Saturday Morning Cartoons: Backpage

Welcome to Saturday Morning Cartoons, a segment where four artists take turns delighting you with their whimsy, facts and punchlines on Saturday mornings! Our esteemed cartoon critters are Cameron GlavinAnna BongiovanniMegan Praz and Yao Xiao. Today’s cartoon is by Anna!

Special Note: With the recent closure of the adult section of Backpage.com, and the recent removal of solidarity with sex workers from The Women’s March, it’s becoming more apparent than ever that LGBTQ community needs to stand by and be active in supporting sex work and sex workers. The Senate claims that going after Backpage fights sex trafficking, but sex work is not trafficking. When advertising platforms are shut down, traffickers just hide further underground while sex workers struggle to survive. This comic, written by a Chicago sex worker and drawn by Anna, is about how the moralistic crusade against Backpage makes sex workers’ lives harder and more dangerous while pushing trafficking victims further into the margins.



Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!

Archie

I'm a cartoonist living in Minneapolis. Co-Author and artist of A Quick And Easy Guide To They/Them Pronouns. Author of Grease Bats, coming out Fall 2019 with Boom! Studios! If I'm not working I'm socializing. If I'm not out with friends I'm drawing. If I'm not doing any of those things I'm probably depressed. Support me using Patreon.

Archie has written 117 articles for us.

5 Comments

  1. Thank you both for making this. I’m looking forward to seeing more content made by and about sex workers on Autostraddle in the future.

  2. I was at the Chicago’s Women March, which was not affiliated with the DC March and I was glad that at least one speaker specifically mentioned sex workers’ rights.

  3. Thank you for this. The Philly March did thankfully have speakers who spoke about the need for support for sex workers, and had 2 people speak at the rally on behalf of Project SAFE Philly which does work defending the rights of sex workers.

    An interesting thing- when we discussed the speakers later, some of the other photographers I was with (who happened to be cis-het white passing women) mentioned that they didn’t know what was meant by the term sex workers but were afraid to ask. It made me think of how to educate around the issue with people of the mainstream when they aren’t even aware of how it exists. Things like this help though, so thank you

  4. As a lesbian sex worker, it is so heartening to see this issue being talked about on Autostraddle. Thank you for showing support and I hope to see more coverage of sex worker issues on here.

Comments are closed.