I’m Alive and So Are You!

So it’s been a while!

Thank you to everyone who has asked or emailed me to check in. It means a lot to me! And if I haven’t written you back yet I will 🙂

A month has gone by and I stepped away from SR mostly because I mentally couldn’t keep up with myself. But I’m back.

In my world, in no particular order:
I start school (again) today
Work is going well. I’m officially a supervisor!
My dear friend who I have been crushing hard on for two years finally realized it was a good idea to try dating me! 😉
Domestic violence is a hard thing to see and hear about
I did one nonsexual escort date and long story short, I got paid $2500 and J and I have gone out to dinner with both the dude and his wife (more on that to come)
I still LOVE dancing
I only have one box left in the house to unpack
We’re flying home next weekend to see the fam
I want to go Hawaii SO BAD. Especially since today is the first really dreary day in Portland.
Have you checked out Bitch media?The falll issue is called Love/Lust and has several excellent pieces on the questioning identity, feminist porn, and more
Still trying to figure out why my most comfortable state is naked. Or rather, trying to be naked more often

What’s new with you all?

End of Week Links

Honorary degrees for legendary pornstars

St. James Infirmary: I am in awe of this organization. I wish I had known about it sooner! It is an occupational safety organization for sex workers. They have an amazing handbook for workers, they employ workers on their staff, they do harm reduction and outreach services, and provide free healthcare to workers… all in SF. It would be so amazing to have something like this in Portland.

Beware the Kerkeslager Effect

What Happened When One Woman Had Her Picture Photoshopped In 25 Different Countries

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?

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!

Social Work, Sex Work, Students

It’s been simmering in my head for a little over a week now:

I got into my MSW program!

I feel relieved, tired, and gritty thinking about it. More school. And this time, part time school with full time work- something I’ve never done before. But this is important to me, and I feel like my life keeps pushing me toward this experience.

I posted a link last week to Tits and Sass piece on social workers who work with students sex workers, and this week I want to post a link to a Huffington Post interview that was done with the woman who works as the sex worker advocate at the Women’s Resource Center at Portland State (where I’ll be going for my MSW), and with two anonymous student sex workers. I haven’t even had the chance to watch the full thing, but it was encouraging to know that the interviewer asked the workers what their ideal questions would be- at least we had a chance to set the tone for the interview. (I wanted to participate but had to work- darn it!)

On Campus: Life as a College Sex Worker

(Try not to read the asinine comments. Or if you do, leave something intelligible to counter them! Ha)

I am encouraged and heartened about the culture of PSU’s MSW program: there is a sex worker advocate in the WRC, a few fairly out sex workers in the program, and at least one professor who has been supportive of student sex workers. I don’t know for sure if I’ll be coming out or not in the program, but at least it feels like a safe possibility.

Patting myself on the back. Now time for sleep so I can do this 9-5 thang.

Working with Student Sex Workers

I can’t wait to see the roundtable I participated in on being a sex worker and going into counseling or social as a profession, but in the meantime, Tits and Sass published this lovely interview with two social workers who work with sex workers: Discussing Other People’s Lives: Social Work & Student Sex Workers

Quotes of note:

 Programs like Project Rose send the message that you can only be a social worker if you are a) not a sex worker and b) see sex workers as people that need to be rescued.”

In social work right now and in dominant white feminism, we need to be really critical about how we think and talk about this issues, and how our ethnocentrism impacts how we think people “should” live their lives. I am deeply troubled with the way that we are discussing other peoples’ lives over and over again in these conversations.”

A really dangerous liaison is happening between evangelical trafficking organization and “radical feminists” and social work organizations. There is a history of this, it’s not new. It’s my opinion that in social work there isn’t a critical eye being turned to this work because we are so deeply uncomfortable with sex work and social workers are so deeply invested in their identities as “helpers” and “saviors.” Annie and I present to lots of different audiences and recently I heard some feedback that there was the impression we were “encouraging” students to enter the sex industry, simply because we did not “condemn” the existence of the trades. Moving away from theoretical conversations about “empowerment” and victim/agent dichotomies makes people deeply uncomfortable because you aren’t making an assessment about if you think the sex trades are “right” or “wrong”.”

PS: This interview makes me so much more excited about my potential MSW program since these women work at the school I applied to 🙂

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

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