Red Umbrella Project

This week Red Umbrella Project is celebrating the WORLD PREMIERE of the Red Umbrella Diaries documentary at Portland Film Festival. We’ll have two screenings, plus cast members are running a writing workshop and a media training (both FREE and for current and former sex workers only).

To celebrate. I’m posting pictures of cast members and their pets!

PORTLAND WE’RE COMING FOR YOU!

The only No True Scotsman I’ll accept wrt feminism:

Real feminists support trans women and sex workers

https://www.etsy.com/listing/244391817/real-feminists#

#GirlsLikeUs - Tomorrow SATURDAY 2 - 6pm

THE @NYCBlackPride TRANS CONFERENCE

Helen Mills Event Space & Theater 137-139 W 26th St, NY. NY 10001

Trans people of African Descent discuss Health & other issues affecting our community.

Expect a great panel and surprise speakers!

This event is being Presented by NYTAG and Supported by Destination Tomorrow.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1508801719410126/

​FOLLOWED BY @NYCBlackPride : THE HERITAGE BALL 2015 at 11pm at @GramercyTheatre THE HERITAGE BALL 2015 Both events are FREE !! Watch VIDEO Invite :

https://www.facebook.com/nycblackpride/videos/1030215093676565/?pnref=story

In the end, the most affected by this will be the most marginalized among us. Many of the higher echelons of sex workers in the US don’t advertise on Backpage at all, and those who do are more likely to have the resources to learn how to use Bitcoin, pay high fees for prepaid cards, or move on to more expensive, less accessible sites.

Backpage has never had pretensions of being “high-end” or “upscale.” The cost and barrier to entry to advertise on the site are low, and the workers who use it are numerically more likely to be poorer, browner, and less gender-conforming than the smaller and more homogeneous populations of higher-end sites—those with fewer resources, who have fewer options. Preventing these workers from being able to advertise makes it more likely for them to be driven onto the streets, into the hands of pimps or managers, or simply into more desperate poverty.

Politicians may not see this as an issue, but all of us should. As conservative Canadian senator Donald Plett put it in reference to End Demand bill C-36, “Of course, we don’t want to make life safe for prostitutes; we want to do away with prostitution. That’s the intent.”

The human effect is just collateral damage—if we’re even considered human at all.

So clearly they have some kind of massive Bitcoin stash on a server farm somewhere as a form of tax evasion (the IRS actually considers Bitcoins property, not currency…pretty weird). 

They probably even speculate on the Bitcoin market for all we know. I’ve been checking the exchange rate the past couple days to see if this affects it at all. So far it’s remained about the same, but if this is really the future we’ll probably see massive inflation. 

And like, they have over $100mm/year in revenue with seemingly minuscule operating costs so for all we know they’re basically like to Bitcoin what the Chinese government is to the US dollar. 

“I find my work empowering! I love sex! It’s fun!”

“I chose to do this. I could do lots of other things. I have a degree!”

These are some of the things I see people saying when we’re talking about decriminalisation and rights, and I’m happy for you, I really am, but what you’re saying is completely irrelevant. And sometimes it’s downright harmful.

…

The truth is that you deserve rights if you like your work, but you still deserve them, (and probably need them more) if you don’t like your work. Responding to prohibitionist claims about how unpleasant sex work is with cries of empowerment and enjoyment means taking the bait and moving the focus of the discussion away from the work of sex work. When we do that, we’re caught up in a never ending game of top-trumps in which we endlessly compare people’s experiences of sex work and try to find an essence somewhere at the centre of it all on which to hinge our opinion of whether or not workers should have rights. We need to stop hunting for the essential sex work experience. It’s not there, and it never was. And we don’t need it to be, because the whole conversation is a pointless, irrelevant distraction.

61-70 100 Days of Pleasantries by Jacq the Stripper