The first of my books are beginning to arrive! I started with one called Sex Work: Writings By Women In The Sex Industry.”

I read it first (even though I had pledged to read something about feminism, not sex work, for once), and in a hurry, between clients at work. After all, one of the editors was at a panel I attended on Monday: “What’s $ Got To Do With It? Sex Work, Economics and Class“. It was a discussion about subjects I rarely hear: Is there a community of sex workers? Should there be, and what are we doing to create it? Is there a political movement? Where is it going? What is the current state of political sentiment, legislation, and law enforcement? What can be done to change it?

I try to keep my mouth shut at such events, but toward the end my hand popped up anyway. I haven’t blushed so much speaking up since middle school. A couple of the attendees thanked me for speaking, which had the odd maybe-reassuring, maybe-patronizing feel of an AA meeting, and another lady quipped “You should’ve been on the panel”. Yeah… and I should get on with my college degree, too.

On the way out I picked up $pread magazine’s new issue, which has a whole section about money. Of course it’s about money, I thought, how silly! All jobs are about money. But it’s not actually so straightforward. Quite often we predicate the entire value of sex work on the money and free time. Our critics like to point out the tenuous nature of pay in an effort to discredit the work. Sure, we make money (and thus our work is worthwhile) when young and well and pretty, but what if we’re sick or grow old and fat, which could happen at any time? Sex work can’t possibly hold any merit if it can’t guarantee its one redeeming feature.

Today I stumbled across an article called Is Stripping A Feminist Act? The author explores a few viewpoints on sex work as feminism, then concludes that money ultimately makes it a feminist act — that poverty is the most degrading of all.

Tasty Trixie, a blogger I have read for years, also posted a diatribe about renumeration a few days ago. She has been open about her struggles with debt and the financial side of the pornography business; here, she takes on the sting of selling something so (in)valuable, and getting so little in return. I found this a remarkably brave post.

The comments on the Alternet article (”Is Stripping…”) are worth a skim. You don’t need to read all 500some of them, but go ahead and get a feel for the diversity and strength of some of the opinions expressed.

While books and articles are nice, it can be eye-opening seeing the same put out on the Internet, where its readership can respond. When A Cnet article came out recently on kink.com’s new live shows, I stared and bookmarked it — not because of the slanted article, but the comments left. I won’t quote the worst, but here’s one:

Who the hell cares about piracy at Kink.com?
This is like posting armed guards at the sewage treatment plant.

And that, quite simply, is why I bother with all this stuff. No matter how great my life is, I cannot separate it from the rest of the vitriolic world.

Posted in feminism, sex work, money, $pread, books, activism