Like most of you, I’m sure, I was excited to see the package of articles in The New York Times Magazine yesterday on the state of women’s rights globally… I am thrilled to see this point made so prominently. But there’s also something about the article that rubbed me the wrong way. I think the banner on the Times’ website sums it up: Saving the World’s Women? When I tweeted last week that the “we Westerners must save women!” phrasing rubbed me the wrong way, a few folks piped up to offer alternatives. Emily Douglas suggested, “How about getting out of the way so women can save the world?” I like that perspective a helluva lot better. The international women’s rights groups that have worked on these issues for years (WEDO, MADRE, AWID, etc.) are absent from the articles. And, consequently, so is their framing that in order to build a better world, women need to be empowered to be an active part in making that change. The U.S. swooping in to “save” them will not actually fix things in a sustainable way. International women’s rights groups, most of whom are working in collaboration with women on the ground, emphasize the importance of supporting grassroots movements and change that is driven by women rather than imposed on them.

I think that one of the hardest things that sex workers today face is that if they are out at all…and if they are proud at all, there’s such a burden to have to all the time be like, ‘No, I do sex work and it’s great and let me tell you why,’ to change people’s perceptions. And the fact is that it’s not great all the time, a lot of the time it sucks, because it’s a job and they all suck. And all service industry jobs are basically the same- you get clients that are rude or smelly, or distasteful in whatever ways, and you know, it’s like anything else. I know I don’t feel comfortable talking about that to other non-sex worker people, like shitty clients that I had, or times when I felt like I did the totally wrong thing, or times when I was really scared or times when I was just like, ‘Ugh, I so don’t want to go to work,’ or whatever it is. The fact is that it’s just like anything else, but like when there’s so much against you, you’ve got to be like, ‘No no no no no, it’s rad, all the time.’ And I think that’s hard.

I wasn’t raised to think I was going to be valued for my looks. But I came out into the media world, and had people look at me as a young woman who was white and tall and slender, that notion of what they thought of as a “pretty girl” kicked in. I had political news journalists express shock and surprise that I could write at all— that happened all the time, and some of those people are the biggest names in the media today. It’s embarrassing, you know— when you’re young, you’d like to think that people are interested in you because you’re [sarcastically] “so brilliant” with your writing—that’s what I wanted to think. I wanted to think that Tad Friend would leave my apartment and just go, “Wow, she raised my consciousness” [starts laughing uncontrollably], and I’m sure that was the last thing on his mind!