Activist Spotlight Interview: Melissa Gira Grant on Playing The Whore and Policing The Policers, Part Two

Melissa Gira Grant (Photo by Noah Kalina)

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

Who Gets Left Out: Respectability Politics Round Table, Part Two

One of Melissa Gira Grant's Carceral Feminist Cat memes at carceralfeministcat.tumblr.com

You can read part one of this dialogue here. Emma Caterine: Red Umbrella Project has definitely encountered issues around pressure to conform to respectability politics from larger groups who fund or sponsor us in different ways. It is telling that I can’t mention many of the specifics for fear of re-opening old wounds. Particularly the… Continue reading Who Gets Left Out: Respectability Politics Round Table, Part Two

Activist Spotlight: Audacia Ray, on Telling Stories and the Tricky Politics of Inclusion

Audacia Ray is perhaps most renowned in the sex workers’ rights movement for her longtime editing of the now sadly defunct $pread magazine. But as a sex workers’ rights movement activist, Audacia has really been everywhere and done everything: blogging for years about her sex working experience as Waking Vixen; publishing her book, Naked on… Continue reading Activist Spotlight: Audacia Ray, on Telling Stories and the Tricky Politics of Inclusion

The Week in Links–March 15th

This week, the NYPD’s ridiculous and oppressive practice of using condoms continued to be written up in various venues. RH Reality Check weighed in, as did the Daily Mail, and Jezebel, while the Red Umbrella Project stepped up their campaign against the cops by creating postcards illustrated with victims’ stories that NYers can send to… Continue reading The Week in Links–March 15th

Quote of the Week

We’re engaging in sex work, as a form of economic survival, but also as a form of validation. We have got to address this. We have got to talk about what it’s like getting up in the morning, catching the train or bus to school or work and that ride is tense because you’re the… Continue reading Quote of the Week