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From Stephen Elliott
Writer, performer, educator, and activist David Henry Sterry talks about the deep cultural roots of shame associated with the American sex industry, and how freeing it can be to bleed out the truth about our lives as buyers and sellers of sex.
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Being a whore was great preparation for being an artist.
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I’d been down that road a million times before and had learned the hard way that unless you had some kind of special line just for them, it never paid to give a client your phone number.
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I was tired of endlessly explaining that sex work could be empowering and could be exploitative, but that most things in life could be either of these things as well.
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Daphne Gottlieb talks about Dear Dawn, a collection of letters written by Aileen Wuornos to her childhood friend from prison prior to her execution in 2002 .
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I worry about you when I don’t see you for a while.
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I was dying to interview Oriana Small about her porno memoir Girlvert.
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“The phrase ‘global citizen’ always gets tossed around with my work, and part of it is that, clearly, talking about being a global citizen is the only way we can talk about participating in globalization without feeling like assholes.”
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I didn’t analyze production levels or consider marketing strategies. I didn’t say to myself, “Tonight you’re going to get with the jack-off program.” I was a dime-a-dozen girl doing a customer service job, and that job demanded more and more of me whether I liked it or not.
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I’m at NYU Dental waiting to get a cavity filled. I’m at NYU Dental because I’m poor, although if I were really poor — I am thinking — I wouldn’t be at a dentist at all. I happen to be reading Michelle Tea’s Without a Net, the first time I have ever read literature about the experience of growing up poor.
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To use a tennis analogy, I played all four corners in an attempt to interview clients. I hit up escort friends of mine with long-terms regulars, old clients who were articulate and thoughtful and guys I’d never met who had contacted me with sex work-related questions.
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The Polk Inn stood out in the tenderloin because of all the beige and glass next to junkies selling stolen bicycles and gizmos out front.
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The following interview may not be safe for some workplaces.
This past Saturday, December 17th marked the 9th year of the annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. SF Bay Guardian looks back at the history of the San Francisco born tradition.
“It’s become a high holy day of whores.
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From Today’s Daily Rumpus email (to read entire Daily Rumpuses you need to subscribe):
“A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star.” So begins Glen Duncan’s review of Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Zone One.
...moreA literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star, right? Well that’s what New York Times book reviewer Glen Duncan thinks.
In his Sunday Book Review of Colson Whitehead’s complex new zombie novel, Zone One, Duncan sets the parallel between dating porn stars and what he initially perceives as slumming in genre fiction, and lets the rest of the review ride on the back of this comparison. While he’s busy offending sex workers, he also speculates that readers attracted to the story for its post-apocalyptic zombie tale will encounter so many big words as to be morally affronted. Duncan praises the book and comes around to the idea of intellectually stimulating genre fiction, but never quite comes around to the idea of sex workers as intellectually stimulating people, concluding of his imaginary couple only that, “they look pretty good together.”
The piece came to our attention via a witty retort by Savvy stripper and staff writer over at Tits and Sass, Bubbles (whose thoughts on this issue you can read here):
Mardi Gras was uncharacteristically dismal in 2010. I met a group of curvaceous, saucy strippers at 10 a.m. on Bourbon Street, where the air was thick with pizza and Red Bull vomit, 24-hour margarita shops and hot dog stands.
Hello Sex Worker Hater,
So, we meet again. You’re a shape shifter and I feel like I see you everywhere I go. I’ve spotted you on police forms for recovered bodies which had two categories: human and non-human.
...moreWe mentioned the new site Tits and Sass earlier today, and already they are posting great articles, like this conversation between Bettie, a dominatrix, and her mother, a preacher.
Bettie’s mother says, “I understand that on some levels I am very prudish when it comes to relationships.
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A Conversation with Cheryl Strayed, who is against sex work, and Antonia Crane who agitates for sex worker rights, about sex work and feminism.
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This is a response for Bedelia, who commented profusely about sex work, house moms, and her experience as a hooker for ten years on an earlier piece I wrote for The Rumpus.
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I first heard about the U of New Mexico controversy via Facebook, when Joy Harjo left a status update reporting that she’d had to quit her job because the university was preventing her from protecting her students from sexual harassment. Based on just that description, I was sympathetic.
The Lusty Lady was a theatre. There was a live stage show, an old fashion peep show, and one-on-one sex shows in the Private Pleasures booth. There were video booths where you could watch porn like in an old arcade.
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Today, I realize the truth — that it is not sex work that society fears is dangerous, but sex workers.
I recently had the experience at my job of being warned by a colleague that other coworkers have begun Googling me.
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The Romanian is an enthralling memoir about Benderson’s consuming affair with a male hustler he encountered in Budapest, while doing research. I wondered about that timeless troll, desire, and how it has the power to dunk one’s entire world into chaos or turn a hillside into a sublime, electric lightshow.
For absolutely no reason except that I feel like it, I’m posting a lot about sex today, so in order to be consistent, Politics Sunday will be Sexual Politics Sunday for today and today only.
The Atlantic discusses the “sexual politics of nominating a Supreme Court Justice.”
“Why I’m Working As A Saigon Massage Girl.
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Courtney Trouble’s no pedestrian pornographer. She’s a pale, femme, riot girl with squiggly tattoos and rocker bangs.
