Since February 2011 I have been collaborating with Ceyenne Doroshow, a black transgender woman from Brooklyn who while she was incarcerated on a prostitution conviction a few years ago, got inspired to write a memoir cookbook. We’ve made significant progress on the book: we have more than 50 recipes, plus an oral history about her life, and now we’re ready to start producing the book itself. We need $6000 to get it copyedited, pay for the cover photography, and have it designed and printed. This morning I hit the launch button on our Kickstarter campaign to raise that money.
Our rewards include signed postcards, copies of the book, baked goods, cooking lessons, and private dinners - all depending on the level you donate at. We need your support to make this book come to fruition. And really, any amount helps - the minimum donation is $1. If you don’t have cash to spare, please check out the video anyway - it really captures who Ceyenne is and why she’s amazing. Also, there’s paella and it is mouthwatering - we ate it at the shoot and wow.
If you think the project is cool, as I hope you will - please spread the word!
As a sex worker activist and active sex worker, what I want to say the most is *please listen to our voices.* We want rights, not rescue. Those speaking for us have trampled our voices for far too long.
In the United States and around the globe, sex workers are forming collectives and unions to fight for our rights. Mainstream feminism and patronizing anti-trafficking orgs have continually propagated lies about sex work statistics and have actively shut down our organizing efforts. The sex worker led efforts to decriminalize prostitution in San Francisco, CA were largely opposed by feminist organization and one of the biggest anti-decriminalization donations came from Gloria Steinhem herself.
Please listen to us. We don’t need to be saved, we need to be supported.
Links included:
- http://www.durbar.org/ (Sex worker rights org founded in Calcutta, India)
- http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Sex_work_in_Cambodia-11639.aspx (Cambodian Sex Worker Organization)
- http://sexworkerswithoutborders.org/ (Sex Workers Without Borders)
- http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-06-29/news/real-men-get-their-facts-straight-sex-trafficking-ashton-kutcher-demi-moore/ (Anti-trafficking fact checking)
House slaves did not want the abolition of slavery because they were treated considerably better than field slaves. Would you say slavery should not have been abolished only because some privileged slaves wanted to remain as slaves?
Article written about all the work that goes into performing also very much applies to porn and adult entertainment.
“Sex workers go to work, come home, take care of their children — just like everybody else,” reads the poster on Muni. Below the quote is a portrait of a smiling woman with a tagline reading: “Someone you know is a sex worker.”
This poster is one of many included in St. James Infirmary’s new media campaign promoting the rights of local sex workers. A collaboration between St. James Infirmary (a San Francisco peer-based organization offering free medical and social services to sex workers) and artists Rachel Schreiber and Barbara DeGenevieve, the campaign features portraits of sex workers and supporters — spouses, partners, family members and health care professionals — putting faces to the people who work in the industry…
