"I've learned a lot about being a Working Woman in an industry where the term is more than just a double entendre."

In case you don’t know this I am a woman. I can’t prove that I’m a female, at least not over the Internet. Like so many things in life, you’re just going to have to trust me. I have all the equipment and I am totally a girl. An old girl.

I’m not old enough to remember the fifties when gals were expected to get married and be housewives. I am way too young to reminisce on the suffragette movement and how women fought for the right to vote. What I know of other cultures and other eras I learned from books. I wasn’t emotionally mature enough to comprehend the reasons for the feminist movement of the sixties and seventies. It was in the nineteen eighties that I woke up to fact that that being a woman is a complicated thing.

I turned eighteen in 1978. I grew up watching my sex evolve at the most rapid pace ever in human history. When I was born, the pill had been invented but access to it was illegal. Doctors would only prescribe diaphragms to married women. If a gal wanted to buy condoms at the pharmacy she had to be willing to endure the same scorn society heaps on prostitutes. By the time I was the age of legal consent, women had not only won the right to access reliable birth control, they had won the right to autonomous control over their bodies.

I know. Feminist go blah, blah, blah. But I’m telling ya; I am old enough to remember when girls were forbidden to wear pants to school. Pants, in America, for God’s sake! I realize that female fashion choice sounds shallow but you try riding a bike in a skirt. Then try applying for a job and being told you’re getting paid less because you have tits. Try to imagine what it’s like to be the one that has to carry a child to term ­ risking diabetes, blood clots and death.

Now, try imagining what it’s like not having control over your own uterus. Envision a society where if your husband beats you or rapes you, you have to take it. Think about how you would deal with a world where you weren’t allowed to live independently, work for a living or have sex without guilt. Conceptualize a reality where there’s no other-gender antonym for the word whore.

Welcome to the history of women.

Yeah. Yeah. Life’s a bitch. Old news. Can we move on please? Women have it a zillion times better today. We’re all liberated now. We have the vote. We have jobs and access to birth control and control over birth choice. Well, at least we have these things at the moment. Maybe not in all the countries of the world but we have those rights in 49 of our 50 United States!

Who says we have to live in South Dakota? We’re free! Free to be paid less than men. Free to be sexual but not too sexual. Free to walk down the street as long as it’s daylight and our outfits aren’t too revealing. Free to work in all kinds of awesome professions like waitress, secretary, teacher or nurse! Oh yeah, baby. We’ve come a long fucking way.

I am a product of the halcyon days of the feminist movement. I was told that I could live my life however I wanted to. When I was young, it broke my heart when I found out that my female freedom came with conditions. I could live however I wanted to but I had to be willing to pay the cost. As it turns out, I’ve managed to get through 45 years of life on my terms. I’ve had to make sacrifices for my independence but I’m satisfied with my choices. Most of those choices involved my personal and romantic life. Most of those sacrifices were about sex. I became a feminist because it pissed me off that I couldn’t fuck who I wanted, when I wanted.

I never really tried to work in male-based professions.

The closest I came was when I worked as a deejay and a veejay. Just the same, it totally occurred to me that I was hired for most of my jobs because I was pretty. My newfound feminism began to shade my opinion of everything, not just romance. I caught on to the owners that staffed their bistros with women and gay males.

These restaurateurs hired women and gays because they would work for less money than straight males. I noticed how the male waiters made better tips than the females. I watched crappy male hairdressers rake in more dough than highly skilled female ones. I watched female coworker after coworker after coworker turn her life, her self-esteem and her body to some man that treated her like shit. I’ve sat back and scoped out those ladies that use their sex and their cattiness to gain power over men and other women.

And now I work in the most male-based industry there is, next to professional sports. I work in porn. Internet porn. Geeks and porn. Talk about a sausage fest! I’ve learned so much about the world of men in the eight years I’ve been in this business. I’ve learned a lot about being a Working Woman in an industry where the term is more than just a double entendre. In part two of my feminist folderol, I’ll tell you what it’s like to be a Working Woman in a decidedly non-feminist trade. I promise I won’t too hard on the fellas. Stay tuned!

** Click Here For: A Woman Working in Porn! - Part #2