How to Locate Low-Cost Mental Health Care in the U.S. and Canada

fuckyeahmedicalstuff:

This is important, please share! You never know who may need it.

(Source: hypocritelecteuse)

(this post was reblogged from fuckyeahsexeducation)

Without bad Facebook jokes…

ICYMI: George Takei posted a photo of a stripper in silhouette with the caption “Without bad parents, there’d be few good strippers.”

Sex work: It’s just a job. Take out the glamorization, take out the shame; it’s a job. For some a career, for some a calling, for some a way to pay the rent or get some extra “fun money.”

There is power in it, there is meaning in it; yes, and there is also fear. Sex work taps into powerful stuff, and we need to respect that…

…but it’s a job, and we also need to respect that.

I truly wish George Takei had stopped to think that there is no other entertainment profession we assume people get into because of bad parenting in this day and age. No other service profession we feel only the “damaged” could do (as if people were brittle, solid vases to break and not clay to reshape). No other helping profession, with the possible exception of therapist, where we assume an abuse history cause-and-effect link.

Here’s the kicker: what do we do with this idea of the fallen woman, the desperate rent boy, the broken whore? We eroticize the very idea of them as damaged goods.

This culture is what’s broken around sexuality, not our profession. Sex work acts as a mirror, the mirror opposite our collective bed. And if we don’t like what we see when we get down to it we have only ourselves to blame.

The Happy Hooker: WHITEHOUSE.ORG PETITION TO LEGALIZE SEX WORK IN THE US

audaciaray:

shoulda-slapped-a-collar-on-it:

happyhookernw:

chibiveneficus:

femmedunoir:

stripperina:

shoulda-slapped-a-collar-on-it:

Here

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/legalize-sex-work-domination-prostitution-etc/3jjbGTzs

This is the link to the petition! Please, if you are a sex worker- i.e., someone who…

Up to 90 signatures. And I have 745 followers. I’m judging at least 655 of you. HARD.

We could have at least put up a show of support, even if it won’t make the 100k needed. No wonder sex work is still illegal.

This. So much this.

Guys, girls, everyone in between and outside of the spectrum, please.
 Don’t just reblog. Don’t just pass this up. This is serious, even though I know some of you don’t understand just how bad things can get for sex workers, please SIGN IT. show your support.

We really do need ALL THE HELP we can get.

Sorry, but no.

Even if he wanted to, Obama could not decriminalize prostitution.

In the US, prostitution-related law is part of the criminal code, and the jurisdiction for that is at the state (and sometimes also local/municipal) level. 

If you want to do legislative advocacy (yes, please want that!!), you should do some research into your local laws and how they impact people in the sex trades and people profiled as being in the sex trades. Then you should think about how to change laws that suck and introduce new bills that could help protect the safety, health, and labor rights of sex workers.

Sorry to say, internet petitions without a realistic target (someone who can make the change) and a concrete ask (specific changes that will improve people’s circumstances) do nothing. Organizing at the local level on specific pieces of legislation is where the change is at. It is frustrating. It takes a damn long time and you will interact with a lot of douchebags along the way. But you may also find allies in surprising places. And this is how policy change gets done. 

I hope our activists and social justice folks are paying attention here. Let’s put that energy where it’s needed—and effective.

(Source: pbandjj)

(this post was reblogged from audaciaray)

Fire Cat Kitty: Kanye, we need condoms.

firecatkitty:

Rescuing sex workers from themselves is the hot new trend amongst celebrities. From Mira Sorvino to Julia Ormand and a growing number of child actors, celebrities are flocking to the “rescue industry” as if a red carpet has been thrown on the global stage.

There are even top ten lists…

(this post was reblogged from firecatkitty)
luckybloke: Latex Allergy Condom ALERT! If you (or your partner) have a latex allergy PLEASE READ! MAJOR DUREX FOUL What You Must Know to Stay Safe!  http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=3263fc6350c7510c91325dcb9&id=dc388a1e17

luckybloke:

Latex Allergy Condom ALERT! If you (or your partner) have a latex allergy PLEASE READ! MAJOR DUREX FOUL What You Must Know to Stay Safe! 

http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=3263fc6350c7510c91325dcb9&id=dc388a1e17

(this post was reblogged from fuckyeahsexeducation)
It wouldn’t be Tumblr without saucy pictures, now would it? Click for high-res photo

It wouldn’t be Tumblr without saucy pictures, now would it?

(this post was reblogged from workneverover)

Gina: a weird & unexpected moment of melancholia

queershoulder:

Today was rough and frustrating and exhausting. I am okay, but basically, I had to be Hella Tough in a hard moment with a bully. And now I am feeling the way I usually feel after I put on my Tough-Ass Bitch Face. Which is freaked-out and exhausted and very small.

And (I promise this is related):…

Right there with you. It’s hard walking into those moments where someone else’s comfort used to be… but it’s been rewarding spending the past year-plus building a support net with multiple anchor points. It’s still new, but getting stronger every day.

Today it’s hard not having someone in my corner. Today I’m toweling myself off and getting my own water, and remembering that even if there’s no coach right up here with me there are a dozen people who love me dearly holding up signs just outside the ring.

Holding up a sign for you today.

(this post was reblogged from queershoulder)

Spread It: Sex Positive Inclusion

On Twitter today, sex educator Lidia-Anain (@sexlovejoy) reposted writer/speaker Alyssa Royse (@alyssaroyse)’s question:

“So, what does ‘inclusive’ look like in the Sex Pos community?”

Which is a damned good question, and one we’re not asking enough.

Inclusive is hearing the concerns of others. Hearing when people feel excluded, even (especially) if they’re not people you always agree with. It’s fundamentally about making room for all to talk about their experiences and be represented.

It’s responding gracefully when people call you on your shit and trying to clean it up. It’s stepping back and letting others step in; it’s about asking the questions designed to get people who are commonly excluded engaged and involved in the discussion, because they aren’t starting with the assumption that they have the right to speak up.

But that’s reactive.

We need to be proactive: reaching out, meeting people where they’re at, encouraging self-knowledge and self-expression. Teaching people that their voices are valued, and wanted, and actively seeking them out…

…not as tokenization, not as “the black sex educator” or “the diversity speaker” or “the underprivileged sex worker” but as people with stories and input who deserve to be heard.

It’s about saying, this is how you can move in this world to make yourself feel more comfortable and confident while you dismantle the structures that keep you out brick by brick. This is how you extend your influence so that there is no one you will not touch. This is how you tell your story so that the people who most need to hear it—often those who are most instinctively opposed to it—will find themselves suddenly and passionately on your side.

And this is how you nourish yourself while you do it.

—-

I think an important point is simply resisting lockstep. There is no “right” sexual expression/approach to one’s gender/way to feel about one’s work. It’s our responsibility to make sure people know it’s okay for them to be where they are, feeling what they’re feeling, confused and even resentful—and it’s okay to want more, or to not want anything. From there we can give people the tools to explore further. A map. A compass. A flashlight.

It sounds basic, but even we have a hard time resisting dogmas. I’m tired of us pretending there’s a right way to fuck, or think, or fight, other than as honestly as we possibly can. And more honesty requires more voices.

Find someone hesitating to speak up and let them know you value their input.

“
As the culture evolves, people who benefitted from the old ways invariably see themselves as victims of change. The world used to fit them like a glove, but it no longer does. Increasingly, they find themselves in unfamiliar situations that feel unfair or even unsafe. Their concerns used to take center stage, but now they must compete with the formerly invisible concerns of others.

The Distress of the Privileged « The Weekly Sift

Required reading. A great explanation of why screaming “privilege!” and walking away will never create lasting change. Shaming people while enlightening them can silence them at best and backfire at worst.

(via allisonmoon)

(this post was reblogged from allisonmoon)
“

In the global capitalist marketplace, the desires of those with resources, particularly privileged male consumers, have become prime targets for producers and retailers of all types of goods and services. As a number of researchers on gender and leisure note, white, male desire has itself been commodified in the global production of leisure services, including sex tourism. In their quest for markets and money, creative entrepreneurs develop products and services designed to both fulfill and shape male desire. Thus, male desire facilitates the production of commodified services at the same time as service providers in leisure industries seek to commodify male desire.

(…)

Although sex tourism can take many forms, sex tourists are overwhelming men with resources, while sex workers are overwhelming poor women of color. This has led many researchers to contend that most global sex tourism-both North-South and North- North arises from the linkage between the political-economic advantage enjoyed by affluent men from developed countries and the widespread cultural fantasy in those nations that dusky-skinned “others” from exotic southern lands are liberated from the sexual/emotional inhibitions characteristic of women (and/or men) in their own societies. For advantaged men from the developed world, sex tourism provides an opportunity, not only to experience fantasized sexual freedom with imagined uninhibited women, but also the opportunity to experience-in their bodies-their own privilege. As Skrobanek, et al. write of sex tourism in Thailand, “Thailand is like a stage where men from around the world come to perform their role of male supremacy over women and their white supremacy over Thai people.”

Nancy Wonders, Bodies, borders, and sex tourism in a globalized world: A tale of two cities-Amsterdam and Havana (via hinduthug)

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Thing is, I think it is very, very true that white men do exercise their power over poor women of colour through sex tourism, as their exercise their power over women in many other forms. And, of course, one of the mantras of MRAs is to advise other men to go to these countries for sex as the women there aren’t stuck-up, bossy and “ruined” the way Western women are (it never occurs to them that women from Asian countries may be putting on the expected show because it never occurs to them that these women are of equal or greater intelligence to them because they don’t really see these women as three dimensional human beings).

However I dislike the way this excerpt, at least, positions those poor women of colour as victims to this.

Thai sex workers are not only smart, savvy, motivated and determined, they are responsible for some of the most radical sex work activism in the world, based around securing their labour rights and spurring the white saviour complex of orgs that try to “rescue” them. Check out Empower Foundation for example. These women are unbelievably revolutionary.

(via everythingbutharleyquinn)

(this post was reblogged from everythingbutharleyquinn)