July 2009 – Feministe

Female Noir: Rewriting a Genre

As I’ve mentioned before (and, as is obvious to anyone who’s read my blog,) I have a bit of a thing for mysteries and hardboiled noir. I’m by no means an expert on either genre, admittedly, but it’s a hobby interest of mine. I just really love the way gender plays out in them: in the “Golden Age” detective novels, sleuths like Poirot, or, to go far back to the grandfather, Sherlock Holmes, were supposed to use their “manly” reason to solve problems. When a woman would step in, such as Harriet Vane in Dorothy L. Sayer’s Lord Peter Wimsey series, her detective work is, at least superficially, chalked up to her feminine intuition.

The American hardboiled genre takes this and turns it on its head; these sleuths think with their gut. The city landscapes of Noir are dark and corrupt—operating on logic within their irrational world would get you killed. And yet, we think of the hardboiled genre as being very “masculine.” Gendering genre still feels weird to me, because, of course, there’s nothing intrinsically male about any of the aspects I’ve listed and am about to list, but within the culture, these films (like many others of their time and now, admittedly) came from a distinctly male perspective. The cynical, money-hungry sleuths of the genre looked upon their cities as embodiments of the fallen American dream, and encountered villains who either didn’t play by the rules of the dream, or were amongst the groups not even allowed to play the game: women, homosexuals, and ethnic minorities. There’s a lot to say about the later two (and I’ll touch on a little bit of race later on in the post,) but I’m going to focus on women for now.

To hurry to the point, I’m going to simplify this a lot: In hardboiled fiction and film noir, writers portrayed women either as helpless and virginal, or scheming, sexy, and ambitious. The latter, of course, is the famous femme fatale, who would kiss and then kill to move up in the world, if need be. In films she is usually cold and selfish: sensuality without feeling. The former, well, her character usually seemed an afterthought to the femme fatale, there more to act as a last-minute love interest or foil to the femme fatale (who sometimes was even her step mother! Holy Brother’s Grimm, Batman!) than as a character in herself. In her introduction to Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir, Val McDermid puts the problem quite nicely:

“I blame Raymond Chandler. I blame him for writing too well. Here’s the thing with Chandler. He had a problem with women. Vamps, victims, and vixens are the only roles he provided for us. And his perennial popularity has guaranteed his twisted view of women would remain the template whenever the hard-boiled boys hatched a new tale of the mean streets. For years, we’ve been stuck in this gruesome girlie groove because of one man’s screwed up sexuality.”

To be honest, I don’t know if it’s fair to blame it all on Chandler; I think a lot of men with screwed up relationships with women contributed to this genre, not to mention the contribution of a lot of screwed up social mores. But the point is that Noir is a very strict, template-reliant genre. We know the story: “It was dark in the city that never sleeps. She stepped into my office with hips like…” We’ve seen it parodied dozens of times. Given the format, how can you break down these gender roles and still write Noir?

Shocker! Tiller’s Murderer Going to Trial

Scott Roeder, the man who murdered Dr. George Tiller inside of his church, is going to trial. Not a huge surprise. The court ruled that there was enough evidence to warrant a trial. Oh, you mean because Roeder brutally gunned down an innocent man inside of a church surrounded by friends and family of said innocent man?!

What gets me though is the refusal on the part of the media to truly call this like it is: a domestic terrorist incident. The New York Times reported that:

“Dr. Tiller’s family was not seen there, nor were the best-known leaders of Operation Rescue and other anti-abortion groups here, which have denounced the killing.”

Hmmm. As much the NYT would like to make it seem as if Operation Rescue is just a simple, sensitive group trying to make their way in the world, the terrorist activities they support do not bear that out. A commenter over at RH Reality Check was in attendance at the trial and was pretty clear:

I attended Roeder’s hearing yesterday, and while Operation Rescue was not officially in attendance, I can say people who support OR were. They talked casually about Troy (Newman, pres of OR) and Mark (Gietzen, Kansas Coalition for Life). And just as casually about knowing “Scott” for several years and reading “Paul’s” book (first names, no last). I was sitting amongst the groupies! One even shouted out for a wave from Roeder. At least one traveled from out of town, and they all seemed to have known each other for years. It was mortifying, to say the least.

Who’s “Paul”? That would be Paul Hill, the murderer of another doctor who provided abortions, back in 1994. Hill was sentenced to death by lethal injection, the first person executed for anti-abortion violence.

The situation is such that even if men like these are convicted – or even executed (which I personally do not agree with) – this doesn’t begin to effect the larger issue. If we continue to refuse to see these incidents as connected, under the umbrella of official anti-choice terrorism, we are doing virtually nothing to stop them from happening again.

From Gaming to Comics…

Sheesh, considering the awesome comment thread that I am totally loving on my post on gaming, I thought I’d move on to comic books. I was just going to copy my Epic Comic Post over to here, but it is long, so instead, I am just going to use the power of linkage…trust me, Feministe is glad for the saving of bandwidth!

“The Epic Comic Post”

However, please, do feel free (in fact I’d prefer it) to make comments regarding the comic post here…and oh yeah, while the link page is SFW, the rest of my blog? Not necessarily so, fyi.

7 Key American Sex Worker Activist Projects

A few weeks ago I gave a talk about with this title at an event called Interesting Amsterdam, and I thought it would be worth reproducing the bullet points and some examples here. The sex industry is big and weird and varied, and there are a lot of different issues that face people who are in the industry by circumstance, choice, or coercion. The industry is not a monolith and there are lots of things that need to be done to improve the lives of the people who work within it. In my perception, there are seven key areas in which projects to support sex workers need to be (and are being!) developed here in the U.S. There are of course lots of other projects happening both in the US and abroad (more on the latter in another post). But these are the areas I think are the most important and intriguing. And – some of these are projects I’m personally involved in, I’ll disclose which ones as we go.

Public Education – Media coverage of the sex industry is salacious and shallow, and most people I’ve to about the sex industry say they’ve never met a sex worker before – or at least, not outside of the confines of some kind of transaction. The experiences of sex workers are rendered in a really narrow way – the fact that they are sex workers is not only the most important, but also only thing that is regarded as interesting about them. But sex workers are whole people. This is why it’s important for there to be public education iniatives about the sex industry – ones that aren’t coded as sexual or sexy. Sex Work 101 (disclaimer: which I created and is an initiative by my org Sex Work Awareness) is one such project. The video at the top of this post, titled “I Am a Sex Worker” is another public education project (disclaimer: that I produced) made as a collaborative effort of the participants of the first Speak Up! media training for sex workers, held in NYC this past April.
Support Networks – Emotional, spiritual, and just plain old friendly support is really key for sex workers to maintain health and sanity. Organizing on any level is just not possible while sex workers (or insert the name of any other group) feel alone and alienated by other communities. Though primarily a political and labor organizing group, the national Sex Workers Outreach Project and its more than a dozen chapters around the country does a really good job of providing this kind of space. Most chapters hold semi-regular meetings – being able to see and talk to people who get it is so valuable. in New York, the organization Girls Educational and Mentoring Service (GEMS) provides support services for underage girls who have been coerced into and exploited by the sex industry. It’s survivor-led and they do some really amazing work. There is also the now sadly defunct Starlight Ministries, an outreach ministry to exotic dancers that was totally awesome and not in any way a creepy paternalistic shaming religious group.
Decriminalization/Legalization – Many parts of the sex industry are legal in the United States: phone sex, nude modeling, performing in porn in some states, exotic dancing, some forms of BDSM work. Prostitution is illegal with two exceptions: in Nevada counties with less than 400,000 residents, brothel prostitution is legal; in Rhode Island indoor prostitution is decriminalized (but might not be for much longer – more on that in a future post). There was a ballot initiative in San Francisco this past fall election cycle to decriminalize prostitution – it got 40% of the vote. There is a lot of debate around whether or not a decriminalized or legalized approach to prostitution would protect people who do not want to be in the sex industry. Most people who work on this issue from a rights-based framework believe that decriminalized prostitution will give prostitutes greater ability to seek out the services they need for health and well-being without fear of arrest or exploitation in the hands of the law. The Sex Workers Outreach Project is one of the key organizations working on this issue.
Health – Sex workers have specialized health needs when it comes to physical, emotional, and mental well-being. Many sex workers are stigmatized against by health care practitioners and are not treated with respect by health care providers. It can be difficult to talk to a general practioner about health issues related to sex work. This stigma is not just about STIs though – I know more than a few strippers who have knee and ankle problems and have a lot of anxieties about talking to their doctor about this issue. I would love to see a sex worker-led initiative to educate health care providers about the unique needs of sex workers and best practices for making sex workers feel comfortable talking about work-related health issues. In the U.S., there are two Calirfornia-based organizations that are devoted to doing health care work for people in the sex industry: in San Francisco there’s the St James Infirmary clinic (which, by the way, has been hard hit by the economy and has had to dial back its services, so donations to them are encouraged) and in Los Angeles the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM). AIM primarily does STI testing and care for porn performers, but it’s open to all sex workers and has somewhat recently launched a nationwide network of clinics where both adult industry and non-industry people can get a comprehensive STI panel – including tests for herpes and hepatitis, which are not tested for as a matter of course when you ask for STI testing.
Legal Advocacy – The needs of sex workers who work in both legal and illegal sectors of the industry are pretty unique. Most people who are arrested on charges of prostitution, solicitation, and loitering related to prostitution plead guilty no matter what the circumstances. Standing up for one’s human rights in the face of police aggression, arrest and jail time is a really scary thing. On the legal side of teh industry, there are lots of intense labor issues, many of which come to a head in strip clubs. Generally, strippers need to pay a “house fee” to work at a club, plus tip many of the different workers at the club – over the past several years, there have been several successful lawsuits against clubs that enforce this structure, as well as several others that are in the works (which I can’t link to because the people involved aren’t ready to go public). The New York City based Sex Workers Project is a legal services and advocacy group that provides support to sex workers dealing with all kinds of legal issues. SWP also works with trafficking victims to secure their rights and navigate issues around immigration and autonomy. Plus, they’ve done three major research studies (available for free as PDFs via the link), on indoor and outdoor prostitution in NYC, plus the use of raids to fight trafficking in persons. SWP has also recently started getting involved in policy advocacy, especially in New York state. Legislation and lobbying could be number 8 on this list, but I think the sex worker rights movement is a little bit in the baby stages of clarifying what our legislative priorities are and how to pursue them.
Sex Worker Culture – Full disclosure: creation of culture and media advocacy (#7) are my pet projects, so the next bunch of links are all to projects that I’m heavily involved in. Creation of culture and expressions of experiences that people -real human beings- have within the sex industry are key to making progress on all of the other projects I’ve listed here. Visibility is important. I’ve heard the argument that there are images of people in the sex industry all over the place, so why do we need to make even more of them? The answer is that most portrayals of sex workers by the mainstream media are exploitative, and it’s important for sex workers to represent and speak for ourselves in ways that are not connected to marketing, in ways that are honest in both beautiful and ugly ways. To this end, some projects you should look at: $pread (where I was an editor for 3 years), a magazine by and for sex workers. Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys, a new anthology edited by David Henry Sterry and RJ Martin that was just published by Soft Skull (I have a piece in the book and created the website for it). And a new project of mine that I’m super excited about: a monthly reading series in NYC, Sex Worker Literati (the first one is August 6 at Happy Ending, free).
Media Advocacy – Creating sex worker culture is important, but it takes training and planning to make it happen. The organization that I co-founded, Sex Work Awareness, aims to do media training, advocacy, and capacity building for sex workers who want to interact with and create media (which isn’t and shouldn’t be all sex workers). Our big project to this end is a media training workshop called Speak Up! – we did our first day-long training in April for 9 sex workers. The day includes training on reactive and earned media, with interview role plays, tips on messaging, writing letters to the editor, and much much more. In the future we hope to travel with the workshop but that depends on funds and time. We will definitely be doing another training in NYC next spring – next time it will be a full weekend. Have a look at a blog post by a participant, What Speak Up! Did for Me, and download the 45 page CC licensed training manual PDF here.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the activist projects or project types that are happening within the United States right now. I’d love to see links to other orgs and descriptions of their work in the comments!

“Hey baby, why all the aggro?”

maverick

And now for something completely different…

I have a confession to make. I’m a huge geek. In fact, I am a gamer geek. Ah yes, from the days of table top D&D in someone’s basement in high school up unto present times, I have always loved games and being a gamer. Dragon Con? Origins? Gen Con? Been there, done that, why yes, even have the t-shirts. From the table top to the larp, from the arcade to the MMORPG, I have gone, seen and conquered. Street Fighter, Tekken, Call of Cuthulu, City of Heroes, Doom, Gears of War, Final Fantasy, Diablo, Werewolf the Apocalypse…these and many others have seen me get my inner geek on. I will admit, however, to date I remain WoW free!

Shoot, I am torn this weekend between real life events and double xp weekend on City of Heroes/Villains…you may not see much blogging out of me when the end of the week draws neigh!

But as a gamer geek girl, I want to share a few little observations that I’ve made about the male of the species when it comes to gaming, and I am sure the other gamer girls in the room will know of what I speak…though I am limiting this to MMORPG’s

Nine times out of ten when the game has customizable costumes and lots of choices in wardrobe, I can tell when a male is playing a female character and when a female is playing a female character. See, both might make the character attractive, but nine times out of ten, the female player will put her in…ahem…clothes. They might be street clothes, or super-hero-y clothes, or armor, or military looking gear…but the character is generally somewhat covered, whereas a male playing a female character will often make her as close to naked as possible. She’s a top dog tank type? So what, she’s still got a bikini on! Now sure enough, if you are going to spend countless hours staring at an animated backside it might as well be one you like, but when I team up with other players and one character is a 5’5’ brunette in full tactical gear and one is a 6’0” blonde in a corset and thigh high spike heel boots, I generally can guess which of those characters is actually played by a woman. Heh.

On teams, no matter who the team leader is, who’s quest/mission/instance it is, sure enough, if it is known that the leader of that team is in RL a woman, nine times out of ten some dude will try to take over and call all the shots and dictate how the whole thing should go. This, my friends, pisses me off big time. In CoH/CoV I often play with people I know in real life, and in most cases, I have higher level characters and more experience playing the game than they do…but it matters not, even on my missions one of the dudes will feel as though he must step up and run the show because he has a dick. At this point, I often fail to defend/tank for/ bail them out when shit gets heavy…a few resurrections (which I won’t do on them either) sometimes fixes the problem. Other times, a firm boot from the team sends the message.

Often times, I play male characters, and when doing so, when teamed up with people who do not know you in real life, when not using a chat tool like Vent, it is amazing the shit dude players will say because they look at your character and assume in real life you have a penis. Be wary male gamers, sometimes us girls play boys…and we really do not want to hear about the totally hot chick you saw today and what you wanted to do with her. This causes RL aggro, which then will be transferred to the game and onto your character. And if we ever team with your girlfriend? Watch out…

Do not assume women gamers want to role-play romance scenarios with you. I, for one, am there to kick ass and chew bubble gum. I do not play WoW, but man, have I heard some stories…then again, those elves do dance all sexy like…

And for all that is sane or holy…

Follow me here….

You ever been to a gaming con? As a woman?

What an experience. Having been to a few in my life, I can tell you that you run into a plethora of dudes who, um, need to get out more…from the guys who are convinced no women can actually game well, to those who want to know where your chain mail bikini is, to those who assume that since you role played with them that you want to fuck them. It is quite an adventure! No, not all gamer guys are like this, but dang, there are enough to make them worthy of notice…and…

Hangs head in shame…

I will admit that I totally won a Gears of War Tournament because the dude playing me had a hard time focusing on anything other than my boobs. I was in a dang AkiraT-shirt, but all the same…

I now open up the floor to the other gamer gals…what have you noticed when dealing with men in the world of gamer geekery???

Open Thread: When Art and Ideals Collide

When we look at art, pop culture, and media on feminist and progressive blogs, sometimes it seems all too easy to force the discussion into a simple good/bad debate: See this movie because it has a strong female character. Don’t read this book because it’s full of stereotypes. This work is feminist. This film is misogynist. This story is racist. This song is empowering.

But what do we do when it comes to movies like Up, which tells a great story with beautiful animation, but also comes with the difficult baggage of Pixar’s seeming unwillingness to tell women’s stories? And it’s difficult to know what to say when it comes to writers like Orson Scott Card, who writes great books but is an outspoken homophobe. What do we do when a book empowers one group at another’s expense?

I think sometimes the defensiveness we see from trolls in threads concerning movies that have uncomfortable subtext is that it’s just difficult for people to accept that something they like so much can also be damaging. I find it interesting how vehemently literary scholars will defend beloved authors like Chaucer and Shakespeare against charges of racism, explaining that their difficult to shallow works such as The Merchant of Venice or “The Prioress’ Tale” are social criticism (sound familiar?). There could be truth in these arguments, of course (some of them are pretty convincing,) but sometimes I wonder if it’s just really difficult to accept that brilliant, creative people who write brilliant, creative stories sometimes carry with them disgusting prejudices and blind spots.

And so here’s the point: I’ve realized that I’m sometimes a hypocrite when it comes to which ideas I love and which artworks I love.

For example, I love Virginia Woolf, but I am Jewish. When I told my grandparents that I was writing my senior undergraduate thesis on Virginia Woolf, I hoped they didn’t know that Woolf was a known Anti-Semite. Despite having married a Jewish man, she often wrote in her journals of her dislike of the “Jewish voice” and “Jewish laugh,” and this still hurts me a lot. Not only was it so disappointing that someone who so clearly saw prejudice at work in her society’s treatment of gender roles could be so blind when it comes to race and religion, but it made me realize that Woolf would not have truly liked me. Yes, it felt that personal. Maybe she wouldn’t even have considered me a scholar worthy of her work.

I wish it were simpler. The “problem” is that media is created by people, people who often have a hard enough time fitting their murky gray-area self into their own ideals, more so fitting their creative offspring. In the same way that a strong friendship is often complex–we often have things about our closest friends that we dislike–I’ve started to realize that my love of books, tv shows, movies, and the people who make them, must be similarly complex.

I know I’m not the only one who’s felt this way; I’m sure many of you have beloved works of fiction (any media. There’s got to be a better way of saying book/movie/tv show/song,) but feel uncomfortable with it because of its subtext. I’m sure that many of you, too, have lists in your head of famous people, dead or alive, whom you would love to have dinner with, except you know they wouldn’t respect you, or you hate their political views even if you love their creative work.

So let’s talk about it: We often criticize conservatives for expecting art to fit neatly within their value systems. Art doesn’t work that way. Can you separate art from author? Can you separate story from subtext? How do we learn to criticize what and whom we love? Tell me your stories: How did you react when you realized that your favorite author was racist, or your favorite movie had ablist subtext? Do you love a song but loathe the lyrics? What did you do? I don’t think there’s a “right” way to deal, but it’s important to talk about ways we can deal.

Amid War in U.S. Health Care and Afghanistan: Midwifing Life

Cross-posted at RH Reality Check

I received two emails in my inbox today. One was from The Big Push for Midwives, asking for help in advocating for greater access to Certified Professional Midwifery (CPM) nationally. The group is basically petitioning Congress to add CPMs to the Medicaid provider list in order to make midwifery an actual option for more women in the United States. Why?

I’ve written extensively about all of the reasons why access to out-of-hospital birth is critical for women in the United States but if you want the quick run-down, check out this synopsis from The Big Push (and sign the petition if you’re so inclined, while you’re there!).

Why is this an uphill battle? Part of the problem is that professional organizations like the AMA and ACOG, while quite supportive of safe abortion care, are not keen on expanding childbirth options to include out-of-hospital settings and use of CPMs, for healthy, low-risk pregnant women. As well, in this country, we’re still enmeshed in seeing childbirth as a medical condition – a condition that must be treated clinically by a physician – regardless of whether or not there are any “medical conditions” present. Culturally we have strayed (if we were ever there) from women experiencing childbirth as normal and healthy, providing opportunities to bond with other women, and receiving support from a midwife and a community of other women.

This is not to say that CPMs do not care for the health of pregnant and birthing women but more that the medical establishment has succeeded in over-medicalizing birth to the point where, ironically, women’s health and lives (as well as the health and lives of the fetuses’ and newborns’) are placed at greater risk through unnecessary interventions. Jennifer Block has written an entire book on the subject!

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that prenatal care and childbirth care are not critical. As I’ve referenced in the past, the United States’ maternal mortality rates are dismal for an industrialized nation. African American women are four times as likely to die during childbirth as white women are, in this country. This dire situation is precisely why we need to expand options to a range of care for all women – not limit them.

So, I know you’re probably wondering at this point what that other email was? The New York Times has an excellent article on the critical role midwives can play in rebuilding Afghanistan, specifically addressing maternal health. The country is second only to Sierra Leone, in the entire world, in its numbers of women dying directly as a result of pregnancy and childbirth.

Amid war, after suffering for years under the Taliban, Afghan women are truly in trouble:

The main causes of these deaths are hemorrhage and obstructed labor, which can be fatal if a woman cannot obtain a Caesarean section.
Even if the mother survives, obstructed labor without a Caesarean
usually kills the baby. Most of the maternal deaths — 78 percent,
according to the Lancet report — could be prevented. [emphasis mine].

But there is one woman under whose leadership Afghanistan is beginning to rebuild its midwifery battalion, literally saving women’s lives.

Her name is Pashtoon Azfar and she works for Johns Hopkins University but also heads up the Afghan Midwives Association. Her mission? It is to remedy Afghan women’s death rate from pregnancy and childbirth by training and disbursing the next generation of midwives in Afghanistan.

The article notes that there is a long way to go. Apparently 80% of women in Afghanistan birth alone or without the help of a skilled birth attendant. And cultural issues plague Afghan women as well:

Afghanistan’s problems mirror those of many other poor countries:
shortages of personnel, supplies and transportation to clinics or hospitals,
especially in remote regions and mountainous areas that are snowbound
half the year. The deeper problems are cultural, rooted in the low
status of women and the misperception that deaths in childbirth are
inevitable — part of the natural order, women’s lot in life.

As we all know, Afghanistan wasn’t always mired in these battles. Before the Taliban, women enjoyed equality similar to that of women in the West. After years of war, however, it is certainly women and girls who have suffered unimaginably, without choice or options, surrendering their bodies and babies to a militant power.

But Azfar calls the midwives she trains “champions” and has great faith that they will help turn things around.

The link between these two stories? It’s not just that midwives can provide critical assistance, support and care to pregnant and laboring women regardless of where we live. It’s that women around the world must demand the right to life – the right not to “surrender our bodies and babies” to powers that tell us we are not worthy of care; and that whether we’re talking about safe abortion care, access to contraception, HIV protection or bringing new life into this world safely, we’re talking about reproductive and sexual health and rights.

Better Than A Magic Eight Ball

Last week I got an email in my personal mailbox from a high school debater who found Feministe while researching the Hyde Amendment, who asked, “I have one question: ‘What’s with the toddler with the gun?’ How is that representative of feministe movements?”

I ignored the message, you know, because I have a rather busy non-blogging life, and because if the kid really wanted to know another quick search would reveal that the Feministe banner has been discussed more than once on the blog.

Apparently I made a huge mistake. Today I received this:

I emailed you very nicely and you neglected to respond back. This is a warning email. If you don’t reply I’m going to send another email, asking another question.

And holy shit, I think he might be serious. A WARNING EMAIL? What if he asks another question? What if he asks more than one question? What if other people ALSO HAVE QUESTIONS?

To cover our bases, I figured I should open up the floor to allow all readers and contributors to ask the Feministe bloggers anything. Anything at all! And we will respond promptly, politely, and without haste. We can’t afford to take any chances.

Sex Work and Marriage

Okay, so we’ve already had pointed out this story, the tale of a Gov. Official in Florida who was fired after he married a porn performer. The reason given? His choice of a spouse did not live up to the “Good Family Values” the city of Ft. Myers FL is trying to maintain…

Now, the cynic in me says that if Ft. Myers was so concerned with family values, they should be praising this guy for “making an honest woman” out of his long time partner and mother of his children…and hell need we remind anyone, Ft. Myers is often regarded as the birthplace of Spring Break and when it comes to porn production and the profit made due to it Florida is second only to California, but anyway…

This article made me decide to write about something I’ve been pondering for awhile now, and because I am so kind (ha) and what not, I thought I would save it for my stint here at Feministe…

There are a lot of things people who are not sex workers take for granted, and one of those things is the ability to be married. Nah, no room for critique of the institution of marriage here, that is another post, but let me let you in on a little secret: A lot of sex workers are married…and that is another place where they take it in the chops in a way other people may not understand.

I’m married, and while my job is not a huge source of strife within my marriage, as in, between me and Mr. Evolution…there is definitely some odd mojo going on in our lives because of my job. For example:

His parents do not know what I do for a living, nor, with any luck, will they ever- because flat out, they would not accept it and it would be a huge shit fest. His co-workers do not know. It is pretty much a given that around his family, his families friends, his co-workers, or various other people we know that when the “What do you do for a living” question comes up I will lie. I do not like doing this, but it is done. I actually like my job and take pride in my work, but that does not matter. There have been times where it has really, really pissed me off… as in, I am slated to work weeks in advance, his family will invite us up to see them or go somewhere, and I cannot go. The why I cannot go has to be lied about, which has at times led his family to think that I hate them, that I do not want to go places with them, that I am lazy and have no job at all, so on, so forth. I cannot tell them or a great many other people “Hey, I am speaking at college X about sex work” so they then wonder why I am just jetting off to MN or something. I cannot say I am going to this event or working on this scene or any of that. It is not done. It is also very possible, that like the folk in that news story, that my job could get Mr. E fired or some such thing. Even though what I am doing is legal.

And as always, even under often highly vaunted models like that one in Sweden, it is worse for those engaged in straight out prostitution. In Sweden, even with their model, it is illegal from one to benefit from the earnings of a prostitute. Which is to say, when said prostitute spends the money she has earned to put food on the table for a family, technically she is breaking the law.

And then, as always, there are the reactions of other people. People freak out at the idea of a sex worker being married. Any time I speak somewhere, the room sits and nods when I discuss performing act whatever in a porn scene, then gasp when I say I am married. “What about intimacy?” “What about fidelity?” and, my favorite (Mr. E’s too), “How can you let her do that?”/ “Your husband let’s you do that?”

The short answer is Mr.E…well, there is no “let” involved, but in any event, this is what one who is a sex worker can expect when people find out they are married. In this situation, not only does the sex worker get the great googlymoogly, but so does their partner. They get in on all the bullshit right along with their sex worker spouse.

They can be fired, they can lose their kids, they put up with all kinds of shit right along with their partner in that til death do you part kind of way. They (if male) get accused of being pimps, or abusive, or it is assumed they have forced their partner into the sex biz. It is just a whole extra load of shit sex workers (and their partners) get to deal with. I mean, if Jane the accountant married John the IT guy- well, no one would bat an eye.

If you are a sex worker? Well shit, then the rules are different. Just ask the Janke’s…or any other married sex worker.

The stigma and dehumanization, you see, runs very, very deep.

Senate panel endorses Sotomayor

Except only one Republican voted for the endorsement.

That is quite frankly embarassing. Sotomayor is a moderate judge with a whole lot of judicial experience. It speaks volumes about the GOP’s general arrogance and stubbornness that all but one Republican on the committee chose not to endorse her.

Republican critics of the judge expressed displeasure with her rulings as a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, as well as with some of her public comments. The rulings and comments show that she is a judge is too “activist” and liberal and has too little commitment to the rights of gun owners, the critics complained.

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the committee’s leading Republican, said just before the vote that he was compelled to oppose the nomination because of the judge’s “liberal, pro-government ideology.”

In an Op-Ed article in USA Today on Monday, Mr. Sessions wrote: “I don’t believe that Judge Sotomayor has the deep-rooted convictions necessary to resist the siren call of judicial activism. She has evoked its mantra too often. As someone who cares deeply about our great heritage of law, I must withhold my consent.”

Sotomayor is anything but an “activist” judge. I’m skeptical of that term generally, but I would think that an “activist” judge is one who often fails to defer to precedent; Sotomayor is precisely the opposite.

These senators voted against her endorsement because they don’t like her views. They could at least be honest about that.