sex work
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Shark’s Teeth
My kink used to be my Deepest Darkest secret, and now it is an integrated part of my everyday life.
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The Art of the Prostitute
Joseph Nechvatal writes for Hyperallergic on the Musée d’Orsay’s “splendid but miserable” collection of art from around Paris’s Belle Époque, a collection that focuses specifically on the representation of prostitutes in the period’s cultural climate.
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Fringe Benefits
A pervasive, and frustrating, myth is that dancing pays enough for us to stop complaining—that we get paid enough to be cool with however we’re treated. But that’s not true. For the Times, Rumpus friend and contributor Antonia Crane details the…
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It Hurts Too Much: The Emotional Reality of Trans Murders in 2015
Are you sad? I hope so. Are you angry? You need to be. We need you to share this work.
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My Daughter at the Blue Venus
My daughter has finished experimenting with chemicals. Now she is experimenting with life.
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Lessons I Learned as a Dominatrix: 10 Things That Don’t Exist
They say you can take the girl out of the dungeon, but you can’t take the dungeon out of the girl.
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Beautiful Things That Happen in the Dark: A Conversation with Eon McKai
Antonia Crane talks to Vivid Alt’s Eon McKai about stigma, sex, and becoming a porn auteur.
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
On this weekend in 1652, a law was passed in Rhode Island banning slavery in the colonies. Turns out that particular law didn’t cause much of a stir. Unfortunately, some of today’s legislation intended to protect marginalized groups isn’t faring…
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Super Hot Prof-on-Student Word Sex: Antonia Crane, The Dirty Dozenth
And this is precisely why I was so entirely blown away by Antonia Crane’s new memoir, Spent, which chronicles her dark and twisted path through the above horrors with remarkable elegance and restraint.
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The Rumpus Interview with Scot Sothern
LA-based photographer Scot Sothern talks about his decades-long career taking photos on the streets, and how his portraits of sex workers advocate on behalf of an often marginalized and misunderstood community.
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Melissa Petro on The Writing Cure
Melissa Petro, whose Rumpus essay “Not Safe For Work” contributed to getting her fired from a teaching job, writes in this month’s The New Inquiry about what she calls “The Writing Cure”—how writing about traumatic or damning life events offers…
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The Changing Face of Sex Work
A University of Chicago survey found that fewer men are paying for sex—or did it? In an interview with Slate‘s Amanda Hess, Post Whore America blogger Melissa Gira Grant takes a second look at the survey results and challenges the idea…