PRESS RELEASE: “Erotic Services” Denied: Craigslist and Attorneys General Are Putting Sex Workers At Risk
Repost from Waking Vixen. Please repost/tweet/spread the word!
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This is a collaborative press release – please distribute and repost widely!
Contact:
Dylan Wolfe – Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK), swank@riseup.net
Will Rockwell – $pread Magazine, will@spreadmagazine.org
Audacia Ray – Sex Work Awareness (SWA), aray@sexworkawareness.org
Susan Blake – Prostitutes of New York (PONY), pony@panix.com
Michael Bottoms – Sex Workers Outreach Project – New York City (SWOP-NYC), info@swop-nyc.org
With Craigslist’s recent announcement that its Erotic Services category will be discontinued within the week, hundreds of thousands of erotic service providers will become more vulnerable to dangerous predators. Eliminating erotic listings as Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and others propose will only drive us further underground.
Policing the masseuses, phone workers, pro-dominants, and escorts using Craigslist fails to protect those of us who are coerced into the sex industry. Preventing the use of Craigslist advertisements also eliminates the advantage of screening clients online, which makes for a safer work experience by filtering out potentially dangerous individuals. Furthermore, keeping us offline hinders police investigations of violent crime. In the Boston murder of Julissa Brisman, it was online tracking that enabled the police to identify the suspect. One has to wonder: are the Attorneys General examining the evidence or simply enforcing their moral values?
“Removing the erotic services category from Craigslist does not help prevent violence against escorts and other sex workers. It only pushes me and people like me out of the places where advertising is available,” said Jessica Bloom, a sex worker from Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK). In the face of increasing criminalization, we insist upon respect. As mothers, daughters, brothers, and members of your community, we claim that sex work is real work, work that we are entitled to conduct in safety. As such, we must be accorded the human right of full protection under the law.
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**EDIT** an addendum. I just typed this up in response to a Facebook friend asking what he could do to help. Here are some suggestions:
You can totally help, mostly by speaking up and jumping into the fray!
Legislation about consensual adult sex work (not trafficking, coercion, or child prostitution) mostly happens on the state level – since you’re in NY, you can find your assembly person here: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/ – write to him or her and tell them how you feel about the risks created and perpetuated by continued criminalizing of sex work and cracking down on advertising
Write letters to the editor of newspapers that publish misguided pieces about how the elimination of craigslist erotic services will “help” women
Comment on blog posts and online articles (if you’ve got the stomach for it!)
And check out the very excellent and thorough reports on research done by the Sex Workers Project to arm yourself with statistics
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Concerned about violent crime in ATL?
Then be sure to check out this event at Charis tonight!
Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative Dialogue
Thursday, March 12, 7:30-9:00pm
Over the past three years, a collaborative of Atlanta based organizers have been building a framework of transformative justice focused on transforming state, communal and interpersonal response to violence. From local neighborhood violence to international genocidal violence, from Gaza & the West Bank to intimate partner & family violence, the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative (ATJC) seeks to transform the responses and conditions that perpetuate all forms of social control and violence. Join ATJC organizers Mia Mingus, Cara Page, Sonali Sadequee & Stephanie Guilloud at Charis as they discuss ways to engage communities through transformative justice and deepen cross-movement conversations within southern based strategies.
I just now found out about this, and as such won’t be able to make it tonight. But I can assure you these four ladies are all kinds of awesome, and the ATJC is the kind of organization I can get behind. I would encourage ATAC folks to attend and participate.
Trying to un-muddy the waters just a little
I want to attempt to clear up some muddying of the waters re: my feelings on the ATACC thing. I realized that in some posts and comments, and particularly my post from last night, it comes off as if I’m conflating two separate issues. I want to address this because it’s the kind of thing that bugs me when I see other people doing it, and in my haste to just write my thoughts w/ little or no proof-reading, I’ve ended up doing the same thing.
Is crime a problem in Atlanta? Does it need to be addressed post-haste? Is it a good thing for people to organize and mobilize their communities, using the tools that work best for them? Do people have a right to defend themselves against robbery, burglary, etc.? Should people feel safe in their neighborhoods?
The answer to all those questions is a resounding YES!
That part, I really shouldn’t have to say. But I felt it best to just be explicit about it. I do understand that in an emotionally-charged environment, things that aren’t personal or aren’t meant a certain way can be taken that way, and really piss people the fuck off.
And that’s maybe the hardest thing about trying to sort this all out in writing: I can see how it must look from the eyes of someone who lost a loved one. I’ve always been good at putting myself in other people’s shoes, sometimes even to my detriment. But ultimately I believe it’s a good thing, because we need more sympathy and compassion in this world.
If I were a close friend or relative of John Henderson, for example, I’d most likely say something like, “Are you fucking kidding me?? He is DEAD and you’re wanting to prattle on about this privilege bullshit and looking for root causes. Well excuse the hell out of me, but no amount of identifying root causes is going to bring him back.”
I get that. Which is why I want to be clear.
When all the Full Frontal Feminism crap went down in the blogosphere, the reason it annoyed me so much was that legitimate frustration with a systemic problem was getting played out as criticisms of an individual. People were pissed off at a system that privileges certain voices over others, but what ended up going around were a lot of personal attacks on Jessica Valenti. The systemic problem is not her fault. The book is a good thing. And if she hadn’t written the book or it had been a massive flop, that wouldn’t have magically made more WOC authors get book deals.
It’s also an all-too-familiar trope in conversations about the sex industry. Instead of criticisms of the way the industry is constructed, we get personal attacks on individual sex workers – denying their choices, questioning their feminist creds, and so on.
So back to ATACC: the formation of the group is a good thing. The press attention it’s getting is a good thing.
But that’s not where my main quarrel lies.
It’s a systemic problem. Why does this group and this set of events get coverage? Why don’t you see coverage of peer-on-peer violent crime in southwest Atlanta? Why is it considered “business as usual” in certain areas of town – even if, as Karsh and others have pointed out, often that’s more perception than reality? Where does that perception come from? Why are some lives tacitly designated as more important than others? Etc., etc.
And remember, none of that has anything to do with intent.
Admittedly, the waters are getting muddied too because I have major concerns about the way the group is turning out. As I said before, I know many individuals involved and know that they have good intentions and truly want what’s best for their community. But when an organization reaches a certain point, it takes on a life of its own (whole vs. sum of parts, and all that); and the racism, classism, pro-police mentality and encouragement of vigilantism I’ve seen from its ranks make me want to run far away from associating myself with ATACC. -And, too, at a certain point, good intentions aren’t enough. For example, I’m sure in his mind Steve Gower has good intentions; but his actions are harmful, and the MNA and MPSA are dangerous groups with significant economic pull.
Getting to the root of a systemic problem does not equal absolving people of responsibility for their actions. An explanation is not an excuse. But without explanations, where would we be? It’s how we learn and make informed decisions. If we never modified our actions based on the results of deep analysis, we’d never get anywhere. Now I’m going to pull out the 9/11 analogy. The attackers who crashed those planes bear full responsibility and blame for their actions and should be punished accordingly. No amount of “the middle East distrusts America” makes what they did okay. However does that mean it’s not important to look at what circumstances may have fostered an environment that ultimately led to them doing what they did? That’s what we must do, unless we want to stick our heads in the sand and wait for our society to either get blown up or blow itself up. I repeat: an explanation is not an excuse. Analyzing is not condoning.
Reading back over this, I feel like I still haven’t done a good job of explaining what I mean. With this issue, I seem to be better at it when I talk about it w/ people face to face, but hey at least I tried.
Latest happenings and thoughts
I know I’ve alluded to it before, but lately I’m seriously wondering if I’ve reached my tipping point w/ social media. It’s true that I’ve been really busy in the past week, but come on, everybody’s busy, that’s not much of an explanation. Like I mentioned in a podcast a while back (would link but our site is down at the moment), I wonder if it’s finally gotten to the point where there’s just too much to keep up with. I haven’t been spending as much time on Twitter, and certainly not attempting to read everybody’s tweets. I haven’t checked Bloglines in days and have given up trying to read all my feeds – and I don’t even subscribe to an insane number of feeds, and certainly not the kind of blogs that post 20+ times a day! Then I end up reblogging shit on Tumblr and half the time I don’t know why, other than it’s a convenient way to help me wake up in the morning or unwind at night without using too many brain cells. I’ve been meaning to write Jenny and Niki an email for weeks now – and of course trying to find time to blog. It all seems so ridiculous, but more and more everything for me seems to be moving to quick little updates of 140 characters or less, no time to sit and write anything of substantial length.
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Friday night bytes… har, har
Lots of stuff in my head. I’ve been itching to write a long-ass blog post since last night, but I haven’t had the time nor do I think I’d be able to find the right words to really convey what I mean. I have a post in draft mode w/ all my notes to self saved for reference, in case I ever do write that post. (I also have a post in draft mode that’s been there since September, but let’s not get into that.) I’m halfway tempted to just put it up as-is, even though it would make absolutely no sense. It’s all sentence fragments and typos and weird abbreviations that make sense to no one but me.
But the truth is I’ve been bothered all day by the EAV shooting that I wrote about yesterday. I spilled it all out to Rusty at lunch and hopefully I made more sense than if I’d been writing. I even used an analogy to 9/11, and even though there should probably be a Godwin’s Law for that, in this case it fits.
I just feel sick about the whole thing and the way people are reacting – all these reactions that are making me use the word STRAWMAN, which I loathe. It makes me want to withdraw from humanity. If this is really how people think then how can I feel safe around them?
Might come back to this later and finish the fabled post. We’ll see. For now, there’s a twisted knot of sickness in my gut that won’t go away. I’m going to try to ignore it by changing the subject for now.
~*~
I continue to be paranoid (not really the right word, because it is a justified concern) about losing my nearly 7 years of blog posts to the bowels of the internet. I want this record of my life, such as it is, to be around for a long time. Recently I read about a woman who periodically makes hard copies of her blog posts for a specific period of time through lulu.com. That’s a damn good idea. For a while I was printing out all my posts and saving them in a big binder, but it got to be too much work and unmanageable. (“Admitted that my blog had become unmanageable…”) Plus – and this would still be an issue w/ the lulu.com solution – it doesn’t preserve the comment threads. But I suppose preserving the posts w/ no comments is better than preserving nothing at all. I might look into this. Someone really needs to form a start-up with venture capital from angel investors (more Bingo words!) that specializes in multi-format, redundant blog backups – NOT just copying stuff to whatever the latest form of magnetic storage is and being done w/ it.
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Back to serious stuff for a minute – another thing I want to write about, in conjunction w/ the rest of my thoughts on the EAV shooting, is the false concept of the innocent victim and how it’s a red herring anyway. But I’m definitely too sleepy to get into that right now. Consider this a personal, mental bookmark.
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Speaking of bookmarks, did anyone else notice that del.icio.us now redirects to delicious.com? Maybe it’s been that way for a while and I just wasn’t observant. Did that happen after Yahoo bought them? (Yahoo did buy them, right? Sometimes I can’t keep track of who’s zooming buying whom.)
~*~
Tuesday is the inauguration and originally I was planning to work from home. Rusty is working from home that day because he has an appointment in the morning, so he’ll work 12-8 from home. I figured I’d work from home so I could have the inauguration coverage on in the background and just work on the couch w/ my laptop. But today they sent out an email saying they’ll have live coverage on the “big screen” (read: conference room projection screens) and free lunch! I’m sure it’ll be crowded but the free lunch always gets me. I’ll be going into the office.
God speed to those of you who are going to DC – including Crystal and Dominque, who are staying in Philadelphia because that’s the closest room they could find. I say, better y’all than me. Being in a crowd of that many people does NOT sound fun to me, even though I understand on a theoretical level wanting to be a part of history. I’ll just enjoy the history from the conference room at work w/ a plate of free food, thanks.
~*~
Today our Realtor scheduled our closing, so barring any catastrophes next week (and you better believe I’ll be emailing EVERYONE on Tuesday to “follow up”), as of January 29 in the late morning/early afternoon, Rusty and I will be homeowners! It’s so hard to believe. Not sure how I’m supposed to be reacting, but it’s really weird. Every so often it’ll hit me and I’ll realize that this is our house and we can do whatever we want – this happens w/ a start, like one of those “OMG where’s my purse??” moments, only to then remind yourself you left it in [x] place on purpose. We can paint the walls whatever color we want and no one can tell us otherwise or charge us a fee to paint them back! We can drill holes in the ceiling and floor to mount a permanent pole and there’s no security deposit to lose! The list goes on.
And indeed, one of the first things we plan on doing, before we move all our furniture over, is painting. So we have to think of colors! Rusty might paint the kitchen Tennessee orange, which despite my obligatory protestations, I’m actually okay with. We know for a fact we’re going to have a yellow room. Other than that, we haven’t decided.
The order of events will go like this:
- Install security system
- Have the pest control people come out for the works
- Put sealant/protectant (whatever you call it) on deck so rainwater doesn’t damage it
- Paint various rooms
- Put up lots of birdfeeders, nestboxes, and birdbaths in the backyard. Also plant shrubs that produce berries that birds like to eat.
Initial heads-up: we’ll be selling our washer and dryer because the house comes with a new set. I’ll also be selling my pole/stage. We can give you our microwave for free because the house comes w/ one and I doubt this microwave is worth much in terms of money, but it functions just fine. If you want any of these things, let me know. We also have some unraveling wicker chairs, and you can have those too if you want them. I was figuring they’d go to the Goodwill donation center.
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It’s cold outside and we have the little space heater set up next to the bird cage. I have it on the almost-lowest setting. The first night we ran it, I had a nightmare that it cooked Puff and Stuff to death in their sleep. It was awful and I hate that I even mentioned it because now I’m thinking about it again. I’m really concerned about it not being too hot for them, while at the same time keeping them warm.
For those who are curious, here are pictures of Puff and Stuff. Sometimes I can’t get over how adorable they are.
I apologize for the state of the perch Stuff is standing on in that picture. Rusty and I are very responsible birdkeepers and we clean their cage and perches regularly.
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Rusty is sitting next to me on the couch playing a game of NCAA Football on his X-Box, and I just looked up and this status bar thing said “Commencing graduation ceremony,” and then 2 seconds later it moved on to the next thing. Ha.
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It’s a three-day weekend so maybe I’ll finally get off my duff and write some damn emails. I feel like a bad friend. :P I should get over that, because we’re all constantly connected thanks to Twitter and Facebook, but still. God.
Okay, turning off the ramble spigot for now and hitting the sack. Commence adding a million tags which take up 3 or 4 lines.
Death and joy never go together
On Twitter I saw a link to this post and then I saw some back-and-forth @ messaging between Sara and Griftdrift. I really don’t have time to be getting sucked into blog threads or writing one of my own right now; I’m at work and need to focus on work. But I do want to dash something off, because reading the thread at Griftdrift’s made me feel sick to my stomach.
I know the usual BS talking points: liberals are soft on crime. Whatever. This isn’t about being soft on crime. It’s about not taking such satisfaction, wipe your hands and be done w/ it, in the death of another human being.
Someone will probably say I’m trying to excuse what he did or say it’s okay. Um, hello, tell me where I said that. I get so frustrated when people put words like that in my mouth.
Far be it for me to tell anyone how to react in the face of a crime but it just seems to me like the guy in the car who shot and killed the guy over-reacted. That’s not really the right word because it sounds too much to me like people making excuses for rapists (even though this is a totally different situation, there are always assholes who will try to pretend that they’re not). But something just feels “off” about it. And it really, really bothers me.
Now, everyone has a right to defend themselves. Of course they do! And I don’t like how sometimes it seems like some people who identify as liberal or progressive are saying that people can’t defend themselves, don’t have a right to personal property, etc. To me that’s ridiculous and that’s not what I’m saying. Hello, I live in the city too and yes, we have a crime problem and no, I would not fault anyone for defending themselves against a crime, and no I do not think anything makes robbing “okay” nor do I care more about the robbers’ humanity/well-being than the victim’s!
However it’s not going to fix anything for everyone to be packing and go around shooting anyone who dares to ask for money. Until we address the underlying systemic issues that lead to so many people being in a position where they are begging for money and/or robbing others at gunpoint, we won’t actually make any progress. There has to be reform to the broken system rather than just reaction. And this is not to say some reaction is not necessary. (I feel like I can’t even get out what I want to say because I’m constantly anticipating strawman arguments in response. And I hate that word “strawman!”) But you can’t have just reaction; otherwise nothing changes. 1 in 100 adults in the U.S. are now incarcerated; tell me the system isn’t broken.
The other reason this disturbs me so much is because I’m afraid these same people (and in some cases I know it to be true) would take just as much glee in the antics of Steve Gower in midtown, persecuting and terrorizing street-based sex workers. It’s okay w/ them because it’s “crime” and who cares about those people anyway, who cares about their lives and circumstances, just get them out of my face where I don’t have to be made to feel uncomfortable. People have said “yay” and “good” to what Gower and others like him are doing and it makes me feel sick.
Situations like this really just make me worry about humanity. It makes my heart hurt and I’m not just being metaphorical when I say it makes me sick to my stomach. This is part of why I have such a problem trusting people. You never know when they’re going to turn around and rejoice because another human being is dead.
[Hitting post w/o proofreading - no time at the moment. Not that I bother most of the time anyway!]
More Saturday night stuff (complete withOUT proofreading)
Woo! Time for another packed-full-of-too-much-stuff, non-SEO-friendly, old-school-blogging post!
Speaking of SEO, Rusty and I were talking yesterday about how everyone wants high search engine rankings, and they’ll invest in all the whiz-bang SEO stuff but they won’t do the one thing that really matters: making sure anyone else knows their site exists so they’ll get some incoming links. Is that ironic? Or just unfortunate?
And that reminds of me of the scene in Reality Bites where Winona Ryder’s character (a journalism major who was valedictorian of her class) is asked, at a job interview, to define irony, and she stumbles over her words and can’t come up with a definition. Then she goes home and tells Ethan Hawke’s character what happened and complains that no one can define irony anyway, and he immediately defines it as when the actual meaning is the opposite of the literal meaning. When I first saw the movie, I remember thinking that that definition sounded awfully fancy, but when you think about it, it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. Now, searching webster.com, I see they include the same definition:
Main Entry: iro·ny
Pronunciation: \ˈī-rə-nē also ˈī(-ə)r-nē\Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural iro·nies
Etymology: Latin ironia, from Greek eirōnia, from eirōn dissembler
Date: 15021: a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other’s false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning —called also Socratic irony
2 a: the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning b: a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony c: an ironic expression or utterance
3 a (1): incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2): an event or result marked by such incongruity b: incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play —called also dramatic irony tragic irony
To me it seems like 3a is the definition that makes the most sense.
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But enough of that. The big news is, re: the house… we are officially under contract!! We have binding agreement as of Thursday. This morning, we had our home inspection, termite inspection, mold test (will get results by Tuesday), and appraisal. The appraiser was so stereotypical. He struck me as someone out of a 1960s movie. But he was apparently impressed enough with the house to actually speak to us and say as much. Ha! As for the home inspection, it went well. The inspector found a few issues (naturally), but most of them are small things that the workers should have done in the first place during the renovation.
Now that I’m not quite as nervous about jinxing the sale, I’ll post a few more photos:
There’s also an old wooden swingset in the backyard that’s super cool.
I’m so excited! Thank you to everyone who has @’ed or DM’ed on Twitter about the house. I really need to write emails to people. I don’t want to become one of those people who constantly whines on being soooo behind on email, blogs, etc. But I think I’ve reached a tipping point where it’s all getting to be too much to manage. More on that later, though. The point: Thanks for all the well-wishes about the house! I’m going to be a home-owner, holy crap!
~*~
I don’t know how to write about this without upsetting someone, because regardless of my intent I know emotions are (100% understandably) a bit raw right now. Yet I still feel the need to speak, and I admit I’m doing it after Karsh did the hard work of speaking first. Ever since I heard about the vigil at The Standard and the formation of the Facebook group against rising crime in Atlanta, something about it didn’t sit well with me. Karsh articulated it well:
Yes, citizens in Atlanta need to feel safe. But I get the overwhelming perception from people I’ve talked to and read about that because this happened in East Atlanta, things must really be out of hand. I’d disagree with that. What if this happened in Bankhead or East Point or Buckhead? Would the public outrage be this great or this social-media oriented? Why start organizing now? Because it happened at a familiar haunt? I can almost smell a Twitter hashtag forming. (I’m partially kidding about that.)
I don’t disbelieve Maigh’s sentiment, and yet the fact is, we haven’t seen this type/level of outrage over other murders. To me it kind of smells like when I call a guy on sexist behavior and he insists, “I’d treat a man the same way!” Well, we don’t know that for a fact, now do we? And it’s moot anyway, because you haven’t treated a man this way. (Yet another clumsy analogy [I'm all about those lately] but I can’t think of a better one right now.)
Note this is not about accusing individuals of being “racists,” as in, a noun. People always latch onto that kind of thing and it derails discussions, because once again racism is cast as something that individuals perpetrate against other individuals, and you are either “a racist” or you aren’t; rather than racism being acknowledged as the systemic, ingrained, oft-unnoticed (by white people) issue it really is. Oh and if someone didn’t mean something in a racist way then it’s not racist. Except, that’s the entire point.
There are systemic issues here that have to be addressed, and if they’re not addressed, nothing will change. Yes, the cutting of the budget and reduction in police force is part of the problem. But far too many people are either ignorant of, or willfully ignoring, the deeper issue.
I’m sure someone will come over here and comment that I’m being disrespectful of John Henderson’s memory and that it’s not the appropriate time and that I’m just being an asshole. If they do, I understand. As I said, emotions are raw right now, and maybe it’s not the right time – but then, I wonder when the right time will be. I know what it feels like to deal with the loss of someone close to you, and the desire for “rational discourse” on a blog FFS is pretty much priority zero. So I understand and I’m sure I would feel the same way if it were my friend who had been murdered. But I just wanted to say my piece.
~*~
I admit I am a bit annoyed with this discussion of sex-positivity at Ren’s. Obviously I respect Ren’s right to like or dislike any terms, and to identify however she chooses! I get frustrated, though, when sex-positivity is constantly portrayed as meaning “I like sex.” Too many people have taken too many steps to explain why this is not the case for the myth to continue to be put forward. I know it’s a hard one to fight against because the marketing world has co-opted the term and applied it to things like fashion magazines, expensive shoes, and men’s body spray. As I said in the comments at Ren’s:
The sex-positive feminism wikipedia page and sex-positive wikipedia page actually have a much more detailed history of the term than the about.com article. I’m always a bit wary about linking to those pages though, because sometimes they get edited by anti-sex-positive people with an ulterior motive.
Anyway, personally, I’m not interested in debating the meaning of the term. It’s been spelled out pretty clearly in many places. For me, it’s part and parcel of feminism because it centers women’s sexual health and the way women’s sexuality has been pathologized under patriarchy. I provided links in order to help clarify some of the history behind the term; most people are not familiar w/ the history and unfortunately the way we most often hear it now is in the co-opted marketing sense, where it’s been twisted around so that it stands in for “anything vaguely related to sex, at all.” Often it’s applied to things that are completely the *opposite* of true sex-positivity.
Again, for me, I find that the term fits, and I will continue to self-identify as a sex-positive feminist. Everyone else is free to do what they want, of course!
See also my page of sex-positive feminism reference material, especially Queer Dewd’s post from two years ago on the matter. I (or anyone else) will never be able to say it better than she did.
~*~
This has been saved in my Bloglines for weeks, and I’m not sure what I can say about it, because you just need to check it out: $pread’s excellent cultural analysis of anti-trafficking posters. Seriously, read it. And tell me those images aren’t fucked up.
Buzzwords vs. real people
God forbid, you can’t normalize and legitimize icky prostitution that I have such a personal moral problem with, because then…
-oh wait. Because then, stuff like this might not happen.
Well then.
Popular opinion: Hooker murders are icky, grisly, and wrong, because, well, murder is wrong but … well, thank goodness it was “just” a whore. No big whoop, right? And, well, that’s what she gets, you know? I mean, that’s just part of the risks of being a skanky ho.
This has me so pissed off right now. What the hell is wrong with people?
This “Well, thank goodness just a _____ died and not, like, a real normal, GOOD person” attitude strikes a real sore spot with me.
ETA: Oh, and also… don’t bother reading the comments on the Bastard Logic thread. Trust me.
My feelings on the bit of it I (regrettably) skimmed echo what GallingGalla said at The Curvature:
The comment thread on the bastard.logic story made me sick. A bunch of men (and especially one guy) making every excuse in the book for why the “sentence” was justified — probably enough to create a “hating on sex workers” bingo card.
Speaking of The Curvature, thanks to Cara for also posting about this on Feministe.
Not an invitation
I am loving these posters from LACAAW:
[Via Bound, Not Gagged]
News, good and bad
The bad (awful, horrible, heart-wrenching) news it that on December 10, blogger and sex worker Razor Mick was stabbed six times and left for dead in a dumpster.
The good news (well, good given the situation) is that as of December 28, Razor Mick has been moved out of the ICU, and it’s looking like she’s going to make a full physical recovery.
It seems crass to remark on the closeness of this attack to the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, but the proximity of the dates did enter my mind as my stomach lurched.
Please keep Razor Mick in your thoughts, prayers, or whatever other goodwill-invoking mechanisms you prefer. Feel free to stop by her blog to leave some words of support, as her friends are passing all supportive messages along to her.
[Via Ren]