you go too far, marlowe.

on decriminalising sex work and drug use.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:53:00 -0500

it may surprise you to know that most sex workers in the west nowadays are middle class rather than lower class and that has given rise to a kind of hierarchy, a distancing of the empowered, independent escort from the drug driven, need based prostitution so often depicted on tv. it has, up to now, been my understanding that the the decriminalisation of sex work and the decriminalisation of drugs are two separate, unrelated issues, and that although many sex workers are drug free, educated women, many have been driven into the business by forced addictions. caty simon’s interview at feministe may have changed my mind. i say ‘may have’ because, like many arguments that involve public policy, a certain amount of generalisation is required, and like all feminist arguments, the identity politics involved often overlook the individuals on the margins of a the particular group spoken for, in this case, sex workers.

there is no question that sex worker activism is largely driven by the aforementioned population of white, middle class women and that those lower class street walker prostitutes at the bottom of the hierarchy are often seen as being more connected to movements against human trafficking or against poverty, pimping and drug use.

the fact is this - arguments that criminalise drug use are based in the disease model of addiction, much like the arguments against s & m, homosexuality and other sexual deviances. however, unlike the case against sexual deviance, drugs are considered truly mind-altering in a biological fashion, both temporarily and permanently. of course, there are those who will argue that sexual deviance is the same way - biological, but i am firmly of the opinion that it’s not a choice, but a preferance. you like eating pickles? i don’t like eating pickles. you like fucking boys? i don’t like fucking boys (an example).

So what gives?

simon’s argument is compelling - there shouldn’t be policies based on (supposedly) biological, disease models of addiction, and the stereotype of the cracked-out whore is detrimental to sex worker activism. however, i can’t seem to get my mind to associate the two movements in a practical fashion, while surely, decriminalising drug use will aid the human trafficking business. ‘no really, officer, she took all those drugs, legally, by herself!’. i can’t see that helping sex worker activism either.

note: i’m all for intersectionality though, so perhaps more things good than bad could come of this. it certainly makes sense in terms of sex work rather than human trafficking.

WANT.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:39:25 -0500

WANT.

mad girl's love song

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:42:53 -0500

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

"And, I would argue, the point that “some varieties of femininity are more rewarded than others right..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:20:23 -0500

“And, I would argue, the point that “some varieties of femininity are more rewarded than others right now, we should broaden the scope of acceptable femininities” is not one that’s being debated by anyone here. And yet! Somehow! This is different than the point that “women are engaging in a variety of femininity that is totes slutty and destroying feminism, they are the enemy now, GGRAGARRRGH […] Because even if I adopted the appearance and aesthetic of a Maxim model tomorrow, fact is, I would still be subject to misogyny. Possibly more virulent misogyny than ever before. And I’d still need this movement to be advocating for me, not shaming me for “destroying feminism” with my bald vagina. It’s the “women’s movement.” Not the “women who keep their legs together and act like proper ladies” movement. I think we need to get that one straight.”

- Sady Doyle (via sexartandpolitics)

sexartandpolitics: via...

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:40:34 -0500

sexartandpolitics:

via omoexplosion:blatino:blue-prince:jonathanclassof99:thecolorsoflove

mmhmm.

i was not sure i had understood. i was naked enough to disappear in the shop windows. your weight on...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:06:51 -0400

i was not sure i had understood. i was naked enough to disappear in the shop windows. your weight on me sank through my bones and i didn’t know where i had lost my body - as if it had no vowels, as if the construction were faulty, the mesh too coarse - when you felt a sneeze coming on and fumbled for your hankerchief. I traced the law of sufficient reason down your spine. your skin was delicate, like a retracted confession.

- Rosmarie Waldrop

Photo

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:34:59 -0400

for jack. (for me)

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:08:49 -0400

Tell everyone to have guts
Do it yourself
Have guts until the guts
Come through the margins
Clear and pure
Like love is.

- Jack Spicer.

plz-gro: (via planettampon)

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:18:00 -0400

plz-gro:

(via planettampon)

longing/art.

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:48:36 -0400

Longing is painful. Every work of art is an attempt to bring into being the object of loss. The pictures, the music, the poems and the performances are an intense engagement with loss. While one is in the act of making, one is not in loss, and one has meaning. The fierce crashes that happen to many creative people when a piece of work is done (read Hemingway on this) come out of the sense that however good the work, it has not answered the loss.

The strange thing about creative work is that it can have enormous value for others while its maker is left ravaged. The ancient Greeks understood this as the price of an encounter with a god—the divine forces enter the human and use him or her as an instrument, only to be ultimately destroyed. But I do not believe that creativity is destructive or divine. I believe it is the part of us that gives shape and voice to our innermost reality.

This is frightening. Encounters with the real, in particular what we really feel, are something we generally try to avoid. Art mediates the encounter, allowing us to get nearer to our longing and our loss, to risk more, to dare more. Yet for the maker, the exposure is not mediated; it is total and terrifying.

- Jeanette Winterson, In Praise of the Crack-Up

I WANT THIS FOR MY BIRTHDAY!

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:44:28 -0400

I WANT THIS FOR MY BIRTHDAY!

chet baker’s been on my mind.

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:44:38 -0400

chet baker’s been on my mind.

sexartandpolitics: Robert Doisneau - La Dame Indignée (The Lady...

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:31:19 -0400

sexartandpolitics:

Robert Doisneau - La Dame Indignée (The Lady is Shocked), 1948
gelatin silver print

via bigfun:protege-moi:arsvitaest:janitoroflunacy

tracey emin, you always have my words.

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:48:00 -0400

tracey emin, you always have my words.

Still, 135.7 lb

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:43:00 -0400

Still, 135.7 lb

sexartandpolitics: Gucci Spring 2010 via...

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:24:34 -0400

sexartandpolitics:

Gucci Spring 2010

via mrsexsmith:shoesday

ARE YOU KIDDING ME I DON’T HAVE THAT MUCH MONEY.

homosexuality.

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:36:18 -0400

forgive me, today is the day i tackle all of bernstein’s reading/responses. i am frustrated by robert creeley to the point of chainsmoking, so i am calming myself with o’hara.

So we are taking off our masks, are we, and keeping
our mouths shut? as if we’d been pierced by a glance!

The song of an old cow is not more full of judgment
than the vapors which escape one’s soul when one is sick;

so I pull the shadows around me like a puff
and crinkle my eyes as if at the most exquisite moment

of a very long opera, and then we are off!
without reproach and without hope that our delicate feet

will touch the earth again, let alone “very soon.”
It is the law of my own voice I shall investigate.

I start like ice, my finger to my ear, my ear
to my heart, that proud cur at the garbage can

in the rain. It’s wonderful to admire oneself
with complete candor, tallying up the merits of each

of the latrines. 14th Street is drunken and credulous,
53 rd tries to tremble but is too at rest. The good

love a park and the inept a railway station,
and there are the divine ones who drag themselves up

and down the lengthening shadow of an Abyssinian head
in the dust, trailing their long elegant heels of hot air

crying to confuse the brave “It’s a summer day,
and I want to be wanted more than anything else in the world.”

the language

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:31:17 -0400

Locate I
love you some-
where in

teeth and
eyes, bite
it but

take care not
to hurt, you
want so

much so
little. Words
say everything.

i
love you
again,

then what
is emptiness
for. To

fill, fill.
I heard words
and words full

of holes
aching. Speech
is a mouth.

- i guess i like more robert creeley than i thought i did. god damn.

(from) for love.

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 21:05:01 -0400

Let me stumble into
not the confession but the
obsession I begin with
now. For you

also (also)
some time beyond place,
or place beyond time, no
mind left to

say anything at all,
that face gone, now.
Into the company of love
it all returns.

-Robert Creeley

"In drawing rooms and little magazines I celebrated the cult with a sense of sanctuary such as a..."

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:05:21 -0400

“In drawing rooms and little magazines I celebrated the cult with a sense of sanctuary such as a Medieval Jew must have found the ghetto, my voice taking on the modulations which tell of the capitulation to snobbery and the removal from the ‘common sort’; my poetry exhibiting the objects made as divine and tyrannical as the Catholic church has made the bones of saints, and bread and wine, tyrannical”

- robert duncan