The very same free speech arguments that lawyers used to attempt to defend sex shops and strip clubs in the late 1990’s are being used to defend against SESTA/FOSTA now — and the fallout is largely the same: erasure of so-called “deviance” for the sake of respectability and supposed “safety.”
Amber Dawn and Justin Ducharme just dropped the first poetry anthology written by self-identified sex workers. Fifty-six self-identified sex workers from across North America, Europe, and Asia are featured. All of them are a different facet to the story that policymakers and social workers and Hollywood never told quite right.
If you can’t handle the titties, get out the strip club, babe. Even if it’s a fictional one.
“Jennifer Lopez’s entrance in Hustlers is better than any of us could have dreamed. But days later, the scene that won’t stop playing in my head happens almost directly afterwards, on the rooftop of the club where Ramona and Destiny work.”
Twenty-Bi-Teen is well underway.
“I identified as a heterosexually-inclined bisexual when I started giving hand jobs for money, and I left more or less a lesbian. It wasn’t the only factor in that transformation, but boy was it a major one.”
Harlots’ second season has five queer women and a story that proves sex worker narratives are uniquely capable of illuminating the restless, uncomfortable gender dynamics and power structures that may experience shifts in style or public acceptance, but never by degrees of import or influence.
“She kisses me. I hold on to her arms lightly, not wanting to hurt her, not wanting to weird her out, make her uncomfortable. She’s here for me: I’d hired her for exactly that, and she agreed to it, and she’s here.”
Sex workers are resilient and face near constant opposition via social stigma or legal obstacles. Regardless of the conditions, for some people, it is the only way to feed their family. The FOSTA-SESTA package-bill is not going to save sex trafficking victims; it’s just going to turn consensual sex workers into victims themselves. Decriminalization is the only solution to preventing sex trafficking and separating sex workers from that label.
One of the most annoying things I have heard during this process of figuring out what to do and how to react to the FOSTA-SESTA prohibition deal is “Don’t panic.”
The Pervert is definitely going to turn off some readers, it’s full of swearing and violent homophobia and transphobia and explicit sex scenes, but for the people who read it, it will stick with them forever. This book is a wake up call.
Over the last two years, a story about a trans girl living in Seattle and surviving through sex work was published in issues of ISLAND Magazine. Now, It’s being put together as one book, The Pervert, by Michelle Perez and Remy Boydell.
Despite taking place 250 years ago, Hulu’s Harlots manages to depict indoor-market sex work more authentically than any show or movie I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot!) — queer stuff very much included.
What does it mean to be queer and a sex worker at Skirt Club?
“It became a running joke between my partners and I, that I was both too stigmatized and too famous to get my needs met.”
Here’s how a single 20-year-old Latina queer polyamorous femme who works as a nonprofit employee and fetish model does poly.
Given the one-year deferral requirement for MSM and women who have sex with MSM, it seems unlikely that the adjustment in policy will majorly impact the supply of available blood
Amber Rose’s Slutwalk truly embraced and celebrated the duality of women’s lives in the modern world, and it was a radically inclusive event — one with an explicit policy against all forms of oppressive language and behavior as well as an explicit intent to include, lift up, and acknowledge the unique and compounded struggles of trans women, women of color, queer women, poor women, and differently abled women.
“Why is it that trans women of color have to experience so much violence to remember that they have each other’s back?”
Amnesty International’s Board has put together a draft policy on sex work that could lift up and protect some of the most vulnerable and marginalized folks around the world – and feminists and human rights advocates alike could learn a lot from it. The only problem is that they’re too busy speaking over the sex workers and researchers who emphatically support the proposal to really do so.
