Stacks & Cats
My girl counting the money and taking her cut.
My name is Ruby. I’m a sex worker from Australia. Kitty name withheld, she’s a very private lady.
Sex workers, submit pictures of your furballs and funds here.
The Week in Links–July 4
Victoria, BC sex worker resource society PEERS has a new executive director and some exciting new developments. After a rough financial situation last year, PEERS had to close the drop-in shelter last August, but between community support and a $100,000 grant from the provincial government it is reopening the shelter five days a week.
Remember last month when Giulia Jones went to Europe and returned to Australia full of Nordic ideas about sex work? Sex workers in Canberra are telling her they want none of it.
Tap Dancing For The Man: Leaving Academia For Sex Work
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.
Dear Tits and Sass: My Boyfriend’s Back
Dear Tits and Sass,
I was with my boyfriend for two years and we decided to take a break at the beginning of this year, shortly after which I began stripping. We recently got back together and I still can’t pluck up the courage to tell him about my new job, which I love. Problem is, his ex-wife was a stripper and he harbors a lot of negative attitude towards strippers and the sex industry in general, and has said some things that make me uncomfortable telling him (“I couldn’t date another stripper”) as well as the fact I’m scared he would tell my parents out of concern. The longer I keep it from him the worse it will look, and besides I think he suspects it already. Help, please!
Thank you,
Secret Stripper
The Week In Links—June 27
In a terrible blow for Bay Area sex workers, the sites MyRedbook.com and SFRedbook.com were shut down by the FBI, accused of money laundering and facilitating prostitution. Redbook was one of the few free advertising sites left where sex workers could advertise, talk to and screen clients with a degree of distance.
Steph Key, a member of the Australian Parliament, is trying for the third time to make decriminalization a reality in South Australia.
Operation Cross Country, a five-day nation-wide trafficking sting, yielded 168 child victims, many of whom had never been reported missing, and far more adult workers. The children, who are primarily runaways, many of whom weren’t reported missing by their families, will be returned to their families where possible or placed in foster care. In at least one instance a driver was also arrested on charges of conspiracy and promotion of prostitution.
Anne Elizabeth Moore and Leela Corman did a comic strip about what anti-trafficking NGOs really do for Truth-Out’s series Our Fashion Year.
Toronto’s Maggie’s Sex Worker Action Project is raising funds to battle C-36.