When social justice isn't just a job
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
The responsibility is not over the victim’s head.
It’s over the perpetrator.
You could call this my first job in the sex industry. It could also be seen as not too different from jobs I’ve held in the past. I have waitressed, and been sexually harassed by bosses and customers. I have modeled for art classes, and watched students and teachers fuel their fantasies with my motionless body. I have worked in an office, and been stuck in a cubicle with a coworker who just could not grasp the fact that I preferred my woman lover over him. I have worked in the film industry, and felt myself a cog in a multimillion dollar machine that designs and markets “entertainment” around the sex-value of its stars. These all look like sex industries to me. I wondered: What is the difference between jobs within work systems that hypocritically deny the importance of sex to their smooth operation as opposed to those that exploit it as their very reason for operating? If capitalism was structuring my work experiences, and if sexism was structuring roles within capitalism, what had I to lose by facing overt rather than covert realities? I certainly had a choice of not doing this particular work, but I never had a choice of not dealing with its existence.
Vicky Funari, “Naked, Naughty, Nasty”, in Whores and Other Feminists (via me-decouvrir)
Reminds me of a song by NOFX called “Lori Meyers”…”Who are you to tell me how to live? You think I sell my body…I merely sell my time. I ain’t no Cinderella. I ain’t waiting for no prince to save me in fact until just now, I’ve been doing just fine…and on and on…I know what degregation feels like, I felt it on the floor at the factory where I worked long before. I took control. Now I answer to me…”
