Santina Hunter: Stripper Alter-Ego: An Introduction
posted by Santina Hunter | February 8, 2011
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IcerocketHow does a woman arrive at feminism when she comes from sex, drugs and rock and roll? Why is feminism such an unpopular, un-liked thing? How did I go from stripper to conscious feminist? How did our ideas of masculine, feminine and sex get here Evolvers? What is a woman's story and on what basis are her opinions formed?
Here on Evolver, I witness the discussion becoming debate over how we should balance our perceptions of sexuality. This whole conversation about masculine/feminine boils down to a concentration of sex, and the alchemical lead we have waiting there, in those first three chakras of ours.
I'm sure you can guess that the Santina Hunter profile is an alias, and that's ok with me, its just that this woman's stories need to remain separate for the sake of personal protection, and in some cases, safety. Until the day comes when the payoff for public ownership of my experiences outweighs the risks, that's the way it'll be.
In my life I have had the privilege and burden of doing unexpected, even shocking things. Some of those things brought me to the edge of life and death, others to the brink of insanity leading to breakthrough. Unlike many other Evolvers, most of my experiences do not include psychedelics. I am born from a different animal entirely; fear, sex, violence, danger, abuse, survival, and ultimately, the need to heal or die.
New Age ideals aside, putting a happy face sticker on these stories of Ms. Hunter would be a terrible shame. In reading the many blogs and discussions on the matter of sex, I see where she might just have a place to be helpful to others.
Through her strife and transcendence of such dark places as strip clubs, drug deals, and city jails, Santina Hunter is as complicated as her real life counter part. This profile and the series of blogs to follow are my real-life true stories from my life as a stripper and how they lead me to where I am now: seeking ways to honor and love the conscious feminine within me being born. Transparent, integral, honest, truthful. I begin with the elements that brought Santina Hunter (two of my longest lasting stripper stage names put together) to life, and tell her tale.
So why write about stripping now???
Well, of course there is the most pressing inspiration mentioned above: the divine feminine debate. Recently, however, I found out that a former co-worker of mine (NOT a stripper, but talented massage therapist and esthetician) was presumably murdered by one of her many love interests last summer.
This woman, lets call her Jill, and I weren't exactly the best of friends, but we chatted on occasion. We were, truth be told, more like competitors. Both young, beautiful, attractive, smart, spicy latin women. We even competed- silently- in our work. The day a few of her clients started seeing me for massage was the day Jill stopped talking to me.
Why then, might you ask, has her death been ceaselessly on my mind? Because her fate could have EASILY been my own, because over the years of healing and becoming a mother I have wondered how in the hell I'm still alive to have these incredible experiences. Because she was my soul sister in shadow, strength, and the battle to gain self-esteem.
I've wrestled with the desire to find out who killed Jill- because they made it look like a suicide and the police haven't done any digging. I've thought about the consequences of snooping around in that arena. Let's be honest, the men she fucked around with weren't good guys, and she was a lot like me... uncommitted, not something to be attained, ever out of reach to the heart, but carnally impeccable. She made men love her and never seemed to give more than her body to their temporary experiences together. What's worse, these men who 'loved' her are gangsters, machismos, and, yes, patriarchs.
I dug deeper; why did I need to avenge her so badly? What was it about Jill that lit such a raging fire of desire for truth within me? Then I remembered the first weekend I stripped when the manager 'Mitch' we'll call him, came downstairs to the locker room to tell us that we need to be extra careful who we work with tonight and that Harmony was in the hospital and on life support after being found in a dumpster in Oakland that morning.
Then I remembered the time my roommate came flying into my room (the kitchen with a cot tucked into a corner) shoving her hand over my mouth and telling me NOT to answer the bangs on the windows and doors and to be perfectly silent and still until the banging ended.
I thought of the day I drove down Mission street with my then girlfriend 'Knoxey' the day after my abortion, detoxing from crank, meth and coke, crying, vowing to go back and help all those women stuck in stripping. I thought of that long road between there and here... nursing an infant girl, making herbal remedies, performing energy work, writing...
I got to the heart of the matter and discovered that Santina, Milana, Hunter, Tabitha, and Stiletto Fawn, all these names I performed under, had more to share than glamour and sexual desirability. These psuedonyms were the characters through which I experienced the big cold world as a young woman trying to survive. These characters were the foundation for the conscious feminist I am today.
What kinds of stories will I tell???
Many, but all for the purpose of shedding light on my arrival upon the current idea I hold of conscious feminine. There will be sex, though not explicit for our younger readers- be forewarned, however, there is a great deal of sadness in this story, along with hope and happiness. I mention this because I have noticed that this kind of sadness can be terribly contagious to those empaths out there who have heard the story in its entirety. If you're particularly sensitive to the suffering of women, you may want to consider taking Pink Yarrow flower essence when reading this blog series which protects your auric field from taking on others energies, like a skin you can zip on and off.
There will be stories of drugs, violence, insanity, ugliness, pain. There will be stories of light and joy, of triumph, of ecstasy. There will be stories of music, business, and personal thoughts.
I figure we can't have this conversation about masculine/feminine without telling the truth about what experiences have colored our perceptions. The great Yin IS compassion, and how else do we open the door to compassion than with the key of honesty?
Thanks for taking the time to read this post, and I look forward to sharing this tale with you, for your sake and my own.
Peace to you
Comments
stripper transparency, now that's a social movement lol
— Feb 09, 2011
Greetings, no need to justify using an intermediary, not that anyone has a choice using this particular medium. It's not like this reply was actually typed by a blue hookah smoking caterpillar.
"Seek not abroad, turn back into thyself, for in the inner man dwells the truth..."
I love it!
— Feb 10, 2011
Although it kind of bursts the bubble of some wise hukkah smoking caterpillar who will give me the call. Guess it means I can't go ask Alice when she's 10 feet tall?
Or you can follow the white
— Feb 10, 2011
Or you can follow the white rabbit and I will show you the world as it truly appears. Reveal for you the code I can says I.
"Seek not abroad, turn back into thyself, for in the inner man dwells the truth..."
Empowerment and liberation!
— Feb 09, 2011
In developed society we are taught to be ashamed of our bodies and our carnal desires. This is inherently flawed, brought about alongside our microbial and pathogenic paranoia. We have weakened ourselves by isolating our bodies from the natural elements. Scientists now say that it is dangerous to get a tan because of the risk of skin cancer. Anyone with common sense knows that hiding from the sun will make people pale and sickly, deprived of vitamin D, and subject to seasonal affective disorder.
We are all so brainwashed by society to accept the norms and values that even go against our common sense and intuitive grasp. To be able to embrace your natural state and liberate yourself from the norms of society can be empowering. Likewise, being in tune with your carnal desires and cultivating a knack for erotic sensuality can also be liberating and empowering at a fundamental level. There is no reason one should be ashamed of doing what comes naturally.
I have a good friend who is a stripper and a spiritualist. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, most people are enslaved by society to feel ashamed of their bodies and carnal desires. They don't value their physical appearance and lose sight of what it means to value health and sex appeal. I wish we could live in a world where we were all liberated and empowered. We would be so much healthier and fulfilled!
Slippery Slope
— Feb 09, 2011
There are elements of what you're talking about for me, but be careful. Glamorizing the commodification of sexuality isn't the way to go. Strippers represent this sexual freedom for us, but its a fantasy, not a holistic truth... speaking from experience here. Not from judgment, from experience.
I've worked with some of the most beautiful women in the world... playboy models, actresses, models. I've been these things with them. BUT what the public doesn't see is the shit these women go through, how unbeautiful they feel, how much they are willing to suffer to be received by the public as beautiful. Starvation, surgery, extreme low self-esteem. Some of the most beautiful strippers I've ever met would spend most of the night in the dressing room piling make-up on, changing outfits a million times, going home with a couple hundred dollars in hand while others averaged a couple thousand.
I understand the fascination with stripping but the problem is it just isn't real. Most of these women are gay because they can't deal with men after being treated like meat all day for work by them.
And yeah, I've known some very spiritual strippers... but one was a heroin addict in and out of treatment, another was a former heroin addict living with her pimp. Then there was me, struggling with my own demons nightly. There are really few others I can think of...
It leads me back to the beginning of my story as a stripper, who I was before I began and what I set out to do... prove that a woman can be beautiful, desirable, smart, sexy, comfortable with her own sexuality and in her own skin. You'll have to stay tuned and read more to see what happened with that.
Just don't be so quick to call it grand, and vice versa to judge. Its a whole other world, a totally different animal. Until you know it intimately, its quite unknowable.
:)
— Feb 10, 2011
I appreciate your joining evolver as well as the decision to contribute with your story.
As a guy who has spent time in strip clubs, enjoying the fantasy as well as pondering the reality of the girls, I have a question for you.
As a younger man I rarely went to a club. As I got older, I began to more consciously examine my own sexuality and so followed my curiosity to strip clubs. I was always more interested in my conversations with the girls than I was in finding whatever satisfaction could be had with the performances.
In these conversations, what I found was similar stories, but no two stories that were exactly alike. Some girls seemed conscious, some did not. Some seemed in pain, some did not. Some seemed to be on a forward path, some seemed to be on a downward spiral.
What I am curious about and wanting to ask you is whether or not you see the similarity of your own personal story, as well as the uniqueness, among all that you have experienced? I wonder if you see that your story is like everyone else's?
I've been registered and reading evolver blogs for over a year now and what I notice here is what I notice everywhere.
People who are interested in economics feel that all of the problems in the world boil down to economic slavery and manipulation. People who identify with the Earth feel that all of the world's problems boil down to how inhumanely humans treat the Earth. People who believe in the Oneness of all things believe that all of the world's problems boil down to dualistic thinking.
Like you, there have been others who blog on evolver about sexuality. Young men are overwhelmed with testosterone and yearn for that woman or women who will allow these young men to share their ardent sexuality, but in a 'good' way. Women who have, like you, been abused and violated, or even simply treated as second class, have stepped into the idea of the Divine Feminine as a means of empowerment for themselves. Finding confirmation in experience both groups of humans step out and share their story and ask for recognition and/or guidance through the sexual confusion that is modern western society.
I appreciate that about you as well as the young men, as well as the economists and environmentalists and the new agers.
I guess my last question, for you or anyone else who might read this, is this:
Do you feel that that Compassion which you so eloquently referred to can be experienced and felt perhaps by letting go of these various identities that we all struggle with? Those things that we allow to continue to define us?
It's seemed to me for quite a while now that it is our identification within our own individual stories that distracts us from finding true peace, true compassion, for ourselves as well as everyone else.
Because you see, if I stay on the surface of your story, I have to profile you as a drug-addled girl struggling to crawl out of the fringes of that part of society based on vice and guilt and corruption. That does not seem right does it? You are more than that, this is what you are trying to illustrate... And yet, there is this sense of clinging to that identity you have known yourself as, just as there is a clinginess to the pagan identity, the eco-friendly identity, the libertarian identity, etc etc...
So, I am not identifying you with your occupation or your drug history. I think you are like me. And I think I am like a math professor (without all those numbers in my head). I think I am like a tree hugger.
Do you feel that maybe your identity is much larger than you apply to yourself in your story? And if it is, then isn't it true about the customers in strip clubs? the evil step-mothers of the world? the corrupt politicians? the greedy bankers?
I'm just curious, I mean no disrespect. I do think you write well, expressing clear thoughts, and I appreciate that and look forward to more of your story.
Thanks again, Namaste,
Steve
The point
— Feb 10, 2011
is to write about my experiences to illustrate how I've arrived at my ideals. Of course I am not my identity, nor are you or anyone else. In fact your comment proves how unidentified I am with this story in my 'real life' as I have another profile completely disconnected from these stories. Everyone I meet who learns of my past as a stripper can hardly believe it. Evolvers don't know me this way.
Its my desire to keep my real name completely separate from this profile in case family, friends, former friends, or, as you'll read later, people involved in my arrest and witness protection experience, don't find me telling these stories through simple search engine generations. Perhaps if these were attached to all the other ideas I've conveyed it might be a bit easier to sense a sort of dis-identification, however, my hope is to avoid that for reasons stated above.
They are posted here not to make a case for the divine feminine, but to paint the picture of the foundation of my perspective. I feel this relevant and necessary for us all to do because we continually have these mental debates about masculine/feminine with zero heart involved. If we are to understand one another we must know one another and the stories that have shaped us. If we are to evolve consciously we must know where we have come from, heal the stories that put gaping wounds in our minds.
Where does a person find the motivation to heal, transcend circumstance, evolve? I hope to show that here, in this place where pain and looming death pushed me personally into something completely new, different, unrelated (seemingly).
Its of course possible that my experiences have colored my perceptions of the stripping world, yes. exactly! Does that make my opinion the be all and end all? No, but it makes my stories more revealing than say, a customer who sees women display their remarkable ability to act as though they are enjoying every moment of stripping. The customer can't tell you a thing about these women's break time when they smoke a bowl while driving to the local bar, throw back six shots of tequila, and head back to the club while smoking another bowl. (Remarkably, not one of my habits, but a favorite of the majority of my co-workers at the last strip club I worked for the span of a year and a half).
I guess what it comes down to is context over content. I implore you to read the stories and allow them, over time, to answer your questions. Let them speak for themselves. The point, after all, is to show why I am what I am, how I came to be so very very different from Santina Hunter after all. I'm confident the story will be a more than sufficient answer to these questions over time.
In the meantime, thanks for reading and giving this some real thought.
I expect it will bring up stuff for people in their own way, the fundamental basis is sex, survival, money, stuff we all struggle with here on Evolver. It may seem unique, but the underlying themes are universal.
peace
SH
:)
— Feb 11, 2011
I suppose my perspective in asking the questions I did was to illustrate that everyone has a story, even the customer who does not know what strippers do on their breaks. My pointing it out is not meant to be a criticism of 'your' story. People love stories, particularly dramatic ones, and I appreciate the intelligence and consciousness you bring to the telling of your own narrative. I also want to thank you for responding to my questions at all. I look forward to what else you have to share.
Peace,
Steve
