{"id":1173,"date":"2024-12-19T13:17:48","date_gmt":"2024-12-19T18:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/?p=1173"},"modified":"2024-12-19T13:17:48","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T18:17:48","slug":"stephanie-kaylor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/2024\/12\/19\/stephanie-kaylor\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephanie Kaylor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephanie Kaylor<\/strong> is a multi-genre writer and researcher based in the Hudson Valley. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and UC Santa Barbara, where she is currently completing her PhD in Feminist Studies. She is the author of Ask a Sex Worker!, a poetry collection interrogating the role of media representation of sex workers\u2019 exploitations and subsequent resistance, forthcoming in 2025 with CLASH Books, and the curator of the Sex Workers\u2019 Archival Project, a primary source share related to sex workers\u2019 histories, primarily mid-century US criminality. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Protean Magazine and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History.<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hooker Killjoys and Beautiful Girls Available Now: Sex Workers Speak Out on Social Media <\/strong><\/h3>\n

Introduction<\/span><\/p>\n

Amidst sex workers\u2019 struggles and increasing measures of surveillance and criminalization, the necessity of an increasing number of internet platforms comes, as worker advocates have argued, with great risks for a precarious population that historically has avoided hypervisibility. In working through this changing digital landscape, however, laborers have wielded the proliferation of social media and its usage in commercial sex trades into an opening for collectivity and disruption.<\/p>\n

In this piece, whereas Omise\u2019eke Natasha Tinsley asks in the introduction of Ezili\u2019s Mirrors<\/em> for her book to be read as a song, I draw from her Black queer methodology of three voices in a text to similarly mirror a \u201cdisjunctured & syncopated\u201d way of being.[1]<\/span><\/a> Here, three fonts are used to reflect the different modes of self that may operate on and off the job within commercial sex trades, as well as how they may work in tandem in worker consciousness-raising.<\/p>\n

In bold font, I represent posts from sex workers on social media, though the piece does not attach usernames to the examples of social media posts. This is not due to the underlying ideas being rendered solely by me but the contrary; these paraphrased posts are all examples of messages that multiple sex workers have published on their platforms, reflective of communal theorizing and practices rather than individualism.<\/p>\n

In italic font is the narration of a longtime worker in the commercial sex trades and their relationship with work, other workers, and their social media existence in this context. And finally, this font speaks to the former two from a greater distance that serves as a bridge to those outside of the commercial sex trades. Together, these voices may reflect what can be understood as both fractured and holistic, or the juggling of work persona, self, and autotheory that workers have increasingly taken to social media as a form of disruption to hegemonic representations.<\/p>\n

I. Disrupting Sex, Disrupting Work: Sex Work as Work<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSex worker twitter is so chaotic and I love that\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

2024: You\u2019ve worked in the commercial sex trades since the late 00s, and you\u2019ve seen the rise and fall of different names for it. <\/em>Girlfriend experience. High-end luxury companion. Escort. The one you\u2019ve never used in settings which clients are privy to is the one you use everywhere else: sex work. Not <\/em>empowerment, not <\/em>sensual thrills, not <\/em>our naughty little secret, but work. It\u2019s a reflex, maintaining this divide. Yet something has shifted. On social media, more and more of your peers name it for what it is, even as they present a work persona who enjoys it.<\/em><\/p>\n

The first step in organizing for labor rights is to name one\u2019s work as work, or to identify as part of a social class of stigmatized, often criminalized, laborers. \u00a0Labor organizing among those in the commercial sex trades is often represented as having origins through the coining of the term \u201csex work.\u201d In 1978, a landmark in the movement occurred when Carol Leigh introduced the term at a conference organized by Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media. \u00a0Upon feeling degraded by seeing a workshop title included the phrase \u201cSex Use Industry,\u201d Leigh suggested that the language should be changed to \u201cSex Work Industry,\u201d \u201cbecause that described what women did.\u201d[2]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Even as a global movement has flourished against all odds, a divide between one\u2019s private self and one\u2019s work persona is maintained. Like any other service work, it is part of the job; and like any other service work, for a body of workers to share their true feelings about the job is a risk. Knowingly or unknowingly, leftist, centrist, or conservative, those in the commercial sex trades have taken that risk. Through the proliferation of activist terminology in their lexicon on professional social media pages, the political choice of naming is no longer done strictly off the job but is an everyday component rubbed in the faces of clientele and all who seek to deny their agency.<\/p>\n

II. Disrupting Management<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so glad I\u2019m switching over to porn now. Booked a scene with a crush tomorrow <\/strong>and I don\u2019t have to keep pretending I actually want to fuck all these musty old <\/strong>men lmao\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

2016: The desert brothel. You have a short-lived social media account that you spend too much time on while in bed with menthol cigarettes. You love the ping of a new follower notification even though it doesn\u2019t necessarily translate to more work, and even though you have to scroll through the posts from your clients, like the one who comes from a conservative religious background he has disavowed. And like many who have recently come to this position, he does so loudly. On his social media account, he decries religious ideology through what he feels is advocacy for sex workers. Rather, it is advocacy for sex work, not considering the work aspect of it, and not considering the workers either.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cCompanionship,\u201d he says, a euphemism used by those who don\u2019t want to acknowledge that the laborers they hire are just that, \u201chas empowered me to explore my sexuality.\u201d It\u2019s all fine, even if off putting to be placing that much weight upon a transaction, a few hours in which you\u2019re periodically looking at the clock when he isn\u2019t looking, excusing yourself to the bathroom to puff on a vape, thinking about what you\u2019ll have for dinner when your shift is over.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s all fine, until the social media equivalent of smiling and nodding no longer feels like part of the job. Rather, it begins to feel like prying into your non-work self, some assertion that he knows you. You pack your bags and use your work account to say how you really feel.<\/em><\/p>\n

After you realize there\u2019s little money to be made in porn compared to the other work you\u2019ve done, you email the madam asking if you could pick up a shift next month at the brothel. She tells you that you\u2019ve been banned due to your social media presence. As difficult as it can be to rebuild a work persona, there will always be new clients in new places. You will work again, even if not there. You will regret nothing, and if you had the chance, you\u2019d disrupt even more.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cA girl I worked with once did media appearances saying she broke her arm falling out of bed when our manager gave her so many orgasms. He broke it when he beat her. I\u2019m not <\/strong>sorry he\u2019s dead now\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHis friend raped me right outside in broad daylight two years ago. I know I\u2019m not the first\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not. Ask me how I know. There\u2019s a group of us pressing charges now that it seems there are enough of us together, and some with proof. My DMs are open if you <\/strong>want to message me about it\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

And so, you disrupt even more. \u201cYou,\u201d you realize, was never a singularity. \u201cYou\u201d was communal, was shared struggle, was the only way forward.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSex workers want decriminalization, not legalization,\u201d the saying goes, words repeated even by those with only the most cursory understanding of this topic. As defined by SWOP Behind Bars, a branch of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, decriminalization of the sex trades would mean that \u201cpenalties on both the side of the customer and the worker are removed, but prostitution is still not regulated by the government.\u201d They continue to define legalization as a model in which \u201cpenalties are removed and prostitution is regulated by the government.[3]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

One can look to the Nevada brothel system as an example of how decriminalization functions in practice. Workers, not clients, are required to undergo regular STI testing, which they are required to pay for out of pocket. Workers, not clients, are penalized if it is learned that there is a violation of the requirements concerning condoms. As there is a license to engage in commercial sex trades, the sheriff has the authority to deny applicants based on a number of factors such as previous criminal history and errors made on the form. This, of course, assumes one makes it to the application stage: one must be a citizen, and citizens must be approved by management, whether for conventional beauty norms, race, ability, or attitude.<\/p>\n

Management can, of course, be preferable to workers for a number of reasons, from having someone else take care of the clerical work, to wanting to work alongside others instead of in isolation.[4]<\/span><\/a> And as sex workers tend to flow between different types of work and work settings, many can attest to the differences therein and what works best for them. Some of the trial and error, in which violence isn\u2019t unusual, is circumvented, however, through information sharing on social media. Or, where one has already experienced the harms within a particular work setting, others may be there to join in solidarity, whatever that may entail.<\/p>\n

III. Community as Disruption<\/span>[5]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I\u2019m out in public and see a man with that <\/em>type of box-dyed hair, I immediately assume he\u2019s some client of mine who was a flop in bed and who I\u2019ve since forgotten <\/strong>about\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely one of the ten archetypes of client. He thinks he\u2019s into \u201ckink\u201d but really what he means is pressuring you not to use a condom and doggystyle or cowgirl\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>2018 in Boston. A new Twitter account but this time under a legal name. You created it to share literary works, academic works, to learn of contemporary poetry or interventions in critical thought. As your life changes back to being dominated by sex work, so does your relationship to social media. You\u2019ve burned out in an MA program, already knowing you\u2019ll be dropping out of the grad program you\u2019re currently enrolled in, unable to afford it unless you\u2019re working to the point that you can focus on little else. \u201cNo provider is seeing five clients a day,\u201d you see an escort post. You\u2019re averaging eight to ten clients a day, at half the rate as you previously worked.<\/em><\/p>\n

The hotels are cheap, your rate is cheap, there are weeks at a time that you only go outside for a cigarette and look upon the view of a highway you don\u2019t have a car to drive on, the drive away. There are half bottles of champagne throughout the day, but it isn\u2019t inebriation coming through in your increasing social media usage so much as the social isolation. You\u2019re not only working alone; in person, you have only met two other workers in the greater Boston area, and these two people you met first on social media.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are people agreeing with this tweet? Being a wife is not like being a sex worker lmao do you not know shit about criminalization and social reproduction? Begging these <\/strong>girls to read Fortunati or Federici\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

2019: Your social media posts remain casual, flippant, and off the cuff. You post bitchy little comments about this or that, the occasional mirror selfie, or lightly comical observations from your daily life. You\u2019ve also become more professionalized, newly in a PhD program though often absent from it as you fly across the country for weeks of work during the academic term or spend each hour-long train ride refreshing your ad to say \u201cavailable now\u201d instead of doing the reading you always brought a book for.<\/em><\/p>\n

You have no idea who the people are behind the anonymous accounts that follow you, but you follow them back anyway. Even as you used your legal name when you opened your account, you felt yourself\u2014your real self, your non-work self\u2014to be similarly nameless and faceless. <\/em><\/p>\n

While isolation may not be inherent to one\u2019s work, it is a condition that many workers know. The criminalization of workers\u2019 collectivity, an additional layer upon the criminalization of work itself, is bypassed. Here, workers may become radicalized or organize for political efforts and consciousness raising on national or global level as readily as they can locally.<\/p>\n

\u201cI block anon accounts whenever I see them. They spread too much negativity on here. <\/strong>I\u2019m simply minding my business and making my money\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201clmao not this bitch again. These girls will blame whorephobia on a random hooker just <\/strong>venting about work like anyone else\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Sarah Ahmed\u2019s conceptualization of the feminist killjoy, one who does what she argues to be the necessary work of killing joy in our current social context to build something greater, may provide an opening as one looks at the \u201cnegativity\u201d known to some anonymous social media accounts.[6]<\/span><\/a> There is a power in the so-called negativity, a power which may lead one to the conclusion that the hooker killjoy, too, is a vital figure in the work of liberation. The hooker killjoy doesn\u2019t just complain about their work. In doing so, they beckon others to consider their own relationship to labor and capital, a moment of self and social reflection that workers in any industry may wish to avoid. The hooker killjoy lets clients know that even when they\u2019re told, \u201cYou\u2019re different, you actually brought me to climax,\u201d it\u2019s said to everyone else. It, too, is labor.<\/p>\n

\u201cGuys, Gabe has been so supportive of my work since we started dating, but last night we got into a fight and he said \u2018you don\u2019t even have a real job.\u2019 I haven\u2019t texted him all <\/strong>day. Am I overreacting?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0“<\/strong>I have the worst client tonight, I don\u2019t understand how he comes out of the shower stinking like he\u2019s never bathed. I wish I could cancel but I really need the money\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not every worker considers themselves to be an advocate, and there is no reason to believe they need to be. In the context of workers\u2019 collaboration being criminalized, building the opportunity to vent together is in itself a disruption to state and para-state interventions within these networks. As worker advocates cry out that legislation, new and old, is killing them, building the infrastructure to stay alive can be everything. Here, community itself functions as disruption.<\/p>\n

\u201cI miss Backpage.<\/strong>[7]<\/a> Remember when you didn\u2019t need social media, or a blog, to do this? I spend more time on socials than I do with clients.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cFellow companions, I was recently sent home when traveling abroad. At the border, I was detained and they pulled up all my ads and interrogated me for two hours. <\/strong>Message me for details.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cPlease like this post if you can see it! I\u2019m trying to test whether I\u2019ve been <\/strong>shadowbanned.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite sex workers\u2019 transformation of the online workplace into a place of community building in the movement for labor rights, acknowledging this isn\u2019t to say that social media has been a net good for sex workers. Platforms that profit from workers\u2019 presence and labor nonetheless ban them without warning,[8]<\/span><\/a> stripping workers of both their client base and the worker community that years of their labor have built. The changing landscape includes but is not limited to the implementation of US Senate and House Bills, Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act \/ Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (FOSTA\/SESTA.)[9]<\/span><\/a> Under the guise of preventing coercion within the sex trades, these bills led to the closure of sites through which vulnerable workers could find and screen clients for their survival. In doing so, they have also made social media more of a need for workers than a choice. Here, a paradox emerges: It is through this medium that workers can share relevant information or their feelings about its harms. This isn\u2019t a \u201cgotcha,\u201d but rather, a testament to the vigilance required amongst workers. Where one form of surveillance emerges, violence will follow. Where that surveillance emerges, others, too, will soon face its impact.[10]<\/span><\/a> To speak it, or to warn others, is yet another measure toward survival in the face of all attempts to thwart it.<\/p>\n

IV. Intracommunity Disruption: Lateral Oppression and Resistance<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re a PMC<\/strong>[11]<\/a> white woman and you become a sex worker just for your empowerment or for some little memoir, just know you\u2019re taking jobs away from people who actually <\/strong>need it for their survival.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cThe workers you\u2019re denigrating as upper middle class might actually come from <\/strong>working class backgrounds. We have to lie. It\u2019s our job\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cSo what if I come from money? I enjoy this. What do you want me to do, work for some <\/strong>corporate bank?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cThere have always been women from upper middle class to upper class backgrounds doing this work. It isn\u2019t a new social phenomenon and it isn\u2019t taking away work from <\/strong>anyone.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cYou\u2019re gentrifiers. I said what I said.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

2018: You get off the bus in Chinatown and head over to the nearest print shop where you order a couple dozen copies of the pamphlet for a new organization. Today is their first meeting, forty-five minutes into Brooklyn; in only a couple of years, they\u2019ll be a global human rights organization representing sex workers at UN summits, providing mutual aid, and engaging in advocacy transnationally. Today, the meeting is held in a dive bar. You\u2019re not Black, but you and everyone else, regardless of race or worker status, are invited to participate in various capacities.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe girls are at it again,\u201d one of the members states. Everyone knows what this is referring to. In Manhattan, three white women put together a new sex workers\u2019 initiative. Today, they decided after this other meeting had already been scheduled, would be their first meeting as well. The organizers have no experience. They attach their work names to the effort. They call their media connections for coverage. They fall apart in a year.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Hello, my suitors! Today I\u2019m announcing a new minimum booking of $25,000 (my two hour rate) effective immediately. Thank you for understanding, and thank you, Mr. S, for buying me a secondary mansion in Montecito where I can host my incalls.\u201d<\/strong>[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

And so, like public criticisms of the client, manager, or outside oppressors, intracommunal criticism functions as a form of disruption as well, from vague quips, to parody posts like that above, to direct replies to those engaging in lateral whorephobia. The term \u201clateral whorephobia\u201d was coined by sex working theorists and advocates to describe the social dynamic in which workers do not exist as a monolith but hold social power relative to one another based upon the relative respectability of their particular trade in the industry.[13]<\/span><\/a> A phone sex operator, for example, can be considered less oppressed than an escort, both in criminalization and in social stigma; as such, they may choose to identify in a way that distances themselves from the escort, hoping to gain the respect of others through oppressing their less privileged peers.<\/p>\n

In addition to hierarchies that exist amongst workers who hold different occupations within the commercial sex trades, the omnipresent social strata of race, gender, and class are, of course, present in these industries as well. Though some of these identities are obvious, others may be trickier to identify. Class drag, or the worker\u2019s self-representation as coming from a more privileged social class than they do, is omnipresent within the sex trades, with many believing it to be a means to both increased safety and a greater number of clients.<\/p>\n

If it is true that sex workers are often working in isolation, then it is just as true that workers have not always been on the job in proximity to peers of different socioeconomic backgrounds or present-day conditions. On online platforms, those holding more social privilege may choose, at times, to associate primarily or only with others of similar identities. There are, however, overlaps among social circles, or people of a wide range of identities coming together to pretend to be \u201chigh end, elite\u201d workers. It is in these intersections that disruption against actors and forces outside of the industry turns inward and against itself. While sex worker solidarity is far from a myth, it can\u2019t be mistaken for something innate. The work of coalition means seeing the range of people and thoughts who can build together; it means seeing where there are shortcomings and naming them to build a path toward a better future.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of you think we shouldn\u2019t be political on our work accounts, but my clients <\/strong>tell me it\u2019s part of why they want to see me\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI do not support all whores! Some of you bitches are very dumb\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like the dominatrix whose occupation inherently contradicts the already inconsistent logics of sex worker exclusionary radical feminists, countering the representation of passivity as they beat men and tell them what to do, an opening for challenging hegemonic representations of the sex worker is made in these online platforms. Workers are no longer seen by clients exclusively in solitude or simply performing side by side with little other engagement visible to others. The dynamic nature of social media has been utilized even by workers with more bourgeois sensibilities to express their political disagreements, fictive views from their work persona, or genuine beliefs.<\/p>\n

Even as a handful of workers bring forth arguments that are contrary to any leftist values or any notion of labor solidarity, a point still stands: Intracommunal differences; advocacy for progressive social change in the face of adversity, even if contested by some workers; and the critical thought behind them are made visible to a greater public. \u201cVisibility\u201d and \u201crepresentation\u201d will not save any marginalized population and, in fact, can be detrimental to them. What is clear, however, is that the disruption to the status quo that once was more exclusive to activist spaces is now a part of the digital commons.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/span><\/a> Omise\u2019eke Natasha Tinsley, Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders<\/em> (Duke University Press, 2020), 2.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/span><\/a> Carol Leigh, interview by Joey Plaster, ACT UP Oral History Project, August 14, 2017. https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/glbths-actuporalhistory-leigh-carol-20170805-1-sc<\/a><\/p>\n

[3]<\/span><\/a> Laura LeMoon, \u201cNordic Model Interventions,\u201d SWOP Behind Bars<\/em>, July 31, 2021, https:\/\/www.swopbehindbars.org\/post\/nordic-model-interventions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/span><\/a> Ava Cardonna, \u201cFrom Brothels to Independence: The Neoliberalisation of (Sex) Work,\u201d Open Democracy<\/em>, March 1, 2019, https:\/\/www.opendemocracy.net\/en\/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery\/from-brothels-to-independence-neoliberalisation-of-sex-work\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/span><\/a> A reference to sex workers\u2019 rights advocate and historian Melinda Chateauvert\u2019s book Sex Workers Unite<\/em>. Melinda Chateauvert, Sex Workers Unite: A History of the Movement from Stonewall to SlutWalk<\/em> (Beacon Press, 2015).<\/p>\n

[6]<\/span><\/a> Sara Ahmed, \u201cFeminist Killjoys,\u201d in The Promise of Happiness <\/em>(Duke University Press, 2010), 50.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/span><\/a> A classified advertising website that operated from 2004 until 2018, when the United States Department of Justice seized and took it down. Backpage included a category for adult services, relied upon by many in the industry for their survival. Per one worker in a 2019 study, they \u201cfelt encouraged to engage in activities outside of [my] comfort zone because [I]need the income.\u201d (M.\u00a0 Peterson, B. Robinson, and E. Shih, \u201cThe New Virtual Crackdown on Sex Workers\u2019 Rights: Perspectives from the United States,\u201d Anti-Trafficking Review<\/em> 12 (2019): 189-193, www.antitraffickingreview.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n

[8]<\/span><\/a> See \u201cPosting Into the Void\u201d by sex worker advocates Hacking \/\/ Hustling for a comprehensive study on the phenomenon of \u201cshadow banning\u201d and its impact upon sex working communities. Danielle Blunt et al., \u201cPosting into the Void: Studying the Impact of Shadowbanning on Sex Workers and Activists,\u201d Hacking \/\/ Hustling<\/em>, 2020, https:\/\/hackinghustling.org\/posting-into-the-void-content-moderation\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/span><\/a> See \u201cWhat is \u2018SESTA\/FOSTA\u2019?\u201d by sex worker advocates Hacking \/\/ Hustling for a comprehensive definition of this legislation as well as a detailing of its impact upon sex working communities. \u201cWhat is \u2018SESTA\/FOSTA\u2019?\u201d Hacking \/\/ Hustling<\/em>, accessed December 17, 2024, https:\/\/hackinghustling.org\/what-is-sesta-fosta\/<\/a>. <\/sup><\/p>\n

[10]<\/span><\/a> Bardot Smith, \u201cAlgorithmic Warfare,\u201d presentation at Harvard, November 7, 2019, Hacking \/\/ Hustling<\/em>, accessed December 17, 2024, https:\/\/hackinghustling.org\/algorithmic-warfare-bardot-smith\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/span><\/a> Professional-Managerial Class\/<\/p>\n

[12]<\/span><\/a> Though other examples are either autoethnographic or not specific to any community member, here I am thinking of a singular account on X, formerly known as Twitter: @parodyescort<\/p>\n

[13]<\/span><\/a> Heather Berg, Angela Jones, P. J. Patella-Rey, and Corinne Schwarz, \u201c\u2018Nothing about Us Without Us\u2019: An Interview on the Sex Worker Syllabus,\u201d Ethics and Social Welfare<\/em> 16, no. 2 (2002): 149.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephanie Kaylor is a multi-genre writer and researcher based in the Hudson Valley. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and UC Santa Barbara, where she is currently completing her PhD in Feminist Studies. She is the author of Ask a Sex Worker!, a poetry collection interrogating the role […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1209,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions\/1209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}