Feminism, sex work, and the pink ghetto I made for myself

This weekend, as you may have notice from my obsessive live blogging and tweeting, I was at the Women, Action and the Media conference in Cambridge. As I’ve blogged about previously, I was pretty anxious about diving into the belly of the feminist beast. I identified myself as a feminist long before I was a sex worker, long before I had heard the phrase “sex positive” – but over the last few years I’ve felt ever more distance between myself and feminism. Well, not my personal relationship with feminism – I’m still very much a believer and definitely identify as a feminist – but my relationship with the movement has felt sadly strained. I’ve felt like it’s a club I’m often not welcome in, and that sucks. As I result, I was anxious about going to WAM and talking about sex work.

But guess what – it was awesome.

My talk on Saturday, Sex Workers and Media Representation (link goes to my talk notes), was really well attended (see photo!). What’s more than that, people were really supportive and really open to discussing sex work and media. I read my post Why sex workers aren’t represented in the media, which turns out to be a really intense piece when read aloud. Amber later said that she thought people were pretty much stunned into silence by it. That’s pretty awesome.

The silence, however, wasn’t pervasive. The session made me realize that there needs to be (or I and the organizations I work with need to do) a lot more public education around sex work. Many participants in the session expressed that they don’t really know where to begin with this issue – they aren’t sure where to turn for information, they don’t really know all the basics, but they want to help. There are so many similarities and points of intersectionality with reproductive rights, the LGBTQ struggles, et cetera.

My conversations at WAM inspired a new public education project, which I’ll announce in a few days when I’ve got the all clear. I feel a lot clearer on things after this weekend – it’s good for me to venture outside of the realm of sexuality, because I can reach out to more people, plus have my assumptions rattled. I need that. I shouldn’t get too comfortable within my world view. I need to make sure I listen up and let myself be challenged if I expect other people to do the same.

The other thing I realized in a big way is that because of my fears about being shunned and shamed (which are sometimes, but not always, unfounded), I’ve been painting myself into a corner. That is, the corner that is the pink ghetto. I find myself being apologetic, or preparing myself for rejection once I mention that I work in sexuality and start to reveal the depth of my involvement in the subject (in both personal and professional ways). As I was advising the ladies of Bitch Magazine to do in relation to new media – I just need to stop being afraid and give it a go, branch outside of my little corner, be less afraid of people being weird to me. It’s a vicious cycle, one that I help to move along and around. I do have a lot to offer – for instance, this weekend I realized that I do have a hell of a lot of knowledge about new media (especially making things go from a DIY perspective) and I’m happy to lend a hand with that. I need to stop worrying so much about the extent to which my work in the sex industry weirds people out – I will try not to inadvertently expose people to explicit stuff, because that’s not cool, but thinking about my background as an obstacle to overcome has got to stop.

[The photos in this post were taken by Amber Rhea - you can see other photos she took over the weekend on her Flickr.]