Here are my favorite videos, of the ones I made this year.
My video about SANGRAM is the one I worked the hardest on, and it taught me more, both in form and content, than any other video I’ve produced. Well, except maybe The Bi Apple – which was my first, and a feature at that, so extra hard to top that as a learning experience. But getting the opportunity to go to India and spend time with sex workers and organizers there and make a video about it – pretty amazing.
In April’s Speak Up media training for sex workers, we made a one minute public service announcement video called, “I Am A Sex Worker” – I knew it was a good idea, but I didn’t know just how much interest it would stir up.
In early March, I paid my first professional visit to the United Nations, and my coworker Whitney and I made a goofy little video – one that we kinda snuck around to make. Stealth new media! Woo-hoo!
When the FDA approved the new female condom last March, I shot interviews with two of my coworkers at IWHC about the female condom in international contexts, with great examples from Cameroun.
Last but not least, something thoroughly random – a one minute video I shot while I was visiting Berlin this summer on vacation.
As a bonus: check out the videos of performers at Sex Worker Literati (not artfully done, but they document the stories) and my round up of favorite videos I made for my Naked City TV show at the Village Voice.
The anti-prostitution loyalty oath (APLO) is a regulation that has been part of the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003 (aka “Leadership Act”) which requires non-governmental organizations and health service-providers receiving that receive funding through the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to sign an oath opposing prostitution and sex-trafficking. “Opposing prostitution” manifests in a peculiar way that essentially blocks life-saving services that sex workers once received through US funded organizations around the world. The APLO makes it impossible for organizations that serve sex workers to get funding, and halts the distribution of condoms, among other services.
Learn more about the history of the APLO through these resources collected by the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE).
The thirteen minute video at the top of this page is Taking the Pledge, a film co-produced by Sex Work Awareness board member Melissa Ditmore, featuring sex workers speaking out about the effect that the APLO has had on their lives.
Over the next few days, we have the opportunity to sign on to a really great letter to the Department of Health and Human Services that submits comments on the harm that the APLO does.
The turn around on this is tight – if you want to sign on to the letter, send your name and organizational affiliation (if any) to Ellen Marshall at em [at] goodworksgroup.net by TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22. She will then make sure the comments reach Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at the Office of Global Affairs.
You can also sign on to the petition at Change.org HERE.
Here is the letter:
Comments on Office of Global Health Affairs;
Regulation on the Organizational Integrity of Entities
Implementing Leadership Act Programs and Activities,
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,
74 Fed. Reg. 61,096
December 23, 2009
Dear Secretary Sebelius:
The undersigned organizations and individuals submit these comments on the proposed regulation implementing the “anti-prostitution policy requirement,” 22 U.S.C. § 7631(f), contained in the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003 (“Leadership Act”).
HIV prevention goals – as well as the human rights of individuals – are undermined by the Leadership Act’s “pledge requirement,” which requires recipients of funding to have a “policy opposing prostitution and sex trafficking.” We oppose the requirement because it compromises much-needed health and social services and the right to those services, as well as free speech. The law is bad – and the proposed regulations do not made a bad situation any better. Moreover, the proposed regulations are unworkable for foreign NGOs.
The Bush Administration originally found that the pledge requirement was unconstitutional as applied to US NGOs and, accordingly, prevented agencies from enforcing it against US NGOs. They reversed course in 2005 and a broad coalition of groups sued the US government on First Amendment grounds to stop enforcement. The draft regulation makes no mention of this litigation even though a federal court has twice found the pledge and its implementation unconstitutional. Instead, the draft proposes an extremely burdensome scheme for US groups to exercise their free speech rights. Moreover, the proposed regulation continues to be so vague that affected NGOs do not know how to operate under it. The draft regulation is therefore deeply disappointing.
In order to cure the ongoing constitutional violation, HHS should refrain again from enforcing the policy requirement against U.S.-based non-governmental organizations, as it did from May 2003 through May 2005, and as it has been substantially ordered to do by the District Court.
The proposed regulations do not clarify what it means to “oppose prostitution” and leave it unknown whether the following activities are allowable:
1. A recipient uses private funds to support a “safe house” where meetings, counseling, and health services are provided for sex workers. The program supports efforts to negotiate with the police to assure that the sex workers will not be subjected to illegal harassment and exploitation. By ensuring a safe environment, health workers are able to engage and consistently reach vulnerable groups in need of services.
2. A recipient provides private funds to a group of sex workers that has come together as a collective to help them obtain access to such rights as wearing shoes outside a brothel and a proper burial. That group of sex workers either has no policy on prostitution or, on its own accord, takes a public position promoting or advocating the legalization of prostitution.
3. A recipient supports with private funds a range of health care providers, including some private entities that operate their own clinics. Such health care providers might advocate for the legalization of prostitution, conduct research, publish papers, or speak publicly on the topic of legalization of prostitution.
4. A recipient uses private grants to conducts trials on microbicides. These trials require the enrollment of individuals at very high risk of contracting HIV, such as sex workers, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of new products in preventing HIV transmission. Such trials must be carefully constructed to ensure that such women are not exploited as human subjects. Previous trials involving sex worker populations have been unsuccessful due to protests by sex worker groups (among others) over the perceived ethics of such trials. The recipient wants to work with this community in order to build bridges and help sex workers and their allies understand the potential of microbicides and prevention research. It also wants to contract with members of the community to conduct research and engage in outreach with their peers. The coalitions, NGOs and unions representing sex workers all take different positions on the issue of prostitution and its legalization.
5. Countries have experimented with a range of legal and health approaches with regard to prostitution. It is the responsibility of public health professionals to objectively examine these various approaches and to present evidence on their outcomes. A recipient uses private funds to engage in public health research and discourse related to the pros and cons of various legal regimes and health approaches to stemming the transmission of HIV/AIDS among this high risk group.
6. A recipient supports a privately funded study to examine the reproductive health needs of HIV positive women, including commercial sex workers. The study occurs in several countries, including some where commercial sex work is legal. The research findings indicate possible benefits arising from the decriminalization and/or legalization of sex work in stemming the transmission of HIV/AIDS and the organization publishes such findings.
7. A recipient provides privately funded technical HIV/AIDS support to a U.S. academic institution, in which faculty members take a wide range of positions on the legal status of prostitution and how it affects public health outcomes. The recipient would like to continue providing technical support.
There are additional concerns about the requirements to maintain separate organizations, because they are unworkable in most practical situations. Additionally, the regulations do not provide a process for approval of affiliate organization proposals and given the penalties for being out of compliance, this lack of clarity may make it more likely that organizations simply cannot provide the needed services.
In addition, the regulation calls for funding recipients to maintain “objective integrity and independence from any affiliated organization” that engages in undefined “restricted” activities. A recipient must be “to the extent practicable in the circumstances, legally, physically and financially separate from the affiliated organization.” Rather than listing clear standards, there are five non-exclusive factors, none of which is given any particular weight. The agency reserves the right to determine, “on a case-by-case basis and based on the totality of the facts, whether sufficient legal, physical and financial separation exists” and reserves the right to take other, as yet undisclosed, factors into account.
The harsh separation requirement is unnecessary, and has been rejected by HHS in other arenas. In regulations for the faith-based initiative, HHS required that federally funded activities are conducted either at a different time or in a different place than any privately funded, religious activities such as worship and proselytization. HHS has recognized that this level of separation is sufficient to ensure that the government neither funds nor endorses a grantee’s message. Therefore, such separation would be sufficient to ensure that HHS does not endorse any privately funded speech related to prostitution by recipients.
The unconstitutional limitation on free speech lead us to believe that the pledge should not be enforced against US-based NGOs. We also maintain that the proposed regulations are unworkable and stand in the way of providing essential services to human being, both because they fail to answer basic questions about what is required and they propose a budensome affiliation scheme.
This year I started regularly using a site that has become one of my favorite ways to share knowledge online: Goodreads. I’ve been keeping track of my reading and my friends’ reading there, plus reviewing some of the books I devour (and I have been crossposting some that to this here blog). I read a lot this year, partly because I now have a commute to work and I read a lot on the subway. In 2009 so far (because, let’s face it, there ARE another few weeks in the year) I’ve read 55 books.
Here are the books that were my favorites. Originally I was going to list books written by friends and acquaintances separately in the interest of being fair and impartial or whatever. But – fuck it. My friends are pretty awesome writers, and their books are notable and still sticking with me months after I’ve read them. So, in no particular order:
1. Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart, by Carol Leonard (link goes to my review). Memoir of a midwife – just blew me away. So passionate and lovely. I’m totally going to push this book on my pregnant friends.
2. Angels and Ages, by Adam Gopnik (link goes to my review). A cultural history/history of science/biography of Darwin and Lincoln. Say no more.
3. Stitches, by David Small. Really sets a high bar for the graphic novel. Beautiful, with gorgeous pacing, silence, and sadness.
4. Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story, by Carolyn Turgeon. Carolyn is a pal of mine who writes lush postmodern fairy tales. I loved Godmother, though it didn’t take my breath away the same way that her debut Rain Village did. She’s been hanging in Berlin and finishing off her third novel, Mermaid, which I will buy and gobble up as soon as it is for sale.
5. Scarlett Takes Manhattan, by Molly Crabapple and John Leavitt. Molly is a longtime pal – her first graphic novel is gorgeously drawn, with great turns of phrase and major filth with a touch of class.
6. We Did Porn, by Zak Smith (link to my long-ass review). Zak’s illustrated memoir about doing porn. Great insights about the businesses and cultures of art and porn. I make a few guest appearances in ways that amuse me greatly.
7. Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys, edited by David Henry Sterry and RJ Martin. I am totally biased on this one because I have a piece in it, and that piece got praised by the New York Times Book Review. That said, this is a really great anthology of writings by sex workers, one that actually represents diversity of experience and background.
8. The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga. I read this novel while I was in India and had a fever. It’s really amazing and dark.
9. A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World, by Marcia Tucker. Lovely autobiography & artifact of contemporary art. Tucker was a curator at the Whitney and then the founding director of the New Museum.
10. Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking, by Tim Dean (click for my review). Though ultimately it didn’t hold together all the way through, this was by far the most thought-provoking book I read on sexuality this year.
11. Hubert’s Freaks: The Rare-Book Dealer, the Times Square Talker, and the Lost Photos of Diane Arbus by Gregory Gibson (click for my review). This book appealed to my particular brand of nerdiness on several levels: material culture, freak shows, weird personalities, American cultural history. It is a lot of goodness, and an interesting approach to what could be a boring story about pieces of old paper.
12. All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay D.C., by Craig Seymour. I am lucky enough to have been able to get Craig to come read at Sex Worker Literati last month – it was cool to hear his writing in his voice. I read a lot of sex worker memoirs, and this was definitely the best one I read in 2009.
13. I Love A Man in Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles, by Lily Burana. Lily wrote one of my favorite sex worker memoirs ever, Strip City, and she’s become something of a pal over the years. She is one hell of a writer. Also, she is pretty and shares my affinity for animal prints.
14. The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World, by Michelle Goldberg. This book is a good and non-jargony read about women’s health and rights around the world. It really helped to clarify things that I was grappling with as I settled into my job at IWHC.
15. The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss. A really lovely, gorgeously written novel.
This is the speech that I gave at the International Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers event at the Metropolitan Community Church in NYC this evening.
Last April, while I was at the grocery store shopping for the meal I was cooking for the first crop of Speak Up sex worker media trainees, my phone buzzed and I got a message that a sex worker from New York had been found dead – bound and shot in the chest – in a hotel in Boston. The message was from a fellow sex worker who urged me to spread the word around and encourage other sex workers I know to be extra-diligent with their screening. Sex workers look out for each other – the community was responding to each other and the news media before the media even understood the developing story.
The case was big news for a few weeks, as the so-called Craigslist Killer went on a bit of a spree and then was revealed to be a clean cut Boston University medical student. Everyone freaked out about the dangers of internet prostitution, which led to Rhode Island legislators getting outraged over the little-known fact that indoor prostitution was legal in the state – and so began a successful campaign to recriminalize prostitution there. All in the name of protection of sex workers.
On that night back in April, I was supposed to be putting the finishing touches on a media training and advocacy workshop for sex workers that I’d poured a lot of time, energy, and resources into. But for an hour, all I could do was slump down on my kitchen floor and cry for Julissa Brisman, a sensual masseuse my age, and think – that could have been me.
There are a lot of different projects that sex workers and our allies must work on to ensure our rights: we must work to reduce stigma and encourage the general public to think of us as multi-faceted human beings; we must work to ensure our legal rights and protections not just from potentially violent clients but from law enforcement officers and the legal system; we must work to gain greater access to nonjudgmental health care services and providers who are educated on our needs; we must create culture and tell our stories to each other and the world at large; we must defend ourselves against people who supposedly have our best interests in mind yet won’t listen to our statements of needs; we must challenge bad health policies and distribution of funds at the local, national, and international levels; and last but not least – we must create networks of emotional and spiritual support so we can stay strong and continue to do this very exhausting work. But it’s hard to do even a sliver of that essential work when we are being killed, silenced by hate and fear and a deep and dangerous assumption that we are expendable, that no one will care when we do not come home.
The night that reports of Julissa’s death reached me, I watched a flurry of messages roll through my email inbox and get posted online that said things like “Be careful out there!” and “Girls, do your screening!” And though I’m a strong believer in personal agency and safety and we all know that there are things that sex workers can do to stay safe, sane, and healthy – it’s not Julissa’s fault that she was killed. Taking safety measures and being on the defensive is a band aid, it is not a long term solution. We cannot stop violence against sex workers by ourselves. We need the support and participation of a culture that sees us as human beings – we are your mothers, sons, cousins, friends – who are worthy of living lives of dignity that are free of violence.
Contributors from the Anthology: Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys read:
Holiday Hookers: An Internet Porn Maven, Ex-Rent Boy, Gigolo & High-End Madam Put the HO in HO HO HO!
Find out why the New York Times said Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys is: ““It’s an eye-opening, astonishing, brutally honest and frequently funny collection from those who really have lived on the edge in a parallel universe. Their writing is, in most cases, unpolished, unpretentious and riveting — but don’t worry, their tales are also graphic, politically incorrect and mostly unquotable in this newspaper.”
David Henry Sterry is an author, performer, educator, activist, and a man who hasn’t worn matching socks in 20 years. David is the author of 11 books, including Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent, which is being made into a TV series by Showtime. He is the cohost of the monthly reading Sex Worker Literati in New York.
Audacia Ray is a media maker and activist who is passionate about sexual rights. Presently, Audacia is the Program Officer for Online Communications and Campaigns at the International Women’s Health Coalition, an adjunct professor of Human Sexuality at Rutgers University, and the co-host of the monthly reading series Sex Worker Literati in New York.
Hawk Kinkaid is a longtime spoken word artist whose work has appeared in various award-winning poetry collections and publications loves to use this AKA because even at his age, there has to be something left of mystery.
Zoe Hansen came to NY as a runaway teen in 1984, with a heroin habit, $200 in her pocket, and a dream in her heart. She entered the sex industry at 17 years old,& went on to become a phone girl, street ho, call girl, brothel worker and eventually successful madam. She continues to live in the East Village with her husband & child, where she is working on her memoir My American Dream ~ Going Down in Gotham.
As I wrote about in a recent post about trying to give myself a break, I’ve been going through some growing pains and stressing a bit about what I should be working on and what I actually want to be doing with my time outside of my (glorious, busy, fulfilling) job. Last week I sat down and combed through my blog posts and notes to myself and promotional materials for things I’ve done this year, and it reminded me that I am one busy lady who has certainly accomplished plenty this year (as in previous and probably also future years). This is the first of a series of year-end wrap up posts – I’ve got lists of my favorites (blog posts, images, videos, press appearances, and books) coming up over the new two weeks. So here goes:
At the beginning of the year, I met David Henry Sterry, which led to my writing getting praised in the New York Times Book Review, plus we launched our monthly reading series Sex Worker Literati in August – we’ve now done five events and it’s just been fabulous, plus it’s reaffirmed my faith in/commitment to the act of storytelling. Also this summer, I took a vacation! (woo!) to Amsterdam and Berlin, where I almost didn’t work at all – except on my second to last day in Amsterdam I did a talk about the American sex worker movement at the sex edition of Interesting Amsterdam (I can’t help myself!). I also took an amazing, life-changing work trip to India, bringing the total of countries I visited in the year up to three. As a result of the trip to India, I produced my first short documentary, SANGRAM: Sex Worker Organizing in India.
I posed for the second annual Sex Blogger Calendar – the first one funded the inaugural Speak Up media training for sex workers that Eliyanna Kaiser and I did in April. We also published a free 45 page PDF handbook about sex work and media. A research project I’m working on with two other board members from Sex Work Awareness, about women’s access to online sexuality information, got funding. I hit my stride with teaching my Human Sexuality course at Rutgers University and totally revamped the syllabus, which I’ve posted online. At my job at the International Women’s Health Coalition, I launched the blog Akimbo, on which we’ve now published almost 280 posts (90 of which I wrote). In addition to going to India for work, I got to spend time at the United Nations (and shot a stealth video about it). My 2007 porn film The Bi Apple was named one of Time Out New York’s 10 Best NYC Porn Films.
I also did a messload of readings and public talks in addition to Sex Worker Literati: In October and November, I organized two Pay As You Go sex worker short doc screenings at UnionDocs, with panels that were fascinating. I wrote and performed a new (raw heart-on-sleeve) piece called “Personal Snapshots” at the Feminist Sex reading Shira Tarrant organized at Bluestockings in November (sorry, the piece isn’t online but will likely be included in an anthology that Shira is editing). I performed my piece from the anthology Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys (oh, did I mention that I launched and run that book’s site?) Hot Flush of Lust and Cash (link to video of my reading) at Rachel Kramer Bussel’s In The Flesh in August. I spoke at both NYC Kink For All events: in August my talk was How to Be an Online Sexuality Rights Activist (link to notes), in March I did “How to Be a Public Sex Intellectual Without Getting Hurt.” I wrote a draft of a one-woman show called “Media Whore,” (which I’ve shelved for the moment) and read pieces of it in public twice – in June at a small event with Carol Queen and in November at Sex Worker Literati. In May I led a panel called “Sex Workers, Resistance, and the Media” at the NYC Grassroots Media Conference, with an added impromptu talk about video and advocacy. Earlier that month I did two panels at Sex 2.0: Revisiting Naked on the Internet (link to audio) and Sex Work 2.0 in the Time of Obama (link to video). I also spoke at Brooklyn Law School on a panel about Porn, the 1st Amendment and the State of Obscenity Law in an Online Society, during which I had the unique privilege of using the phrase “bloody pussy” at a law school, and I traveled to San Francisco to co-present at Sex::Tech with an IWHC partner from Brazil on Sexual Rights Online and IRL. My comedic short film Dacia’s Love Machine had two public screenings in NYC – the short version showed at Auralfixia, the long version at CineKink – and one in Amsterdam, at the Rated X festival.
Is that it? Whew. I think it is.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, in addition to this round-up, I have five posts coming up that are all about my favorite stuff from the year: blog posts I’ve written, images by/of me, videos I’ve made, press I’ve gotten, and books I’ve read. I think I’m going to start with books!
December 17th is the annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, a day on which sex workers and their allies gather at vigils around the world to mourn our dead and bring attention to the continued acts of violence and injustice faced by sex workers. It’s a tough event, but a necessary one – because sex workers are so stigmatized, they are often disrespected in both life and death. Our community must come together to memorialize those who have been taken from us, and support each other in the ongoing fight for justice and rights.
This is a video of the speech I made at last year’s vigil in New York, held in Washington Square Park. In it, I do something that I’ve never done at a public speaking event or on the internet – I cry. Like I said, it’s a tough day.
Here is the information for the gathering here in New York:
December 17th is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers
Join us in honoring the lives of sex workers and celebrating our communities with a candlelit vigil. Come add your voice to the call to end violence against sex workers at our community speak-out.
Speakers will include community organizers, peer educators, advocates, artists. . . and YOU?
Where: Metropolitan Community Church
446 West 36th Street, Manhattan
When: Thursday December 17th, 8:00pm – 10:00pm
Metrocards available. Please wear red!
For more information, please contact swank@riseup.net or 212.714.1184 x50
And this is the text of the speech in the video (the original post is here):
Every year I come to this event, and every year, in the hour before the vigil, I seriously consider not showing up, because it’s hard to be here, hard to stay present and be witness to the sadness and struggles of this community. Sex workers and our allies are strong – no doubt – but we are also vulnerable. And those two words -strength and vulnerability- are exactly why the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers exists.
Today, on the 6th annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, there are gatherings in 20 cities around the world, including places like Tucson, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Copenhagen, and Sydney. There’s a National March that happened earlier today in Washington DC, culminating in a rally in front of the Department of Justice. And here we are, a little chilly but resilient. Our movement is growing, and though we have many obstacles, we are moving forward toward a world in which sex workers’ rights are recognized as human rights, where we are free to choose what we do with our bodies and how we make our livings – whether that means working in the sex industry or keeping far away from it because we have viable economic alternatives.
In a minute we’ll read the SWOP demands for ensuring justice and safety for sex workers, but I also wanted to add in my very own demand – and it’s not directed to policy makers, health care providers, law enforcement, or any other official organization. It’s directed to the people standing right here today. My demand is this: take care of yourselves, ask for help when you need it, and offer support to others when you can. And by support, I mean the purest and most human form of support – listen to sex workers and allies about their experiences, their struggles, their doubts. It’s true that we have a lot of work to do, and sex workers are dying while we’re trying to do that work. But it’s also true that we can’t be of service, we can’t fight the good fight, if we don’t take care of ourselves and each other. When we’re done with the program today – after we read the SWOP demands and the list of names of sex workers who were murdered this year, I want to encourage you to hang out a while, decompress, and just talk to each other and offer support.
This day is a hard one to face, a hard one to be present for, but the purpose of any memorial service is to create a space for the living to show respect for those who have lost their lives and to be there for one another. So let’s do that – not just today but throughout the year.
Ahhhhh! I’m so excited about this!!! Ok, must be professional. But seriously!!! Excited!!!
Back in September, my job at the International Women’s Health Coalition sent me to India with my co-worker Khushbu Srivastava to do media training and documentation of our partners in the country. I shot more than 6 hours of video footage, took more than 400 photos, and took many many notes. As a very prolific writer and speaker on sexuality and rights issues in the US, it was a tough but great education to just shut up and listen for two weeks.
This short video documents the work of the amazing organization SANGRAM and the fierce sex workers they collaborate with and support in their struggle to have their rights recognized and respected. I learned so much from my time with them, I hope you enjoy the video!
Official video and blurby blurb below – please circulate widely!
And for the embedding-inclined,
You can find the video on Blip
And on YouTube
Sixty-one years ago today, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to ensure dignity and equality for all. Sadly, these ideals are still a distant dream for many girls and women.
In celebration of the International Human Rights Day and the tremendous gains the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC) and our partners have made towards securing the human rights of girls and women, we are proud to present a new short documentary. The video is the product of a collaboration among IWHC, SANGRAM, and rural Indian sex worker advocates.
Based in a rural community in India’s Maharashtra State, SANGRAM works to ensure equal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support: Over 6,000 women in rural India have participated in HIV testing as a result of these efforts. Drawing on 15 years of work to empower marginalized communities to claim their rights, SANGRAM is becoming an increasingly strong advocate nationally, and globally for health policies and programs that are responsive to the real-life needs of local communities.
I remember when I first started to get a sense of community, activism, and desire to do something, help, make a difference, I was frustrated when the answer to the question, “What can I do to help?” was often “Donate.” That just seemed – detached. Like I wouldn’t really be involved or get my hands dirty or be a part of something. Where does all that money go? Does it really help people? How does money translate into real services and real change for real people?
Organizations of different sizes that serve a variety of communities obviously answer this question in very different ways. But having spent a bunch of years involved in grassroots organizing with groups that had no funding, or were channeling personal funds or tiny grants into the work they believe in, and then moving into for reals non-profit work: ok, I get it.
I’ve certainly donated a ridiculous amount of my time to volunteer for causes I believe in over the past bunch of years (sometimes so much time it was detrimental to my comfort, sanity, and wallet), but this past year, I did something new: I donated money. Because I have a real job, and I have enough money that I’d like to pay it forward to organizations I respect.
I’ve donated to a few different organizations, but the organization I want to highlight here is Scarleteen. For more than ten years, Scarleteen has been run by Heather Corinna, who I have to say is at the absolute top of my list as one of the of strongest, most amazing, and caring people I know. Scarleteen isn’t funded by any government grants, they don’t have monies from large foundations – Heather has stubbornly and steadfastly kept the project alive because she believes that young people deserve real sex education, sex education without limitations.
And though there’s no limit to the heart that Heather puts into Scarleteen, there is a limit to the amount of time one person can stay awake and functional, and there’s certainly a limit to the funds that one person can stream into her project.
In Heather’s words:
What you might not know is that Scarleteen is the highest ranked online young adult sexuality resource but also the least funded and that the youth who need us most are also the least able to donate. You might not know that we have done all we have with a budget lower than the median annual household income in the U.S. You might not know we have provided the services we have to millions without any federal, state or local funding and that we are fully independent media which depends on public support to survive and grow.
Your donation to Scarleteen, which you can make here, actually goes directly to funding online sex education for young people. If you have benefited from Scarleteen or can think of some young people who do or could, you should help to support an amazing community project with whatever you can spare. I know it’s cliche to say that every little bit makes a difference, but for Scarleteen, that is actually very much true. Scarleteen is run in a very stripped down, streamlined way – when you don’t have a lot, you learn to make big things with very little money. Donations to the project have a solid and positive impact on the health of Scarleteen, and will help keep it running longer and better.
I blogged a little bit last week about the 2010 Sex Blogger Calendar – which in my opinion, is a pretty perfect holiday gift for your favorite perv – its $20 plus shipping, and you get a free download of my comedic short Dacia’s Love Machine. But there is backstory to the photo I posed for with Sinclair Sexsmith. Our photo was taken by the talented Amanda Morgan
The theme for this calendar was “SEXUAL FREEDOM,” and while Dacia and I were discussing what to do, we both were inspired to feature something very New York-y, since New York has been a big part of sexual awakening for both of us. I moved here almost five years ago now, and my sex life and sexuality has changed significantly since I did.
We talked about iconic photographs and couples that we could imitate or reproduce, and eventually settled on the famous shot of the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square. Amanda was totally game for it (though she insisted that we shoot early in the day so we’d have the best light), I hunted down a sailor suit, Dacia queered up her nurse outfit, and voila, there’s the shot.
An homage, of course, to Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous photo taken on V-J Day in Times Square, 1945.
Our image was shot very early in the morning – we met in Times Square at 7:30 am, I believe I was up around 5:30. Being in Times Square at that time of morning in a waist cincher is kind of a weird thing. But one of the best things about that morning (other than the obvious of wearing fabulous outfit, making out with hot butch) was the fact that it was July 28th – my fifth blogoversary. Shooting an image like this with one of the excellent people I’ve met because of blogging, for the 2010 Sex Blogger Calendar? Yeah, that was a really nice way to celebrate.
I remember when I first started to get a sense of community, activism, and desire to do something, help, make a difference, I was frustrated when the answer to the question, “What can I do to help?” was often “Donate.” That just seemed – detached. Like I wouldn’t really be involved or get my hands dirty or be a part of something. Where does all that money go? Does it really help people? How does money translate into real services and real change for real people?
