By M.Christian

YNOT – Being born in 1960 I sort of … ‘missed’ the protest decade, being too young to have been around when the world changed.

But now, in 2011, I can’t help following what’s happening in every major U.S. city and feel that, this time, I have the opportunity to be there, to see it all happening. As Dylan sang, “…the times they are a-changin’.”

So why, you may be asking, am I saying this here, for YNOT? What does this have to do with the adult entertainment industry?

A lot, actually.

Unlike a few so-called “movements” that have cropped up lately — I’m looking at you, tea-baggers — the 99% movement isn’t Astroturf: fake grassroots bought and paid for by corporate and political interests banking on bigotry and fear.

Instead, the 99% is just about as diverse a bunch as one could find anywhere, and therefore it is a perfect demonstration of the melting pot, or salad, that is the U.S. Many are college students, of course, but they are shoulder to shoulder with teachers, creative types, white-collar workers, blue-collar workers, no-collars workers, members of the military. They are young and old and every age in between. All of them are out-front with the same core message: Greed is not good.

The 99% are protesting because they are tired of having to look up at people and companies that do nothing but look down on them. They are tired of being a “target demographic” that’s only as good as the money they can make for someone else. They are tired of working and saving and behaving in what they’ve always been taught was the American Way, only to sacrifice their jobs, their homes, their health, their families and even their human dignity to corporate and political greed. They are tired of the growing income inequality in the U.S., where every day more and more middle-class people are succumbing to poverty while the wealthiest 1 percent get richer.

Instead of hearing the message when the 99% take to the streets in rallies like Occupy Wall Street, politicians, the media and even the courts in some cases characterize the marchers as — surprise! — drug addicts and hippies. In fact, they’re common people who have been forced to exchange the American Dream for the hopelessness of their worst nightmares.

Republican political strategist Ron Christie, once a Dick Cheney adviser, pretty much encapsulated “the establishment’s” position during a recent segment of Hardball: “College students who are out having sex on the lawn, people who admit they’re just there to be part of a good time, people are taking drugs, people who are breaking the law. They don’t have a right to urinate on the lawn.”

Meanwhile former U.S. Senator and current Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, still frothing over being connected to a rather distasteful byproduct of anal sex, further demonstrated his inability to understand what’s happening: “The biggest problem with poverty in America — and we don’t talk about [it] here because it’s an economic discussion — is the breakdown of the American family. You want to look at the poverty rate among families that have two … that have a husband and wife working in them? It’s 5 percent today. A family that’s headed by one person? It’s 30 percent today…. We need to have a policy that supports families, that encourages marriage, that has fathers take responsibility for their children. You can’t have limited government — you can’t have a wealthy society if the family breaks down, that basic unit of society.”

Okay, you’ve been patient, so I really should connect the dots here. What does the 99% movement mean to the adult industry?

The way I think of it is one word: industry. Even when what you produce is Debbie Does Everyone or Dirty Fighting Midgets, you are still a business, a company — and the 99% are a magnifying glass looking right at you.

Some businesses have been smart about all this. Ben & Jerry’s, for instance, has come out in support of the protestors. A few other progressive businesses have, as well. Some pundits have accused Ben & Jerry’s of playing marketing games, which may very well be true. But the effect cannot be ignored: They company has gained more positive than negative comments because it not only supports the 99% movement, but also indicates it understands and supports the movement’s ethos.

Consumers have a lot of choices, especially when it comes to watching people have sex. Therefore, it seems essential that folks in the adult industry begin to understand that their customers are more than just lines on a graph, weird emails, credit card statements, and money in a bank account.

What the 99% are saying is that they are tired of being exploited, of being invisible. While making a bold move like being publicly in favor of the 99% might be too drastic — especially from an industry that in many ways prefers to remain in the shadows — what is important is understand what the movement is all about. The 99% is not socialism run amok in the free world. At its core, the message is simpler: Profit shouldn’t be a company’s only motivation.

In other words, if you want customers and employees to be loyal to you and your products, you must return that loyalty. Customers want quality, certainly, but they also want to feel a connection with the people they are doing business with, and they want to know they are not just a credit card number. Employees want to know they matter.

Go ahead and prove it to yourself. Regardless where you are on the economic ladder, ask yourself a simple question: With what kinds of companies and people do you prefer to do business? Do you want to deal with those who see you as a partner and want you to prosper so both of you can feed each other’s income for a long time to come? Or would you prefer to deal with an impersonal monolith whose only goal is to make enough off your efforts that the CEO can live way up in the economic clouds … looking down on you?

M.Christian is a YNOT.com contributing editor and an author of literary erotica that blends the spectrum of sexual preferences and desires with horror and science fiction. Got weird sex news you want to share? Email him.