Sex worker, other

I’m sorry, I gotta say it. What a dumb, rude, *cunt*. Really. Who the FUCK does she think she is that she’s got special knowledge about how educated people don’t work in the sex industry? Has she done research?

I hate it when people who’re supposed to be educated rattle off bullshit “everyone knows” lines about areas of life they haven’t the faintest godamn clue about.

Sex work pays a shitload better than college “work study” programs. Hell, I made more as just a nude artist’s model than I ever made with standard campus jobs.

I am very intrigued by your thesis on the sex worker middle class. That is how I tend to describe myself and my income when people ask – because people always want to know what I am making when I say I work in porn.

Fucking shit, dude. I don’t know how you kept your mouth shut at that. I think I would’ve lost it.

Maybe I’m becoming a curmudgeon, but I think the older I get the less patience I have for bullshit and ignorance. And I have just about had it with that kind of shit.

Obviously, the only thing to do is have her killed by the Sex Workers’ Avenger Squad. Their dark doings must remain shrouded in mystery, but I will say that if she has an “incident” involving epoxy and a device containing several pounds of latex and a 220V motor, it probably wasn’t an accident.

M

Having been through the process before, I know how frustrating it can be to prove your point (though obviously not under the same circumstances). If I had to offer a little advice, I’d say to gather the information you need to present the case that sex workers do in fact wind up getting Master’s degrees, cause at the end of the day a prof like this will likely only respond to hard research.

Well, Tim, isn’t Dacia proof enough herself?

Amber, one single example will probably not suffice. Now, a statistically sound study of the incomes and education levels of sex workers, conducted with rigorous attention to academic standards… that would turn some heads.

You might have said, “You probably have already had several sex workers writing theses for you that you didn’t know about.”

at one of my sex parties, someone who i had fucked earlier that night later asked me what i do. i told him, “i’m a sex worker – i escort,” and a look of shock came across his face. i felt i could read his mind – how disgusting of me! how low of me! he had obviously thought “more” of me before that.
the hypocrisy of it all was just too much. he could come to a sex party and be a total slut, and that was ok, but for me to be a whore- well, it’s clear that the “enlightened” aren’t really enlightened. doesn’t matter if its a prof or a slut. and lots of people in between.

dacia, dont let this (and perhaps other recent incidents) sour your entire view on academia. it’s still a great subject to study.

ok, you know who this is, but hopefully it will come up as anonymous. 1. that essay i wrote on nerve is like, about this topic exactly. maybe you can use it to help prove your point? or that jeanette angel book..though it’s kinda outdated. — i also know nerve is working on a story right now about how people use craigslist to sort of casually do sex work on the side–people who would have never considered sex work otherwise (i know this because they contacted me about talking to a friend of mine from the University of Michigan who was doing just that)…

and, i know girls who’ve done sensual massage who have graduated from…um….yale, u of michigan, penn state, SVA, UC- berkley, columbia, bryn mayr, hampshire…..the list goes on and on and on…

ew! anyway all i have to say is I WOULD BE DYING if i was in that room. like fighting every urge to be like MEEE!! MEEE!!!…i guess that’s part of the whole game, huh.

Sounds like you have more of an economics thesis going. It seems tough to study, does anyone keep statistics on sex-worker wages/employment like they do for other industies? It sounds very interesting.

I’m working on my masters right now, too, though in a completely different field (cognitive research!). I completely understand your frustration with academia. I hope it starts being more kind to both of us! Good luck on your thesis and dealing with closed-minded professors.

Mikey,
One example won’t suffice? Really? Even when that “one example” is the person STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU after you’ve just denied that such a person can exist? (“You” in this poorly-constructed sentence referring to the asshat professor, of course.) On the contrary – one is all you need in that case.

“The prof simply didn’t accept the idea that some women would chose sex work or that a sex worker could be an intelligent (or even sentient) being. Incredulous, she said: “It’s not as if sex workers are writing master’s papers at Columbia!” And the whole class laughed.”
But one is isn’t she? The problem is that society as awhole doesn’t look at sex workers as humans. The police term is NHI. No Humans Involved. Whether you should open your mouth on the subject to your prof is a decision that you need to make. Is the point of your thesis and your paper as a whole to be a champion or to get your degree or both. I feel that two of those answers warrant telling the prof. Either way you can always mention that Asia Carrera is Mensa member haha.

Is your professor some kind of Bible-thumping, intolerant conservative? What other possible explanation could there be?

I’m a film studies student, working on my thesis on pornographic film. I find it highly frustrating that students are apparently discouraged to write about topics like sex work, pornography or sexual exploration – I have to work with material that’s over ten years old, just because there are not enough people brave enough to do academic research on topics like this.

So please, please stick to your topic nonetheless and thus make it easier for the rest of the academic world. Because once there are a dozen papers like yours, profs will have a hard time not accepting topics that have the word ‘sex’ in the title…

“Sometimes I think I’m very cleverly negotiating the lines between all the different worlds I’ve got a stake in, and other times I think the joke is on me.”

current state of my life . . . thank you for the words!

dacia — good luck with the thesis and the diy-idiocy in grad school.

my approach would probably be to point out that waitresses used to be considered sex workers (see Dishing it out by Dorothy Sue Cobble and, if I recall correctly, Dishing it Out by Greta Foff Paules. The frist is a history of waitress unions, the second is an ethnography of waitress. I know for sure the first discusses the “tawdry” reputations of waitresses in the later 1800s and early 1900s.)

The point would be to show how an occupation changed over time so that the ill repute associated with it dissipated (though it lives on in subtle ways) and that it became possible for, uh, waitresses to be seen as intelligent people with enough income to put themselves through college. duh.

You could do the exact same thing with actresses and for that I believe you can look at Joshua Gamson’s _Claims to Fame_ where I believe he discusses the “tawdry reputations” of actresses. (There is also a fine piece on Mae West somewhere I can look up. I only had a chance to skim but I blogged it so can find more detail if you need.)

Also, if you want to change the problem with comments overflowing edge of page, here:

in the stylesheet in the admin backend of wordpress, change the line that says this

#commentlist p {width:300px;}

to something more like this

#commentlist p {width:285px}

#commentlist p {width:285px;}

with the semi-colon; without won’t work.

typhos, bane of my existence!

[...] Here’s a wrap-up of my best posts here on Waking Vixen: Sex worker, other and More thoughts on sex worker/other The State of Alt according to Vegas Serious Hunk of Man, and the Shades of Gray – includes a pic of me at 19, with short green hair and a leather jacket How to be an ally to sex workers Authenticity Sex workers, class divides and fun with empowerment and degradation As it turns out, the Internet isn’t the answer to everything Book vs. blog: where to stick all the juicy details How the media is more exploitative than the sex industry Creepy dudes The internet is not a virtual streetcorner Anniversaries: The Museum of Sex Seeing straight ahead: the porn industry’s sexuality blinders [...]