Pretty Lynne Writes

I had a confusing thing happen recently and I wanted to write about it. 

An individual responded to a story of mine on Instagram with a note that they clicked on the Reddit link in my profile and were “not sorry. Amazing work.” 

We had a very pleasant and superficial exchange about my writing, and I invited them to explore my offerings. The individual asked me to recommend a favourite. I suggested my audio of “Nothing and Everything,” a sweet story about lovers whispering late at night. The individual commented that they enjoyed it, called me a talented woman, and in reply I said I would listen to their podcast about poetry. I went and followed the podcast right away and found it on Spotify. 

When I went back to say I had listened to some of it, I discovered I’d been blocked. On all platforms, by both the podcast account and the individual. 

How confusing! We’d had the briefest of interactions and I have no idea what caused them to block me. 

My first thought was to wonder if I’d done something wrong, but that was brief, because I hadn’t. 

My second thought is the one I want to pay attention to: I thought, “Oh, maybe my account was too porny for them.” I even said this to a friend.

I am very upfront in all of my social media about what I do. I clearly state my age range and that I write and read smutty stories into a mic. My profile picture is suggestive enough that an attentive person would realize I’m all about sexy things. 

My thought about being too porny was accompanied with the slightest remnant of shame. As soon as I realized that, I identified it as the voice of Linda, or possibly one of her helpful friends. 

Women my age generally grew up with the cultural message that sex was a few things:

• reserved for marriage
• possibly enjoyable but definitely more for men than women
• not to be discussed in polite company
• an activity that would make you subject to shame If you did too much of it

I had a brief stint as a religious teenager and that did nothing for freeing me from sexual shame. It took me years to be able to talk about sex openly with a partner. 

But in this era of my life, I am approaching sex in a totally different way. I have learned a lot about sex and sexual desire to empower myself. I speak about it freely. I make content about it and featuring sexual acts. I present myself as an object of desire and am regularly told I am a sexy woman.

I am an anonymous creator for a few reasons, but I’ll say for damned sure that shame is not one of them. 

This is not the first time my content has been blocked by someone, and it won’t be the last. But I am very clear for myself on the fact that if you think less of me for the content that I make, you should show yourself to the door as quickly as possible, and don’t let it hit you on the way out.