Sometimes I Wish I Had Had an Abortion.
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Lets talk…..Period.
To help keep a healthy body and mind during the second lock down, I have been walking each day. I wrap up warm taking along a flask of coffee. Last week my walk ended abruptly. I felt the familiar wet warmth down below and a cramp crept around my lower stomach - I had an unexpected visit from Aunt Flo, the crimson tide, mother nature’s gift, and any other euphemisms you wish to call it. (Personally, I like to call it the pain in the arse!) Muttering under my breath as I turned back, I grumbled how unfair life was. I know, I know, but in my defense, I am extremely irritable when it is my time of the month.
Do you know what I did when I got home? I had a warm soapy bath. Afterwards I grabbed a sanitary pad; a hot water bottle and made a sugary cup of tea. Then as I stretched out on the sofa with cushions popped behind my back, a water bottle on my belly and a hot cup of tea in my hand, I had a reality check. Here was me pissed off that my walk was caught short, yet I can come home and have everything at my fingertips. What do people do who are homeless or on low income? What does a person do when they are on the street or have to decide that milk Is more important for the kid’s cereal?
When thinking of hygiene products for the homeless: soap, razors and toothpaste spring to mind. Why has tampons and pads eluded me? Why did I not think of these essential items? I decided to investigate further and started exploring campaigns and charities that help with distributing hygiene products.
There are many organizations and charities working hard to raise awareness and trying to put an end to period poverty. After an internet search I could see there were many worthwhile causes such as Blossom Project, Dignity-Matters, and Bloody Good Period to name but a few. However, the one that resonated with me was Tricky Period who are based in London.
Tricky Period was set up by Caroline Allouf and a small team of volunteers who were already working to support homeless people on the streets of North London for Street Kitchen. Caroline wanted to address the horror for many women that live on the street and are unable to afford basic period products. At Street Kitchen Caroline and other volunteers were regularly hearing stories from women with no choice but to shoplift, skip meals and use newspaper to provide their monthly protection.
‘None of these things we say are an exaggeration,
I mean in the terms of people literally having nothing.
Coming in stained, having to steal, using leaves in knickers.’
It was then that Caroline realized that something had to be done and the grassroots project was born at the beginning of the year (2020).
Caroline and the gang launched Period Poverty at the Vagina Museum in Camden London in February 2020. The Vagina Museum is about erasing the sigma around the body and spreading awareness of gynecological anatomy. Caroline said, “this felt totally apt”.
The gang distribute pads, tampons with applicators and without, wipes and disposable bags to women’s shelters, refuges, mother and baby units as well as the women on the streets via breakfast outreach. Tricky Period have teamed up with ShowerBox London, a free and secure shower and changing rooms which travel around London providing support for the homeless and this makes for a good partnership. “It’s a great opportunity to start conversations with the women” said Caroline, and notes that throughout outreach she has noticed a rise in homeless women. “Sadly, and this is a non-scientific approach from being out there, but there are noticeably younger women”. Some backdrop of these cases are of domestic violence, leaving home and then having nowhere to go in lock down. Caroline has come across women that will sleep with men just for a bed for the night.
Photo by Anna Shvets.
Tricky Period are working with a growing number of council libraries who are acting as product pick up points. They have been collaborating with libraries to provide period products to those experiencing homelessness and poverty. “It’s a model that can be replicated,” explains Caroline. The free supplies to libraries enable the women to come and get what they need under a no questions asked policy. Caroline says “the idea of libraries is that it is one of the few places in the community where everyone is welcome and safe – especially the homeless, people can walk into a library and not be looking over their shoulders or feel self-conscious.” Anyone who needs to use the service can tick off the items on a form and hand it over to a librarian. Caroline adds, “Just like they would go out the back to find a book that wasn’t on the shelf they then come out with the products in a bag”. She is keen to reiterate that this is a no questions asked policy.
With COVID-19 closing libraries Tricky Period have had to adapt in the lockdown and have been able to use family centers with open access. The future of Tricky Period is to focus on a space where women can feel safe, have a coffee, and enjoy the company of others. “Not just between 3pm and 5pm, and we are already connecting people to make that happen.” She is also excited to expand the library model.
I asked Caroline to describe the essence of Tricky Period:
“Tricky Period are just human beings building trust and relationships.
There are other projects, amazing projects out there. What matters to us
is that the people are getting what they need. We want to be able
to develop relationships with the most vulnerable women and support them.”
The realization of the lack of access to sanitary products is shocking. Many low-income and homeless women often don't have access to tampons and pads at all. Women confront the demoralizing task of finding resources to soak up blood and then having to find privacy to change and dispose of used items. Menstruation is not only a physical challenge for vulnerable people, but it’s also a psychological and social issue. I have never had to make the decision on either spending money on food so that I am not hungry or spending it on pads so that I am comfortable and dry. I’ve never had to use napkins from McDonald’s, and I don’t need to rip up a t shirt to line my knickers.
Pads, tampons, and liners are desperately needed. Initiatives, charities, food banks, and shelters distribute them, but they're often in short supply. Even more so in the current climate (COVID-19). Please check out and support your local and regional organizations and if you can please donate.
Resources:
Justina Jameson is an emerging writer from the UK. When she is not writing at the weekend, she can be found holding down a 9 to 5 as a Senior Administrative. Justina has a Social Welfare and Community Degree which examines the quality of human life in a society in all its dimensions. She feels strongly in female empowerment and believes that women should make personal and professional choices that they want and not let society make them very guilty about those very choices. Justina likes art,dogs, books, laughter and lives with her long tern partner and their dog Cooper-Star.
Unfinished Solidarities
N is a seemingly quiet, perceptive woman in her late 20s whose only caveat before she came in for her first therapy appointment was to ask that she be the last client of the evening. She didn’t fill her intake form which is a preliminary information gathering sheet that helps me get some basic medical and personal history of clients/patients before the appointment in order to better understand them.
A lot of clients either forget or need several reminders to fill it before an appointment. Nothing unusual there. N dropped me an email and asked me if it was ok for her to verbally give an intake when she came to the clinic. I agreed.
We began our session with a cup of tea; she seemed apprehensive, uncomfortable. Again, nothing unusual for first timers in therapy. I assumed it was the sudden exposure to the contemplative silence of a therapeutic setting. Suddenly she burst forth with a single, shaking sentence –“Ma’am, I have to tell you about my job.” My assumption was that she perhaps was unemployed and maybe needed pro bono help or wanted to inquire about sliding scale payments in which clients pay as per financial wherewithal per session. Before I could ask anything, she sighed – “I work as an escort. I am not sure if you counsel people like me. I am sorry if I am wasting your time.”
“People like me” is a phrase that can carry such translucent contradictions; evident yet indistinct. A person using it either feels mousetrapped, isolated in their identity or very sui generis. The only response that felt suitable in that moment was to sit back and listen rather than assume what was N’s story.
Over a period in time as I have gotten to know her, I reckon she is a rarity among those who use sex work in India as their main source of income. N works on her own, can exert some autonomy and makes choices based on her own discretion when it comes to her clientele. This has not come easy to her. She is a high-school dropout who was slung headfirst in Bombay’s chaotic riddle when she was barely 16. The map to her present has been involute. Over the years as she moved from being a dancer in one of Bombay’s infamous dance bars to her current profile of being what she calls a date-for-pay. She is incredibly smart and she has taken time and effort to educate herself on her rights even though the realistic expression of those rights is usually negligible and compromised in a country that pivots on patriarchal supremacy dehumanizing and delegitimizing the personhood of women.
Accessing mental health help is already a thorny path in most parts of the world. Common cultural stigmas, limited funding, poor practitioner-to-patient ratios, disorganized psychiatric epidemiology and a widespread inclination towards a pathologizing, purely bio-medical model that often doesn’t factor psychosocial causation for mental and emotional wellness all contribute to this quagmire. This is especially flagrant in the Global South where poverty, climate apocalypse and increasing ethno-fascist regimes have impaired an already derelict public health infrastructure, if at all one call it that.
“In South Asia, depressive disorders accounted for 9.8 million DALYs (95% UI: 6.8–13.2 million) or 577.8 (95% UI: 399.9–778.9) per 100,000 population in 2016. Of these, major depressive disorders (MDD) accounted for 7.8 million DALYs (95% UI: 5.3–10.5 million). India generated the largest numbers of DALYs due to depressive disorders and MDD, followed by Bangladesh and Pakistan.”
The burden of depressive disorders in South Asia, 1990–2016: findings from the global burden of disease study (Ogbo, Mathsyaraja, Koti, Perez & Page)
The high prevalence of depression-spectrum conditions cause a massive overall health challenge to physical well being leading to increased co-morbidity for diabetes, coronary diseases, poor infant mortality rates and neo-natal health, increased self-harm and suicidal ideation as well as substance abuse. This complex weave is rendered more inelastic due to prolonged wait time for getting any reliable medical assistance and a general lack of affordability. This is exacerbated when you are positioned at the intersection of caste, gender, class and sexual orientation in such a way that disenfranchisement is means to keep an electoral imbalance for cheap political wins.
Sex work till date carries its own taboos irrespective of how progressive a society claims to be. While studying for a forensic course, I was always appalled by how victims of “serial offenders” especially murderers who started their trajectory by attacking sex workers were referred to as “high risk” as if the nature of their work was solely responsible for the inhumane treatment meted out to them, not the internalised misogyny of the those who committed the violence.
In a no-nonsense essay, “How being a sex worker affected my mental health”, British sex worker and activist who uses the pseudonym Mitzi Poesener wrote -
“However, contrary to popular view of sex work, it is not a one way ticket to a breakdown. The difference between us and workers in other industries is that when we seek help we are asked to look at the ways we’ve kept ourselves out of poverty as shameful.”
N’s hesitation towards revealing her profession became more palpable when she described her attempts at visiting a psychiatrist while in the throes of a heavy depressive spiral brought about by her mother’s death a few years ago. She was both mentally and physically violated in a place designated to be refuge away from judgment. This had put her off from seeking any further help till, wait for it, a regular client of hers convinced her to try therapy again and passed her my details. Apparently, he had a significant social media presence and that’s how he’d chanced upon me. She researched me for days before she called my practice for an appointment.
The National Human Rights Commission of India has recently issued an advisory that now lists sex workers as informal workers in India. This move came in the wake of COVID 19 and also to take cognizance of the fact that a lot of sex workers in India are from marginalised sections of the society. The real-time impact of this declaration is something we can only wait and assess over time. A close friend who works towards providing affordable healthcare to sex workers in remote, often neglected red-light districts in two-tier and three-tier Indian cities is not as jubilant about this new development because they believe that systemic corruption coupled with a pervasive casteist, sexist bent of our society won’t let such proliferation make any real dents. Their pessimism has its own historicity.
There is also the more vicious and embittering side of this coin which involves human trafficking, sex tourism and forced prostitution that often sweeps up the most defenseless amongst us. Young girls, particularly from oppressed communities (e.g. lower castes in India or BIPOC and immigrants elsewhere) are often sold into flesh trade and these rackets stretch across a vast geopolitical radius. Socio-economic disparities are growing as capitalism fails to realise most of its promises. Once again, there is limited community-focused work on rehabilitation for those who have experienced these atrocities.
In a study titled “Burden and correlates of mental health diagnoses among sex workers in an urban setting”, the researchers drew a valid and significant conclusion –
Women in sex work faced disproportionate social and health inequities compared to the general population.
Evidence-informed interventions tailored to sex workers that address intersections between trauma and mental health should be further explored, alongside policies to foster access to safer workspaces and health services.
The key challenges to mental health help for sex workers can be listed as follows –
Compound Stigma– Even trained professionals often show stringent biases stiffened by inflexible echo chambers in which they exist. It is harrowing for someone to wade through all the aforementioned complexities that make mental health care usually unreachable to then face reproach or flippant remarks about the nature of their work or worse, character. Clients of mine have narrated abdominal experiences of dealing with GPs, psychiatrists and psychologists that bordered on uninformed, invasive and prejudiced/small-minded abuse. In a world that often invisibilizes people who engage in consensual sex work or, worse, makes them feel chronically unsafe, trusting a professional is an act of courage. This courage extinguishes itself when the professional is unable to remove themselves from a regressive and essentialist understanding of sex and sexuality. For example, a former sex worker and single mother who visited a local hospital for guidance about what she believed to be PTSD and vaginismus, she was repeatedly chided about her past just because she chose to be honest while providing her medical history.
Affordability & Access – Sex work– for a significant percentage of people who willingly engage in it– is still an unsteady source of regular income. If you are not covered by sufficient insurance which again is hard to access if you are primarily working as a freelancer within an irregular setup, being able to find a reliably inexpensive psychiatric or therapeutic intervention is often a pipe dream.
Individualizing of Harm – The most popular contemporary models for assessing mental health tends to lean heavily towards a biomedical model that has its uses but often doesn’t make enough space for psychosocial factors involved in a person’s suffering. One can’t deny that neurochemical and biological markers are relatively important when discussing mental health and illness but we need to be more receptive to the formulation around social inequities linked to race, class, caste, gender and sexuality based discriminations that dent people’s wellbeing on several levels. The DSM or the Diagnostic Statistic Manual which of often used by mental health practitioners to code and diagnose mental illness is a debated creed and for good reason but still it considers/includes both disorder/disease and distress models of mental health. Yet, there is a disproportionate attention paid to pathology where a person’s wellness or illness is often attributed to faulty wiring on an individual level v/s ecology where a person’s response to acute and persistent exposure to debilitating circumstances is relegated to the back-burner.
Marginalisation – Queer and trans folks are further penalised for engaging in sex work and often experience the most dreadful consequence – an ever looming threat to their lives. Fighting for a dignified acceptance of identity is compounded by limited vocational options that respect the whole human being. In a report published by National Center for Transgender Equality, it was noted that in the US nearly 40% of the respondents were denied shelter when homeless and almost 60% reported that they had attempted suicide at some point in their lives. In India, the presence of caste further stigmatizes a transgender person’s right to safety and acceptance. This often enables hyper-sexualization of transgender identities by cisfolks to devastating consequences. Till date, there is little to no inclusion about trans rights in most mental health syllabi used in colleges in India. Queer theorists and academics are working to change this but it is slow. Most research around their health and wellbeing is often carried under a cis gaze as well.
The sizable role played by law enforcement’s frequent viciousness against those in sex work is also undeniable. Most sex workers report frequently barbaric encounters with members of the police force. There have been various news stories and investigative journalism pieces that refer to collusion by members of such agencies in sex trafficking rings.
Sex work is a complex conversation that can’t take place if we begin viewing its entire existence with a jaundiced eye. It involves precarity for those who participate in it. There are evident dangers to mental health and wellness for sex workers but let us also understand and pay attention to how much of that is caused by social prejudice against sex and sexuality. On the one hand, independent sex workers who engage is mutually consented activities are pathologized, limited rehabilitation is available for those women/persons who have been rescued from illegal sex trade that festers across the landscape of the Global South.
Mental health practitioners need to educate themselves and be open to learning as they go. Accessibility for on-time healthcare is a matter of human rights. Antipathy cloaked in “traditionalism” is an offshoot of social conditioning and it needs to be disassembled. This has to be a process that rests on unconditional compassion, not a one-time event hinged on dubious charity. Challenging our own programming as therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists, our implicit scripts built on vague morality and questioning the lack of support for folks merely on account of their profession is only the entry point of this change. Centering the needs of our clients in therapy is the first rule of therapy. This shouldn’t be forgotten or compromised.
Citations:
The burden of depressive disorders in South Asia, 1990–2016: findings from the global burden of disease study (Felix Akpojene Ogbo, Sruthi Mathsyaraja, Rajeendra Kashyap Koti, Janette Perz & Andrew Page) https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-018-1918-1
How being a sex worker affected my mental health (Mitzi Poesener, Dazed Digital)
https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/35938/1/how-being-a-sex-worker-affected-my-mental-health
Criminalisation of clients: reproducing vulnerabilities for violence and poor health among street-based sex workers in Canada—a qualitative study (A Krüsi, K Pacey, L Bird, C Taylor1, J Chettiar, S Allan, D Bennett, J S Montaner, T Kerr, K Shannon)
http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/4/6/e005191.full
Psychiatric morbidity among female commercial sex workers (Marboh Goretti Iaisuklang and Arif Ali) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5806326/
Burden and correlates of mental health diagnoses among sex workers in an urban setting (Nitasha Puri, Kate Shannon, Paul Nguyen & Shira M. Goldenberg) https://bmcwomenshealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12905-017-0491-y
Scherezade Siobhan is an award-winning psychologist, writer, educator and a community catalyst who founded and runs The Talking Compass — a therapeutic space dedicated to providing mental counseling services and decolonizing mental health care. Her work is published or forthcoming in Medium, Berfrois, Quint, Vice, HuffPost, Feministing, Jubilat, The London Magazine among others. She is the author of “Bone Tongue” (Thought Catalog Books, 2015), “Father, Husband” (Salopress, 2016) and “The Bluest Kali” ( Lithic Press, 2018). Find her @zaharaesque on twitter. Send her chocolate and puppies — nihilistwaffles@gmail.com. Tweet at her @zaharaesque.
Late Bloomer
She had been called many names. In high school they called her prude. She didn’t want it to follow her to college. In drunken rounds of Never Have I Ever, with a crowd of new freshmen acquaintances that maybe could be friends, she often lied when the questions turned to sex.
Never have I ever had sex in public! The brunette with bangs laughed as she proclaimed her perceived innocence. She too would laugh along with the others, hoping her own face wouldn’t show the truth, hoping the conversation would skirt the next question that would often come up; when was your first time?
She couldn’t come up with a story that quickly. The vodka cranberry she was drinking in the red plastic cup was going to her head. She was scared she would blurt out the truth. Her turn was next. She chose to change the topic.
Never have I ever done heroin. They could take that as they like.
Tease. Her roommate called her one evening after she turned down the advances of the boy whose dorm was two doors over.
She felt too ashamed to tell them at eighteen she had never been kissed. She was a late bloomer as people liked to call it. And the way he leaned in towards her at that party made her breath catch in her throat, because she couldn’t let that be her first time. She was too in her head, too sober. What if she was bad, and he knew?
Sometimes she would make up stories if the conversation turned to first kisses. She always had a backup to tell. Her first kiss was when she was thirteen at a summer camp. Or fourteen with her friend’s brother. Usually she would steal a story from others if the groups didn’t intersect. Her problem was keeping her stories straight.
She hated tampons. She only had one success story when she nearly fainted onto the bathroom tile. Removing it hurt much more than she anticipated. It had to be ripped out of her, as if it didn’t want to leave. She didn’t try again.
She became an expert at excuses when the time came. Pool parties were skipped for homework. Sometimes she had a migraine. Sometimes she would absent-mindedly forget to wear her bathing suit. I’m so stupid, she would tell those who would listen.
She had her first kiss at long last, late into her nineteenth year, drunkenly in the middle of a dance floor with a twenty-four year old serviceman on leave. The night ended with him lying down in a bed begging her to come over, while she retched into the toilet with the door closed. She continued to tell others her first kiss was at a summer camp.
She scheduled a doctor’s appointment for the pill in her twenty-second year. Her friends told her gynecologists gave it out like candy. The first doctor refused a prescription, scaring her with stories of fatal blood clots. She left the appointment and cried in her car.
The next doctor took her excuses of not needing a pelvic exam.
I already got one at the last doctor but she wouldn’t let me go on the pill. But I’m not using it for sex. I’m a virgin. I just want a more regular cycle.
The doctor wrote her a prescription without hesitation. The pill made her anxiety spike but she didn’t have to fake migraines anymore.
She continued to avoid tampons, feeling intense shame as she handed a pack of pads to the cashier at Target. Often times she would buy unnecessary purchases just so they had something else to scan.
---
She met him in the summer on a dating app. She liked that he spent time outdoors and he liked dogs. She wondered if her standards were too low. He suggested they meet up at a rooftop bar in Greenpoint. It was packed with other twenty-somethings, all who could most likely have sex, she thought.
He was a tad overweight and shorter than he seemed in his photos. But his confidence made up for it. He ordered for her, handing over a vodka soda. She didn’t have the heart to tell him she preferred a glass of wine. She drank it anyway, even though the vodka tasted cheap.
He spoke only of himself. I know Matt Lauer, he bragged. Back when it was something to brag about. She counted how many times he asked her questions; only once, when he asked if she wanted to go to his place.
My roommates are gone, we’ll have it to ourselves. And it’s not far from here.
Okay.
She didn’t really want to, but she was twenty-four. She needed experience.
He led the way to the Bedford Avenue L train.
I thought you said you lived not far from the bar.
Yeah, only three subway stops away.
They rode deeper into Brooklyn. She wished it was walkable. She started getting nervous, and wondered if she was about to get assaulted. She pushed down her fears. They entered his apartment. It was covered in half-drunk water glasses and a fine layer of dust over the Ikea furniture.
Nice apartment, she lied.
He led the way to the couch where they began to make out. His body on top of hers in a strangely comforting way although she felt it difficult to breathe. He struggled to unclasp her bra beneath her tank top. She continued to lie there, kissing him back, with her bra unclasped but her top still on. She wondered what the point of it was.
Can we take it to the bedroom? She asked.
Yeah, okay.
He led her down the hallway into a small room. His bed was undone with its brown sheets still scrunched up from where he got up that morning. She felt uncomfortable with her chest chafing against her tank top. She thought longingly of her bra lying on the couch.
He took off his white t-shirt and she followed as he stared at her breasts. She always felt insecure about them. They were too far apart, too pointy. Only one other person saw her breasts in college. Back then she had baby hairs that surrounded her nipples. She always wondered if that’s why he broke up with her the next day. She shaved them from then on.
Come here, he whispered.
She followed, sitting next to him on his dirty bed. He pulled her hips close and pushed her down onto the bed as he followed a line from her navel to her neck with his lips. His grunts made her uncomfortable, but she pretended to like it as his lips met hers. His mouth tasted like vodka. She wondered if hers did too.
She straddled him in her jean skirt. His hand inched towards her lace underwear that she only wore for special occasions. She often preferred the kind that covered her whole ass. But the lace made her feel confident. Like someone who could have sex.
They continued to kiss, her mimicking how the women do it in movies, as he pecked her neck in a way that reminded her of a bird. She tried to open her mouth into an O but the movement felt foreign.
She felt a small thrill as he slid his stumpy fingers close to the lace. He struggled with getting around the fabric; she felt his fingers fumbling against her skin. She pretended to like it.
When his finger went up inside her she yelped so loudly she made herself jump. The sharp pain lingered.
Are you okay?
Can we stop?
She stood up before he could answer, running to the bathroom. She stung where his finger just pinched. On the toilet paper she drew up blood. While taking in slow, deep breaths, she asked herself if she just lost her virginity. She decided she kind of did.
Is everything okay? He asked when she walked back into his sweaty room. He was laying down on the bed, looking bored.
Yes. That hurt me, so I don’t want to continue.
He grunted. That’s okay. But she didn’t feel that he meant it.
He asked if she wanted to sleepover. She agreed, only because she didn’t want to take the subway alone at this time of night. She borrowed one of his many college t-shirts to sleep in. He went to Michigan. His room was hot as he refused to turn on the air conditioning.
It’s too hot, she said as he tried to spoon.
Eventually he rolled over to his side and fell asleep. She stayed wide awake.
The next morning he asked if she would like to go to breakfast.
No thank you.
She left his apartment in her jean skirt and tank top that felt like too much for a Saturday morning. She felt proud she had one sexual experience to boast about. Even though there was nothing to boast.
The boy and her never spoke again.
She didn’t know much about her body. She was a late bloomer. Her period came on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, around the time her doctor began threatening blood tests to figure out what’s wrong. She didn’t know what the clitoris was or what her vagina looked like. She knew she bled monthly, but her cycle was a mystery.
She still couldn’t use a tampon. Sometimes she would buy birthday cards to accompany her pads. She had a drawer full of unused ones. Deep down she believed the inability to use tampons meant she wasn’t a real woman.
Her friends suggested that maybe she had endometriosis.
Yeah, maybe. Except her periods were fine.
Are you sure you have a vagina?
I’m pretty sure, yeah.
Well I read a story about a girl who didn’t have one. She had to get surgery.
She shrugged. This conversation isn’t helping, she thought.
Her pain didn’t seem like chronic pain. It only happened when something tried to penetrate her, and would always be partnered with fast breathing. Sometimes she felt like she was going to faint. She knew the symptoms of fainting. She was used to it.
Sometimes she would skip a period if it coincided with a family beach trip. She turned back to Tinder. She came across a profile of a guy with glasses and messy brown hair that she always found attractive. He too liked the outdoors and dogs. And he had a photo of him and his mother. She swiped right.
It was the fall. Her and Mike met at a bar in Williamsburg. He didn’t order for her, but he paid. He asked her questions. He seemed like he did love his mother, but not in a bad way. Their relationship started off slowly with a soft kiss in Domino Park. She liked how he gently held her face in his hands, and swept her hair behind her ear before going in for it. They ended their night with a quiet goodbye as he hailed her a cab.
The next date they spent at McCarren Park. Then to the Cooper Hewitt on the Upper East Side. then they would meet up for coffee or ice cream. When he invited her to his place she happily accepted. They kissed on his bed. His sheets were gray, not brown. They didn’t need air conditioning.
We don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with. He said it like he meant it.
They continued to kiss, the kind of kiss that felt like it wouldn’t end. It felt easy with him.
And yet. She felt the familiar panic as things started to get heavier. He pulled away.
Are you okay?
She was surprised he noticed. What do you mean?
You’re clenching up.
Oh. Well. She wondered how much she should say. She decided to go for it.
I’ve never had sex before. Or done really…anything.
Oh.
If you want to leave that’s fine. She said this as she remembered it was his apartment.
No. It’s just a surprise. That surprises me.
Yeah. Me too.
All they did was kiss. She spent the night. The next morning she stayed for breakfast. He made eggs.
She continued to see him. The longer they dated the more they tried sex. She enjoyed the kissing, but when he got too close she would freeze. She had rules. No fingers. No surprises.
She shocked herself with how little she knew about her own body. The boy taught her the terms of her own vagina. She struggled with saying the word vagina, preferring to call it the short “V”.
Friends tried to help.
Maybe try anal? My friend and her boyfriend have anal all the time.
Yeah, maybe. But she didn’t have much desire to.
Eventually, he got tired of the rules. He got tired of not having sex. They both got tired of the arguments. Once out of frustration he changed into his clothes to leave.
If you want to go, just go. She cried from her bed.
He stared at her from the doorway as if deciding his fate.
What are you doing? She asked as he crawled in beside her.
I don’t want to go.
They laid like that, him clothed, her naked, arms tangled, knowing it was over.
---
She felt she failed. She felt she was a failure. Google became her therapist.
Can’t insert tampons? She typed.
It showed a how-to of tampon insertion; Just breathe, wash your hands, insert at a forty five degree angle. But that didn’t help. She couldn’t do any of that without her hands shaking and her heart racing. She couldn’t insert anything without the sharp pain. She searched for other things.
Sex hurts me?
Endometriosis again. Nothing helpful.
She scoured the deep pages of Google. Eventually she found a definition that actually made sense. When your vagina spasmed uncontrollably when foreign objects entered, causing intense, uncontrollable pain, it was called Vaginismus. It was an unexplained anxiety, usually stemming from trauma. But she didn’t have trauma.
Was there treatment?
Yes. Therapy. Both mental and physical. She ordered a set of dilators. She used the dilators every day.
Lying down on her yoga mat, she practiced pelvic yoga exercises and listened to calming, meditative music as she would slowly enter the plastic sticks covered in lubricant inside herself, starting from the smallest, similar to a pen, until she graduated to the next size up. The largest mimicked the size of an average penis.
Are they like dildos? Her friends asked.
I guess so.
Except they hurt. Even the one barely bigger than a pen. But she willed herself. She wanted nothing more than to be normal.
The boy and her stayed in touch. She ran into him several times on the streets of Brooklyn. New York could feel so small.
She started dating again. Or tried. She kept swiping left. There was always something, and she couldn’t satisfy anyone. She felt nothing anymore.
She found a therapist who charged one hundred dollars per session. She stared at the person she was expected to spill all her secrets to. She chose her because she was younger than others. And a woman.
Are you familiar with vaginismus?
Yes. Sex hurts me.
Have you tried getting drunk?
No, I’ll try that.
Maybe this wasn’t a good therapist. And of course she tried that. She used to drink to blackout before having sex. But even when she was so drunk the room would be spinning, the pain remained. They sat in silence for a moment as she tried to think of a way out.
Were you assaulted when you were younger?
No.
Are you sure?
I guess not.
She didn’t have a past sexual trauma. That she knew for sure. But when medical professionals forced their opinions that she did, it confused her. She felt crazy. She remembered her previous gynecologist, the one who wouldn’t prescribe her the pill. She began to lose faith in the medical industry, and began to doubt the current studies on female health.
On her worst days she wondered what made her so broken. And she would feel bad for feeling this way, as other people had actual problems. But she felt her problem was still a problem.
You’re your own worst enemy. Her friends would tell her. But she felt something like ill will towards them. Because they could have sex. They knew how to insert a tampon. They got pap smears with no problem.
You’re right, I am. She would agree.
She turned twenty-five. She believed she would never be normal. She found a midwife who said she could help. The empty stirrups made her want to vomit. The midwife directed her to her office. She shared her computer screen, pages and pages of sex toys.
I want you to buy a vibrator.
A vibrator?
A lot of my patients with vaginismus have had success with one. It may make sex easier and more enjoyable.
Okay.
You and I will work together to get you ready for a pap smear. Your condition is extremely normal, and curable.
She left the office feeling more hopeful than she had before. Later that night she spent forty dollars on Amazon. It was hot pink and shaped like a flower.
---
A few months later she ran into the boy on the corner near the deli they once got sandwiches from. They hugged. He looked good.
I was going to get a coffee. Want to join me?
Yes.
She followed him. He ordered two iced coffees. He paid.
It had been months since she’d last seen him, but it felt like no time had passed. Still, she felt nervous.
What’s wrong? He asked. He could always tell.
I’m better. I wanted to tell you that. I think I can do it now.
Yeah?
Yeah.
You look good.
They stared at each other. She knew sex would always be more difficult for her than others but she was willing to accept it. Willing to face it head-on to get over her trauma-less trauma. She just couldn’t use a tampon.
Shelby Crane (she/her) is a freelance writer and comedian based in Charleston, SC and Brooklyn, NY.
My Sex is For-Profit, Just Not Yours
Our whole lives, women are taught to fear sex, sex work, and sexuality. Whether the message is given directly by our parents or indirectly by the society surrounding us, we learn it. Often, we don’t unlearn it.
Cautionary anecdotes tell us that a woman who enjoys sex as a form of liberation is nasty or somehow lesser. While folktales remind us that a woman who relegates sex and family life to mere duties is virtuous and reverent. These stories are told to indoctrinate us into a world that would rather use female sexuality for profit without compensation. The problem is whether we are getting paid or not; women are constantly partaking in sex work. Not because we voluntarily entered into that field or even consciously chose to be sex workers, but because businesses and individual men alike continue to profit from the female form. It is a part of the unmonitored “market for sex and affection.”
Our society doesn’t value female work; this goes beyond equal pay and touches on every aspect of women’s rights. The labor that goes into being beautiful, or even just presentable, goes uncompensated but not unutilized. This is the same with the work that goes into housekeeping and motherhood and speaks to why our society isn’t eager to pay for those tasks. They are a woman’s place - it is a duty, not a job.
In a capitalist society, women are like nature; we hold no value unless we are broken down for profit. This manifests in the unconscious competition that plagues the female psyche. On top of that, the lingering knowledge that men are free to consume and discard women at will pours fuel onto the fire of female insecurity.
Whether it is using women in advertising, free to enter clubs, or inviting us out to a party - the idea that women are products or currency is everywhere. This keeps us vying for attention and value at the expense of not just ourselves but for all women. In the eyes of the capitalist world that surrounds us, we are no better than a tree in essence. The only difference is that we can partake in the market, in so far as we can change ourselves to be more appealing - ripe for the taking.
Ashley Mears, a prominent sociologist, and former model, thought of bodily capital when writing her first book and developed it even further in her second book, Very Important People. It is the sum of all the potential value we have to offer to this market. In an interview with Tyler from the Mercatus Center, Mears makes it clear that we can only access that value with the help (manipulation) of a third party - usually a man. She writes about how this plays out in the context of the high-end party scene where promoters recruit young, broke models from the streets of New York to be pretty near rich men. But this concept of needing a third party to manage or reap the (minor) benefits available to pretty women spills over into every other part of life.
“Women can be gorgeous, but our society reinforces and maintains that beauty is worthless when she controls it. ”
We all need a “promoter,” someone who manages our beauty for us in some way, someone that unlocks its monetary value. If a woman is beautiful, she must pretend to be ugly or not comprehend her beauty. That way, a third party (a man, generally speaking) can explain to her the depth of her attractiveness. Not only does this put the man in control of her capital, but it distances her from understanding the underlying labor and value therein contained.
When we are merely submissive participants, lame objects in this market, we forget how much value there is in that bodily capital, which we do have.
That doesn’t mean we can’t reject this structure, but it does reframe how we can view sex and sexual relationships. Even if we can recognize all the micro and macro impacts of this invasion of capitalist logic on interpersonal, sexual, and friendly relationships, can our partners?
Understanding the subtleties of a market system should make us question what it means to have respectful and healthy sexual relationships.
Ornela, who works with the feminist organization FENA in Argentina, argues that we can’t be having good sexual relationships. Saying, when I spoke with her: “La relaciones sexo afectivas se han convertido en transacciones, sean capitalizado. Sean vuelto capitalistas”
“Sexual and emotional relationships have become transactions; they have been taken advantage of. They have become capitalist currency.”
Both in the sense that sex with powerful men gains women clout and in the sense that being seen with hot women gives men access, leverage, and power. The problem is that this power is not evenly distributed. Women don’t gain enough from these interactions for them to be fair, but oppression is built into the capitalist superstructure.
This extends beyond consensual sex. Part of the alluring nature of the superstructure is that it imbues the undeserving with power. When men hold all the tools to unlock the intrinsic value that is trapped within the female form, they are inclined to feel that they own it. That female sex, sexuality, and to an extent, labor is theirs for the taking. This leaves a gap in the system that turns sexual violence in all its forms into another malignant transaction. Yet another way that men can exert their unearned superiority.
In a way, capitalism has come to pervert the act of sex on a whole. Making it a perpetual form of structural violence that forces women into a subservient role. The unpaid laborers upon which this market is built. Much like the arbitrary use of a fair trade label, “consensual” sex is a rubber stamp that negates the oppression that is embedded in this market.
She goes on to say: “No estamos en relaciones sexo afectivas responsables y libres sino que las mujeres somos objetos de un mercado de consumo. Hablamos de un mercado sexo-afectivo donde los hombres son los que compran, los hombres son los que tienen poder, los que tienen la plata, son los que tienen mejores trabajos, [etc].”
“We are not in affectionate/sexual relations, responsible and free; instead, women are objects of a consumer market. We are talking about the market for sex and affection where the men are the ones who buy, the men are the ones that have the power, that have the money, that have better jobs, [etc.].”
There is an undeniable truth to what she says. Men have access to better salaries, better jobs, more money, all of these things from which women are deliberately excluded. Everything about our various cultural understandings of the role of bodily capital in society predicates on a system in which men are the profiteers in this market. They hold all the power.
When you apply this logic to relationships, as we have come to do, we can never have equal partnerships. Moreover, women are continually partaking in this unspoken sexual commerce - unwitting participants in this nuanced form of sex work.
Ultimately, your sex is always for profit because someone is gaining something from your implicit oppression.
Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley
STD Testing at Home: My Experience with NURX
My experience with NURX, the at-home STD testing service.
Photo by Natali Voitkevich via Pexels
I was not paid to endorse or use NURX, I bought and took their STD test out of my own curiosity.
In the first couple weeks of the pandemic, the questions were all about the essentials. What's going to happen to me? Will I be able to get toilet paper? Will global distribution chains of food dry up? There were many immediate concerns such as these while we huddled indoors and bought camping equipment, pasta, and sourdough starters. But as the months wore on, other less pressing issues started coming to the forefront.
One of the pressing ones for me was the question of reproductive healthcare. My normal clinic was closed except for emergencies, and I didn't think my regular STD checkup would be considered one, although mentally I was close. As a sexually active person who is also polyamorous, I am usually fastidious about STD and sexual health checkups and until the pandemic, I would go every three months or so. But now, I didn't know where to go. It was starting to make me feel anxious, and I wanted to put my mind at ease, and take care of my health.
Almost as if by magic, the internet daddy Google started advertising Nurx to me via instagram and facebook and all of the other unmentionable places I lurk on the internet, and I was immediately interested. A STD test you could take at home? Perfect for quarantine. Nevertheless, I hemmed and hawed about getting it because I was unsure if it was as reliable as it said it was, and also it came with a decent price tag, whereas previously, all of my STD tests were free through my insurance. Not knowing when the pandemic would end though, I decided that it was worth a shot.
When the kit came, it was packaged in a cute little box that opened up in such a cute way I was almost disappointed that there wasn't shoes or chocolates inside. There were many different packages and labeled bits and bobs, but the instructions were really easy to read and easier to use. It was definitely a bit weird and uncomfortable to do the tests myself, but it was outweighed by my genuine curiosity and slight feeling of glee in doing these on my own. Finally, I can play the Doctor my mom always wanted me to be.
One throat swab and one vaginal swab later, I was left with the blood test. You use a little disposable lancet to prick the side of your finger and then you squeeze several drops of blood onto a little tab. I think of the many times I've been to the lab to get this test done, and how they've always taken two or three vials of blood out of my arm. Can they really accurately test me with just one finger of blood on a little business card? Time will tell. This process is not for the faint of heart, it does hurt a tiny bit, but surprisingly, it was not as bad as I thought it would be, and I could easily do it again if necessary.
After all of that, I packaged everything up neatly and put it into a little box to send back to the company. Postage is already prepaid so I just took it to my local post office to tip into the mail slot. It took about 10 days to get my results back, which is a little longer than they promised on the website (but considering the overworked state of healthcare in this pandemic I was more than willing to give them a break), but I got my results by text, email, and then through the private messaging function on their website. All negative! Yay for me.
Would I do it again? Absolutely. I really enjoyed the process and overall, it took me fifteen minutes maximum to do all the testing bits (I had to wait until the blood card fully dried before I could put it back into the packet which took a bit longer) but honestly, it was a lot more convenient than having to go to the clinic. A feature that I also liked was that you could reach out to your designated provider via the website at any time with your health questions, just as you would at the doctor's office. The cost can be a bit prohibitive, I think it was about $200 dollars for me overall, but during a pandemic in which my usual methods of sexual health monitoring aren't available? This worked just fine and I'll definitely be doing it again.
Dick Pics and Why I Want Them
The only thing that’s been giving me hope during the pandemic is dick pics, a story.
“Rather, they were tentative offerings of themselves, saying, ‘this is how I see myself, this is what I like about myself, and I hope that you like it too.’ They are feminine, and thoughtful in a way they never were before.”
In a time of quarantine, sexting has made a raging comeback. It’s easy to see in terms of the raging increase of the use of dating apps like Tinder and Bumble, as more and more people turn to socially distanced outdoor hangouts, or zoom dates, Netflix shared streaming and texting marathons. Everyone needs a dedicated friend to shelter in place with, and you gotta admit, there’s something kinda sexy about the end of the world.
I hopped on Bumble before the shelter-in-place order came down, and stayed in touch with two or three guys after it started. It felt dangerous to feel like there was a person in the city who was into me, and that I couldn’t have them. Or, for the one who lived by himself, it was comforting to know that if all hell broke loose, I had someone to save me. (ahem, I’m a feminist, but if the purge is about to happen, I’ll take the guy with muscles, please and thank you).
For the most part though, I’ve spent lockdown alone in my apartment with my computer and my vibrator. Before, it was so easy to invite guys back and watch them leave in the morning while I sipped my coffee, but now, not so much. Now, I felt like I have taken fifteen years off of my life and reverted to being the geek I was back in high school. I can no longer rely on body language or facial expressions to read a man. Now, I had to hang onto every single word of his text messages, which were always timed a strategic two or three hours after I had sent mine. The weeks stretched into months, and I was glued to my phone, waiting for the next ;).
I was climbing up the walls and I needed some relief, and that came in the form of dick pics. Almost all of them were unsolicited, and some sent around the distasteful hour of 3am, but each one was received with delight and immediate, careful examination. I’m dating men who are solidly in their thirties, and I’m impressed with the exponential improvements in penis photography since the last era I got dick pics, which we will not mention except to say it was the before times.
No longer is there dirty laundry in the background, or a stack of pizza boxes just beyond his thigh. Now, there were tasteful rugs and private bedrooms (not private apartments, mind you… who are we kidding, I still live in San Francisco). Now, I’m getting mood lighting. Now, I’m getting Armani boxers pulled down, and manscaping.
One photo in particular, is one of my favorites I’ve ever received. Taken from mid thigh, it’s a tasteful upshot of the bottom of the shaft all the way up to the head, with a tuft of tissue paper placed in anticipation on his stomach. His shirt is pulled up to crop-top level, and gloriously, part of his face is peeking out from the right side of his glorious dick. This was not a hastily taken photo, it was a carefully staged shot that had taken an extra layer of dexterity, most likely a timer, and care. I was absolutely delighted. It meant he cared! And more than that, it meant that he cared about what turned me on.
These dick pics hit different during quarantine. They aren’t a taste of things to come, but a careful and vulnerable exploration of what that man things I would find attractive. There was no text that accompanied any of them that told me exactly what holes he wanted to shove himself into, because gross. Rather, they were tentative offerings of themselves, saying, ‘this is how I see myself, this is what I like about myself, and I hope that you like it too.’ They are feminine, and thoughtful in a way they never were before.
In a world in which many guys will ask girls for nudes, no matter what, and have the nerve to get annoyed when girls don’t comply, it’s been nice to be on the receiving end. Maybe in some ways quarantine is the great equalizer. While I’ve sent a number of nudes myself, I no longer feel the pressure to do so, and I almost always ask for compensation in the form of a dick pic. With ample amounts of time at home, the men in my life have no excuse except to finally, carefully, pose. I wanna see the family jewels, boys.
When the pandemic ends, who knows if I will see dick pics in the same way again. Will they go back to the drunken and frenzied, aggressive and unwanted photos of before? I hope not. I’ve grown to love these dick pics for their nuance and care. Let’s create the space where men can send a sexy nude, where they can be the object of desire. I want to sit back and see.
The Whorticulturalist is the mother of this magazine. She is a sex-positive blogger and creative who enjoys rock climbing, dancing, and camping. In her spare time, she’s probably flirting.
Where the Dancing Never Stops – an Essay
A personal essay addressing how sex work can be empowering at times, but also very traumatic considering the misogynistic framework in which sex work often operates.
A couple of months ago I wrote a post about how shaming sex workers makes you a bad feminist, which you can read here. It was an argument that women who shame other women for their line of work was not uplifting, but instead incredibly harmful. One thing that this article failed to review however, is that sometimes the cost of empowerment is high; and the labor of feeling empowered in the face of misogynistic men in a sexist system can be overwhelming. We support all types of sex workers and think every reason to do sex work is valid, and understand that it is an excruciating job, while at the same time this essay is a different perspective on some of the potential effects working in such a marginalized industry can leave on a woman.
The walls are strange. They slant so the roof skims above my head in the darkness and a far off light shows what I’m wearing: suspenders, a black bra, thigh-high stockings. In this sloped room, the shadows are dancers, or should I say strippers, and the shapes around them their customers. My dream soon finds me in the changing room surrounded by fluorescent lights and big mirrors, the reflection showing something unformed, and when I stare at the beast, time stops. I’m in a night terror. I have them regularly in different variations. Here’s another: I’m in a Victorian-style house rich with velvet curtains and rugs and I’m crawling between rooms because a man is chasing me. I don’t know who the man is or why, but I keep going. I scuffle between rooms until I can’t tell one from the other. I never know how the dream ends because I usually wake before it ends, stiff with anxiety. I don’t tell anyone these anxieties because empathy is limited to those from the sex industry. There’s a level of shame implicit to sex work which sticks like warm molasses and marks every aspect of life, no matter how forward-thinking people are. I’ve danced for most of my 20s and still have a bitter taste in my mouth whenever asked of my past.
Photo by Obi Onyeador on Unsplash
It’s not strange for a feminist to decry the sex industry, but it’s also not strange for feminist sex workers to tell of the empowerment they find from using their bodies as they wish. The dancers have agency when it comes to the right to choose, and a wield sexual mastery not otherwise seen in everyday life through pole dancing and expressing themselves sexually. You can be a feminist and a sex worker, but when considering the industry as a whole, the bitter taste only sours.
When writing this story, I contacted an old friend I’d stripped with to ask her perspective on the industry since she’d danced for almost a decade and was one of the biggest earners I knew. Quickly, she declined. She was doing the same thing I’d done since quitting, a voluntary witness protection program hiding her identity from society. Even for the most confident of dancers, anonymity is vital for self-preservation, both mentally and spiritually, something I understood well.
For a short while in 2012, I took it on myself to be proud of my job, mostly stripping, and told people about it honestly. Of the reactions I received, here are a few: one man asked what it was like to sleep on a mountain of cash for fucking men. Another sent a long, detailed email listing the reasons I was an embarrassment and disgusting, and some men asked for favors, either a boob flash or a 'private show' depending on their confidence and how well they knew me. Although the women's reactions were more supportive, there was still an air of concern for my career choice and that I was doing something wrong.
Sometime later, feeling discouraged, I looked up the nicer things people wrote on blogs and forums, finding perspectives from strippers. I read about sexual liberation and the choice to use the body and having a say over who could and couldn't use it. This was when the industry started to leave a mark, and something in those words resonated. I'd first started dancing for the rush of using my body and wanting to emulate the women who worked hard and saved for their future. They were confident, beautiful, interesting. But I was drained. I'd told myself I'd get used to the late hours, and the bruises on my knees, and the spiteful words, and the grabbing, and the managers trying to fuck me, and the security guards groping me, and the waitresses looking down on me, and the expectation of giving something for nothing, and the need to party, and the burning taste of vodka, and the 'extras' you needed to do to earn money because everyone else did them, and the dirty looks from women with their friends, and the men who got too attached, and the men who waited and followed me after my shift, and the constant bodily assessment, and the fingers that probed too close to my vagina, and the men who threw beer and coins on stage to make me feel cheap, and the way even after I showered the grime stuck to my skin and never quite washed out.
Photo by Eric Nopanen on Unsplash
Looking back, the liberation is faint and unclear. Where is the liberation in an industry formed by a society that shames women? The job is sexually liberating but within a short spectrum of acceptability dictated by the men and club owners. I've never seen a hairy dancer. Nor have I seen larger dancers. I've seen curvy dancers and older dancers (I was told at 25 I'd soon be put to pasture), but on the whole, dancers are expected to look the same, dance the same and alternate the same outfits provided by the sex stores, usually lycra and seven-inch heels. On induction to some clubs, a pamphlet is given with the accepted attire and the places to get it.
In 2014, before I quit dancing, I started at a club known for its beautiful women and luxurious outfits. After my audition, I received a guide on the weekly outfit changes. Wednesday was lingerie, Monday bikinis and swimsuits, weekends for ballgowns, long spandex numbers provided by the club at a $150 fee. With fines for not dancing the correct way or wearing the correct outfits, we were the unified, undistinguishable embodiment of male desire.
The liberation fades further when I consider agency and the choice to dance, choosing who to strip for and when. Private dances work on a commission basis with a 70/30 cut between the dancer and the club, and when you're having a bad night and the money is slow, it's hard to say no to a half an hour private show paying a hundred dollars. I recall picking the bad eggs from the crowd when dancing on stage and groaning when they approached me afterward for a private show as I'd only earned fifteen dollars and couldn't say no. These were the men that grabbed too hard, probed too close, and requested things like 'spreading my lips apart' so they could get a better look. And for the right price, I indulged them because everyone else did. My threshold was someone else’s payday. But the point is if men didn’t feel the need to be sexually placated and need to indulge in a spectacle of feminine sexuality, these clubs, these requests wouldn’t exist. There’s also the drug use: customers constantly looking for a coke hook-up and the need to re-examine your limits each night if you want the big money.
Strippers aren’t always the victim in this narrative, but they’re not respected either, and the ramifications for working in the sex industry are far-reaching and insidious.
After I made a clean break from the industry, I experienced something beyond my usual anxiety, which kept me tense and unable to forget the past. At night I'd wake in a sweat with nightmares reliving a bad night dancing, or I wouldn’t dream at all, just wake frightened and lost. In the daytime, I’d have flashbacks. I’d stop and be lost in a private room or on the stage in a club while my chest squeezed around my heart, aching. The feeling was so strange and vague words can’t describe it, though it’s somewhat like being adrift in time and reliving the worst days, every day.
I approached a therapist, and after telling her my history and symptoms, she informed me I was experiencing PTSD. The words themselves felt strange on my tongue. I'd heard of soldiers and people with trauma experiencing PTSD but not for stripping and entertaining drunk men. The symptoms under the disorder include 're-experiencing trauma' through memory or flashbacks, 'physical and mental distress', 'avoidance of thoughts and feelings', and others like restlessness, anger, and sleep problems. I recognized and knew all the symptoms, but I couldn't connect my experience with the words. The place where the issue stuck was the fact I'd chosen to strip. There was no coercion or desperation. Usually, there's the perception workers of the sex industry are trapped with the need for money, but the money was only a bonus for me, and I never felt forced to maintain the lifestyle only that surrounding circumstances made it difficult to leave, like having a five-year gap on my resume and not adapting to the nine to five day. I wasn't a victim yet my body was telling me otherwise.
After leaving my therapist’s office, I thought about all the times I’d come home after work and cried, either from being groped in a private show or being shamed by men when they’d ask whether ‘my parents were proud of me’. I thought about this last incident in particular. On a Thursday or Friday night, I’d been dancing on stage and just finished my set, when two men called me over. Their table was on the path to the change room, so I walked over, holding my bra over my breasts. 'Your parents must be really proud of you,' one of the men said. The other laughed, and I didn't say anything. In isolation, this seems insignificant, though when taken in context with the physical harassment and countless other slurs, the abuse becomes more apparent. But an answer to this is why not leave? And an easier response is it didn't seem so bad at first. The first year, you mark it off as drunk men, not knowing what they're doing. You're sure he didn't mean to slap you that hard or touch your breasts that way. The second year, you expect the insults and the grabbing, but you're weathered to the fact. You make sure you're always watching for wandering fingers or unwanted slaps. The third year is when you start thinking about getting out, but it's harder than you think because the money's so easy and the work's so easy if you just put in the effort. Everyone else does, so why not you? The fourth year is when you question things in detail, like the motive of the man who verbally abused you in a private show for lying. He asked several times if I had kids and only got madder the more I said no, but that’s not the point. It’s not relevant whether I had children or not, the goal of this man, and most other men that I experienced who go to strip clubs is to enforce a level of power over women either physically or psychologically. This is where the trauma started for me.
For some, dancing is a way to control the narrative, to take back control of bodies and feminine power and sexuality. But if society weren't formed around a culture that shames and reduces women physically and psychologically, would these impulses need to be fulfilled in the first place? We can choose who we dance with and when, but we don't choose how men speak to us and how men treat us. It's them who choose, them who pay and they who decide to come back if we're good enough.
Lisa Easey is a recent university graduate completing a Bachelor of Creative Writing and is currently a freelance writer on Upwork. She also hosts a small book review podcast called Book Island that you can follow on Instagram @bookislandthepodcast.
Beginning in a Time of Corona
A short statement about where I am, and why I’m starting this magazine.
Photo credit to @cottonbro
The weekend before shelter-in-place, I went on four different dates with four different men. If sexual interactions could be saved up like water in a camel's hump, I wanted to make sure I was full up. I dated like I was going to be shot into space the next day. I kissed like I was getting shipped to war, and I had the feeling that, as I said goodbye to each man, I was obliged to light a candle in the window.
Living in San Francisco is like being a third grader at a school designed by drag queens. The city is obsessed with its own culture of work hard play harder. There are putt-putt golf courses featuring holeside bottle service, bowling alleys hidden underneath concert venues, and underground raves that take place in hastily rearranged WeWork spaces. At 29, the city made me feel ancient and out of touch. I was already falling behind in every aspect of my life, and my weekends had begun to revolve around avoiding missing out on the “Next Big Thing.” This desperation extended to the men in my life, who, while on dates with me, would always look over my right ear as if a slightly better, more successful or better-networked woman would appear out of nowhere that would be more worthwhile of their time. Dating was less about personal connection and romance as it was an algorithm that needed to be optimized. And I had fully bought into the system with a devil-may-care, volume-focused approach to tindering that would've put Mae West to shame.
There was a desperation and strange nostalgia that tinged my last four dates. Meeting up at bars felt tender and fragile. My boys and I would spend long silent minutes observing the chaos and camaraderie of people crowding in for their drink orders like we were watching black and white films of our grandparents dancing. Things used to be so good, we thought to ourselves, while still living it. We clutched at each other and squeezed hands like we'd just struck the iceberg, and later on in the night when we were in bed, we would face each other and cuddle, pretending we could feel the icy black water lap around our ankles.
The following Monday I opened the windows at midnight to listen to the city shut down. The streets had already been empty for hours, and for the first time since moving to the city, I could hear the birds. I went to bed alone, thinking that it would be a good time to masturbate, but not having the emotional energy to give myself that small reprieve.
The next weeks were strange ones. I started having incredibly vivid sex dreams about people I went to highschool with, but was too dorky to talk to. I started sexting with a guy I had hooked up with three years previously. I brutishly and forcefully sent unsolicited nudes to the guys I had been seeing, with varying levels of joy at one end of the scale to one guy on the other end telling me, 'I know you meant to cheer me up, but this is just more depressing.' I started to fantasize about elaborate rituals for washing hands in which men I couldn't see would come over and shower immediately, changing into sterilized robes that I had someho prepared. We would rub soap over our hands for hours on end and squirt purell into each others palms, gazing iris to iris while we rubbed it in and waited for it to dry. We would then carefully, delicately intertwine our fingers.
I started going for walks late at night so I could avoid as many people as possible, but walking past all the shuttered and boarded up restaurants and bars made me cry. I pictured the neighbors starting to refer to me as the weird sobbing girl. The highlight of the second week was starting to communicate with my neighbors across the street with post-it note missives and incredibly detailed drawings. I started to chat with the woman on the third floor, and found out her cat was named Oliver. One night at the end of one of my walks I stood under her window to feel a little closer to her and looked at my own dark apartment. I saw that my neighbors above and below me had all also been communicating with Oliver's owner, and I felt a deep sense of betrayal that could only be equaled by my childhood trauma of watching the Sonics move to Oklahoma City. A different neighbor across the street with a penchant for wandering around his apartment shirtless also caught my attention. He asked for my number via paper towel and permanent marker taped to his window, and we've been flirting ever since. I rearranged my desk for a better view, my apartment being higher than his I suddenly feel protective over him. I start doing my hair and posting more on instagram. I started walking around my apartment naked.
It's week three and I find myself unspooling gently. I feel constantly high, although it's been four days since my last edible. I've started to get to know my neighbors so intimately that now I feel like I can trust them with their own privacy again. They will be safe without my care, without my vigilent watching. I'm texting the boys less, and masturbating more. I've taken up painting more, and reading the books I always said I would read later. I started to write without irony about setting boundaries with men. And I started to gather little dust bunnies of courage from under all the responsibilities I had been ignoring and started planning this magazine.
This magazine was something I had wanted to do for a long time, and I had even had the name treasured since childhood, when my dad would let me read chain letters outloud to him while I spun around in his office chair. "You can lead a whorticulture," one read, "but you can't make her think." In another email, my dad chuckles as I say aloud, "a good cowgirl always keeps her calves together." It took me a long time to understand these jokes, to read these as ideals or cautionary tales, and I carefully grafted them onto my personality as a form of performative chasteness. It took me longer to shed that mantle in exchange for a short skirt and a pair of Docs. I think about feminist labor, and consider the pros and cons of charging my boyfriend for every time he has to ask when our anniversary is. I think about how much I spend on shampoo and then look up projected earnings for girls on onlyfans.com. I think about how I used to write but I've been too scared, and too traumatized, to write for years now. I think maybe this is the time to take the plunge. When the world is falling apart, the space is created for radical change. In this space, perhaps it is the time in which we can tend to and cultivate the cultural institutions we live under, and perhaps grow something a little more beautiful.
Reap what you hoe.
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