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People malign sex workers without realizing they're talking to one...
Some sex worker rights activists say that white women like Evie should come out as an act of solidarity. If everyone who’s had sex for money were open about it, would the public accept that sex work defies stereotypes and is more prevalent than most imagine? The answer is a Catch-22. Stigma and severe criminal penalties keep people from openly fighting laws and cultural attitudes.
Via Gracie Passette
THE stock market was invented in 1602 in central Amsterdam, when traders gathered on the New Bridge for the then-disreputable purpose of speculating in shares of the East India Company. Today the New Bridge marks the entrance to Amsterdam’s Red Light District, an area dominated by other trades long considered disreputable but which the city’s liberal government has tried to bring above-board. But even in Amsterdam, sex work has not shed its stigma, as a former supervisor at the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) discovered last year. The Dutch magazine Quote reported this week that the woman was fired last autumn for having secretly moonlighted for years as a self-employed sex worker, out of an address in the heart of the Red Light District.
Via Rob Duke, Gracie Passette
If prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, then punting is the oldest consumer activity. Yet it remains broadly unexamined, perhaps because the questions it raises are too uncomfortable.
Via bobbygw
Whorephobia drives me insane, especially when it results in separation and even worse among sex workers. Perhaps nowhere is this as clear than the divide between porn stars and all the other sex wo...
Via Gracie Passette
Escorts make $100 a hand job — but entrepreneurs like me? We make $5,000 a night. Welcome to the new economy of the oldest profession.
Via Gracie Passette
Teenagers may not have the full capacity to consent or bear as full a responsibility for their actions as adults do, but they're not mentally incapacitated. The government shouldn't be able to lock up a 15-year-old girl 'til her 18th birthday to stop her from having sex in a way of which it disapproves.
I'm not ashamed to pay for sex—and other men shouldn't be either
Via Gracie Passette
We assign a cultural significance to sex; it is for procreation and the preservation of the family unit. We are told it is to be cherished and not commodified, but meanwhile sex screams at us from every billboard and TV channel. It seems sex can be u...
Via Gracie Passette
I met Antonia Crane when I was putting together an anthology I did about sex work & sex workers. From our first correspondence it was clear she was smart, articulate, funny, talented, ballsy and didn't take herself too seriously. I knew she had a...
Via Gracie Passette
Porn stars aren't typically labeled as feminists or women’s studies majors, but Belle Knox, a Duke freshman who made headlines recently after she was outed by her classmate, is both. Whatever you make of Knox, her story offers a lot to think about.
Via Gracie Passette, Deanna Dahlsad
The Feminist Times has an excellent series on sex work, covering a diverse range of issues. (Sadly, it is only found by searching for the hashtag #SexIndustryWeek, as if finding it on Twitter was more important than a person being able to find all the discussion on the site.) Because it is a diverse series, there are plenty of articles I do not agree with; but that’s what makes it a good discussion, so, please, do take the time to read them. However, there’s one article in particular that raised my hackles and prompts me to write today ~ primarily because it has gone without comment. Such absence of comment might make people think it is “right”. And it is not.
The article is #SexIndustryWeek: Dworkin Was Right About Porn, by VJD Smith of Glosswatch. In it, Smith uses the words of Andrea Dworkin to align all porn as patriarchal misogyny abusing and raping female victims:
Via Gracie Passette
After being outed for her work in pornography, a student is explaining her professional choice, but not abandoning it. Her words reveal our own unfounded stigmatization of sex workers.
Via Gracie Passette
The implication is that with the insufficient “supply” of women, tempting men with a hint of sexuality is too dangerous. This is almost a textbook example of victim-blaming, in which victims of sexual assault or aggression are construed to have been asking for it based on non-verbal cues, such as clothing, demeanor or profession. This sort of rhetoric flares up in large-scale rape cases. While covering the alleged rape of 14-year-old Daisy Coleman, known in the media as the Maryville case, an expert witness on Fox Newssaid, “What did she expect to happen at 1am in the morning after sneaking out?” The example in the New York Times article is a variation on the same concept; the woman is cautioned that she should adjust her behavior because this will either tempt or invite sexual aggression from men. It is not the man’s responsibility to not rape women; it is the woman’s responsibility to not ‘ask for it’. It may seem redundant to point out the commodification of female flesh in the industry of sex work. However, the issue at hand is specifically the rationalization that it is a simple function of the influx of men that creates conditions fertile for exploitation and predation. Critically absent from this discourse is a question as to why the men in Williston engage in this behavior. Ara Wilson, an associate professor of women’s studies at Duke University, points out that the definition of capitalist markets as “benign vehicles” that merely channel “wants, needs, and desires” overlooks the fact that “desires can be fostered and created.” Anybody can see how a sense of necessity did not precede the existence of consumer goods like smart phones, jewelry, or the millions of toys produced each year. However, with sex work, it’s taken as a given that desire precedes the market, and Wilson notes that a discussion of the creation of desire for sex work “remain[s] surprisingly unexamined”.
Via Gracie Passette
I know many of you who read here are, or have been, sex workers. Myself included, of course. We consider ourselves to be sex positive feminists who want sex work to be recognized and respected as work. Most of us believe it should be decriminalized, if not completely legal, even if we often disagree about how best to achieve those things. But often in our conversions on the subject of (and issues surrounding) sex work, it is clear that many hold onto their own experiences at the expense of seeing the larger picture. Just like those who were harmed come out swinging “against” sex work, we let our feelings color and even cloud our willingness to hear from others.
Via Gracie Passette
When researchers taught capuchin monkeys how to use money, it didn’t take long for one of the male monkeys to offer a female one of the coins in exchange for sex. Prostitution is often called “the world’s oldest profession” with good reason; it is a form of exchange that predates the human species, and has even been observed among chimpanzees. Males tend to want sex much more frequently than most females are willing to accommodate, and where a demand exists it is inevitable that some individuals will choose to meet it for a price. But because sex has traditionally been viewed as sacred, magical or otherwise special because of its ability to produce life, it has always been an area authoritarians felt especially compelled to enact restrictions upon; the fact that most of the sellers were female and most of the buyers male1 probably also had a lot to do with it, especially in pre-modern times when virtually all political power was concentrated in the hands of the client class. We no longer live in a time when power depends upon gender, nor one in which coitus runs an uncontrollable risk of creating unwanted offspring, yet our laws regarding prostitution are still solidly anchored in the era when those conditions prevailed .
Via Gracie Passette
Adult performers who get work elsewhere can be fired if their past comes out -- and there's no legal recourse
Via Gracie Passette
Our society turns a blind eye to the murder of sex workers, deeming them less than human. Why is that? ...Twenty years ago I first asked two questions that continue to unsettle me today. The first is answerable: What does a woman who sells sex accomplish that leads to her being treated as fallen, beyond the pale, incapable of speaking for herself, discountable if she does speak, invisible as a member of society? The answer is she carries a stigma. The second question is a corollary: Why do most public conversations focus on laws and regulations aimed at controlling these stigmatized women rather than recognizing their agency? To that the answer is not so straightforward.
Via Gracie Passette
It’s important to note that the horrors of the Cleveland abductions had nothing to do with sex trafficking; Ariel Castro’s atrocities were his, the acts of single criminal male. [This is also something folks would be equally wise to remember when it comes to the use of the word "sadist" in description of his acts; this has nothing to do with BDSM, neither in porn nor practice. Just as whatever religion Castro professes to prescribe to has nothing to do with that faith's real practice, any other associations, assumed or claimed, should not be accepted. Castro's inhumanity is his; to lay it at the feet of some other group, to misrepresent its origins or associations, to pretend it came from some "other" or otherwise purport false dangers, these things create panic and other actions which do not serve public safety or justice. Castro, and those like him, should be held accountable for their actions.]
Via Gracie Passette
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Curated by Deanna Dahlsad
An opinionated woman obsessed with objects, entertained by ephemera, intrigued by researching, fascinated by culture & addicted to writing. The wind says my name; doesn't put an @ in front of it, so maybe you don't notice. http://www.kitsch-slapped.com
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Sexuality as a human right.
Vintage Living Today For A Future Tomorrow
It's as easy to romanticize the past as it is to demonize it; instead, let's learn from it. More than living simply, more than living 'green', thrifty grandmas knew the importance of the 'economics' in Home Economics. The history of home ec, lessons in thrift, practical tips and ideas from the past focused on sustainability for families and out planet. Companion to http://www.thingsyourgrandmotherknew.com/
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