drop the feminist f-bomb @imgross-ok - Tumblr Blog

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Vogue UK Sept 2018 - Anok Yai by Mert & Marcus

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Chocolat (Claire Denis, 1988)

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plainwater by anne carson

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please sign this petition to protect the protesters responsible for taking down the statue of a slave trader in Bristol from prosecution

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There's also a legal fund here that needs donations

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White people: if you want to help long term: get used to being told your opinion is wrong, irrelevant, or unwanted. Tell your friends to get used to it. Work on getting used to it and do this work with other white people. Because white supremacy has all of y’all very used to being right and being an inherently valued voice and if we’re going to fight white supremacy you’re going to have to be comfortable surrendering that expectation and also white people will need to learn how to handle being rejected or disagreed with. It’s an extension of racism and racial trauma for black people to try and educate or speak up about our issues only to expose ourselves to your white fragility which makes you defensive– this defensiveness can look like shutting down, silencing us, painting all corrections or disagreements as ‘fighs’ (extending the idea that black people are aggressive) etc.

White resilience is the opposite of white fragility and black people are VERY good at resilience, unfortunately. Listen to us we know how to combat this.

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Also get used to the idea that you’re late to the game. If you think you have a great idea for how to change something, chances are there is a poc-lead organization that is already doing the work, or a black person has already written about it, and more thoroughly than you can imagine. Join the work, read those authors, and let it humble you.

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memoirsofaworkingprostitute

I want to say something about that “90% of women want to exit the industry” statistic

As someone who was forced into sex work because of extreme economic circumstance (aka poverty), I would probably be considered one of those who “wanted out”

But using me as a statistic to silence sex workers who love their jobs and continue working by choice DID NOT HELP ME

Four years ago, I begged my day-job boss to give me more hours. BEGGED. Said if something didn’t change soon I would have to become a sex worker in order to feed my family. Nobody helped me. I didn’t qualify for any government assistance programs. Minimum wage was $8/hr at the time, and it was not even close to being enough to survive. I had no other options. Sex work was my ultimate last resort.

Because of websites like Backpage, I didn’t have to work on the street, where conditions are a thousand times more dangerous. Redbook allowed me to screen clients by looking at their review history. But in the back of my mind there was always an incredible amount of fear. Fear of law enforcement trumped my fear of bad clients. An arrest would have destroyed my entire family. Because I was terrified of the police, I took many clients that I should not have, and in doing so subjected myself to abuse in several cases.

The notion that sex workers should just “get another job” because of tightened prostitution laws is unfair and unrealistic. Many of those you claim to support because they “want out” are already doing sex work as a last resort. There is no other job. This is it. Taking away the few safety precautions they have is pulling the rug out from under them and making their job that much more dangerous. Again, for many of us, sex work was our only option.

You will never eradicate the sex industry, and these moral crusades to “end demand” do nothing but harm those you claim to care about.

If you really want to help people exit the industry, advocate for a living wage. Advocate for better addiction services that help rather than punish addicts. Provide assistance to LGBT teens who were disowned from their families and are now living on the streets. Stop the school-to-prison pipeline. The problem is a societal one that cannot be fixed with anti-prostitution laws.