My friend Lux Nightmare, who recently wrote a fantastic piece about “The End of Alt” for Fleshbot, got me thinking a few months back when she read aloud from another piece she wrote, The Pink Ghetto, (which I know is not a term she created, but a term she embraces when it comes to working in the world of sex) at Rachel Kramer Bussel’s Best Sex Writing 2008 book party.

In it she mentioned how hard it is for anyone who works in sex to use their birth name. In it, she mentioned a few of us who embraced our birth name, but spoke of the challenges of both doing so, and not doing so. See, in this piece Lux (not her birth name) writes how there are few of us who talk about, write about, or play with sex/gender that use our birth name, which leads me to a digression - why is it sometimes called our “g-d given” name, when it’s the name given to us by one or two people that we meet when we come into this world, or at some other time in our lives.

It’s difficult to be under 60 and talk about sex, even your own sex life, or do sexy things on camera or on stage, and use your original name. So I can understand why one might change their name. Part of it may be ego based, perhaps you need to escape who you once were and prove to yourself what you can do. Or perhaps you just really like this new name. Another part of it is for protection, to maintain privacy, so that no sex-raving lunatic will find out where you live, and try to stab your eye out with a pencil. I get it, but I never got it. At least not for myself.

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