#sex worker history

[readingcoco]

One of the best discoveries I have made whilst researching things for my fic Painted Red is a collection of photographs taken by the photographer William L. Goldman. After his death they found a secret collection of portraits he'd taken of the sex workers who worked at a brothel close to his studio in 1892. It's such an amazing treasure trove from the past and I have spent hours imagining the lives of each of the women captured. Sex workers are so often dehumanised by our culture so I'm planning on attaching a photograph to every chapter as a way to honour their stories and place in history.

#painted red #sex worker history #history #1890s #turn of the century #vintage photography #rdr2 fanfic

[lucidaurelius]

|31-10-2022 // 1:50 p.m|

3 weeks ago i submitted my thesis through the incredibly underwhelming click of a button. last week i picked up my bound copy and now it finally feels like i have completed my masters ⌛️

#studyblr #studyspo #masters degree #masters in women’s studies #ucc #intersectional feminism #black feminism #thesis #bound thesis #dissertation #lucidaurelius #motivation #irish studyblr #hubertbookbinding #feminist philosophy #women’s history #lgbtqia history #sex worker rights #sex worker history

[petitelappin]

I can't stop reading the 1793 third edition of "A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue" (originally published 1785). I have been irritating all my friends and coworkers with fun new terms like "That's the barber!" and "He looks like God's revenge against murder."

Anyway, Ash talked me into drawing some of the phrases and I ended up with these little mid-1780s Londoners.

#my art #digital art #history #18th century #the lads are sailors and the ladies are sex workers. i love looking at outfits in commercial prints of sex workers from the era

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Earlier this year in Halifax, a former sex worker won a precedent-setting case. Brogan, the plaintiff, took a client to small claims court for not paying her and she won! It’s the first time a court has ruled on the enforceability of contracts between sex workers and their clients. It affirms what we’ve been saying all along: sex work is work!

In January of last year, Bradley Samuelson contacted Brogan on LeoList, an online advertising platform for sex workers. She told him her rate of $300 per hour plus transportation, he agreed and paid for her Uber to his apartment. She spent seven hours with her client, but after much wrangling, only got paid for an hour’s worth of work.

Unpacking the win

What’s really interesting about this decision is that the adjudicator gives not one, but two reasons why Brogan won her claim – the first being that a contract was established, the second being unjust enrichment. There is also a third reason that she deserved to win, but it wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the ruling: the interconnectedness of payment and consent. I’ll be unpacking all three factors today. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

#cdnpoli #Halifax #Nova Scotia #sex workers rights #workers' rights #workers history

[lucyvelvett001]

Do you want to date me??

#trans sissy #transharmful #trans hrt #transhumance #trans hc #trans hunter #trans harry potter #trans happiness #trans horror #trans history #trans ana #trans are beautiful #trans angel #transage #trans sex worker #trans switch

[angrydefendorsuit]

What makes you think you deserve this🥰💞

#transformers #transgender #trans people #trans nsft #trans pride #transfem #trans love #transgirl #trans positivity #trans princess #transparent #traditional art #transportation #trans women are beautiful #trans woman #trans women are valid #trans women are amazing #trans streamer #trans selfie #trans sex worker #trans sub #trans stuff #trans hrt #trans hc #trans history #trans healthcare #trans headcanon #trans feedee #trans ftm #trans feedist

[yourdailyqueer]

Billy Herrington (deceased)

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Gay

DOB: 14 July 1969  

RIP: 2 March 2018

Ethnicity: White - American

Occupation: Adult actor, sex worker, body builder, model

Note 1: Became a meme in Japan and was very well known there

Note 2: Don’t Google if under 18

#Billy Herrington #lgbt history #gay history #lgbt #lgbtq #male #gay #1969 #rip #historical #white #adult actor #sex worker #actor #body builder #model #tw smoking

[unnecessaryligatures]

Why 18th-Century Queer History Matters

[homophobia cw]

I learned early on that that sex worker and LGBTQ+ rights are linked, but as usual, I didn't realize how far back that history stretched.

It is poignant to learn we have always seen each other as community. This article is about the queer community building social spaces for themselves in 18th-century England. The queer community and sex workers naturally gravitated to each other. We were all criminalized for a reason.

I think of the fight against FOSTA-SESTA (2018); Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson founding and maintaining STAR with earnings from sex work (1970); and seeking each other out to form a safe space in the 1700s. That's over 300 years of solidarity.

The reasons we were arm in arm 300 years ago haven't changed much. How similar does this - 17 raids from 1726-27 in England - sound to the raids that were regular occurrences in NYC in the 1960s, 200+ years later? How similar does this sound to where we might be going?

The other thing I take away from this: The more I learn, the more I realize I was denied in history class. Queer-only spaces were common enough to be their own category in 1709. 1709! I never want to hear anyone imply we sprang into existence in 1969 ever again.

Ending this post with this quote on found family. Do you ever cry thinking about our queer ancestors who built community in a society that wanted to legislate them out of existence? I do.

Sources:

Homosexuality in 18th Cent. England (cited in the Wikipedia article on Molly houses)

18th Century Molly Houses – London’s Gay Subculture

Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P Johnson, & STAR

#queer history #18th century #queer rights #sex worker rights #queer tag #victorian history #unnecessary's stuff #apologies for the dramatic title #it was the best i could come up with #i really really love the queer community #if you thought to yourself: did tree go down a research rabbit hole about the terror (2018) #you would be correct

[spiderfreedom]

I read a book a while back about the erotic appeal of 'women with penises' (don't close the page yet I promise it's useful). the book was called Ambisexuality. it's basically two things, a history of the sexual fantasy of a 'woman with a penis' and a study of transgender women sex workers in australia. content warning for sex work and children forced into sex work.

in the history portion, one of the things it talks about is how it seems that prepubescent boys who enter the sex industry in some cultures are basically taught to perform femininity. dressed like women, taught to dance like women, perfume themselves like women, basically appear cosmetically like a woman. since prepubescent boys don't look too different from girls, many adult heterosexual johns found this attractive. the presence of the penis was considered a positive, because male customers knew how a penis worked and could understand it. from the book:

References to the training of older boys and young men, in the twin arts of seductive dancing and sex work, can be found in many historical religious texts, not just of Afghanistan but as an aspect of cultures in many cities in South Asia and the Middle East until modern times. [...] The historical record also provides clues that the link between feminised males and sex work even existed in some hunter-gatherer societies. In North America, the journalist and critic, Peter Ackroyd suggests that some native Indian societies accommodated feminised male sex work. The Pueblo Indians for example, maintained a mujerado, a 'trained male prostitute' in each village, who identified as a 'man-woman, not as a male [source mine]. Similarly, records suggest that the berdache were males who took on the roles of wife, communal concubine, prostitute and participant in certain sexual rites of native Indian tribes. The berdache wore women's clothing, did women's work and in sexual relations with their male partners, behaved like women as far as possible. Many Roman brothels offered boys of different races, skin colours and professional abilities. Boys from the Middle East, for example, were prized for their dancing abilities and exotic appearance, while boys from Northern Europe were valued for their bawdiness and sensuality. Some brothel owners refined the process of procuring, raising and training very young boys to an art form. Boys considered to possess the appropriate attributes were purchased as young as two or three years of age and were raised and trained by their owners. Their sole purpose in life was to entertain men and pander to the sexual tastes of wealthy clients. Many of these boys were feminised during their training. They were beautifully groomed and perfumed, had unwanted body hair removed and wore their hair long and curly. Some were trained to perform for their clients - as dancers, mimes, singers and storytellers. All were trained in fellatio, sodomy and analingus.

it's disturbing to think about how femininity is conflated with being attractive to men, so much that you can take a prepubescent boy, dress him up like a woman, and apparently plenty of people go "yeah, this is the perfect sex object, like a woman but better."

it also had a section on how trans women and gender non conforming men who dressed femininely across the world were basically often forced into prostitution. since they could not find employment due to their gender nonconformity, the only place they could get money was as prostitutes. being feminine dressed also meant they could make more money than gay male prostitutes who dressed in masculine style. from the book:

According to some cultural historians, the reason why the xanith presented as women was to enable them to make a living from sex work. As will be seen later, the suggestion that this lifestyle is driven by 'economic necessity' probably belies a considerable degree of individual choice in the matter. For many, the rewards of sex work led to a comfortable lifestyle, which was infinitely preferable to other occupations which paid less, demanded longer working hours and offered fewer other intrinsic benefits such as personal gifts.

there's a myth that there exists a certain type of person who enjoys being prostituted, because of some social category they belong to. it has variably applied to women of the lower classes, black people, gay men, and in this topic, trans women. it exists to excuse the dehumanization of these groups who are excluded from normal labor markets, experience higher rates of poverty, and enter sex work to make money.

i've noticed some radfems have suggested that trans women prostitutes 'enjoy' being prostitutes, on the basis of quotes from bailey's book 'the man who would be queen' and taking twitter quotes from unverifiable 'trans sex workers' at face value. but i would be very hesitant to believe that. just in the same way you would not believe a woman who told you she 'loves sex work' without doing further research on her background to see if this statement is honest or produced by trauma, you should also consider the same for transgender women and gender non conforming men. especially since they are often forced out of legitimate labor industry for gender nonconformity.

the idea that trans women inherently love prostitution reinforces the idea that there are feminine people who it is okay to degrade and treat as sex objects, because they love it. the femininity is taken to be a lure to men and proof that they love being 'used'. there may be some portion who are 'erotic professionals' who love it, just like there are women who say they same, but there's a high rate of traumatic background from trans women who become prostitutes. and that's before whatever traumatization happens during prostitution.

in short, there's a dirty history of treating gender non conforming male people as the sort of perfect sex object, the ideal combination of feminine presentation and "comprehensible" male anatomy. radfems should not help this myth by repeating it mindlessly. all this does is spread the idea that a. being dressed feminine means you exist to lure men, b. there exists a 'perfect sex object' who wants nothing more than endless sex with strangers for money, whose trauma, poverty, mental illness play no role in their life, and c. therefore there is no need to include these people in efforts to exit the prostitution industry, because they "love" it after all. no human is a perfect sex object. accepting that it can happen to one group of people means you naturalize it and allow the possibility it can happen to you.

#sex industry #mypost #\ transmisogyny #radical feminism #i've seen this sort of thing and i don't think it's a good idea to reproduce about sex workers living in poverty working the streets #onlyfans is something else for another topic #but it's very disturbing to read this history of basically fetishizing “feminine boys” as perfect sex objects #and then compare that to how trans women/gnc men are overwhelmingly in prostitution #this is relevant to female people because it presumes that there exist 'perfect sex objects' and there do not

[bookofmac]

DEADLOCH SPOILERS

It's so interesting that #FeministAlly Serial Killer Ray is like 'Eddie we can get married and have a kid! We can watch Buffy on the couch together' as if a) that is ANYTHING that Eddie would want if he actually knew her rather than idealisng her and b) That Marriage was the end game for him

Like all his grandstanding about being an ally and such a good guy is undercut by him wanting credit, but also by him STILL buying into to this Essentialist view of men and women: men are always the agressors and women are always the victims, there is no repentance for the men, it is innate and unable to be change.

His paternalistic idea that women can't get out of bad situations by themselves, seen with his shock that Abby DID break up with James on her own. That his happy ending is a wife, kids, and a dog as if that tight nuclear family environment is not partially causal to IPV due to the closed off nature of our lives under the capitalist imperial system in so called australia, as Sharelle says 'All that civility and no Actualy community amoungst you Cunts' Ray was killing Sex Workers because they were 'undeseriable', and he seemed to to see what he did to them as Bad, because Eddie pointing out that murder is murder is what shakes him

It's RadFem logic, and it's facinating to see it in the show

#Deadloch #Deadloch Spoilers #Deadloch Meta #It's facinating and theres something to be said about how he started by killing sex workers #and how swerf and terf logic overlap due to the RadFem essentialist stuff that runs underneath #Vic has a line when she confesses where she basically says 'i didn't want him dead i wanted him to be a better man' #while ray is like 'they're all fucked' as if peopel are things #its all just *MWAH* #i NEEEEED season 2 i need to see if the Themes change or if it'll do more stuff with Cops and First Nation relations #given the recent history of the Northern Territory Intervention and how Fucked it is and you need to cover it in a crime show set in Darwin #GIMME MORE #I'm gonna have more Big Meta Thoughts later but I wanted to do this one first bc it's very connected to the Themes of it all

[haggishlyhagging]

Sex work in the medieval period was considered a necessity, especially in cities, because of concern that unmarried men might not be having enough sex. Both Augustine and Aquinas warned of the dangers of pent-up lust in urban environments. They cautioned that if unmarried men were unable to have sex, they would exercise violence, as there was no other way to expel the heat that their hot, dry constitutions built up. As a result, both saints advised that brothels were necessary to avoid riots.

-Eleanor Janega, The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society

#eleanor janega #medieval history #sex workers in history #male violence #male sexuality

[comrade-onion]

Happy workers day❤️🇵🇸

Creds to PFLP

#pflp #communism #history #current events #politics #socialism #marxism #gaza #gaza solidarity encampment #protest #anarchism #workers of the world unite #workers rights #may day #support sex workers #construction workers #aid workers #free palestine #palestine #palestinian liberation #indigenous liberation #blue collar worker #black liberation #equality #socialist revolution #social justice #international #left wing #leftism #antifascism

[mxtxfanatic]

There is no greater testament to Jin Guangyao’s life philosophy than Guanyin Temple. He spends his entire political career indiscriminately using, abusing, then disposing of sex workers in much the same way his own father did, culminating in him burning down his old home/brothel along with all his mother’s former coworkers in it to build a temple dedicated to his mother, thereby ignoring who she actually was in life to elevate her status to goddess in the eyes of people who he wants to gain the approval of.

No one is allowed to know of his mother as a sex worker because she was “better than that.” No one is allowed to bring up Jin Guangyao’s harsh upbringing amongst sex workers because he’s “better than that.”

#mdzs #this isn’t putting a moral stance on sex work or jgy being brought up around sex workers #just noting that HE thinks sex workers are beneath him #and so must erase his mother’s history as one to be able to ‘respect’ her #he likes his mother as a symbol not as a person #and i think that’s how he views himself as well as someone who shapeshifts into whatever role gains him the most power #human metas mxtx

[yourdailyqueer]

Sophie Anderson (deceased)

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Pansexual

DOB: 23 November 1987 

RIP: 4 December 2023

Ethnicity: White - British

Occupation: Adult actor, reality star

#Sophie Anderson #lgbt history #pansexuality #lgbt #lgbtq #female #pansexual #1987 #rip #historical #white #british #adult actor #actor #sex worker #reality star

[gxlden-angels]

One of these days I will write about the nuances of The Black Church and how it acted both as a force for good; providing food, shelter, and community to those in need from slavery onward, and as a force for destruction, actively treating drug addicts and LGBT people as diseases and cutting them off from that sanctuary. I should do it at my most powerful (Now during BHM) but alas.....

#I recently attended a conference #and one of the presentations I went to was about Ballroom Culture and History #the presenter compared it to being in a black church #and of course not all churches are the same even with groups #but when I say 'The Black Church' I usually mean the southern baptist/methodist combination that emphasizes freedom. emotionalism and praise #There's a big focus on being freed from slavery both literally and metaphorically (from sin) #Youve probably seen those videos of praise breaks with ppl screaming crying frowing up and falling on the floor #That type of church #It seems silly as an outsider but it's all about connection #In Ballrooms they danced. they performed. they loved #In church they danced. they performed. they loved. #After the church comes together and feeds everyone #If someone is sick the whole church nurses them and prays #Ballroom was a place for queer folk to gather. Black people gathered at church. It wasn't entirely safe but it was something #But then things happened #Black churches kick out addicts and sex workers and queer folk #And during the AIDS epidemic #and war on drugs started #Cis gay men turned on the trans women that built those Ballrooms #They decided they didn't want their spaces pulled down #They decided this was the only way to rise. By stepping on others #And as the communities grew they changed #Of course these community churches and Houses still exist #People are still there supporting each other #But Madonna 'invented' vogue and Ru Paul partakes in fracking #But Creflo Dollar owns a private jet #This was probably a rambling mess but I hope you get it #I also lost my ipad on the other side of the country so I'm a bit too upset to organize my thoughts better rn #ex christian #religious trauma

[meerawrites]

Sex Work Regulation: A Necessary Reform 

Sex work is one of the oldest livelihoods in the world...

View On WordPress

#meerawrites #wordpress #my writing #anti purity culture #anti censorship #bisexual #history #lgbtq+ #queer history #sex positive #sex positivity #sex work is real work #sex workers are workers