I am sorry it has taken a while to post this, but I am working over the Christmas period. Let me say this, the purpose of the interviews was and is to feed my PhD thesis and future academic journal publications . I had absolutely nothing to do with The Independent using my article in The Conversation, let alone the shocking use of the photograph that has been so damaging.
The idea of The Conversation article was sort of an academic staking out of territory. The Conversation only allows you to publish an article if you are an academic studying at a university. I wanted to let the other academics that are starting to write about camming know that a rigorously researched thesis was on its way. I don’t know if you know this but an American academic has just written an article based on her observations of what is being said by women in public webcam forums. The title of the work is I get paid to orgasm and I felt that it was belittling of the serious work ethic that a lot of the women I have interviewed have. I cannot emphasise enough that my thesis when published will be a serious work that explores themes of precarity, entrepreneurialism and the repossessing of a form of sex work by the women who are engaged in it. My intention by letting the academic world know that my work is based on qualitative interviews was to stop further works based on the ethnographic observations of forums such as this one. My own work will be based on the anonymised content of the interviews that I have conducted for which I have gained the informed consent of the women interviewed. I think it morally ambiguous to use observations of public forums to inform academic studies.
I was horrified when the article, which I don't consider to be academic was picked up by The Independent.A newspaper I would never write for yet alone buy based on the fact it is owned and run by the Lebedev family who make Rupert Murdoch look like a boy scout. I was even more gutted when I discovered that they had used a random image of a woman and have caused such devastation to her life. The intention was and still is to publish a thesis that shows how a form of sexual labour develops when we don’t have that old crap about victimisation, so when the Independent used it in and in such a salacious way I literally cried. That they have victimised a woman in such a way is horrifying to me.
I cannot describe how upset I am over what has happened. I owe a massive debt of gratitude to the women I have interviewed. Their insights will be used to inform a 100,000-word doctoral thesis which I hope will be met with the approval of the webcam community as a whole as it will illustrate the lived experiences of the women involved.