Here’s video from Tuesday.
Joanne Webb, a blonde mother of three who was busted for selling sex toys in Texas, tells the speaker at the AVN Novelty Expo, lobbyist Robert Raban, "I met with my senators. I met with my mayor. It got put into deferred adjudication."
"I’m a good corporate citizen. I have made myself a valuable member of my community. I do grassroots at every level. I speak at universities, business schools, colleges."
"I don’t sell videos or magazines. I’ve positioned myself in a different way. I’ve thought about joining some local [sex entertainment] groups but I don’t want to be lumped in with them. Not that I personally have anything against it… Is FSC going to go about this so that we’re all lumped together?"
"I’ve figured out how to function. People talk to me about the laws. They don’t find me threatening."
"Will this make more trouble for me than its worth?"
Robert Raban: "You’re going to tell us."
"It’s the quandary of the minority. I’m a good citizen. I do A, B, and C. I don’t want to be associated with the people who keep the filthy store… Wallmart does the same thing [selling massage oils, etc]."
"When they come for my peers, my community members are going to know I’m not them."
"My caustic Eastern-European family in the ovens side says, ‘They don’t distinguish.’"
"I recommend a laser focus on toys. A campaign that educates about toys, that exposes the absurd regulation of toys. A campaign that encourages people to think of themselves as consumers of Adult product because they like hot massage oils…"
Sherri Williams was busted for selling sex toys in Alabama. "We would all like to be more legitimated in the public eye."
"I would like to throw out an opportunity…that I haven’t made public until today. They’re likely to do a TV series on my life story. …If there were a way to take that series…and make the validation that we need…"
Why are people in the sex industry so thirsty for validation? Don’t they realize that if the sex industry was socially validated, a more professional group of people would flow into it and replace the second-raters in it now (I include myself in this category).
Former Free Speech Coalition president Julie Stewart says: "We don’t have people willing to stand up and say, ‘I use sex toys. It’s my right to use sex toys. I love watching porn.’ And the people who do aren’t necessarily the best representatives for our industry."
Former FSC president Gloria Leonard (who lives in Hawaii) says she has no money. That she only got to come to the conference because somebody gave her his frequent flier miles. She’s working on a memoir.
