Episode 35: Sex Work & Sexual Liberation
If you consider yourself a sexually liberated person; if you call yourself a feminist; if you believe in the sexual liberation and sexual agency of others; if you’ve made it your job to instigate sexual liberation in others through things like sex coaching, pole dancing, sensuality courses, or any other forms of sexual healing; and you’re not using your voice to stand up for and support sex workers—you should be.
Sex worker rights are human rights and we aren’t sexually free until all of us are sexually free.
And to continue this conversation, I’m bringing back porn performer and sex activist, Allie Oops, to talk all about sex work—what it is, why she does it, and how we cannot talk about sexual liberation and sex-positivity without talking about and supporting sex workers.
“[Surface sexually liberated people] are appropriating so much about sex work while also screaming from the rooftops that they’re not doing sex work. It’s so whorephobic and reproduces the whorearchy by saying, ‘I’m sexually liberated, but I don’t do porn.”
Other things we discussed: How to unlearn whorephobia; the difference between feminist porn and ethical porn; porn literacy and respectability politics; who gets to call themselves a sex worker; and how to humanize and adequately support sex workers.
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
For a transcription of this episode, click here.
Recommended Reads:
Playing The Whore – Melissa Gira Grant
Sex At The Margins – Laura Maria Agustin
A Taste for Brown Sugar – Mireille Miller-Young