Four years ago, I quit my full-time teaching job to be a whore—to travel the world and to make art. […] These days I continue to work as an escort in LA, but I am at the tail-end of my sex work career. Burnt out and jaded, I have seen and done it all. In the past, whenever I wanted to get out of the sex work profession, I wasn’t able to. So often you make a choice but then for different reasons you have to continue doing the work, so it isn’t a choice at all. Without sex work I was mostly doing shit minimum wage jobs like hustling for donations for the environment outside of grocery stores. Because I feast and famine quite frequently I find myself doing survival sex, and this can be very traumatic. I can’t go back to teaching because I have a criminal record. I was banned from the district for five years.
Prominent activist and artist Mariko talked to Melissa Petro about her experiences in the sex industry. This bit beautifully highlights how much criminalization sucks and does no good for sex workers, ever.
This is awesome. “Criminilization” in general is often a bad thing. Many criminal justice theorists believe that part of the reason that recidivism rates are so high for so many convicted felons is simply because they are seen as only that, and aren’t able to function as citizens after serving their time, preventing honest employment and peer acceptance. And of course it applies to sex workers too, sadly.