Do you guys remember that super misogynistic meme from the early 2010s about how the grandchildren of women of the day would have to see their ‘slutty’ selfies online and how this new generation of women were suddenly classless? I’m descended from sex workers. Multiple. Not like my grandma was an escort in the 70s, I mean way back. My great great great grandmother was a sex worker and she was a divorcee in the turn of the century/1910s. And her mother too, I’m fairly certain. From family accounts, her daughter as well. This was the family business for at least three generations of women. That was the trade they did to survive and they had an unusual level of financial independence doing it. We have some photos of the lives they lead, not many but precious glances. I cannot imagine having a family lineage that is so dull and privileged you cannot view the women you descended from as anything but moral little chess pieces for the men in your family. I hate that false view of the past that conservative values need to project to survive, the idea that no one was imperfect or sexual or interesting in any way before this day, that there was some static family structure and predictable life lead by every person. It is so flat and so bizarre and so evil.
