Part one of this interview is here. You encapsulate the tired terms of the sex worker debate, in which the token sex worker is asked reductifying questions ad nauseaum: Is sex work exploitative or empowering? Is it violence against women? How can we help women (always women, and always cis women, never sex working men… Continue reading Activist Spotlight Interview: Melissa Gira Grant on Playing The Whore and Policing The Policers, Part Two
Tag: Activist Spotlight
Activist Spotlight: Melissa Gira Grant on Playing The Whore and Policing the Policers, Part One
In the early aughts when I was a novice escort and On Our Backs was still being published, I was wowed by Melissa Gira Grant, an internet porn-making, geeky, theory-spouting phenom, even managing to be friends with her despite the fact that she was an Anais Nïn devotee. Over the years I’ve kept in touch… Continue reading Activist Spotlight: Melissa Gira Grant on Playing The Whore and Policing the Policers, Part One
Activist Spotlight: Anna Saini on Identity and Being An Unlikable Survivor
Anna Saini is a community organizer with Voices of Community Activists and Leaders – New York (VOCAL-NY), where she works towards ending the drug war, mass incarceration and racist policing. Her writing appears in Bitch magazine, make/shift magazine, the forthcoming Dear Sister Anthology, her self published anthology Colored Girls, as well as both Red Umbrella Project… Continue reading Activist Spotlight: Anna Saini on Identity and Being An Unlikable Survivor
Activist Spotlight Interview: Sarah Patterson on Health, Access, and Risk
In January 2012, Sarah Elspeth Patterson and a group of other sex worker activists in NYC went to work offering health care and social services to sex workers. The much needed outcome, Persist Health Project, is the 2nd sex worker only health clinic in the United States, after Saint James Infirmary in San Francisco. While… Continue reading Activist Spotlight Interview: Sarah Patterson on Health, Access, and Risk
Activist Spotlight: Melissa Ditmore on Responsible Advocacy and No-BS Research
Dr. Melissa Ditmore is one of the sex workers’ rights movement’s most cherished academics. For twelve years, she has worked as a freelance research consultant, with an impressive list of clients that includes AIDS Fonds Netherland, UNAIDS, The Sex Workers’ Rights Project at the Urban Justice Center, and The Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP).… Continue reading Activist Spotlight: Melissa Ditmore on Responsible Advocacy and No-BS Research