Feminist
Cross Posted -check it out
I am a feminist. I have been (consciously) since age 4. I've educated myself and taken my share of Women's studies classes. I've been an activist since age 11. I had a safe house, have been trained by feminists to defend myself and payed it forward teaching others the same techniques. I've taught women assertiveness. I've been in business with women and have always ascribed to the "One hand up and one hand down" philosophy. I do my best to not judge other women. Instead, I take a step back and do my best to employ compassion. When I find myself being competitive or jealous of another women in my industry, I check myself.
When I read "Feminism VS Sex Workers" at the community blog and read some of the arguments, my B.S. radar went off. I quieted it down with the memory of my own perception pre strip industry experience. I entered the strip clubs at age 29 and worked on and off as a stripper until age 37. Before that, my perception was not very different from many I've come across on feminist blogs and journals. I was prejudiced against "those" women too. It's important for me to remember that while I ask for understanding. I ask women to suspend their judgments until they have at least imagined a walk in my shoes. I know that is asking a lot because I didn't do that before I actually walked in those shoes myself. How dare I expect that from anyone now? I don't expect it, I hope for it.
I ask feminists to listen to our individual stories. Listen to us as much as or more than the statistics manufactured about Sex workers in general, to guide the perception of feminists who strip or are in any other facet of the sex industry. We can be understood, from simple differences to greater likenesses. The definiton of sex work and sexpoiltation varies from person to person. I'd like other feminists to understand that as a stripper, I did less with my sexuality than many actresses, who we do not call whore or exclude from feminism, villianize or dismiss. In fact, we gave an Oscar to a women for a performance that included her simulating sex. A scene my prudish, stripper- self could not have done when I was stripping or now. I'd like my community of feminists to understand that when a stripper points out that the bartender is making more tips on nights she wears her tight t-shirt and push up bra, or that a waitress in a short skirt will make more if she also applies red lipstick, the performer has better gigs, etc- it is not to insult them. It's to point out that we are here, in the same world, dealing with similar issues from a not so different place in not so different ways. Strippers and sex workers are often just more honest about it.
Your sexuality is part of you, and what you do with it is your choice and should be respected as such (I am not speaking of enslaved women and children in this post). As a stripper, I was taking advantage of something that exists, the male gaze. I was not ignorant of it and do not need to be blamed for it's existence. I was not preventing the dominant paradigm from shifting, just the opposite. I was directly relating to the males (and females and trans) employing the gaze. I was not preventing it from changing as I was surviving and thriving from within the sex industry and beyond. And beyond. Few of us are in that industry for more than a decade. We emerge from it in a variety of ways. I emerged with tools and skills I couldn't have gotten anywhere else or any other way, with a memory of a sisterhood I can cling to with my soul during trying times. If that is not feminism then what is?