Why Do We Need Sydney Leathers to Make Sense?

When The Dirty reported the new sexting allegations against New York City mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner, they framed the story as one of power imbalance — a powerful politician grooming a hopeful and naive girl, who thought that giving up images of her body would get her love and security.

On Tuesday, we got to hear the other side of the story when Weiner’s playmate, Sydney Leathers, took to xoJane with a little background about what happened, along with a guide for seducing politicians.

“Why does having a sexting affair with a married man or even doing porn make someone a ‘bad person’?” Leathers asks. “I enjoy my sexuality, and it doesn’t make me anything other than what I am: a young woman who’s enjoying her life to the fullest and going on plenty of adventures with willing partners.”

Leathers says that her involvement with Weiner was an experiment. She wanted to see how far it would go, and she got the sense Weiner, too, was curious about this. In retrospect, she admits she became engrossed in the little world she and he had created, but she sees all her choices as her own.

“I do feel disloyal to him now, but I don’t think I owe him anything,” she writes.

The piece she has penned, interviews she has given, and the steamy masturbatory scene she recently shot for adult studio Vivid suggest Leathers is making a margarita out of the lemons the scandal threw into her lap. But not everyone sees it as a story of overcoming. Much has been written about Leathers’ profile on profile on SeekingArrangement, a site devoted to connecting well-to-do men with young women in the sort of ambiguous, beneficial relationships that are just this side of legal. But even people supportive of sex work seem to be having their doubts.

“Leathers is certainly comfortable talking about sex, but it’s not clear exactly what she’s trying to say,” writes Amanda Hess at Slate. “On The Dirty, she was a naive young woman in love. On her Vivid sex tape, she presented herself as a ‘shocked and flattered’ Weiner groupie. On xoJane, she’s a seasoned sexual manipulator who engages in unfeeling sex talk for the purpose of science experiments, then publishes the results to shame the other participant. And in a Gawker interview today, she’s ‘still shocked. … It’s still hitting me in waves.’ When it comes to launching a career in the sex industry, it helps to be sex-positive, respectful, and enthusiastic about your work. Right now, Sydney Leathers just sounds confused.”

I think it’s a little much to expect someone who has been thrust center stage to have their agenda together. While I agree that the xoJane piece was unnecessarily cruel, it’s not hard to see why it must have felt like a reasonable position to take. The media has been presenting Leathers as a victim. She wanted to set the record straight, but she went overkill and painted herself as a predator. It’s reactionary and I don’t think that’s the whole story. I think the lack of cohesion in her statements is far more indicative of her state than any one single thing she has said thus far.

Sydney Leathers, like many women in their twenties, has been exploring sex for some time. Her travels have taken her to the outskirts of commercial sex. She’s got a ways to go on the life-long journey of self-awareness. Most of us have the privilege of defining our positions on various topics privately. She, the center of a scandal, doesn’t get that opportunity. If she stays in the adult industry in any capacity, we may have an opportunity to watch her evolve. But it’s important that we give her that space and stop nitpicking.

The first time I got naked in front of a stage lined with eyeballs, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I was doing or where it would go or what I believed in. I was several columns into sex, in fact, all the while still believing that sex columnists got boring when they got “political” — I couldn’t see past my own privilege. There are times I still can’t. My ideas are evolving, constantly solidifying. I’ve written things in the past that I would tear apart today. Come on. Most people don’t get on this ride prepared. We learn as we go. That’s okay.

One thing that is worth considering, though, is advice from Aurora Snow, former porn star and current adult industry director: “Think about where you might want to be five or 10 years from now. Selling yourself out for one sex tape hardly carries the hard-earned prestige of being a porn star. So unless you are ready to do your time—hundreds of hardcore scenes—all you might hope to gain from a sex tape is a fat check and a soiled reputation sans the porn-star perks. A sex tape will follow you forever. If you should one day decide to be a teacher, or seek a public office, this is a surefire way to block such endeavors.”

That’s fair advice, whether you’re Sydney Leathers or not.