By Grabthar’s hammer. What a Tumblr.

...why don't they?

One of the universal rights is the right to unionize one's career.

As far as I can tell there's literally nothing stopping sex workers from unionizing or forming a guild in order to protect themselves. Union bosses could even call themselves Madames if they wanna.

In countries where selling sex is only partially criminalized under various legal models, unions often can (and do!) exist, but their power is limited. In the UK we have SWU (Sex Worker's Union) which I am a member of, but our laws make it so that my union can't support me with a huge range of issues because my union rep would be charged as a pimp if they did. Our efforts to organize for better working conditions always have to come second to pushing for full decriminalization.

There are only a few places which have full decriminalization of sex work. In Belgium, there's the sex worker union UTSOPI. Since it's not illegal to do full-service sex work or any surrounding acts there, UTSOPI is able to have much more influence on public policy and is far more empowered to support their workers.

I realize this was a question, but I do wish people wouldn't start making claims that something is a "universal right" (it's not) and suggesting there's nothing stopping us, as if sex workers are simply too stupid to have considered this already. Sex workers are an incredibly engaged group of workers highly prone to becoming class conscious and politically radicalized.

like, he’s entitled to sick leave, he really ought to take a couple months to break the curse and come to terms with whatever the fuck just happened to him, but instead of embarking on a journey of self-discovery and healing he just keeps showing up to work. no one can get captain maximus to go on his fucking voyage of self actualization and fix the curse because he’s obsessed with catching flinn ryder. everyone really fucking hopes that when he finally catches this guy the curse might be broken anyway, but it isn’t.

he just keeps showing up to work. he glares at the stablehands until they saddle him up. everyone’s gone over the regulations a dozen times but there’s nothing there saying you’re not allowed to saddle and ride the captain of the guard if he makes you do it. his former second in command rides him around like ‘sir i really don’t know about this’ and he’s just like ‘are we going to catch some criminals or what.’

you can see in the movie that everyone in the royal guard defers to this horse. it’s absolutely because that’s their boss. and secondarily because now he’s two thousand pounds of percheron.

*local action, campaigning, planting trees, targeted politician lobbying, whatever: something CONCRETE and achievable with measurable results

let this inform your local politics: turn up to planning meetings for solar, wind or battery plants to be in favour. Embrace YIMBYism on renewables, nuclear, heatpumps, dense housing with public transport access, bike lanes, and electric vehicle charging points. It's far more psychologically healthy and effective to be FOR things than against things (and frankly the history of environmentalism has well-meaning people being against some random things), and we actually can build our way out of climate change. If we continue to build renewable electricity and electrify other energy sectors, the fossil fuel distribution industry will collapse purely on reduced economies of scale, and we can stop using about 40% of maritime tonnage to ship stuff around to burn it.

talk to people about this in a neutral way. So many people do not know about the progress we are making and so they truly believe the only alternative to runaway climate change is drastic degrowth or depopulation. It is not.

try to get a job in this field, if you're good at your job. Doesn't have to be high level! Do admin for a heatpump firm. Be a salesperson for cars who is highly knowledgeable about electric vehicles and helps steer customers towards those models. Being a small cog in a good part of an imperfect machine is the best that most of us can do.

some parts of civilization are very difficult to make zero-carbon, like aviation and some parts of industry and the last 10-20% of electricity in highly seasonal climates. There is a lot of work to be done, so be nice to the people working on far-out or expensive stuff like carbon capture and sequestration, geoengineering, space solar, and weird types of long-duration electricity storage. (Personally I think none of these things will pan out, but it's good that someone is working on them because I may be wrong).

while personal action is not everything, it is good to align your actions with your values when it is practical to do so. Obviously not everyone can run out today and buy a heatpump, swap an internal combustion car with an electric car or even better a bike, take the 500-euro train instead of the 100-euro flight etc - but there are choices most people make about eating meat and holiday destinations and lifestyle that collectively have a huge impact. And we are a social species, we set our view on what's "normal" from what behaviour we see being modelled, so seeing that our peers are willing to make climate-conscious choices even when it's inconvenient to them is a nudge.

@saltysmoothie @rotten-dan

Friends it is a flipchart

Series of GIFs showing Elizabeth Taylor speaking about her charity work for AIDS on The Whoopi Goldberg show in 1992. The subtitles read as follows:

Elizabeth Taylor: I was involved in the first dinner for APLA (AIDS Project Los Angeles). And the reaction of people in this town, in show business, was extraordinary. No one wanted to come to this dinner. I made the phone calls myself, and I’ve never received so many “nos” in my life! I couldn’t understand and I would say “why?” “Well, we don’t want to get involved. We give to heart, we give to cancer, we don’t have the time. We don’t really want to be involved in this particular charity.” And I finally, because of Rock, was able to get people to come to the dinner. The town finally said: “Oh! One of our own has been stricken!” And then Hollywood really got their shit together. And you know what really cheesed me off was that homophobia. Because without homosexuals, there wouldn’t BE this town! Well, it’s true! Whoopi Goldberg: Mmm-hmm! Oh, go ahead, girl! Elizabeth Taylor: The creativeness of homosexuals, this town, the arts, are built on that. You take homosexual input out, and there is no Hollywood.

End Image Description.]

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The interview is linked here:

what men hear: “I have no idea whatsoever, but here’s a totally random guess”

what you say: “I’m not an expert on this subject”

what men hear: “I don’t know anything about this subject and need its bare fundamentals explained to me”

what you say: “I could be better read in this area”

But there are men in my life who I respect, who I think are generally good communicators, but who have admitted to me that if they do not know the answer to something they will just state their best guess in a confident tone of voice, with no hedging or clarification to warn the listener that what they just said was pulled from their ass.

I once asked my high school boyfriend what noise a platypus makes and he confidently told me "oh they quack" and I said "really? that seems like they'd have different noise-making structures than ducks since they're not birds" and he said "oh yeah you're probably right. I was just guessing." And had no idea why I was mad! I was like, so if I ask you a question you might just bullshit me?? What if I had believed you and gone and repeated that to other people? I could have looked like an idiot. I could have spread misinformation to a ton of people! But I have told that story to other men and had them say "oh yeah I totally do that."