the text isn’t mine, just to note, but i’d like to bring this to your attention. thanks goes to the author. cheers.

17 December is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.

I would like you to take time on Sunday to remember the dead. Take five minutes if that’s all you’ve got. Light a candle. Say a prayer if you’re the praying type. Read the list of names. Talk to people. Pressure politicians and the press urging them to take sex workers’ safety seriously. If you’ve got money, donate to a sex work project, a drugs project, a charity that tackles whatever issues you consider most significant. If you’ve got time, look into volunteering for such a charity. Do something to show you care.

It’s all the more important in the light of the Ipswich murders. We need to discuss the sex industry rationally. We need to acknowledge the diversity of experiences of sex workers. We need to recognise that some sex workers freely choose and enjoy their work, and others do not, and neither category represents the industry in its entirety, and both categories deserve protection. Protection does not come from criminalising sex workers, or their clients. Both of these measures further jeopardise sex workers, leaving them more vulnerable to exploitation and violence. We need to decide whether our bottom line is eradicating the sex industry altogether – and with it sex workers themselves – or tackling the actual abuse suffered by sex workers, whether it’s the abuse that leads some into the sex industry, the abuse perpetrated by some clients, or the abuse of a society that turns a blind eye to the needs identified by sex workers themselves.

These are some of the sex workers worldwide who lost their lives in the past year.

Paulina (Juan Pablo) Méndez Cartagena, 22, Guatemala City, Guatemala

Rene L. Tuttle, 19, Flint, Michigan, USA

unnamed, teenage, Lombardy East, South Africa

three unnamed transgender sex workers, Guatemala City, Guatemala

Zelia Harrison, 32, Peterborough, England

unnamed, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

Brandon “Alexis” King, 21, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

unnamed, Pereira, Colombia

Vanessa Lackey Franklin, 45, Houston, Texas, USA

“La Maña”, or “Isabel”, in her fifties, Barcelona, Spain

Kristi Hoenig, 21, Chicago, Illinois, USA

unnamed, 36, Brisbane, Australia

Bridget Gray, 22, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

Kumkum Bhattacharya aka Puja, Calcutta, India

Pham Thi Truc Linh, 25, Singapore

unnamed, Rugby, Western Cape, South Africa

Ahmed Khalil, 14, Baghdad, Iraq

Ellenore Leander, 52, Paarl, Western Cape, South Africa

Pamela Ann Goss, 50, Houston, Texas, USA

Janneth Marin, 36, Elizabeth, New Jersey, USA

unnamed, 37, Paramaribo, Suriname

Monica Said, 23, Kizota, Tanzania

Theresa Merrie Innes, aka Theresa Goodwin, aka Terri, 36, Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada

identity unknown, Singapore

Bonnie Lynn Jack aka “Bunny” aka “Heather”, 37, Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada

Debra Barajas, 44, Nebraska, USA

Brianne Smith, 25, Glenwood, Iowa, USA

Sheila Ann Turner, 42, Perryman, Maryland, USA

unidentified, 32, Broadbeach, Gold Coast, Australia

Geovanny Calderon aka “Barbara”, Guatemala City, Guatemala

Victoriya Nuosu, aka Vicky, 28 or 35, Madrid, Spain

Lynne Barwick, 29, Hull, England

Loretta Lynn Roberts, Austin, Texas, USA

Samantha Tapper, 24, Shrewsbury, England

Annie Eels, 55, Shrewsbury, England

Lakita Stubblefield, 21, Houston, Texas, USA

Donna J. Riley, 36, Kansas City, Missouri, USA

Georgina Kimble, 37, Des Moines, Iowa, USA

Jonathan Marquez, 26, Davao City, Philippines

Karen Redmile, 37, Brisbane, Australia

Kayla Lorianne Wood, 16, Moreno Valley, California, USA

unnamed, 23, Johannesburg, South Africa

Ami Patel, Ahmedabad, India

Molly Jean Tilts, 20, Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, USA

Kim Raffo, 35, Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, USA

Tracy Ann Roberts, 23, Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, USA

Barbara V. Breidor, 42, Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, USA

Tania Nicol, 19, Suffolk, England

Gemma Adams, 25, Suffolk, England

Anneli Anderton, 24, Suffolk, England

Annette Nicholls, 29, Suffolk, England

Paula Clennell, 24, Suffolk, England

If you want to repost this anywhere, or e-mail it to somebody, then you’re welcome to.

One Reason I Haven’t Been Around So Much

Straight As Folk

make sure you go read the other articles too, because they’re all fantastic.

The Pub Alternative

so then, vibrators……..

i know, sorry, i’ve been very quiet in here recently. it isn’t exactly that i have nothing to say, but i’ve been lacking time to say most of it and i’m also going through something of a dry patch of experience right now so there is nothing new, bewildering and juicy to impart at this time.

i have, though, just started online dating again and i’ve ordered a new vibrator, so i presume that all is not lost for me just yet.

on the former……. weird, isn’t it? i haven’t spent many hours trawling the profiles yet, but i have had some contact with a few of the guys on there. the first we shall call the Local Likely Lad. LLL is an indivdual who actually, purely for his looks, put me off the very first time i tried internet dating. i’m sure he is exceptionally sweet and charming in real life, but his profile and photograph leaves something to be desired. he hunted me down with the precision of desperation the first time i signed up and, sure enough, this time he was the first to send me a message. in fact, just double checking his message makes me think that i could be being slightly harsh in not giving him the slightest chance, but….. well. i have to draw the line somewhere and i might as well sort out my priorities straight away.

plus, he’s an inch shorter than me, which really never bodes well.
the other guys i’ve had have been a bit of a mix. there’s been the eighteen year old, who looks like a prime candidate for gryffindor, who winked at me. i didn’t wink back. then there has been a local man who instantly gave me his mobile number and suggested we meet up in a local bar. now, maybe it’s just me, but i think i’m allowed to exercise some degree of caution before i meet a total stranger from the internet. especially when, judging from his profile, he could potentially move in the same circles as a past complicated one night stand of mine. in fact, can you imagine it, he could even be that one night stand. of course, the chances are very slim, but i don’t want to even slightly allow the possibility. i asked demurely for a photo, just to make sure though, but he pointed out that he didn’t have a photo. ahend also enlightened me to the idea that if i didn’t like him as a person when i met him i could just walk away. apparantly, so he said, ‘knowing someone in this kind of medium is about taking a risk which we all do’. maybe, but i would like to take those risks on my terms, considering he’s probably bigger, stronger and potentially maybe even more insane than i am. he also, presumably in lieu of a photo, pointed out that he is african, which lovely to know doesn’t neccesserily give away a great deal about his general lucidity. regardless of who he is and where he comes from he is still an unknown man and i, i’m afraid, have some safety boundaries. at least when i’m sober. so i ignored him from thereon in.

there was one particularly nice sounding man who hailed from india and who had a beautifully florid and poetic style to his english. he, again, gave me his mobile number without any qualms whatsoever, which further confused me. after all, i could, you know, stalk him. okay, so he lives about 200 miles from me (hey, i’ve cast my net wide), but giving out such intimate contact details strikes me as a bit, well, trusting really. i could even give the number to my friends and convince them all to send impish texts of gentle malice until he goes quite mad, and he would have walked right into it. so, what is it about that level of immediate trust? why have i experienced it from a few guys within fourty-eight hours of internet dating? i decided to read it as a possible display of low character lucidity and from hereon in ignore such people, just in case they were embarrasingly desparate or simply totally barking. still, on this occasion i did message him back pointing out that i’m a little shy so i prefer talking on the internet before anything else and, bless him, he did aquiecse and send me his msn details instead. i haven’t chatted to him yet though, but i think i might break my rules. just to find out how good his poetry is.

later on i had another gentleman wink at me, asking me ‘Hi sexey how are you ? i am fine‘. i immediatly decided to ignore him, even though i am kinda curious as to what makes this man, who readily says that the highlight of his life so far is seeing shakin’ stevens live, tick. happily, the curiosity is not so great that i’m going to loose any waking hours to it.

you might be forgiven for thinking, from all this, that i’m not being all that lucky so far. but, i have started chatting to a guy over the last couple of days who seems lovely. i have no idea where things are going and my own neuroses are already firing all over the shop (‘oh no! he’s gone offline! i’ve bored him! if only i was more intresting and didn’t talk about dogme95 films like such a trainspotter! woe is me!‘) and i feel that we’re taking time getting over generally being pleasant, but he does pretty much seem like a Really Nice Guy, which i get the impresion is a rare. he did ask me if i believed in love though, which was a surprisingly difficult question to answer for a cynically terminally single transwoman, but i said yes as i really do think i do. at least in my more slushier and less intrested-in-taking-the-whole-fucking-world-out-with-me moods. still, he does do martial arts, runs his own business and he is taller than me as well! he even said he’d be intrested in finding out about feminism and gender politics, which i’m taking as genuine intrest and not just politeness, okay. however, i am seriously invested in finding some exciting things to talk to him about that don’t involve me being a music, cinema or queer theory geek.

otherwise, while that is all exciting i’ll also be getting my new vibrator tomorrow anyway. just in case non of it works out. i just wonder who i’ll start thinking of when i use it, because sometimes i never can tell.

hopefully not shakin’ stevens.

Batteries Certainly Included

i don’t want this to be a blog about how transsexual i am or anything like that. in fact, it’d be fun if you could forget that fact, or at least not make a big deal about it. but, on the other hand, this is going to be a blog that examines my own sexuality (or at least i’m intending for it to be at the moment. you never know, i might never get laid again, but then i suppose i can tell you about all the vibrators i’m thinking of buying) and, really, it’s impossible for me to do that without looking at it through a very specific lens. i can’t escape it, at least during this point of my life, so i have to live with it.

i’ve also recently come out as straight, which is an intresting experience, and, i’m afraid, i want to be sexually active, with a partner, right now, if possible. i’ve spent a large part of my life just not having a clue really, and now certain possibilities and desires have opened up, fit into place, and felt perfectly natural (and, often, better than that), such that i’m anxious that i need to make up for lost time. i want to get out there, i want to meet people, i want to experience (more) complicated one night stands and (at least one) lasting romantic friendships with a man. i guess, in truth, i want to play the field a little.

but, let’s be honest, i’m learning about dating and sex and men and, in many ways, myself. it’s very new and very treacharous terrain that i’ve only been able to start trying to stumble over in the last year or so, and i really have no clue what i’m doing. plus, just talking to a man in a bar threatens to open a whole complicated can of worms if he fails to understand, no, being attracted to me does not compromise his sexuality one bit. that’s simple for me to understand, but i find myself wading through a marsh of culture where i just don’t know if and when i’ll get horribly stuck, and maybe drown, in somebodies preconceptions of who i am. it’s frightening, and i don’t know of a whole great deal of people who talk about cruising for a one night stand or a relationship in spaces that probably aren’t totally read up on peoples of the transsexual experience (hey, it makes me sound important and ethnic). yet, apparantly, that doesn’t seem to stop me (mostly dreaming). and so, in all, this blog is to help me work out the tricky aspects of being a trans-woman who is looking for love (or just a plain fuck, i’m not delusional) in your average UK town.

you’ll know how well i’m doing from the number of posts about vibrators.

Just One Kiss

this blog seems to have gotten off to a bit of a shaky start. there’s been some angst, pretension, cultural comment, personal experience and sex. i’m going to try and stick to the cultural comment and personal experience in the future, with most of my perspective hanging around sex, but i suppose i should apologise in advance if i end up with more angst and pretension.

still, there is something i need to let you in on, at this stage, before it gets to late in the proceedings and before it may come as more of a shock. i have to make a decision on when to tell everybody this, and for most people it need never come up in conversation at all. of course, when i’m trying to follow some guy’s bad attempt at slow-dancing during whatever indie song is getting rotation in the local student dive, battling off his carlsberg saturated attempts to cover part of my face (they usually don’t seem to mind which, as long as they think they’re making an effort, bless them) in slobbery lips, while groping my arse using a similar hand movement to the one that you would use to test if a loaf of bread is fresh or not, then nine times out of then i usually find myself trying to figure out how to raise the point i’m talking about.

actually, really, that’s just me being bitter. the men i’ve staggered with on most dancefloors haven’t really been that bad. i’m just bitter that i haven’t had one single stagger for a few months now. i mean, they usually do manage to actually kiss me on the lips. i was just being unfair.

anyway, if you seem like you’re in with a chance at getting to know me on something more than a verbal level, and nowadays if we’re in any kind of embrace like the one described (or better, preferably) then you most definatly are, then i’ve got to ask you a question really.

usually i’ll run through a disclaimer, give you the lowdown that i’m about to ask something that you might find a bit difficult to deal with, let you know that it’s fine if you have trouble getting your head around it and try and quell your fears that the thing i have to tell you does not involve well-built and agressive boyfriends, ex or current, that may or may not be watching all this from the other side of the dancefloor. i’ll also point out that, other than giving you information that may very well influence how hungrily you choose to kneed my arse, i’d really appreciate it if what i have to ask you, and the implications it brings up, is treated with no more gravity than, say, the fact i currently have something of an obsession about eastern european gentlemen with moustaches. if you can’t deal with that or if you end up treating what i’m going to say as anything more than information then that’s fine, i’ll tell you, but if you do then from that point onwards, i’m afraid, i really won’t want to know anymore and i’ll be off as soon as you let go of me.

and i will take time to tell you all this, because i have to, and because it is very important that you understand, as best as you can in a noisy club at two in the morning after necking aftershocks all night with your friends who have mysteriously disappeared by this point, and because somehow, in my experience, whispering all this to you will make the inevitable question easier for you to digest and answer.

don’t ask me how that is, but part of me presumes that whispering words in a mans ear has a calming effect that, while not neccessarily sharpening his senses to what may happen, certainly mellows them to what may be going on around him. i could probably spend my time reciting Spot Goes To The Circus, replete with bow-wow and woof noises, and that would do the same trick. actually, that seems like a good experiment….. i’ll keep that one in mind.

regardless, i’ll deliver that rather lengthy and soothing disclaimer and then, probably with you still holding your arms around my waist as you’ll be relectant to let go considering, after all, it is two in the morning, all your mates have disappeared, and you’ve snared the slim blond dancing chick in the dog collar, and i’ll say as directly as i can, straight into your ear,

‘would you still want to kiss me if you thought i was transsexual?‘

at this point i would be utterly enamoured with you if you tried to understand, even slightly, how nerve-wracking a situation i find this. i’ve found myself in the embrace of a strange man and i’ve had to ask him something that may not be very easy for him to digest. i’ll say now that i understand how tricky it may be for most guys to question their sexualities at such short notice on such a liquid intake, especially when Somebody Told Me by The Killers is probably playing at this point in time. do inappropiate songs get played at exactly the wrong times for anybody else? well, whatever, i still hope that, for all your confusion (should you even have any), you understand that all the while you consider your reply i’m probably waiting for you to potentially turn violent.

although, of course, i’m a straight woman who is utterly desparate to get laid, or at least have some steamy sweaty full-on snogging action, which is why i find myself in such a situation in the first place. i have desires, i have lust, i have frustrations, and i have most of my life to catch up on. all i really want to do is get naked and roll about a bit with a man who has enough chest hair to keep me entertained, good arms, smooth shoulders, and enough consideration to carry my years of baggage and hopefully help me forget about it. i’m not even all that fussy about the size or shape of your dick, as all dicks are things of wonder to me right now. oh, except maybe getting naked won’t totally happen, unless i’m really drunk, and maybe all dicks are not things of wonder, because i still have one myself.

gets better doesn’t it? well, you should see it from my perspective.

normally i don’t tell people how things are down there, unless they’re going to be in with a chance of finding out with a surreptitious (or not) grope, but considering the tone this is taking i think it’s safe to share.

and then, probably biting my lip and mindful of the exits and the bouncers and maybe a spare bottle should i need it, i’ll wait for your reply. i won’t be too expectful that it’ll be positive, but i’ll be hanging around on the off-chance, because i could really do with some action and probably because you still have your arms around my waist, continually kneeding my arse while you chew over what i’ve just asked you. 

if you’re anything like any of the other guys i’ve ended up in this situation with, you’ll probably either ask me ‘what is a transsexual‘, thereby opening a whole other dimension of complication and angst for me (i ended up screwing him, by the way), or you’ll look confused and just say ‘no. why? are you?‘ in which case you win (except you won’t agree to my reasonable terms over where we meet up, being a coffee shop in town rather than a common on the edge of woodland, and you’ll fail to get back in touch with me, so, really, you don’t win at all). of course, you won’t be like those other guys, because everybody is different and i wouldn’t have it any other way. you’ll probably have another way of dealing with the question, or another answer, or even a question to throw back at me. i do hope you’ve got something intresting to say, before we leave each other alone or leave with each other together, because if you have it’ll give me more stories to tell in here as i get used to the trials of being a straight sexually active trans-woman. but, regardless of what you do or say, whether you stay or go, whether your head comes apart or you embrace me further in your arms and take me away and screw me until i can’t breath. hopefully, no matter who you are, you’ll at least give me a kiss before you leave me for good. after all, i wouldn’t have picked you if i didn’t want at least one.

No Questions Asked

we’d walked into my living room, me and this man i had known for something slightly less than an hour. he seemed safe and ‘nice’ enough, even though now ‘nice’ isn’t really a word i feel fully honest using, considering the encounter.

we’d spoken on the street earlier, his frame covering my body against the corner of somebody elses building. i didn’t feel particularly threatened though, and while i wondered at his cheek, following me through town saying he’d like to get to know me, i wasn’t making a great effort to escape. we’d traded our terms, told each other the most pertinent things each should know about the other and eventually, while always talking around the subject, come to an unspoken agreement concerning how the rest of the morning would progress.

he took his watch off. something i still find quite particular and almost careful. more careful than either of us had been, or would be really, for the rest of the morning. yet he still took it off, placed it on one of my speakers, and looked over at me.

‘i’m a little nervous‘, i breathed apologetically, finding myself standing there unsure what to do like a fish totally out of water.

‘me too‘ he empathised.

and before i knew it he had crossed the room and he was behind me, undoing his belt while he lifted my skirt, and then he was inside me. roughly screwing me, grunting, slightly painful clumsy kneeding attempts at stimulating my breasts, his own ‘nervousness’ comletely lost to whatever need drove him.

i felt exhilerated. all i could think about, in the simplest, basest way, was the number of times i’d fantasised about something like this happening. the number of times i’d lain in bed at night, thinking about somebody just coming along and just damn well taking me. part sweeping me off my feet, part sating some deep-seated urge to be wanted and desired and part simply wanting raw animal sex. analysis of what it means, or whether or not my internal feminist should be appauled, be damned. being honest, there was certainly a part of me that gets turned on by the thought of a man just taking me and fucking me. no questions asked.

and now, here we were, doing it.

still, it took a minute or so for me to realise that, really, it hurt too much and, with a bit more preparation, it probably didn’t need to. plus, standing up wasn’t the easiest way to lose another one of my virginities. combine that with his own attempts at foreplay in this position not being the most balletic of manevoures and i suggested we move to my bedroom. there was a bed, obviously, and lube, meaning that hopefully with this space everything would be easier slightly easier and, well, more comfortable. and so we did. and with butterflies in my stomach we walked, past the watch left on the speaker, towards the stairs.

One Track Mind

prompted by a friend directing me to this recent guardian article, i’ve decided i must buy this womans book. the media seem to have their claws in her and, well, it doesn’t seem to really be a pleasant experience. she comes across perfectly fine and together in the guardian interview, but, it wouldn’t be difficult to imagine, it isn’t all roses and jollys for her right now. i’m actually a little loathe to make her out to be some sort of heroine, or to elevate her onto a pedastal, as it would seem that such a viewpoint may only fuel the clamouring intrest that surrounds her very suddenly changed life. after all, it would seem to be the explosion of intrest in her writing and how the media is crawling all over that which is behind her feeling unable to go back to her house and also behind how she feels she is a ‘laughing stock’ in her film career. on the other hand, the actual story, and the actual intrest that has been gathered around her, along with the personal fallout she is receiving, well, it would seem to highlight certain opinions that, as a culture, we seem to be falling in line with. hell, one of my current thoughts is due to my own grapples with the unspoken feeling i get that, as a woman, being simply one-track and sexual, as i must admit i have wanted to be (or even have been to some extent, to be honest), is something slightly bad and shows serious flaws in my the lucidity of my character. i guess i feel you have to applaud her tenacity and honesty, no matter how naive, simply because she did speak about her experiences, feelings and thoughts. i’ve yet to actually read her blog, or anything that she has written, as i would seem to be behind the times and have not actually heard about it properly until this afternoon. still, whether or not her writing directly correspond with my experience, feelings or sexuality is moot. indeed, this isn’t even about suggesting that women should be actually sexual, or even just have it on our minds. it’s just about the idea that if we are sexual and we do have it on our minds, and that we (god forbid) talk about it, that we’re not going to be open to public ridicule, as seems to have happened to ms. lee.

and, as i usually think with these kinds of things, the fallout does says a lot more about the people who are commenting than the actual writer herself.

Just Stopping, Never Quit

‘don’t you think that when you say your tattoo was the most painful thing you’ve ever had done, and that you almost fainted after about ten seconds of it being started, and that you had to grip a friends arm all the way through, that the fact you were thinking of your next when it was about half done is a little perverse?‘
recently, for the first time in a couple of years, i really found myself craving a cigarette. i mean, so badly that i very almost just got up and went and bought some. just so i could light up, relax, and encase myself in smoke trailing out of my nostrils and mouth, wrapping itself lazily around my head. that comment, that’s the kind of thing i’d love to exhale smoke to, blowing it bored away to the side, with my fringe obscuring heavily kohled and disintrested eyes, while just blankly whispering,

‘yes‘
yeah. okay. there is a part of me that’s disgustingly obsessed with image.

right now, in my life, i’ve got an inner teenager, and i think that’s the image she feels.

shame i’m 29 years old and a working proffesional woman, isn’t it?

*flicks*

Dipping The Toe

another day, with more hours spent in front of this PC screen procrastinating myself further and further away from work i don’t feel even slightly connected to right now. my mind spins off into whimsical fantasies: running away to the continent and starting over, selling all my possesions and using the money to set myself up as somebody new, learning a new trade, being a blank canvas, letting life take me where it wishes, placing myself in the stream, giving myself over to fate and wishing that something would happen, cruising bars and allowing myself to be subsumed, altered and crushed in somebody elses desire. gasping with the hope that, in the violence of change, i might feel a little less numb and afraid. all, really, just different ways i might be able to spend my time. all lurid and unrealistic ideas that i could possibly, hopefully, lose myself with. or find myself in, maybe.

sometimes i wonder if the only way to fix whatever feels broken in me, is to break myself further apart.