Where To Get Help

This Time, It's Personal

By

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August 22, 2014

Reach out to someone. (Photo by Mark Fischer [Flickr user fischerfotos]) — Reach out to someone.
(Photo by Mark Fischer [Flickr user fischerfotos])

The numbers are staggering. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, one out of every four women has or will experience domestic violence. If those numbers are correct, it is guaranteed that you know someone that has been or is a victim.

Domestic violence isn’t always physical; it can be verbal, emotional, or even psychological. Escaping an abuser is never as easy as “just leaving.” Being abused is isolating and stigmatizing; the notion of even asking for help for a civilian woman can be terrifying. Considering the systematic whorephobia that sex workers face, getting away from an abuser seems downright impossible for some of us.

But help is out there. Here are some sex worker friendly resources should you or your loved ones need help. All of these resources are trans inclusive as well, to the best of our knowledge.

In or near San Francisco:
A Woman’s Place, an emergency shelter and transitional housing.
San Francisco Women Against Rape is a trans and sex worker friendly center that provides crisis counseling.

In or near Chicago:
The Heartland Alliance provides a variety of resources to those that have been impacted by domestic violence or other types of trauma.
Apna Ghar provides holistic help to the immigrant population affected by domestic violence.
Mujeres Latinas en Acción provides domestic violence counseling to the Latina population.
The Domestic Violence Legal Clinic offers free legal assistance.

In or near New York City:
The New York State LGBTQ Domestic Violence Network can direct to an agency that will provide the services you require.
The Sex Workers Project provides legal and social services to sex workers.
Safe Horizon can provide emergency housing and safe haven for individuals and families.
The Anti-Violence Project provides direct services such as immediate crisis intervention; safety planning; short or long-term counseling; police, court and social services advocacy and accompaniment; and information and referrals to anyone who calls their hotline or comes to their offices or intake sites.

In or near Salt Lake City:
The YWCA provides shelter and legal services for domestic violence victims. Their 24-hour crisis line is: 855-992-2752.

In Boston:
The Casa Myrna agency

In Portland:
The Portland Women’s Crisis Line

If you know of any sex worker friendly resources that we missed, leave them in the comments.

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The Second Shittiest Thing About Being Abused: Survivor Solidarity And Getting Out

By

Electra Fyre

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August 20, 2014

Part of a piece in the Waiting Room/Domestic Violence Tableau at the Topeka Library (Photo by the Topeka Library, via Flickr and the Creative Commons)

I actually didn’t know who Christy Mack was until I started seeing articles about her attack flying around the internet last week. But her story is one that is familiar to me. Intimately familiar.

I stripped for eight years, in a dozen clubs across New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, and Georgia. I met strippers who were also full service sex workers inside or outside the club, sugar babies, cam girls, and adult film stars. I’ve seen co-workers “graduate” into Playboy and Hustler. I’ve seen every combination of education, economic background, race, size, upbringing, parental status, and religion, so when I overhear non-sex-workers talking like we’re all a certain type, I can only laugh.

But one thing we all seem to have in common is an abuse story, either one of our own or of someone very close to us.

One thing I noticed early on in my career is that stripper locker room talk is brazen and honest. There is some high speed bonding that goes on over trays of eye shadow and half-finished drinks. As a more-or-less good girl going to state college on my parents’ dime, I was no stranger to boozy heartbreak stories, but stripper stories almost always went somewhere darker, faster. Without even knowing a co-worker’s name, I might hear the details of how her ex-husband broke into her house, or how she was borrowing a phone from another girl after receiving threatening texts from a stalker. I’ve had girls show me pictures of men on their phones with the warning, “If he shows up, tell the bouncer and come warn me. I don’t care if I’m in a VIP, just come tell me.”

There’s this recurring theme in our love lives— a man will admire us for our independence and freedom, and of course, our money. We’ll thrive on the attention for a while and we’ll enjoy spoiling him with gifts or trips. Maybe he moves in because his roommates are irresponsible, or maybe we move in with him because we’re sleeping over all the time anyway. And then the fights start.

“Where the fuck were you until five in the morning?”

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Sex Work and Partner Violence: How We’re Forced To Negotiate Our Own Abuse

By

Ruby Rue

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August 19, 2014

Late porn performer Linda Susan Boreman/ Linda Lovelace, abused for years by her manager boyfriend Chuck Traynor (Image by Nino Eugene La Pia, via flickr and the Creative Commons) — Late porn performer Linda Susan Boreman/Linda Lovelace, notoriously abused for years by her manager boyfriend Chuck Traynor (Image by Nino Eugene La Pia, via Flickr and the Creative Commons)

Editor’s note: This post was originally erroneously attributed to Victoria Joy. The piece is actually by Ruby Rue.

Victims of violence are more likely to have experienced violence at the hands of someone they know. The same goes for sex workers. There seems to be a lot more concern about stranger-danger in the industry than there is for what I’ve seen as the bigger threat—the people already in your life. I’m not suggesting you don’t screen clients, of course that is important. I’m also not suggesting isolating yourself from friends and family. But, article after article I’ve read about sex workers’ partners reflects some of my own experience. Now, luckily, the situations I’ve been in have never escalated to physical violence. But—verbal abuse? Manipulation? Sexual harassment? Sexual assault? Check, check, check, and check. Let’s break down this potential mine field and see how sex work stigma and abusive partner behavior collide in the worst ways possible.

I think about how many times I’ve had a friend who was a good decent friend, a decent, “good guy.” I figure, he’s pretty great, I should date him. And almost immediately, the whole situation sours. I wonder, “Did I do something wrong?” Maybe if I had a clearer head I’d see that the deterioration of the relationship is related to his resistance to my standing up for myself. Still, in the context of abuse, it’s going to be branded as my fault. There is no way of knowing that a guy will treat you the same way when he’s dating you as he did when you were just friends. For whatever reason, dating can open the can of crazy douchebag worms in a seemingly otherwise wonderful man in your life. The beautiful wonderful man you are dating can make this very same quick switch the second he discovers you were or are a sex worker, though I will bet you anything that if he reacts poorly to that information that there were already other problems in the relationship.

The first instance is misogyny and the second instance is whorephobia. Both misogyny and whorephobia are leveraged in relationships in order for the abuser to gain:

1. More outside support—a rallying cry against you
2. More sympathy—they’re broken hearted, you’re just a slut

I’m going to break down some intersections between whorephobia and abusive partner behavior, based on my personal experiences. You can use this to help identify whether your partner is an abuser or not. Much of this will be familiar, because the world is still pretty shitty about these issues.

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On Surviving Sex Work

By

suzyhooker

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August 7, 2014

This post was removed at the author’s request.

Tap Dancing For The Man: Leaving Academia For Sex Work

By

Bubbles

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July 3, 2014

Leaving academia isn’t just for sex workers, but there are a good number of former academics among our contributors and readers. Once you’ve done sex work and experienced the particular freedoms it affords, academia’s constraints can seem more chafing and its endgame more pointless. This post in particular prompted us to have some of them talk about their experiences with higher education and why they left. Thank you to our participants, who will introduce themselves:

Charlotte Shane: I’m in the US and I went to school here, mostly. I got one graduate degree (M.A.) and then went for another. The second time was when I became…A DROPOUT. I’ve been sex working in one form or another since the start of my first grad school stint. I also have various straight jobs, but none of them are dependant on any degree. (Not even high school, I don’t think.)

chelsea g. summers: Possessing a checkered academic past, I didn’t graduate college until my mid-30s, a few years after I started stripping. I worked the last year or so of college as a stripper, the year between undergrad and grad school, and the first two years of grad school. When I started my Ph.D. program, I quit stripping because I realized my students had fake IDs. It was fine if they were hot for teacher, but I didn’t need them to see the evidence that teacher was hot. Plus, I did my work at a Jesuit college here in New York City. I left my program with an M.Phil in 18th-century British Literature and a staggering amount of debt.

Lux ATL: You can find me on Facebook and Twitter. I spent 12 years in higher education, earning a B.A. in English, an M.A. in Creative Writing, and a Ph.D. in Literary Studies. In 2013 I finished my Ph.D. and officially became a doctor. I taught Freshman Composition from 2006 until 2014. I also spent my entire adult life working on and off as a stripper and occasional nude model. I started stripping when I was 18 and have continued to strip, with breaks in between, until present. I am currently 32.

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