That sounds like a day with zeke ;)

Zekey Pie <3

(Source: lovequotesrus)

Beautiful

everythingbutharleyquinn:

grypo:

too-tired-to-argue:

The thing is I don’t even know why I’m supposed to care that “Don’t you know that not all sex workers are trafficked victims! Don’t you know that some women who do sex work are educated and middle class and choose to be there?” its like yes yes i do know that because you never shut the fuck up about it, you never let those of us who were trafficked or forced or who had no other choice get a word in edge ways about it. You never let us, of whom there are far more of than those of you who choose to do it, talk about the way it laid waste to our lives, our histories our relationships, our ability to function as people are supposed to be able to function, you never let us care about the millions of women and children in the world who are in the situations we were in, who are being beaten, raped, sold, who have no choice no agency, no hope, you never let us talk about them, organize to help them, you never let us speak up against the men that hurt them, that hurt us, without having to tell us that we are terrible feminists because we don’t care that you chose to be a sex worker.

This is definitely something I’ve been thinking for a long ass time without being able to really voice it, because BAD FEMINIST!

And it has me straddling the sex-pos/sex-neg divide. It’s almost as if we were to say: hey lets not talk about domestic violence because some people choose to engage in BDSM! // Hey, lets not talk about the problematic shit about prostitution because some people choose sex work!

I don’t know.. Maybe I’m totally off kilter here, but I’ve been pondering this for a while now.

I don’t think you’re totally off kilter, but I think you’re not seeing the whole picture.

What happened to the OP is really shit and not okay, in any way, shape or form. And yeah, it happens to others too. And I want it to stop, and we should all want it to stop and we should all be working towards that.

And it’s totally fucked that there is a popular romantic vision of sex work that is getting perpetuated which can actively silence those voices.

And I think we have to look at the environments that helps create those narratives - ie,  a virulently, violently whorephobic world that simultaneously punishes and condemns women for being in the sex industry at the same time it relentlessly deems us as victims - and, let us NOT forget, voraciously FEEDS on our stories. Against which there has been a contingent pushing back - perhaps arguably started with the sex worker memoir market, which is most definitely domineered by white, middle-class, educated, cis women, a privileged demographic whose voices are going to be preferenced no matter what the issue. With the rise of the internet, blogs and websites have sprung up as well. You have to understand that these voices, whilst not reflective of the majority, often express the internalised stigma we bear as a result of sex work. They’re trying to validate themselves by saying ‘we’re not like those other dirty whores’ in response to the amount of stigma and shame which is placed upon sex work - which throws the rest of us under the bus and I don’t like it and deeply resent it, but I can see where it comes from.

But the OP’s voice is not reflective of the majority either. Which does not make her voice any less important, but what it comes down to is: a black and white for or against dichotomy that ultimately serves no one, and I would say least of all those most disenfranchised amongst us. 

As Pony points out here, the OP’s post expresses some pretty intense racism and classism. There are thousands of sex workers the world who are not white, middle-class or educated who work in countries where sex work is illegal and who therefore face horrific police brutality, increased potential violence from clients, targeting by predators and ostracisation from the general community as well as dodgy working conditions without easy access to health care or safe sex equipment, who work in sex work not perhaps because it is their first and best choice or even something they really want to do but because, for many reasons, it is the option they have, who are sometimes homeless and transient and underage and even considering ALL OF THIS, are still active participants and believers in sex workers rights and obtaining them, who have created their own grounds-roots organisations to campaign for their rights - because they recognise that the most critical aspect to minimising violence and exploitation of sex workers ARE rights.

This is what sex work abolitionists do not take into account. The many varying and intersecting reasons someone may end up in the sex industry. In countries where sex work is illegal it hasn’t STOPPED sex work. It just means sex workers are driven further underground, are practicing in really unsafe conditions, even more on the fringes of society with little to NO recourse to protection, least of all legal. Abolition ultimately ends up hurting sex workers more than it helps them - it makes them more vulnerable to predators AND justifies police persecution of them. FFS, in some places condoms are used as evidence of sex working and confiscated (best case scenario). But the worker who has no options other than sex work and can’t afford not to work - how is that helping that person, exactly? Or let’s say (TW: rape) some complete fuckwit of a husband wants pocket money and forces his wife to fuck men he brings home and they pay him for it - how does making sex work illegal stop that from happening? That is a case of misogyny intersecting with rape culture and abuse.  Abolition by itself does not stop that from happening. It also increases the likelihood of police corruption.

So-called “rescue” organisations are increasingly being exposed as doing more harm than good because AGAIN they are not addressing WHY people are in the industry.  Those reasons are intersectional with classism, racism, ableism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia. Also many of these orgs and charities are being exposed as fabricating their information. 

The dominance of the privileged sex worker who chose her vocation and just loves doing it is a narrative that needs to be minimised. I understand it arose partly because it is important that the diversity of sex work be recognised, but because non-sex workers can never, ever view us as actual human beings, they just grasped onto it as the flip side to the grizzled, victimised street walking junkie (which non-sex workers have been exploiting in media with very little sensitivity or compassion for fucking decades), whilst not letting go of the junkie. Now all we get is one or the other, with the heiarchy very, very unmistakable, and sex workers ourselves feel the pressure of that impact onto us and what we say about our work as well.

But even those grizzled street walking junkies who’ve had pretty rough shit happen to them are often not abolitionists even as they may well fucking hate the job - they want their rights still, too. They are human beings, not walking testimonies. 

I mean -  I could tell some pretty amazing, really radical stories. But. They’re not my stories to tell. And I’m not okay doing that. I could tell some of my stories but while I’m open about the fact I’m a sex worker I do NOT go into detail about my past or present experiences publicly because of the way non-sex workers treat such information.

The main people I hold responsible for this hopeless, unhelpful dichotomy with no useful action being taken outside of what we’re doing for ourselves: Non-sex workers.

Cos you either want us to be your little tragedy porn puppets or your impossibly fantastic courtesan icons and you will never allow the full complexity of what we experience on tiered levels to be fully understood or comprehended or even allowed for. You insist that it be one or the other and within an oppressive framework many of us bend over backwards trying to meet that expectation under the belief it’ll somehow make things better for us.  We HAVE to be victims so you can feel justified in pitying us and can make yourselves feel useful by ‘rescuing’ us and we HAVE to be liberated happy hookers so you can feel okay about watching porn and sending anonymous, invasive questions to any sex worker blogs you find online.

I don’t find feminist spaces at all useful to the rights of sex workers. Cos it always ends up as antis vs pros. It always ends up these feminists who say all sex work is rape up against those feminists who say porn is liberation. And both sides will have their token sex workers on hand to back them up when they snap their fingers.

I mean how many people who’ve liked this post or chimed in the discussion have actually been in sex worker only spaces?

Cos that’s where shit really happens. That’s where things GET DONE and get accomplished. When sex workers are left alone with each other to organise, advocate and basically just support each other.

That’s when the whole complicated, vast array of sex worker experience comes together and we talk about it and we share our stories, and we laugh and we cry and we hate on the world and celebrate each other - in all our messy, diverse glory - and then we plot the ways we can get our rights so maybe one day no sex worker has to fear being raped by the police, beaten or ripped off by a client or forced into it as a homeless teenager. 

Frankly, I think feminists need to butt-out of trying to set our agenda for us. We’re actually totally, one hundred per cent capable of doing it ourselves, even when our experiences have been radically different and our opinions and perspectives on shit diverge completely. This paternalistic feminist interference has not been helpful, it just attempts to make sex workers mold our movement to suit whatever feminist agenda is butting in at the time, often with the consequences being the silenced voices of the actual sex workers.

In my experience, those who are anti-sex work tend to fall within the radical feminist school of thought, a movement marked for its transphobia, whorephobia and the promotion of the idea of false-consciousness (and don’t get on me for this - if it weren’t for these factors, I may have turned out to be a radical feminist. I’m not unsympathetic to everything they have to say).

But. I do NOT want the rights of sex workers fought for by the sex-positivity, pro-porn but non-sex working camp either.

Because sex work and sex workers rights is not a matter of a sexual revolution.

IT IS A MATTER OF LABOUR, INDUSTRIAL AND HUMAN RIGHTS.

First. Foremost. Most importantly. Without compromise. 

The happy hooker stereotype really does nothing to aid such objectives.

But who do you think abolition - forcing sex work to go underground, practiced in illegality with all the breeding grounds for corruption and exploitative individuals such circumstances attract, making sex workers lives tradeable commodities - is going to hurt the most in the end?

I can tell you right now - with her education, options for other employment, secure roof over her head, cis and white privilege and conventional looks - it ain’t gonna be the middle class white sex worker by choice.

As always, it will be the most disenfranchised, the most oppressed and the least privileged who will suffer the most as a consequence of action taken on their behalf that does not truly comprehend and consider the complex issues they face.

I know this isn’t my usual MO, but people should be reading this.

ignorantatheist:

if you dont think this is cute dont talk to me

OMGGGGGG 

(Source: 4gifs)

abgron:

cooler than me / mike posner

and me cray dancing around the room to this song

(Source: singlethemes)

evilqueenofmyheart:

2x18 - I Feel Pretty / Unpretty Mash Up

Sung by: Dianna Agron & Lea Michele

Silence by fear on the Day Of Silence

oh god girls like this annoy the fuck out of me

(Source: coinlaundrys)

thebritishteapot:

stravaganza:

PILOT’S HAIR. HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG.

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Don’t worry

It’s just me

Licking the screen

Mom- “he’s pretty, who’s he?”

Me- “sherlock”

Mom- “ahhhhhhhhhh, now I know what you mean by you want to have his babies.”

(Source: cumbercrieff)