"Sex is always political."

- Gayle Rubin (via barricadeur)

"Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors."

- Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe

"Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up in bed till early dawn, throwing your whole tomorrow out of whack, simply to find out what happens to some people who, you know perfectly well, are made up."

- Barbara Kingsolver (via writingbox)

"I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

- Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter from a Birmingham Jail (via brashblacknonbeliever)

"Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop out of that bitch."

- Lili St. Crow (via writingquotes)

"‘You gotta grab life by the balls bro…’ Yeah, how bout no? How about I never grab anything by its balls ever? That’s the worst advice I’ve ever heard in my life. Anybody ever grab anything by its balls before? Know what happens when you grab something by its balls? It beats the shit out of you until you let go. When I was six I grabbed a dog’s balls once. I almost lost an eye. I’m never gonna grab anything by its balls. Especially life, especially if life shows up in the incarnation where it would have testicles. If life showed up and had balls, the last thing I would do is grab those balls. I might try to shake life’s hand, buy life a drink, but you don’t wanna just go and grab life’s balls off the bat."

- Kyle Kinane (via enemychan)

"I’m now writing out of rage — and I feel a kind of Nietzschean elation. It’s tonic. I roar with laughter. I want to denounce everybody, tell everybody off. I go to my typewriter as I might go to my machine gun. But I’m safe. I don’t have to face the consequences of ‘real’ aggressivity. I’m sending out colis piégés [‘booby-trapped packages’] to the world."

- Susan Sontag

"Good writing never soothes or comforts. It is no prescription, either is it diversionary, although it can and should enchant while it explodes in the reader’s face. Whenever the writer writes, it’s always three o’clock in the morning, it’s always three or four or five o’clock in the morning in [hir] head. Those horrid hours are the writer’s days and nights when [zie] is writing. The writer doesn’t write for the reader. [Zie] doesn’t write for [hirself], either. {Zie] writes to serve…something. Somethingness. The somethingness that is sheltered by the wings of nothingness — those exquisite, enveloping, protecting wings."

- Joy Williams

"When a man says no in this culture, it’s the end of the discussion. When a woman says no, it’s the beginning of a negotiation."

-

Gavin De Becker (via dandyions)

#drop the mic and walk outta that bitch

(via zombres)

"If you hate your parents, the man or the establishment, don’t show them up by getting wasted and wrapping your car around a tree. If you really want to rebel against your parents, out-learn them, outlive them, and know more than they do."

- Henry Rollins (via warehouse-eyes)

"Perhaps most of all, though, you deserve to be okay. You deserve to know that a day in which you can just barely get out of bed because you are sad, or sick, or simply not ready to see the outside is not the end of the world. You deserve to know that moments of weakness do not make you fundamentally weak, only fundamentally human, and that sometimes we’re not going to be effusively happy, and that is okay."

- Chelsea Fagan   (via anditslove)

"Many citizens of this nation, myself included, have been
and are afraid to think about class. Affluent liberals concerned
with the plight of the poor and dispossessed are daily mocked
and ridiculed. They are blamed for all the problems of the
welfare state. Caring and sharing have come to be seen as
traits of the idealistic weak. Our nation is fast becoming a
class-segregated society where the plight of the poor is
forgotten and the greed of the rich is morally tolerated and
condoned."

- bell hooks, Where We Stand: Class Matters

"

I’ve done many different kinds of sex work. I’ve been a cam girl, a porn performer, a professional sub, and a performer at a peep show (similar to a stripper). I’ve also been working in retail and food service simultaneously.

I get so frustrated at how I’m treated at work. It really gets to me. I find myself involuntarily crying once I get into my car to drive home. I hate how dehumanizing it is. People don’t acknowledge me as a person. They think I’m less than them because of my job. Maybe they don’t actively think that, but that’s how they treat me. Oh, by the way, I’m talking about the food service job.

When I’m doing sex work I can refuse a customer. I can be rude to them if they are being rude to me. I don’t have to apologize for their mistakes. I don’t have to be sweet when they are being inappropriate. I negotiate my limits, and I only do what I feel comfortable doing. They don’t get to order off the menu, I’m not going to bend over backwards for them.

I find it oppressive to work for minimum wage. I find it oppressive to act like the customer is always right. I find it dehumanizing to apologize for things that aren’t my fault, like how much something costs or if you order something wrong and you want it remade the correct way. I find it dehumanizing to say “Hi! How are you?” and in response get “Yeah I just need a blah blah blah” and then have a customer go back to their cell phone conversation. I hate being reduced to a cash register.

"

-

-littlemew, reddit post (via takingbackshannon)

turning tables/turning tricks. (via seattlegrrrlarmy)

Yes, this. Excellent. During my many presentations on sex work and sex workers, people would try to make the point or ask the question “well why don’t these people just get a real/decent/non-sex work job? there are jobs! you can go to McDonald’s and get a job.”

But food service, I would argue, is more dehumanizing in some ways than sex work. There is no job autonomy in food service. You work for minimum wage, less than 8 bucks and hour. And you have to work all the time (if your place of employment will even give you the hours you need) to make rent payments. Sex work, in all the varieties it comes in, can provide more opportunities and is often times more lucrative than working a minimum wage job. Sex work is labor.

People, during my presentations, try to argue that sex work is inherently exploitative, and that is what is wrong with it. But I argue that all work is exploitative. 

(via sociologically)

The last time someone was arguing about sex work with me, I said I didn’t want to take away someone’s choice to do sex work and they said, “It’s not a choice if you do it to put food on the table.” Show of hands: how many of us go to work in order to put food on the table? Right.

(via stfuconservatives)

Not gonna lie, I won’t judge sex work or sex workers. If there was demand for types like me to do sex work, I might well consider it. What’s so bad about it? You are giving pleasure and get paid for it!

Now, sadly, there IS a lot of exploitation and abuse going on in sex work, but that’s a completely different issue. There’s also a lot of exploitation and abuse going on in the clothing industry (sweatshops, anyone?), yet I do not see people sneer at tailors…

(via forumgamer)

The key words in all the replies are “can” and “choice” when it comes to sex work. Sex work canbe empowering to women and women can make choices with sex work. However, not all women involved in sex work can make choices about what they do. Not all sex workers experiences are like littlemew’s experiences with sex work. Sex work is labor. Like all jobs, especially minimum wage jobs, there is exploitation. I am not saying every sex worker is exploited because that is certainly not true. However, for every sex worker who has positive experiences with sex work, there is a sex worker who has negative experiences with sex work. It is true for other professions as well. Sex work is not black and white. We need to stop talking about it like it is.

(via shooting4ownhand)