers@sexworkercabaret.com

http://www.sexworkercabaret.com/

This venue is wheelchair accessible.

[*Speaking of whom, if you'd like to help send a sex worker/performance artist into space, now is your chance! He only needs, um, about $299,000 more to make it happen.]

The podcast featuring my story from last month’s Red Umbrella Diaries is now online.  If you’d like to hear about my getting a blowjob from a man I call Mr. Chompers, click away.

New York: I am going to be in you in about twelve hours.  Tomorrow (Thursday) evening I’ll be reading at Red Umbrella Diaries, Audacia Ray’s monthly reading series at Happy Ending.  My story is kind of dirty and kind of gross and kind of still not done yet.  (But I have seven hours before my bus leaves?)  Doors are at 7, the reading’s at 8, and it’s over by 10, in time for a big dance party something something.  (It’s called Downtown Top Ranking.  I may have to stick around?)

Then!  Friday night I’m heading to the Sex Work Awareness fundraiser at Madame X, which is a place with which I am not familiar at all.  But this is from the Facebook invite:

The event at Madame X will be emceed by the only letter in burlesque, N, and feature performances by Reid Mihalko, Graydancer, Luna, Brandon B, and Miss Mary Cyn. Tickets will be available for purchase for lap dances by the Luscious Lifestyle Diva, Ms. Yolanda Shoshana, the one and only lifestyle Passionista,(who will also appear as a teen dating coach on the January 31st episode of MTV’s Made, YAY ABIOLA!) Ms. Abiola Abrams, burlesque sensation, Sweet N’ Lo, and the sultry Ms. Savannah Darling. Luna will also provide foot rubs for those for purchase a ticket.

Admittance is $15 pre-paid via Eventbrite or $20 at the door and includes a 2011 NYC SexBlogger Calendar with sex educator and adult film legend Nina Hartley vamping it up on the cover and lots of steamy bloggers* heating things up from the inside cover to the very back page, Wet safe sex kits, and a $10 gift certificate to The Pleasure Chest for the first hundred people to register and/or arrive. To avoid the line, pre-purchase lap dance or foot rub tickets for $15 at Eventbrite (remember to print out and bring your confirmation with you) or pay $20 at the event.

Thanks to a donor, who prefers to remain anonymous, your money will be doubly well spent, since they are very generously matching funds up to $1,500.

See you there?

[*Ahem.]

Way back in early 2009, it seemed like every single person on the internet was talking about The Girlfriend Experience, porn star Sasha Grey’s entry into the world of mainstream film.  The movie had a really great poster, and it was made by popular director Steven Soderbergh, but it didn’t get a whole lot of distribution and disappeared rather quickly, earning (according to iMDB) less than a million dollars total.

Yesterday, lazing my way through a combination sick day/snow day, I finally saw the film, which is currently streaming on Netflix.  It’s interesting, for a Hollywood movie about prostitution.  But also it’s pretty frustrating, particularly if you like movies where anything actually happens.

Grey plays Chelsea, a Manhattan call girl whose clients are mainly sad-sack hotshots who spend most of their sessions dispensing unasked for financial advice.  (Invest in gold.  Vote for McCain.  Invest in gold.)  Meanwhile, Chelsea’s also talking to a reporter who wants to profile her, chronicling her day-to-day life (and wardrobe) in a diary, and trying to update her website.  She agrees to meet a man who runs an escort review site when she knows full well that he’s probably full of shit.  She is mostly if not all business.

Her boyfriend Chris is a personal trainer, and the parallels are… there.  They both make their money living off other people’s conceptions of beauty, they both pretend to be interested in wealthy clients that aren’t actually interesting, and they both lie a lot to make people feel better.  And–this is where the film’s very, very minimal plot kicks in–they both get offers to go on weekend trips with clients.

The film is tedious, and that’s kind of the point.  Chelsea makes her money by pretending to be interested in very boring things, and Soderbergh clearly enjoys implicating the audience in that.  When Chris takes off on a private jet to Vegas with a bunch of scummy douchebags, we are right there with them, talking about John McCain and making bad “stimulus package” jokes.

While Soderbergh could have taken the trashy route, he doesn’t.  Grey never takes her clothes off and we never see any fake sex.  That is good.  But although the film is intentionally boring for the sake of being boring, The Girlfriend Experience is still, well, boring.  (I paused it no less than three times to see how much time was left, and the whole movie is only 77 minutes long.  It ends mid-scene, which I was fully expecting since there’s not actually any plot to resolve, but knowing that just makes it seem even longer.)

The very meta use of distance doesn’t help.  Most scenes are shot quite a few feet away from the actors, which is an interesting trick but also kind of annoying after a while.  And Grey, though on-screen for most of the film, is almost always buried in murky shadows.  Her diary-style narration disappears for no real reason, and we have no idea why she’s writing any of this down, anyway.

Ten years ago, Soderbergh directed Full Frontal, an equally meta but slightly more plot-driven film that was critically loathed at the time, but which I loved thanks largely to the performances of Catherine Keener and David Hyde Pierce.  Unfortunately, The Girlfriend Experience has no great performances.  Grey doesn’t have enough to do, and when she does–in conversation with the boyfriend, say–she doesn’t sound especially convincing.  His acting is fine enough, I guess, but the real stars of the movie are the many, many anonymous johns, who are all pretty unterchangeable.

For its treatment of call girls as rather ordinary people who have to do very boring things, The Girlfriend Experience is great.  But unless you’re really into hastily assembled think-pieces, you probably don’t need to actually see it anytime soon.