Sexual Freedom

Sasha Grey read to some kids in LA last week.The media blew up. Some stepped up to support her.As a society we really need to ask ourselves what we have up our collective butts about sexuality.Ok. Sasha was a porn actress. I think that point is quite clear.But how does that fact alone uniquely disqualify her from dealing with kids? Now certainly I agree that kids shouldn't be exposed to the movies she's performed in, but she wasn't doing anything sexual in front of the kids. In fact they didn't even tell the kids that she was a porn star. The agency that booked her told the school that she had appeared on Entourage, which is true.Sure, she's a retired porn star. But even if she was active in that career how would that make a difference? As long as she's not doing that in front of the kids and not shoving it into people's faces what's the problem? How does the act of having sex in front of a camera or in front of an audience change your qualifications about an unrelated job?But this goes beyond the world of simple pornography.Take a look at the old and new editions of this book:

• The Topping Book (old edition)
• The New Topping Book (new edition if you hadn't guessed)

From the foreword they go on to write:

In fact, one of us has changed so much that even her name has changed. The one of us who wrote the first Topping Book as "Catherine A. Liszt" did so under a pseudonym, because at the time she had minor children whose boundaries she wanted to protect. Now that her children have grown to adulthood, "Catherine" is now writing and publishing under her real name, Janet W. Hardy.

The point to note isn't that we was protecting her children from her actions -- she was the same and doing the same things as she was doing both before and after writing the book the first time. She was protecting them from the societal screw-ups that would happen if someone found out that she was kinky.But the fact remains, how does knowing something about someone change that person? If you knew Janet as a good person, why on earth would you change your mind to know that -- oh my god wait for it -- she has sex. And… she wrote a book about it. And it's kinky sex to boot.I'm guessing that most of the kids in the room were the result of having sex.The irony of the situation is that we live in this hyper-sexualized society that punishes the folks that are involved with giving us what we want. Everyone wants sex. Everywhere you look there's sex. But few among us want to stand up for it and embrace what we all seem to want anyway.Why?Oh, that's right. Because I can have sex, but if you do, especially if you do it differently, you're a perv or just otherwise broken.

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I have friends who are quite conservative. It can lead to some lively debates over a beer or two, but at the end we're still friends. Their past and their world-view does not disqualify them from dealing with me or anyone else.I have another friend that used to be a stripper. So what? I knew her before and after that part of her life. She's still the same person for the most part. I'm sure she learned more about herself. Would I trust kids around her: absolutely. Does it have anything to do with her past? No. I know people that have perfectly normal-sounding pasts that wouldn't trust. I know people with wacky "abnormal" pasts that are great parents.

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Then there are people that you do trust your kids around -- like certain coaches that were recently in the news. Those were men that were trusted by both the parents and their employers to act the right way around the young men they were in charge of.

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Shouldn't the quality of person be the criteria, not what they do when you're not around.I know I would pick Sasha Grey to read to kids over Jerry Sandusky or Jerry Fine any day of the week. Not for what she's done in the past, but what she hasn't inflicted on kids.

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I think I need to send some cash to NCSF. Like the ACLU, they fight for the freedoms that all of us deserve.