Why is sex work necessarily more degrading than working at McDonalds, or a Dunkin Donuts for that matter? Both involve the sale of ones body, and labour power to a certain degree. Both involve not being adequately compensated vis a vis profits versus wage, yet pornography is deemed horribly degrading. I submit that this because womens sexuality is only culturally acceptable when it is virginal in nature. Good girls, or authentic women don’t actually enjoy performing sex acts, or participating in any form of voyeurism. Certainly there are women working in the porn industry that are not happy about that choice but not all women feel that way. If you ask Walmart workers, I some will tell you that they are not happy working there either.

For us to accept this as completely degrading to women, we must ignore those in the sex trade industry who unequivocally state that they perform this labour because they enjoy it, and therefore if we truly feel that it is necessary to respect women, we should validate their experiences and accept their explanations about their labour. Is it still demeaning if the one performing does not feel demeaned? By telling sex trade workers that they are uniquely oppressed are we not guilty of seeking to discipline their bodies in the same manner that we accuse others of doing? Are we not creating them as other?

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via Womanist Musings (via ihatethismess) (via igather)

I think there is also an element of classism: if mid-to-upper-class women were to admit that Mickey D’s and maid service are just as degrading, they have to admit that it’s something they’re a part of. If McD’s is just as degrading, it’s degrading because the pay is such shit and the working conditions are so bad. If it’s degrading in that way, it’s because higher-class people don’t care enough to make it any better (because they are the ones with the power to do so). Therefore, if McD’s is just as degrading as sex work, it’s because of them.

So, of course, sex work is just a super special kind of degrading low-pay use-of-body work. Because class privileged women don’t typically hire female prostitutes. But they do hire maid service or buy something at Starbucks or stay in a hotel or use a public bathroom or use their electricity and indoor plumbing systems or stay in a man-built structure period … and so on …

(via amandaw) (via thecurvature) (via gauntlet)

The question for me that night amid the celebrants was: do you dare? Because if I did, and I was wrongly placing my faith, what would happen to my ability to believe? The Bush administration changed my life, not as radically as it changed some, obviously, and of course we were all affected. But it led to my renouncing poetry and doubting literature. If I showed you my homemade childhood books, the stories dictated to my mother before I could write so she could pair text with the scenes I’d illustrated, you’d understand what that meant. And I think in the space where that lifelong identity used to reside, a new idea slid in, the idea that maybe who I was now had something do with the fact that I was very often naked in exchange for money.

— Politics