Mirror

The following is a quote from an interview with Susannah Breslin at the clusterflock blog. She's talking about her unsuccessful attempts to sell the idea of a non-fiction book on porn.

My favorite rejection letter came from a well-known editor at a major publishing house who passed on it by stating that he would have to leave this project to those editors whose values were less influenced by the radical Protestant movements of the 16th and 17th centuries.

When he says "values", he's not talking about his personal morals, although these values may serve that purpose also. He's talking about the criteria he uses in his role as gatekeeper for books. These values help determine what information becomes publicly available.

I wish everybody were this honest.

Later in the interview, Breslin engages in some honesty of her own.

Interviewer: "Is there a unifying goal for the work you do?"
Breslin: "...I'm interested in exploring the heart of darkness in our culture, which can be seen by entering the American sex trade."

To me, the "American sex trade" is a mirror. I can look in the mirror and hold up my desires, my biases, my fears, the blender full of social messages, religious formulas, and acquired classification systems that constitutes my conscious thought; I can hold up an entire society, as I know it, and the mirror faithfully and honestly reflects it back.

Of course, I could find this mirror anywhere. I could look into the illegal drug trade and find my own face looking back. The fact that I've chosen sex work as a mirror says something about me, just as Breslin's choice of porn as her heart of darkness says something about her, and the editor's decision to identify his gatekeeper role with radical Protestantism says something about him. But in this case, all this honesty is a glimpse of something reflected in the mirror of sex work.