A few months ago, I came across an article about Laurenn McCubbin’s recent art show, which featured a variety of sex worker stilettos, in the University of Nevada Las Vegas student newspaper. I recognized her name as the former art director of Kitchen Sink magazine, and the illustrator of Rent Girl, Michelle Tea’s 2004 graphic novel/prostitution memoir.
Laurenn and I have both spent more time in Las Vegas than we’d like to: me in strip clubs hustling for money that’s just not happening in my hometown these days, and her finishing a degree at the University of Nevada. I caught up with her days after she completed her MFA as she was plotting her next move to Duke University, where she’ll be getting a second MFA in Documentary and Experimental Art. On a typically nasty hundred-something-degree afternoon, we sat down to talk about her recent projects, Nevada’s hypocritical politics, and post-Vegas plans.
10. I feel like twitter is to blame for anything starting with “Dear,” including “Dear John” billboards in and surrounding Chicago, IL. “Dear Starbucks,” “Dear Netflix,” “Dear rain,” “Dear Man Soliciting Sex, We’re watching you in your sleep. Love, Chicago PD.”
Farley in action, probably explaining how all prostitutes are "slaves"
It’s common knowledge ’round these parts, and in every sex worker activist circle I’ve ever bumped up against, that the work Melissa Farley does is misleading, ill-intentioned, and downright vile in the way it determinedly misrepresents the whole truth. She’s a self professed “abolitionist,” meaning she wants sex work (and by necessary extension, sex workers) to be eradicated, and everything she’s ever done in this arena has been deliberately intended to further her point of view. This is not how real academics are trusted to work; like scientists, they’re expected to go after information in an attempt to minimize their own bias, not cater to it. And, as was true in the case of Ashton Kutcher, real activists deal with complex realities. They don’t require and supply a histrionic alterna-world where there’s only one story.
It’s always easy to spot the glaring flaws in Farley’s “reasoning.” She habitually ignores the existence of men who sell sex or women who buy it. (That includes porn, lap dances, etc.) She relies on emotional appeal. She draws from self-selected and otherwise skewed populations and treats them as definitive, expansive samples. She equivocates to serve her ideology. (Prostitutes are raped because they are in a job that “exposes them” to rape, not because laws around that job make them unusually vulnerable.) This is a woman who once called indoor sex workers “house ni****s.” You could play a “spot the logical fallacy” drinking game with almost any one of her articles and end up with your stomach pumped.
Miss Farley called us terrible names and accused us of being like toilets! She never talked to any us for her research […] We wish powerful women like you would stand beside us instead of against us. Many other professions have developed from slave like conditions into occupations we all respect today like wife, child care, soldiering, construction, farming, domestic worker and nursing. Why won’t you respect us?
It’s a question Farley is not inclined to answer. She’s very much in favor of dominating the discussion, and she often gets away with it.* She won’t acknowledge sex workers who want rights, because giving us the ability to better control our own labor is not the equivalent of halting that labor altogether. And now Newsweek has given her the floor.
Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors will baby people become interested–for a while at least. The “righteous” cry against the white slave traffic is such a toy. It serves to amuse the people for a little while, and it will help to create a few more fat political jobs–parasites who stalk about the world as inspectors, investigators, detectives, and so forth.
What is really the cause of the trade in women? Not merely white women, but yellow and black women as well. Exploitation, of course; the merciless Moloch of capitalism that fattens on underpaid labor [… T]hese girls feel, “Why waste your life working for a few shillings a week in a scullery, eighteen hours a day?”
Naturally our reformers say nothing about this cause. They know it well enough, but it doesn’t pay to say anything about it. It is much more profitable to play the Pharisee, to pretend an outraged morality, than to go to the bottom of things.”
Don’t push yourself on me in the name of help if I don’t want or need it. I have the ability to make decisions for myself. Honor my decisions even if you don’t agree with them.
We have lots of people offering us “help,” but most are NOT actually meeting our needs. Meet my needs, not your desires. If you don’t know what my needs are, it is ok to ask.
If you offer help and I accept, follow through on your promises. Do not lie to us or give us a false sense of hope. Be real about how much you can and will help.
If you offer help, I want it to address my immediate needs! Not something that will help me 5 years from now. For instance, if I don’t have food, a place to sleep or my fix, then scholarships for school have very little relevance in my life.
A few months ago, I came across an article about Laurenn McCubbin’s recent art show, which featured a variety of sex worker stilettos, in the University of Nevada Las Vegas student newspaper. I recognized her name as the former art director of Kitchen Sink magazine, and the illustrator of Rent Girl, Michelle Tea’s 2004 graphic novel/prostitution memoir.
