as small as a world and as large as alone

6:35pm June 26, 2014

stripperina:

clarawebbwillcutoffyourhead:

dude I can’t stress this enough.

Sex work is a hot issue right now. Every little asshole dabbling in social work or sociology or anthropology or hell even English, “wants to do research” on sex workers.

But there are actual sex workers with legit real life experience not being allowed to do this same research or being shut down or kicked out of programs or bullied out of school for their jobs.

If you really WANT to support sex workers fall the fuck back and support us doing our own research, ask us what we need, ask how you can support us, and stop barreling in like captain save a ho like your questions are gonna be the shit to change the world. Find a different topic for fucks sake. Free up space for us.

I know multiple, yes MULTIPLE women who were pushed out of their academic field in college when it was revealed (by themselves or someone else) that they were doing sex work to support themselves and pay tuition.  Most of these women were social work or psychology majors who, at least once, were bullied, sex-shamed, or excluded from their studies by their professors, advisers, and the faculty at their schools.  Several were given the ultimatum of “quit sex work or quit this university, we won’t allow you to do both.”, which is, of course, ridiculous, since sex work was HOW they were paying to be students in the first place, and there is nothing about doing or having done sex work that makes you a bad student, social worker, therapist or counselor.  This post needs visibility.  Academic sex workers need visibility.  We need support and validation, not pity or threats or discrimination or “saving”.

Little-known fact:  Lots of people know that Donna Williams has had detractors who say she’s not autistic.  Most people do not know that these detractors were all stirred up deliberately by one sociology professor who stalked her and harassed her for years.  He used to specifically ask her harassing questions about whether she was “a child prostitute like in Pretty Baby” and make sexually inappropriate comments to her.  (She had, as a teenager, been what she called a ‘domestic prostitute’ – she was homeless and slept with grown men who gave her a place to live and food and such.  This was to escape a home life that was even worse.)  He was her advisor and he, and a bunch of bullying students that he later used to tell lies about her, basically did his best to make her work on her degree damn near impossible.  (And this was already with her trying to get a degree with serious class and disability barriers thrown in her way.  She’d missed most of her high school education, had autism and an intellectual disability and severe PTSD and DID, and was often dealing with homelessness and hunger and other things that get in the way of studying.)  And basically, this guy was enough of a sleazebag to use even the idea that she might have been a sex worker against her (and I think he was also coming on to her, a lot of the time, because that happens too).

So if you ever hear people telling rumors about how she’s not autistic?  They were all started by a sleazy sociology professor who did his best to prevent her getting a degree and became obsessed with her, and used his suspicions that she was a sex worker to manipulate and blackmail her.  In fact, most of the time when you hear rumors of “everyone knowing” someone isn’t autistic, there’s a story similar to this behind it.  But I was reminded because of the sex worker connection.  So yes.  This happens.  All the time.

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