Devon Hunter

Dear @SpencerReedXXX,

Before we go any further I want you to know that I am writing this with a very calm and measured tone. Please consider reading “Misogyny as the language of homophobia.” I am taking control of this (which I know is something difficult for you to accept), because the messaging here is mine, not yours. Take a deep breath, pause before you continue, and hear my words as I am telling you they are spoken.

Yesterday you sent out a general attack against your female fans, calling them all over-sensitive cunts, even though there are perhaps only a few very specific individuals toward whom you meant to air your griefs. One of these specific individuals is my friend, @JPBarnaby, and you singled her out for particular abuse. You did this, because she has dared to defy your plan to blacklist and ruin someone. You consciously chose to attack her in a way that is obvious in its intent to cause emotional harm: You said she was a pathetic person and an unskilled writer. You are not the person to make either of these judgments, since you have never met JP and you write at the level of a poorly educated 8th grader. I stand behind the comment I made that, “I have read four of JP’s books, and she knows more about gay love than you ever will.”

There are many “Ladies of Gay Porn” (#LOGP), and they are a diverse bunch. @JPBarnaby and her writer friends thrive on fantasy, and they value the creative and emotive parts of sexuality whose nuances are utterly lost on you; @ErynnVaehne says her “body is made of water and gay porn,” and she works in the M4M industry by specific choice; @MamaTStar and women like her are loyal and protective friends to men who might not otherwise have affirmation from anyone else; and @PornBiatch enthusiastically comments on the state of gay videos, making many astute observations that the industry should heed. And none of these women are cunts. Not. A. Single. One. These women are not fag hags, nor are they fruit flies: They are honey bees. Can I get a witness? (*insert praise and speaking in tongues)

You strike me (excuse the pun) as a bullying thug who operates at a very base level driven to extremes by steroid abuse, and your neanderthal methods are not only manipulative but transparent. Your grossly dismissive attitude toward women is not only mean spirited, it is also financially unsound. Women make up a significant portion of your audience, though most of them are silent and are reluctant to be known (probably because of situations like the one you created yesterday). Personally, I believe that people should avoid paying for their own oppression, and I am again voicing my opinion that people of color should avoid racist videos, gay men should avoid homophobic videos, and women should avoid supporting people like you.

A few random, unrelated facts before closing: Assault is illegal. So is filing false charges. While we’re at it, lying to police is generally ill-advised, given that it’s possibly a form of obstruction of justice. Falsifying injuries in order to commit slander or libel is unwise, and perjury (unless you’re a member of Congress) will not generally be tolerated by most judges. Also, before you presume to start bullying me for defending my friends and ideals, call the people at Sean Cody and Queerclick and ask them how well that tactic works against me. I’m not afraid of them, and I’m not afraid of you.

Sincerely,

Devon Hunter

Well, after two months of almost no entries, here’s a second one in one day. I wasn’t going to blog this, but I just decided to vent it out of my system.

Earlier, while my window was open, I heard two people having a very heated and profanity-laden argument in the parking lot. It was a lovers spat quickly devolving into a problem. He started cursing horribly at her at the top of his lungs while she was just crying and trying to carry all her stuff out in one trip to the car. When he threatened her, something in me just snapped. I walked out of my apartment in my underwear and a baseball cap with no shoes on, stomped directly to where they were, got in his face and informed him that if he threatened her one more time I would call the police.

He got very quiet.

A friend told me that I must have been quite the sight when fuming with rage. I thought he was shocked by my near nudity. I hadn’t considered that I might be intimidating on some level… I hope I didn’t scare him. Well, I kinda hope I did. He was being so mean to that woman. She was crying, and he threatened “to fuck you and your car up!” while throwing a bottle at her… I’m not having it. Period. I love women so much, and it pisses me off beyond belief to see men act that way. It’s unacceptable in general, but completely unconscionable when he’s humiliating and hurting her publicly while she’s begging to know what she did to him that was so bad that he would treat her that way. No, I think not… I am not having it.

I still have adrenaline pumping through my system. Writing about it helps. I have a very low threshold of tolerance for abuse, especially when it’s done publicly to humiliate someone. I almost got involved a while back at Secrets in DC when two gay dancers were getting stupid in the dressing room (See: “Some of them want to abuse you”), and the blog entry about it put the abuser in check and the abused woke up. So, no regrets; however, it still makes me feel giddy with fear and anger when I see this kind of crap.

Why can’t people just be kind to each other?

Dear QueerClick,

We have some unfinished business, you and I. But before I address any of that, I want you to know that I am not ranting as I write this. Although Howard at Fabscout and a fellow gay porn blogger bore the brunt of that fury last night, I want to be clear that I am writing this morning with the calm tone of cool “detachment.” Last night I felt that people were right, and that what happened last night on Twitter didn’t matter; however, this morning I realize that although I’m not screaming into a telephone, I am still aware of the need to get these justified feelings out of my head.

In June of 2010 your company published my legal name. I have a series of emails that I can publish if you want to deny it now (and I also have screen captures of all the Tweets from last night), but at that time your QC Features Editor was falling over himself to apologize to me. He even went so far as to say in public on this blog that he would, “spend the rest of my professional career ensuring that I never unwittingly injure another as I have [Devon]. May he and the others I’ve disappointed find it in their hearts to forgive us.” Although most readers didn’t accept that at the time, between the public statements and the private ones between you and I, I decided to let this go as much as possible.

However, that has now changed…

Although eight or nine months have passed, and although you, QueerClick, no longer have to worry about what has become a buried moment of ineptitude, people took screen captures of your story. I don’t blog everything that happens to me (though it may seem like it at times), but I want you to know that I still contend with isolated instances of harassment from abjectly crazy people. I would also point out that it took four months for all the cashed versions of this gaffe to finally rotate out of Google’s database. I don’t believe you are evil in the purposefully hurtful way that is obvious to anyone. No, I believe you are evil, QueerClick, in the subtler, “unintentional” way of acting irresponsibly and then being detached from your connection to the Cause/Effect that your meat grinder creates. I believe you’re evil, because you behave in the manner of any other cold, mechanical corporation that does what it does to generate the money it wants, no matter the cost. And this is where I will always have more value than you, despite being a single person: Your entire site and everything you do on it is geared toward money, and everything my site does is geared toward people. I win. Every time.

Now, QueerClick, let me explain to you with a level head and calm tone why you suck demon cock:

1. No one ever mentions you to me when they ask about that fiasco from last June. They only ever ask about Sean Cody. And I’ve never really put much effort into bringing you up, because (until last night) I wanted to believe your public and private mea culpas. But now that has changed: I will, from now on, continue mentioning your name as well. I’m not inventing it: In the public comments on this blog I watched you avoid removing my legal name from that cover story as long as possible. It might have been a mistake to include my legal name with Sean Cody’s press release, but your “writers” used my legal name in the body of that story that YOU wrote, in the captions of the pictures throughout the story, and within the title of the URL address. On the public comment section of “A rose by any other name…” my readers had to mention each one of these separate “horrible, inexcusable, and irreversible” mistakes – you were looking for ways to leave my name in that fucking piece of rubbish article the entire time.
2. You say repeatedly that you are not affiliated with Sean Cody beyond the level that they are advertisers, and to this I say, “Bullshit, you’re a liar.” I don’t know who Tweets on behalf of your company, but please tell this person for me that s/he is a complete and total Twat. Please do not bother erasing/denying what I am about to describe: I have screen captures of the exchange. Last night you Tweeted about a “new” model who had been brought to your attention by some magazine. I clicked on the link, and was taken to a photo shoot of a model named Simon. This immediately irked me, and reminded me of the “non-connection” between you and Sean Cody, because this “new model” is Simon Dexter (aka “Harley,” possibly the single most popular model Sean Cody has ever had).
3. I pointed this “mistake” out to you. And do you remember what your response to me was? Do you know what you actually said to ME of all the ants crawling around on this picnic table? You said, “OMG! You’re right! We got caught up in the armpit and forgot to look closely! LOL” What may look like a simple gaffe to you and everyone else sent me from irritated into full rage. How dare you, only eight months later, already fall into the same exact carelessness that perpetuated this entire problem in the first place? How dare you admit that “gaffe” to ME of all people, and IN PUBLIC?!
4. You didn’t respond when I  asked whether the magazine that “alerted us to this smokin’ hot new model shot by Dylan Rosser” was in fact the magazine that Simon Dexter himself started. So, is it? Don’t pretend Simon Dexter isn’t starting his own fashion magazine: He’s such a clueless megalomaniac that Simon actually asked me to write for it, so I know it’s at least getting ready to be launched, if it hasn’t already. So, I want to know: Is the magazine that just happened to clue you in to Simon’s existence the same one he himself started? In short, did “Harley” from Sean Cody clue you in to his existence as a model? I’m assuming “Harley” would need to tell you himself, since there is such a gulf of separation between you and Sean Cody…
5. Although you skimmed over that detail on Twitter last night, you did do that which set me off to the point that I lost my voice from screaming (although I am not screaming right now): “[We] fully admit it was an error to publish your name we found on the web, we apologized and did remove it. What you choose to do with that is fine. We get it. You can be pissed.” Let’s look at this: You admitted on my blog and in private that you utterly fucked up to the point that you may have been worried I could sue you, yes; however, you never, to my knowledge, gave the same amount of coverage to the apology as you gave to my humiliation. You didn’t find my name on the web, it was provided to you, and then you provided it to everyone else. You apologized and removed it only in painfully protracted stages under public pressure, and did nothing to get it out of Google’s memory before it expired on its own in October. What I “choose to do with it” isn’t under your authority to grant. You “get” exactly nothing, and if I want, I am entitled to be pissed for the rest of my goddamned life! All I did was describe my experience working for Sean Cody: YOU PEOPLE TRIED TO RUIN ME BECAUSE OF IT.
6. Although I agree with my gay porn blogger confidante that you aren’t purposefully malicious, I want to point out that you are a company composed of hack writers with no sense of morality or work ethic; you steal material from others without citing their contributions; you, by your own admission, release and spread information without checking it; and you completely feed into the exploitation of the human beings who give you anything worth writing about in the first place. I am not your cannon fodder, QueerClick, and neither are any of the other models you chew through on a daily basis.
7. You have the cold audacity to think you actually understand what you have done. You don’t get it AT ALL. You do not appreciate AT ALL the way in which you have made me vulnerable to crazy people. If you really wanted to attempt to do right by me, you would give the same word count and central placement on your heavily trafficked blog to describing your “oversight” and apologizing to me as you did in “unintentionally” feeding into the behavior that proved I was right about Sean Cody in the first place. You would at least pretend not to be so incestuously connected to that company. And you would stop acting like a tabloid muckraker. You can make your money, of course; however, do you have to invest so completely in being the very worst of the exploitative stereotype that is attached to this industry? All I am asking for you to do is act like a human being.

I feel better for now. I don’t know who is in charge of public relations at QueerClick and Sean Cody, but both of these people should get sacked for neglecting their duties. Please know that I continue to hold you at the level of esteem that you deserve,

Devon Hunter

(In the spirit of providing useful information and a place for intelligent dialogue, www.DevonHunter.info accepts well written blog entries about topics of concern to adult entertainment. The views expressed in the following article are not necessarily shared by the operators of the hosting site. Archived guest writers’ articles will be listed under Interviews & Essays.)

“While L.A. County finally doing something by closing AIM is a good thing, we’ll see if they have the backbone to shut down productions,” said AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein, a longtime critic of AIM, who renewed his call for public health authorities to shut down productions that do not require condoms.
- Los Angeles Times, December 10, 2010*

Have we failed the test?

Six months ago, I had never heard of the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation.  In August, I started researching a new project which includes characters that become gay adult models.  Of course, I’ve been a fan of the industry for a while.  I find watching a man make himself physically, if not emotionally, vulnerable to another man incredibly erotic.  That’s one of the reasons I author novels in the genre of gay erotic fiction.  However, I had no idea that there was a clinic in Los Angeles dedicated to the testing of adult models until I began to follow dozens of models on Twitter and saw a tweet from Wolf Hudson mentioning it.

As I started talking to a few of these guys, I found out that testing policies range from strenuous to non-existent depending on the studio.  From watching the ACS (Amateur College Sex) side of Corbin Fisher, I knew that sometimes condoms aren’t anywhere to be found.  This puts a lot of pressure on the models to keep themselves tested and put their health in the hands of their scene partners.  I think a database with test results for everyone involved in a shoot is a band-aid, but it’s better than fucking in the dark.

That’s why I was very surprised to see that the AIDS Healthcare Foundation was a longtime critic of the AIM testing clinic.  I absolutely understand their position about requiring condoms on every shoot, but that’s not likely in a society driven by capitalism.  While there are customers that want to see bareback sex, there will be studios that will produce it.  The government tries to stay as far away from the stigma of porn as they possibly can.  I mean, porn stars bring it on themselves don’t they?  If they were worth anything, they’d find another line of work.  This is another attitude that pisses me off, but that’s a post for another day.

If the goal is to minimize the new outbreaks of HIV and other STDs, how does it possibly make sense to close a facility geared toward industry performers?  Consistent testing for models isn’t going to solve all of the world’s problems, but it will allow them to get treated sooner and allow reputable producers to minimize risks to other models.  Of course, that’s a lot of sex to be had in the thirty days between tests and the variables are exponential, but it’s better than them not being tested at all.

I don’t know what the solution is which is why I’m an author and not a politician.  It just seems to me that if the goal is to try and keep models safe and healthy, as I think it should be, they should have more options for achieving that goal, not less.

- J. P. Barnaby
http://www.jpbarnaby.com
Twitter: @JPBarnaby

Erotic fiction is more than just moans, grunts, and physical pleasure. To J. P. Barnaby, erotic fiction consists not only of the mechanics of physical love, but the complex characters and relationships that lead to those all-encompassing feelings of need and longing.  Sex without context is merely sex – but sex coupled with attraction, with explosive repercussions – that is good erotic fiction.

*http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/10/local/la-me-porn-hiv-20101210

I stumbled upon a very empowering video today, and I feel the need to share it. Nothing to say that it doesn’t say on its own, except that I wish someone had said this to me when I needed to hear it most. I hope this encourages you, even if you are hearing it years later than you had hoped to: