Content warning: this piece contains accounts of child sexual abuse and violence against a sex working minor as well as discussion of structural violence. I spent my teen years selling sex on the internet. I grew up on the Craigslist Erotic Services section, finding men who would pay me for something I didn’t take seriously… Continue reading Thinking About Cyntoia And My Black Body
Tag: trafficking
Cyntoia Brown and the Commodification of the Good Victim
Imagine at the age of 16 being sex trafficked by a pimp named “cut-throat.” After days of being repeatedly drugged and raped by different men, you were purchased by a 43-year-old child predator who took you to his home to use you for sex. You end up finding enough courage to fight back and shoot… Continue reading Cyntoia Brown and the Commodification of the Good Victim
Surviving As Working Class After Backpage
Content warning: This post contains discussion and accounts of trafficking, debt bondage, and exploitation, both in the context of sex trafficking and trafficking in another industry. There are also brief references to experiences of domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, custody loss, structural violence from criminalization, and violence against sex workers. In the last four… Continue reading Surviving As Working Class After Backpage
Big Little Lies Protecting White Virginity
[Content warning: this piece includes general discussion of rape and domestic violence.] Maybe every rich little white girl should auction off her virginity in support of Amnesty International, the way Abigail Carlson (Kathryn Newton), teenage daughter of HBO’s Big Little Lies protagonist Madeline Mackenzie, proposes to do. Abigail’s plot line gained little more than an… Continue reading Big Little Lies Protecting White Virginity
Threadbare: Clothes, Sex & Trafficking (2016)
Red: In journalist Anne Elizabeth Moore’s new book Threadbare: Clothes, Sex, And Trafficking, in which years of her reporting are illustrated by comic artists Delia Jean, Melissa Mendes, Ellen Lindner, Simon Haussle, and Leela Corman, among others, she takes us around the world, untangling the many levels of exploitation and corruption inherent in the garment… Continue reading Threadbare: Clothes, Sex & Trafficking (2016)