Home Blog Page 68

Man Calls Cops on Stripper That Won’t Screw Him: Stripping Isn’t Sex Work Lite

By
Lane Champagne
-
(Image by Nicolas Royne, via Flickr and the Creative Commons)
(Image by Nicolas Royne, via Flickr and the Creative Commons)

One of the brightest spots of sex work activism is when some bright-eyed bushy-tailed sex-worker-to-be finds her way into the space and wants to know the best way to get into our sordid business. “Come, little one! Join me in the fresh hellscape that is the business of selling sexual services,” I declare, fancying my mentorship style half old-school brothel manager chain-smoking Virginia Slims, half Archimedes the uptight but good-hearted owl from Disney’s Sword in the Stone. But one of the darker spots of the same situation is when these apprentices say things like, “I think I could start with something easy like stripping.” Oh, girl. You did not.

It is times like this that I wish I had this story in my back pocket to pull out and give to would-be strippers that think dancing is the Diet Coke of sex work. It is the story of a man with a shit-eating grin and a monumental sense of entitlement calling the police on a stripper who denied him sex in a VIP room in the appropriately named city of Butte, Montana. To recap, this man believed that the denial of sex from a stripper was not only a criminal offense but a criminal offense worth escalating to involvement with law enforcement. The sense of entitlement to sexual services beyond the ones on the official job descriptions are ones to which strippers are subjected regularly. While it is newsworthy because the guy actually called the cops, strippers know that boundary-pushing clients are part and parcel of the sexual and emotional labor of stripping.

Continue

The Week in Links—September 5th

By
Red
-

 

Cris Sardina of Desiree Alliance holds up pictures of Marcia Powell (Photo by P.J. Starr via the NO HUMAN INVOLVED Facebook page)
Cris Sardina of Desiree Alliance holds up pictures of Marcia Powell (Photo by P.J. Starr, via the NO HUMAN INVOLVED Facebook page)

A Sydney sex worker was set alight with petrol by two men. One of her attackers has just been sentenced to only three years in jail. S Kim suffered burns to 45% of her body and her face, and her top lip had to be partially removed. As a result of being outed by articles about the attack, she has lost friends and support. A former client of Kim’s began fundraising towards her medical costs. You can join him using this information: BSB: 062 016 ACCT NUMBER: 1075 6113 Name: S Kim

Two transgender sex workers have been murdered in Baltimore in the past two months, and the police say there were similarities between the murders.

The mayor of Surabaya is monitoring the Dolly district—which has been the scene of ongoing protests over her attempts to curtail sex work by evicting sex workers and closing down the area—through CCTV cameras.  Not unlike some club owners I know.

Though Amanda Goff says that her children will not be affected by her decision to write a memoir about her work as an escort, the Australian Herald Sun begs to differ, and worries greatly about the potential horrific effects this choice will have on her children, all the while vocally supporting her agency and empowerment.  It’s a wild ride.

I knew there was something shady about the survival of all those bikini barista drive-thrus! The owner of one chain, Java Juggs, has it doubling as a brothel/money laundering operation! Sounds chilly for the employees.

Ruth Jacobs interviewed PJ Starr about No Human Involved, her documentary about street worker Marcia Powell’s death while arrested and kept in a cage in the Arizona heat.

Continue

I Did Not Consent To Being Tokenized

By
Lady Emmy
-
Do not use our passive bodies as props for your agenda (Photo by Anton Marcos Kammerer, via Flickr and the Creative Commons)
Stop using our passive bodies as props for your agenda. (Photo by Anton Marcos Kammerer, via Flickr and the Creative Commons)

I am a sex worker who was coerced into doing work I felt violated by, and I am horrified by SWERFs (Sex Worker Exclusionary Reactionary Feminists) who insist that all sex work is by nature coerced and non-consensual.

Recently, I’ve noticed a disturbing rise in anti-sex work rhetoric that rests on the premise that all sex work is coerced. The proponents of this claim argue that because the workers may need the money and thus feel unable to turn down a proposition they are uncomfortable with, sex work encounters are always non-consensual. As far as they are concerned, if money is involved, sex can never be consensual. They claim that by promoting the criminalization of all forms of sex work, they are “protecting” sex workers and engaging in “feminist solidarity” with us.

I’ve already seen a number of brilliant sex workers debunking this argument: by discussing their own consensual sex work experiences, by pointing out that all professions involve money and thus a potential for coercion or abuse of workers, and so on. Tits and Sass contributor Red wrote a particularly interesting piece on her tumblr in which she notes that she finds the term “constrained consent” a far more accurate term than “coerced consent.” All of those points are valid and important, if often ignored by the audience they’re intended for.

But I’ve noticed one perspective missing from the discussion: that of someone who was sometimes unable to consent to sex work, and is harmed by those who would tokenize that experience and devalue the experiences of other sex workers. After seeing my experiences casually commandeered by SWERFs as a talking point, I’ve decided to speak up.

Continue

The Week in Links—August 29th

By
Red
-

 

 

Marcia Powell, RIP (Photo by Gary Millard, 2008, courtesy of SWOP-Phoenix)
Marcia Powell, RIP (Photo by Gary Millard, 2008, courtesy of SWOP-Phoenix)

The often brutal side effects of Truvada, or PrEP, as well as general lack of adherence to medical standards, may be the undoing of widespread PrEP use. Studies have shown the prophylactic may be too flawed to work, in fact, “a public health disaster in the making.”

A Brazilian sex worker has been forced into hiding after speaking out against a brutal and illegal police raid on May 23rd of this year.  The worker and her family have received threats; there is a campaign to raise funds to help them here.

After being arrested for prostitution, Marcia Powell was left in a cage in the Arizona sun and she died later that same day. PJ Starr’s documentary, currently in funding stages on IndieGogo, tells her story, and examines the sex work and prison policies that caused her death.

One of the prizes for donating is I Was a Teenage Prostitute, which, despite/because of the salacious title, looks amazing.

In a glorious paradox, Susan Patton—the “Princeton Mom” who urged young female coeds to go to Princeton to get a husband—is currently outraged by another Princeton alumni who used the alumni listserv to advertise her documentary on sugar babies and daddies.  The commentary her hypocrisy inspired is maybe the best part:

“Susan, you, of all people, have a problem with this? I mean, shit, you’re the one telling us not to give away the milk for free while simultaneously harping on our youth and attractiveness to men as our primary assets in finding a husband who will (hopefully) support us (financially) for life,” wrote one alum. “I swear, you can’t write this stuff.”

I can’t.  Maybe Curtis Sittenfeld.

Continue

The Role of Humor In Sex Worker Activism: Should We Always Be So Goddamn Hilarious?

By
Lane Champagne
-
(Screenshot of a tweet by PepperHeartsU)
(Screenshot of a tweet by @PepperHeartsU)

If you’ve been hanging out in the digital sex work community for long enough, you’ve learned a handful of things. One is that some men really like to interrupt your conversations uninvited to assume that you do your work for the sake of your sexual liberty, and to assure you that they’re totally cool with it. Secondly, sex work statistics are kind of like recipes and can be tampered with to fit the occasion of the person whose hands they’re in. And the third is that sex workers are really fucking funny. In the very likely event that I out myself one day in an effort to feed an ego that is starved for affirmation from strangers, I want to start by writing a book called Everyone Is Basic But Us: The Story of Some Funny Paid Sluts I Know From Twitter. I am currently accepting submissions for the collection.

I came across this brilliant satirical press release from Sex Worker Open University that pokes fun at the plans of Scottish Police to conduct “welfare visits” at the homes of sex workers as part of “Operation Lingle.” Putting aside for the moment that “lingle” sounds like a medieval wasting sickness, the plan itself was clearly a surveillance effort dressed up as charity. The response from SWOU instead suggests home visits for the 17,000 known police officers “plying their trade” in Scotland. It turns the tables on law enforcement and makes clear just how invasive and ridiculous such visits would be if directed at any other profession. It was one of many examples of how sex workers have used humor to their advantage when combatting the grave injustices and daily humiliations to which we are constantly subjected.

But in the same moment that I was applauding another job well done, I was reminded of a recent conversation I had with a civilian dude who loves Sex Work Twitter for its entertainment value. He isn’t a client (to my knowledge) and isn’t an activist, he just thinks sex workers are really funny. Seeing as I think of Sex Work Twitter as an impenetrable digital slumber party where we make fun of shit clients and antis, it hadn’t occurred to me that people outside of sex work or the surrounding debates paid it much mind. So if you were wondering what remarkable naivete looks like, add me on Snapchat and I’ll send a selfie. It made me wonder to what extent our movement is taken seriously when so much of our public discourse is decidedly unserious.

Continue
1...676869...235Page 68 of 235
© Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv