He was the perfect client. Well dressed and freshly showered, he brought me a small gift in which my precious dollar bills were discreetly enclosed, and our session finished before I was even fully undressed. “How did you find me?” I asked him over cacio e peppe. I needed to recreate whatever marketing techniques scooped… Continue reading Saving Face
Tag: stigma
Your Mother Is A Whore!
Puttering around the Mojave as a child, I shouted “Tu madres es una puta!” to the delight of my father and other day laborers. Before I could even count in Spanish, I knew how to say, “Your mother is a whore!” The colloquialism revealed two truths about living under a heteropatriarchy: first, a woman’s worth… Continue reading Your Mother Is A Whore!
Altered Carbon (2018)
Content warning: this review contains graphic discussion of the rape, torture, assault, and murder of sex workers; as well as spoilers after the jump. For the uninitiated, Altered Carbon is the story of Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman), a biracial man “resleeved” into the body of a beautiful, dirty blonde-haired, and incredibly hard-bodied white man in… Continue reading Altered Carbon (2018)
The Erasure of Maya Angelou’s Sex Work History
As Black History Month draws to a close, we thought revisiting Peech’s seminal essay on Maya Angelou would be appropriate. Dr. Maya Angelou, American Poet Laureate, most famous for authoring I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, passed away at age 86 on May 28th, 2014. Her literary agent Helen Brann confirmed the news to… Continue reading The Erasure of Maya Angelou’s Sex Work History
We’re Not Crazy For Doing This: Sex Workers With Mental Illness
Most people have some form of a lurid narrative about drugs, exploitation, childhood abuse, and mental illness come to mind when they imagine the life of a sex worker. However, sex workers’ relationships to their identity are far more complex and difficult to characterize than that trite narrative allows for. When it comes to sex… Continue reading We’re Not Crazy For Doing This: Sex Workers With Mental Illness