#YesAllWomen

~My good thoughts and prayers are with the Isla Vista community~

I thought it would be worth collecting my favorite media responses (so far) to the Elliot Rodger incident, and posting them here. I have many thoughts and feelings about the shooting, and many others have already responded articulately and comprehensively. Many of my own thoughts have been encapsulated by others, and while I have been distressed over the shooting, I feel heartened reading all of the strong, emphatic responses by other feminists. I am distressed and saddened, knowing this will likely not be the last incident of its kind, and yet strengthened knowing that so many people I know, men and women, share a vision of gender equality and non-violence.

Laci Green on Upworthy

Jessica Valenti on #YesAllWomen

Your Princess is in Another Castle

When Women Refuse Tumblr

Dude, It’s You

Yes, All Men

Why It’s So Hard for Men to See Misogyny

I posted the Laci Green video on my Facebook wall, and I was not prepared for an acquaintance from high school to side with Elliot’s misogynistic beliefs and attitudes. I have been feeling embarrassed to have such grossness on my Facebook wall, so I keep countering his comments with my own- I can’t let him have the last word on my wall, can I? I have been thankful to my friends who have also been stepping in, bolstering the side of equality. A good friend of mine, too, sent me a message that she had received from a friend of hers who was going through the exact same thing. It was inspirational, and reminded me that I didn’t need to be an “expert” in order to argue with this guy and I didn’t need to apologize to anyone for his behavior and beliefs.

My #YesAllWomen contributions (not that I am on Twitter, but if I was, these would be mine):

Vigilant when I walk by large vans

Cautious when I open my front door at night

Thought about how fast I could run if I need to escape an attacker

Worried that I haven’t taken self-defense and that if I am attacked I will be criticized for not fighting harder

Worried that if I am attacked someone will out me as a stripper and I will no longer look like a “good victim”

Thought about getting an actual guard dog so when we are walking around our neighborhood I would have another form of protection

Do you have any favorite articles on the subject that I don’t have listed? Please share! Reading other people’s thoughts, opinions, and analyses of what happened is helping me process :)

Politics of Respectability

About the politics of respectability, and how having an education and other successes in life clouds our other, more taboo, experiences, despite their worthiness and depth in our lives:

The Erasure of Maya Angelou’s Sex Work History

Or, how the politics of respectability makes our collective experiences look crazy, strange, or shameful:

Stripper with a PhD

The politics of respectability are those that I have tried countless times to discuss on here in relation to my own struggle as both a lover of school and education and desire to work in the mainstream, and a lover of the strip club stage. How can I be both? Perhaps I am neither? Am I a feminist? Or not? Perhaps both? Am I a slut? How complex can I be and still be accepted? How complex can I be and still love myself? Can I respect myself and be everything that I am? Will others respect be despite, and hopefully because of, everything I am?

Thank you Maya

I love this Maya Angelou poem. I especially love the line about diamonds, as it reminds me of my bedazzled g-string I wear at the club. And, I deeply love the strength, resilience, and power she describes. May we all rise despite adversity, showing ourselves and others what true strength looks like.

Still I Rise

Maya Angelou, 1928 - 2014

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

 

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

 

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

 

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

 

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

 

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

 

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

 

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

 

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Hump Day Links

What If We Admitted to Children That Sex Is Primarily About Pleasure? (Sorry the ending is so cheesy everyone)

Five Lessons From Poly Relationships That Everyone Can Benefit From

This Is What The Female Orgasm Really Feels Like

To give you an idea of the lack of sex-positivity of the community I grew up in: Bikini coffee shop agrees to change drink names

She’s not ugly in my opinion, and her body is amazing. Inspiring me to practice my head and handstands: 10+ Reasons I Love My Ugly Body

And this gem that was posted in my Open FB group:

equalitypickup

Kyriarchy

I feel a little late to the feminist table: why hadn’t I come across the word “kyriarchy” before? I don’t know, but now I have. This post does a good job of explaining the difference between kyriarchy and patriarchy. It may seem simply like semantics, but I think the difference in definitions is important to understand.

Kyriarchy is about examining all systems of oppression and privilege, and not just the system of patriarchy and the power that men hold over women. I love this piece from post I linked to:

“Kyriarchy is more descriptive of the approach I try to take to feminism. The word considers all parts of the oppressive structure we live in evenly – no one oppression is worse or better or more important than another. We are all subject to kyriarchy, and we all benefit from kyriarchy; we all share the burden and the blame in different measures and proportions.”

And, she goes on to quote a scholar, who mentions:

“When people talk about patriarchy and then it divulges into a complex conversation about the shifting circles of privilege, power, and domination — they’re talking about kyriarchy.  When you talk about power assertion of a White woman over a Brown man, that’s kyriarchy.  When you talk about a Black man dominating a Brown womyn, that’s kyriarchy.  It’s about the human tendency for everyone trying to take the role of lord/master within a pyramid.  At it best heights, studying kyriarchy displays that it’s more than just rich, white Christian men at the tip top and, personally, they’re not the ones I find most dangerous. There’s a helluva lot more people a few levels down the pyramid who are more interested in keeping their place in the structure than to turning the pyramid upside down.”

Does that make sense? We all embody varying degrees of privileged and marginalized identities, and how we experience privilege and oppression changes depending on context. I’ve understood this phenomenon to be true, but I just never knew there was a word to describe it.

I love this concept because it helps, for me, to explain why I can experience oppression and privilege in the system of a strip club, and why I can experience both oppression and privilege walking into an academic setting or my work setting. It helps explain why a strip club customer embodies both oppression privilege. It helps me breathe a sigh of relief because our world is not so neat and tidy as being able to say “sex workers are oppressed people” or “white people are privileged people.” (Yes, I do think that most of the time in most contexts white people hold far more power than people of color- and I’ve never personally experienced a time in my life where I have felt noticeably less powerful than a person of color. But, I do think there are situations and contexts in which the power dynamic shifts).

For example, this post ventures down this path and I appreciate the writer’s analysis of kyriarchy. My beef with her post, though, is her extension into what kyriarchy means for sex workers. She immediately starts talking about workers in trafficking or abusive relationships with pimps, and discounts the experiences of workers who choose their line of work. So, I would agree with her that it is kyriarchical of her to analyze sex workers’ experiences as she does (“But, and maybe this is kyriarchal of me, when people claim that sex workers derive power from their work, it gives me pause.”)

I appreciate this article on The Guardian, and this particular passage:

“Perhaps most importantly, kyriarchy exposes a sin within the women’s movement itself: that of feminist-perpetuated oppression. (I can already hear feminists hissing at me as I type. But don’t worry – I’ll hiss at myself in the mirror later for perpetuating the stereotype of internecine cat-fighting.) When feminist commentators and charities working to “liberate” sex workers relate their tales for them, rather than letting them speak first-hand, that’s kyriarchy. It’s also kyriarchy when minority male feminists are forced to veto voting rights in equality action groups because they are male.

Kyriarchy has the potential to settle the age-old argument about “privileged” feminism once and for all. Perhaps that’s why it’s so frightening to those that balk at the term, and will dismiss this as yet another example of woman-eating-woman. It may feel counterintuitive, but recognising your own privilege doesn’t make the struggle for gender equality any less credible: it makes it more so, by allowing feminists to see that advantages – such as being born to a semi-prosperous family or being well-educated – don’t necessarily protect against, say, rape.”

Reading all of this makes me feel so much better since I have been stewing for the past month or so about the anti-Belle Knox coverage (you can’t be an empowered feminist and a porn star: the Belle Knox brand of feminism is so totally not feminism). It all seems like a bunch of bullshit (and probably because I identify with Belle Knox and think she is rad)- you certainly can be a feminist, recognize the power and privilege you engender as a young and hot woman, profit off that power, and also recognize the oppression that brought you, as a woman, to porn in the first place- and, say that you wouldn’t want to continue in porn forever. I really don’t understand why complicated motivations and identities are so scary to people. This kind of experience doesn’t hurt the feminist movement: it enriches and enlivens it,  allows us to delve into the complexities of our lives, and speak up for minority experiences.

What do you think?

kyriarchy

Sex Worker/Social Worker

Somehow I missed the publication of the roundtable I participated in for Tits and Sass. Here it is:

Sex Worker/Social Worker: An Ethics Roundtable

I am floored and humbled and motivated reading (and re-reading) the other workers’ experiences with school and sex work. There are so many rich and complex stories here. So much insight, pride, solidarity, and action. I love it.

And thanks to T&A for including me!

Word Gets Around

It is so gratifying to know that people talk to each other, and that my story of school and stripping has gotten around. I received an email from a former fellow student who heard about my story through another student and put two and two together, and wanted to make sure I was okay and offered to give me any support I needed. They and I had had only one class together, but I had disclosed my stripping experience to them and felt really supported by them. It was really nice to hear from them and to know that they found the courage to reach out to me.

And then, I met someone through the sex worker outreach coalition who is starting the exact program at the school that I just withdrew from. So of course we had to talk about it all. Since she is a former sex worker, she is also trying to decide how much disclosure she feels safe making in her new program and moving forward in her career. (No surprises: she feels pretty darn unsafe in disclosing her past work experiences)

Hearing her get fired up on my behalf, and on behalf of all workers, was gratifying and intensely pleasurable. It gave me chills.

Social network + solidarity = one happy Katie

Solidarity-Hand-Tree-blog-770x380

Sex Workers, the Internet, & Stigma

Last night I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Emily Kennedy, a sociology PhD student studying the role of the Internet in shaping the ways in which we view sex work and sex workers. It was a fantastic experience- one of the highlights was when I started talking about my experience with withdrawing from my counseling program and she jumped in her seat: “That’s you?! I saw that post on Tumblr!! I can’t believe you’re part of my interview sample!” She was so excited, and I loved that she had seen the HoP post. We talked about how Internet use has helped me attract customers, how I have communicated with regulars, how I got started stripping and why, who I have disclosed my experiences to and why, if I have had any negative experiences with school or law enforcement or other people in my life, and whether I think there has been a shift in general attitude toward sex work in the past 10-20 years. It was really fun to talk about all of that with a sociology student who herself has direct experience with sex work and also has a deep curiosity for how sex work is viewed and treated culturally in our country.

My interview came after an interesting afternoon at work, something I am still somewhat processing. I met with a coworker to discuss planning a financial planning workshop for sex workers in the area, and after about 20 minutes of me offering a lot of information without much clarity of source, she asked me:

So… how did you get involved in this work?

I stumbled for a minute, and probably looked a bit uncomfortable. Ummm…

You don’t have to tell me at all! It’s okay.

No, I’ve been struggling with this. And so I guess I’ll just tell you, and you (as I nodded to the coworker who I share an office with). I’ve actually been a stripper, so that’s how I got really interested in sex workers rights and advocacy.

Well that is so cool! You have a lot of insight then and probably a better ability to reach this population. What an asset. How great!

After I told my two coworkers I started doubting myself- was that a smart decision? Why can’t I just keep my mouth shut? What is wrong with me? So many people don’t talk about their personal lives at work- why do I have this compulsive need to be out everywhere?

I remember Louisa Leontiades telling me in a Skype chat once:

It’s addicting to be yourself.

It’s so true. Once you have felt what it’s like to be yourself, totally and completely, without shame and without regard for what others think, it’s hard to go back. It’s hard to stuff pieces of yourself away, for fear of retaliation or judgement.

I had a longer conversation with my officemate after the other person left, and she understood completely my need for discretion and to continue to feel out the culture of our program and the attitude of other coworkers. I trust her and I don’t worry about her telling anyone or gossiping about it. Then later, I emailed my other coworker and thanked her for her understanding and respect and discretion. And she replied with more kindness and a confirmation that she adheres to the Vegas rule- whatever was said in our office, stays in our office.

I need to trust my intuition about people- my coworkers felt like safe and supportive people to disclose to, and they are. While I have largely had good experiences coming out as a stripper, I also have enough experience from my school snafu to know that not everyone sees my stripping experience as an empowering, rich, and positive perspective. So taking it slow in my new work environment in disclosing feels like a good path to take. I am also feeling more “all here,” which is freeing and grounding at the same time.

One of the last questions that Emily asked me last night was: You’re only 25, but how do you think general attitudes toward sex work has changed in the past 20 years?

To which I replied:

Well, I was only 5 20 years ago, but I know from the time I was in high school to now, I personally have undergone a massive shift in how I view sex work. I used to have my mom’s attitude toward sex work- that it is objectifying, degrading, and hurts all women and people. I carried that through college, and it wasn’t until my partner and I opened up that I had a catalyst to unpack my views surrounding sexuality and sex work. I have noticed that a lot of other women in my age cohort have gone through similar transformations with how they view sexuality and sex work, although they have had different catalysts than me. It gives me hope!

She laughed and agreed.

International Sex Worker Rights Day & Benefit

Yesterday (March 3) was International Sex Worker Rights Day, and so of course, I went to a benefit show last night to celebrate the day. (December 17 is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, which is generally a much more somber event)

From the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP):

“This day’s history goes back to 2001, when over 25,000 sex workers gathered in India for a festival despite efforts from prohibitionist groups who tried to prevent it taking place by pressuring the government to revoke their permit.  The event was organised by Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, a Calcutta based group that has over 50,000 sex worker members, and members of their communities.  Sex worker groups across the world have subsequently celebrated 3rd March as an annual, international event, as International Sex Workers’ Rights Day. “

A couple of really rad dancers in Portland organized this amazing show as a benefit for our main crisis line and local Sex Worker Outreach Coalition, complete with poetry, a band, pole dancers, burlesque performers, a consensual kissing booth, and a booty-shaking contest. And lots of raffle prizes. It was really fabulous. And had I not been exhausted, I would have stayed for the whole thing.

swoc

Highlights for me included:

-The amazing host/emcee who kept saying things like “We are coming together with our strength and vulnerability.” She was so cute and sparkly.

-All of the drag performers were amazing, but there was one in particular that blew my mind. I love a guy with long hair who has moves.

-The booty-shaking contest which featured almost all male contestants.

-A stellar rendition of Margaret Atwood’s poem “Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

-A display of strength and power during a pole performance set to a Brittney Spears song (I wish I could remember which one- I was totally singing it during the performance, and now I can’t remember)

Support your sex workers- we’re just workers, who deserve workers’ rights and human rights, just like all other workers. For me, reclaiming sexuality extends to giving voice and authority to people who exchange their sexual energy for resources, and also means that we need to strip (ha) the taboo away from sex work and give sex workers the respect and integration in our society so we can all live healthy and fulfilling lives.

Want to learn more about sex workers’ rights? Here are some other resources:

Sex Workers Projects

Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network

COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics)

There are many other more local organizations organized sex workers’ rights; I encourage you to support those in your area!

Sexual Violence, LGBTQ Community, & Trafficking

This week I was able to participate in a couple of webinars for work- one on domestic violence within the LGBTQ community, and the other on minor sex trafficking.  Because I see such an obvious intersection between sexual violence prevention and intervention and reclaiming healthy and equitable relationships, I wanted to share some of my notes with you all.

-Domestic violence and sexual assault hotlines often include the suggestion to call 911 if someone is experiencing an emergency. This does not really take into account the historical experience of many people of color and LGBTQ folks with the police. What would be a more just way of serving survivors when they call after hours?

-Have any of you seen the Power & Control Wheel? While it is used in many settings and is well liked by many therapists and advocates, it also simplifies the experience of many marginalized groups. The standard wheel definitely captures many common patterns and behaviors within violent and abusive relationships, but when creators have tried to tailor the wheel to different populations, they have not necessarily done a very good job. For instance, the P&C wheel for LGBTQ folks simply layers “homophobia” around the outside of the wheel without actually providing specific examples of how homophobia intersects with experiences of domestic violence.

-Tactics that abusers often use within LGBTQ relationships include: isolating and threatening to out the survivor, using the survivor’s vulnerabilities to keep them from leaving the relationship or reporting abuse, using a survivor’s internal oppression to their advantage, using children as pawns, using the smallness of the LGBTQ community to keep a survivor quiet, leveraging institutional violence to keep a survivor quiet, and playing off of any substance use/abuse that is going on.

-Intersectionality is a big component for any person, and particularly relevant for understanding abusive and violent dynamics within LGBTQ relationships where other marginalized identities exist (ethnic, poly, BDSM). So a queer person of color who is in a D/s relationship and is experiencing nonconsensual abuse will face a much more challenging situation in leaving or reporting the situation than a white straight person in a vanilla relationship.

-Sex trafficking is different than consensual sex work. (This of course can get us into a discussion about what consensual means. To me, consensual means a “yes” given by all post-pubescent parties involved. The legal definition of consent, however, is very strict: if you are a minor-18 years- then you cannot legally give consent to sex.)

-Workers often refer to their pimps as “boyfriends” for a variety of reasons: many pimp-worker relationships start off as dating relationships which makes the relationship complex; the word pimp is often stigmatizing so workers often opt to refer pimps as dating partners instead

-The dynamics present within domestic violence and intimate partner violence relationships and trafficking relationships look very, very similar

-The Trafficking Victims Protection Act broadly affords victims rights to trafficking victims, because the Act recognizes trafficking as a crime (no kidding)

three-women