In May 2013, sex worker and trans rights activist and Arizona State University social work student Monica Jones was charged with “manifestation of prostitution” in Phoenix after accepting a ride from an undercover cop. Her arrest ignited a firestorm of protest against Project ROSE, a prostitution arrest diversion program run by the ASU School of Social Work and the Phoenix… Continue reading Nothing Scarier Than A Black Trans Woman With A Degree: An Interview With Monica Jones
Author: Caty Simon
I'm a small town escort and activist, with purely *academic* interest in drugs and madness (because identity politics are so passe). I've been escorting low-end on and off for eighteen years, and haven't gotten sex worker burnout quite yet. I'm a co-editor here at Tits and Sass, and you can also find my writing at Alternet, VICE, Raw Story, refinery29, The Forward, HTMLGiant, the emilybooks tumblr, the Red Umbrella Project's literary magazine Prose and Lore volume 4, in a couple of issues of make/shift magazine, and in the anthology Eros & Thanatos. I also have experience in the mad movement, the harm reduction movement, the drug users' union movement, and the low-income rights movement. I fundraise and do support work for Whose Corner Is It Anyway, a local mutual aid, harm reduction, political education and organizing group by and for low-income/street/survival sex workers who use opioids/stimulants and/or experience housing insecurity. I am the national sex worker liason for Urban Survivors' Union, the national drug users union, and a board member there.
Gore and Psychic Wounds: Nicole Witte Solomon on Horror, Phone Sex, and Film
Nicole Witte Solomon and I have kept up with each other online for a while, dating back to the era when she was a young phone sex operator/film student, just beginning to pitch her clever writing on topics ranging from vegan cooking to feminism in pop culture to a variety of venues. As the years… Continue reading Gore and Psychic Wounds: Nicole Witte Solomon on Horror, Phone Sex, and Film
Support Hos: American Horror Story: Freak Show
Adapted from a g-chat between Caty Simon and Maggie Mcmuffin: American Horror Story: Freak Show draws on the traditional connection between perfomativity and sex work. Acting has always been connected with prostitution, since before the Jacobean era to very recently. And by connecting performance in a freak show with sex work, the show is pathologizing… Continue reading Support Hos: American Horror Story: Freak Show
Moving Through Archetypes: Juniper Fleming and Reclamation and (Dis)Atonement
I interviewed sex worker artist Juniper Fleming on her collaborative photo series with other sex workers, Reclamation and (Dis)Atonement. Your project consists of remaking iconic Western art works, creating photographic reproductions in which you replace the main figures in the paintings with sex workers. What does depicting sex workers in these roles achieve? As sex… Continue reading Moving Through Archetypes: Juniper Fleming and Reclamation and (Dis)Atonement
Remembering Stone Butch Blues’ Pledge To Sex Workers
Trans/queer writer and socialist hero Leslie Feinberg died last week. The event rekindled my memories of squatting on the floor of Barnes and Nobles at the age of 17, reading the work zie’s1 most known for, Stone Butch Blues, a bildungsroman set in the lesbian working class bar scene during the Stonewall era. I was… Continue reading Remembering Stone Butch Blues’ Pledge To Sex Workers