This is cross-posted from Sex Work Awareness.
Donna Hughes, a Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island and an outspoken opponent of the sex industry, wrote a piece for the Providence Journal called RI’s Carnival of Prostitution. In the piece, she describes a hearing in which sex workers speak out for themselves and give their perspectives on legislation to re-criminalize indoor prostitution in Rhode Island. Learn more about about what’s going on (well, sort of) from the archives of the Providence Journal. Filmmaker Tara Hurley responds on her blog (which, by the way, is the best chronicle of this saga I’ve seen).
The bulk of Hughes’ piece is criticism edging into mocking the sex workers who spoke up at the hearing. One of the women she picks on is Megan Andelloux (pictured above), who was a participant in the first Speak Up media training that Sex Work Awareness did in April.
Ms Hughes had this to say about Megan:
Then a tattooed woman, calling herself a “sexologist and sex educator,” spoke against the bill. She is also a reporter for a prostitutes’ magazine called $pread. (I couldn’t make this stuff up!)
And this is what Megan had to say in return:
Let me introduce myself: I’m the nationally certified sex-educator and derogatorily labeled “tattooed lady” mentioned by Ms. Donna Hughes in Wednesday’s paper. It seems that the would-be chairwoman of URI’s women’s studies program (she is not) was so put off by my appearance that she called into question my credentials. Putting quotation marks around my profession was insulting. And yes, it is not “made up” that I am a contributor to the sex-workers magazine $pread. Is it so shocking that sex-workers can read?
This “Opinion piece” was nothing more than an exercise in highbrow name calling. She attacked the opponents to her pet bill as “a sordid circus”, as “smelling of other odors”, and as projecting the atmosphere of “a carnival”. As an alum of URI (‘97), I would have expected faculty of our honored University to develop a reputation for science and truth. Instead, it seems that Ms. Hughes would rather resort to right-wing scare tactics. Perhaps if “the Professor” really cared about women, she wouldn’t attack us for the way that we look.
Megan J. Andelloux, AASECT, ACS
10:50 am
When you can’t attack the position attack the woman. I think Donna Hughes might have benefited from a debate class and skipped the propaganda class.
Megan’s response to Hughes article is perfect.
7:00 pm
I love Megan’s website, it’s incredibly interesting and fun. The said thing is that sex-positive people often have better manners and more respect for someone else’s point of view that the people who look down their noses at people like Megan (not to mention the decorum and style her response to Ms Hughes shows!).
I think its ironic that the simplest way for people like Ms Hughes to do something really useful for trafficked men is to co-operate with the consensual sex workers who know the industry from the inside!
7:01 pm
**of course I meant ‘trafficked men AND women’. My brain is started to melt