Annie Sprinkle: a woman who needs to get back in touch with her movement rather than speaking over it (Photo by Creatrix Tlara, via her flickr and the Creative Commons)
As a general rule, I absolutely love being called “adorable.” It reaffirms a lifetime of well-intentioned cheek pinches and makes me feel like I still look youthful as I approach 30. But being an adorable person is a very different thing than being part of an adorable movement. So when Annie Sprinkle took to Facebook to chastise sex workers who decided to “act up” at a conference called “Fantasies that Matter–Images of Sex Work in Media and Art,” and used condescending terms like “adorable” and “well intentioned” to describe sex workers who seek a voice in discourses about them, well, I got just adorably incensed.
Orange Is The New Black actress Laverne Cox in Arizona backing trans and sex workers’ rights activist Monica Jones’ appeal against false charges of “manifesting prostitution” (Photo by Leah Jo Carmine, via Monica Jones’ Facebook, courtesy of Monica Jones)
Laverne Cox supports Monica Jones’ appeal against trumped up charges of “manifesting prostitution”! We couldn’t have dreamed up a more exciting celebrity cameo in our wildest activist dreams. Catch up on Monica’s case by looking through Tits and Sass’ Monica Jones tag, and stay tuned for an exclusive Tits and Sass update on her appeal by her SWOP-Phoenix comrades.
Coverage of the Portland Cupcake Girls’ Spa Dayin the local press had a few of our readers writing in to us and other venues, infuriated. Apparently, neither the Oregonian nor the Cupcake Girls understand that strippers are not all unloved waifs and that actually, they can make themselves up and even (gasp!) pay for their own salon visits without the group’s charity. In fact, they do so consistently in order to work in a field in which their appearance must be immaculate. Read Red’s longform piece on shadowing the Cupcake Girls for more on these well meaning altruists’ fundamental misunderstandings about the sex industry.
Without even a photograph of her, it is difficult to put a face to her name. Access to the fragments of her life prior to her murder is also hindered by the stigma associated with sex work. Although the oldest profession in the world (apart from politics) it remains shrouded in secrecy and shame, criminalised in most countries and regarded with contempt by mainstream society.
All photos courtesy Dick Hennessy Productions/Hypnox
ATTN: NSFW PHOTOS AFTER THE JUMP
At 10 p.m. last Thursday, I sat myself in the judges’ row at Club Rouge in downtown Portland for the fifth annual Vagina Beauty Pageant. There were six judges, two poles, 22 competitors and 23 vaginas. Wait, what?
“Didja hear the story?” pageant staff photographer Hypnox shouted over the music. “Apparently, when she was a young lady and used a tampon for the first time, she inserted it but the blood didn’t stop flowing.”
The Vagina Pageant has been criticized for its somewhat anatomically incorrect moniker. However, I’d like to state that while it might be called the Vulva Pageant, within seconds of the contest’s beginning I really did view the inside of a vaginal canal and would see several more throughout the evening.
I spied my coworker Juniper Knox from Lucky Devil Lounge across from me, fondling a blow up doll’s breasts and lip syncing to Aaliyah. Nearer, judge Rachel Reckless sat stretched and crossed her long tattooed legs, sipping her drink through platinum-capped teeth. Beside her was Jedidiah Aaker of Portlandia fame (he’s the bearded guy in the thong). To my left was Nik Sin, all 3’6” of him looking devilishly handsome. Nik has appeared on Oddities, Portlandia, Jerry Springer and Maury, and has toured the country doing his Mini Marilyn Manson impersonation. Judge Tres Shannon, of world-famous Voodoo Donut, looked across the room. “I should check on my friend, Poster Boy. He doesn’t know anybody,” he said.
“He smells bad,” I said.
“He has butter on his dick.”
That wasn’t what I expected to hear. Although I already feared that I knew the answer, I asked “Why?”
“He gets lap dances.”
Suddenly the house lights were raised, “so that the judges could see better.” I cringed at the thought of the inability to hide treacherous razor burn and blemishes. Red light absent, shit was gonna get real.
A sex worker called Cat said: “It’s outrageous to hold a meeting to discuss sex work and to specifically exclude sex workers and sex worker-led organisations.”
Ms Grant said: “The planned meeting is for those who support the principles of criminalising the purchase of sex and as SCOT-PEP have publicly stated their opposition to this, their inclusion wouldn’t be appropriate at this time.
