emilydwarfield.bsky.social
@EmilyDWarfield
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Just your average dominatrix turned anarchist bookstore social worker turned therapist turned policy researcher. Words: @mic @mask_mag + @PMPressOrg (she/her)
Mannahatta
Joined April 2011
Doing my best to be permanently off Twitter so please find me w the same handle on BSky + IG ✌🏻.
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They say Seinfeld was a visionary show but they really whiffed this one
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Making sure teens can earn a living wage is actually super important to reducing youth homelessness + sex trafficking of minors (the majority of which occurs w/o force, fraud, or coercion but is mostly older teens trading sex to survive). So, you know, let's benefit all of them.
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When someone with whom you have a long-standing, close emotional bond simply stops talking to you without warning or explanation, it’s not ghosting. It’s abandonment. This is important to know if you want to be able to understand its psychological impact, e.g. abandonment trauma
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Running late for work today because someone abandoned what Google tells me is a bearded dragon on the street corner and I called 4 different numbers and no one would take him but I felt bad so he’s in my bathtub now. If anyone knows of a lizard rescue in NYC plz tell me!!!
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Idk why so many of you are hellbent on redefining every shitty or even outright cruel thing people do-- lying, cheating, ghosting-- as abusive. Is it that you feel your hurt is only legitimate if you were abused? Because that's not true!.
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Depressing how much of healing from trauma comes down to ‘remind yourself that you’re safe now!’ when such a large percentage of the population is like one missed paycheck away from complete ruin and is not, in fact, safe and maybe never will be.
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I hope everyone who’s ever done sex work for housing or food is enjoying the “working at Lockheed Martin is about survival for marginalized people” discourse as much as I am.
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Just for perspective-- from someone who's relatively young, healthy, up-to-date on vaccines + wasn't too worried about Long Covid-- I bought this line + figured it was worth eating indoors on my birthday at a nice restaurant + 6 months later I can hardly walk up + down stairs.
Masking up is a risk/benefit calculation. If you’re young, healthy, up-to-date on your vaccinations and you're not worried about long Covid, it may be reasonable to unmask. But if you're medically vulnerable or around people who are, or worried, you might want to adjust. 2/.
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Protesting for the right to sell naked pictures to make rent so we don’t have to fuck for money as much during the plague and abortion ban just so we can stay housed in our flooding, burning slumlord buildings, but we also try to have fun, you know.
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My hot take is that trying to impose a moral framework onto sexual fantasies makes about as much sense as imposing a moral framework on dreams.
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@DoctorMacArthur My landlord also did this with the window that opens onto the fire escape. Chiseling it open was great fun.
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Wanted to throw out that in NY, prostitution is a misdemeanor but practicing massage without a license is a felony. You can guess how this works out in terms of enforcement against sex workers by race.
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This man is outing sex workers to their families in order to “save” them. Report for targeted harassment and block
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I can’t even figure out a clever way to say that sex workers have been screaming about this since before they passed SESTA/FOSTA. I’m just tired man.
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Sex is honestly so embarrassing? Like just objectively speaking, evolution really fucked up there.
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Still a lot of discourse over whether abortion makes you sad or happy so maybe we can take a page from sex work and remember that as far as criminalization goes it is completely irrelevant and basically just a derailing tactic.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: if privileged women were as likely to need to do survival sex work as they are to need an abortion, there would be no feminist debate over decriminalizing sex work. Put that shit on a coffee mug and drink it.
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It's pretty well accepted among experts at this point that the quickest way to decimate child sex trafficking would be to fund desperately needed housing for LGBTQ youth since the actual majority of child sex trafficking is queer kids of color trading sex to survive.
Following @netflix’s disturbing promotion of “Cuties,” I sent a letter calling on @TheJusticeDept to investigate whether Netflix, its executives, or the filmmakers violated any federal laws against the production and distribution of child pornography.
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Any drug policy win is also a big win for sex workers, not just because of the overlap in drug users and sex workers but because it indicates the public is willing to rethink criminal punishment as a solution to economic and social problems.
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That's shitty, that's cruel, but that's not abuse. It is not a pattern of seeking control through violence. It's not even violence! And yet it has still left me with a profound sense of loss and an inability to trust. My pain can be valid without my ex being a violent abuser.
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Between The New Yorker piece on trafficking in porn and The New York Times piece on trans teens, it's overwhelmingly obvious how the liberal value of 'neutrality' in mainstream journalism enables repression and fascism. You cannot give SWerF + TERFs an inch.
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It’s incredibly disruptive to both your sense of safety and your self-worth to have one of your major emotional supports simply vanish like that. That’s a different thing entirely from someone you went on 2 dates with not responding to a text about a third.
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Literally have a graduate degree in trauma and it took me researching my own issues to discover that PTSD from abandonment is ‘a thing,’ and not just a thing that effects children abandoned by caregivers. You need to be able to name what happened to you in order to heal from it.
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The fact that 'sex work' is not a politically neutral term is very revealing of how so-called radical feminists conceptualize work as distinct from violence.
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Quick and easy way for restaurant workers + bartenders to build solidarity with sex workers: don’t fucking read the name on an ID or vaxx card out loud.
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This is also true of purchasing a manicure, massage, childcare, and goods like clothing, produce, and fish. Instead of never buying anything, maybe the answer is labor protections and safe migration paths!.
When you buy sex, you have no way of knowing whether the other person is actually consenting—or is being trafficked. That means you assume the risk that you are complicit in human trafficking—or that the person you’re soliciting is a cop.
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@redditships This is what happens to parents who say "I'm giving you $10 to clean the bathroom, and then I'm giving your sister $10 too for doing nothing and that's socialism!". Congratulations, your kid discovered capitalism!.
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@JoeBiden Oh did you have a massive unexpected expense pop up through no fault of your own that the government didn't help you with? Can't relate.
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Damn, if Marxist-Leninists have to treat their texts like fundamentalists treat the Bible, then that sounds like more of an argument against Marxism-Leninism than sex work.
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I appreciate how hard everyone is shipping me with this reptile but I live in a studio apartment with 2 cats and can’t really afford another pet. However, I promise I will give you updates on where he ends up and also a better photo when I return to my terrarium (bathtub).
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Harm (e.g. lying, ghosting, cheating), violence (which would include sexual consent violations), and abuse (patterns of violence) all have different meanings. This would be easier if I could draw it out but:.-We all cause harm. -Some harm is violence. -Some violence is abuse.
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Took me way too many years to realize that the scariest people aren’t the ones who yell when they’re mad but the ones who will repeatedly hurt you while maintaining perfect emotional regulation, so that you’re the crazy one if you show any visible distress.
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We need terms like 'gaslight' (which is NOT the same thing as authoritarian propaganda, i.e. Donald Trump cannot gaslight you unless you're in an intimate relationship with him) and 'abuse' because we have to be able to define problems in order to solve them.
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I swear I’m not just trying to be a pedant; it kills me to think people who have been abandoned are reading that trending headline thinking what they went through is just a form of ghosting. Babes, it is not. It is much worse, and I am rooting for yo being able to heal it.
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I don't think we can solve all of human cruelty, but if we're going to try we need to be precise about behaviors and motivations and you calling everything abuse is stopping us from doing that.
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The thrill of being an anarchist sex worker when SWERFs think they've got you with "Oh so you admit sex work is bad?!" Yes,all work is bad, get on my level, and learn the difference between prohibition + abolition!
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Why do we hear so much about disabled men who pay for sex and so little about the disabled people, mostly women, who sell it? . I've been talking about making this zine for 2+ years, and I finally did it!!! The first 15 copies are available only through @Bluestockings, link in 🧵
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The worst pain anyone's every caused me wasn't physical or sexual assault or abuse. It wasn't even emotional abuse. It was a man I trusted completely and rearranged my life for ending my relationship with him and then his daughter I helped raise, with no warning or explanation.
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Very hard to heal from interpersonal trauma in a capitalist society designed to traumatize the vast majority of people through poverty and precariousness!.
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Is this a *super* common experience for people like me? No, but it's unclear just how common it is, or what the risk factors are, so it's impossible to make a properly informed risk/benefit calculation at this point + framing this as 'worry' is dismissive + unhelpful.
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I got the jab and you know what? They don't ask you a single question about eligibility. Sex workers, if you are still doing in-person work right now and can't afford to stop: go get your shot. The gov't wants to pretend we don't exist but our health is key to public health.
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Biggest misconception about sex work: you’ll just touch the dick of any guy who can pay. Sadly every day I’m reminded that society’s most successful men cannot get it together to give 24 hours notice, a copy of a photo ID and a deposit via Amaz*n gift card to make it happen.
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He's only a little older than my grandma, who I talked to on the phone yesterday.
@jackjohnsoniv7 Even though it was only the 60s, color photos of Dr MLK Jr are intentionally rare af.
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And the people who get mad about adults acting out these fantasies as consensual sexual role plays are the same ones who get mad when a work of fiction isn't written with a moral lesson stated as clearly as in a children's fable.
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Someone explain to me why I get paid ten times more to fuck a guy in the ass than to talk him down from a crisis and he gets paid ten times more than I ever will to do something fake with stocks.
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Only talking about human suffering in terms of quantitative costs is literally exactly how we got to this place.
Long Covid has affected millions of Americans — and it may cost the U.S. economy $3.7 trillion, according to one estimate. Join the conversation on "This week, your wallet."
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Periodic reminder that is is not leftist to hate any of the following:.-Children.-Drugs.-Sex.You can decide you do not want to incorporate any of these into your life without making it some weird reactionary moral crusade. Thanks.
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The #1 anti-violence intervention is providing as many people as possible with the material resources for baseline physical safety, from which further therapeutic + relational healing can then occur, and our society basically does the opposite of that.
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Sounds like maybe they could’ve honored her with a working elevator.
Edith Prentiss, a disability rights advocate who died earlier this year, was known for clashing with the MTA over its lack of accessibility. On Thursday, the agency honored her with a plaque.
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"Kill the cop in your head" doesn't mean you can't be angry or even pursue revenge, but it does mean your first recourse any time you are hurt in any way at any level can't be an attempt at punishment.
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There are conversations to be had about levels of complicity, what constitutes a pile-on, etc etc but…. “survival”?! Kim people are dying. From Lockheed Martin bombs.
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If you’re already doing important work but it’s not specifically repro justice focused, now is not the time to drop what you *are* doing— which can happen unintentionally when you start taking on more work.
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An excellent illustration of civility vs morality!.
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@redditships Seriously though explain to her why this isn't fair so she doesn't grow up to be a fucking landlord.
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Do you know how hard it is to get 1600 sex workers to agree on anything? And yet here we are all asking Mastercard to cut the shit. You can still sign on: #AcceptanceMatters.
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When we said "make it gayer" we didn't mean for the NYC Dept of Health to force all cis women sex workers to identify as nonbinary to get the MP vaxx but like ok! We're all nonbinary now!.
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He didn’t just abuse her, he trafficked her. The criminal punishment system found a literal child sex trafficking victim wasn’t allowed to protect herself because she’s Black.
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All of these things are bad and should be addressed but need to be addressed differently, because the psychology and power dynamics of someone who causes harm is different from someone who abuses, and that's why we need to keep the definitions separate.
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An NYC sex worker has been murdered and her name dragged through the mud by the press, who declined to name her suspected killers. Please help her family with funeral costs.
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Periodic reminder that it’s not only permissible but encouraged to sometimes say, “I don’t actually know a ton about that issue and would defer to the people most directly impacted.” You can’t be an expert on everything. It doesn’t mean you don’t care, it means time is finite.
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This is going to be my new favorite meme, I can tell. Every time someone on here loses an argument this image is gonna come out
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All it took was that one dinner. Was the risk/benefit worth it? No. So if we're going to be asking people to make their own calculations, we need to provide them with as much information as possible, and here's some more information for you.
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I might be alone in this but it’s not the prohibition of sex work per se that’s so ugly to me as it is the logic behind trying to take away money from some of the most marginalized people, replace it with nothing, and think things will somehow improve.
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An example: we very often cause harm unintentionally through misunderstandings that escalate. Mediation can be super useful here because it helps restore mutual understanding and get around communication blocks. Mediation processes will be manipulated by abusers.
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Certainly if I'd had a better understanding of the still-unclear prevalence and severity of Long Covid, I could have better assessed my vulnerabilities (shit insurance, no PTO, financially precarious) + would have made a different risk/ benefit calculation.
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Forty minutes before dinner time is when they start staring at me and meowing like they’ve never been fed once in their lives
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What jobs actually deserve all the hate that sex workers get? Like besides cops, obviously.
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I want to be mad about something that doesn’t matter for a change. What’s the thing that matters least that pisses you off most? I’m going with the fact that Michael Douglas starred in 2 of the most famous erotic thrillers despite being one of the least erotic men alive.
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@latimes Genuinely cannot think of a less thorny question than whether people should be arrested for standing in public.
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Is the SAG strike the right time to mention that porn actors don’t ever get royalties despite frequently living with the stigma for decades or?.
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Learning about other culture’s memes is my favorite form or cultural exchange. Behold the Russian sausage cat
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So many people on this website so close to understanding 1) how fascist, white supremacist violence is normative and supportive of the status quo, unlike anti-fascist violence and 2) the role of Democrats in maintaining that status quo.
The thing I can’t stop thinking about is how different it would be if some far-left radical had tried to assassinate McConnell. It would be covered as devastating for Dems. They’d spend a week denouncing themselves. The midterms would be understood to be lost.
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Last thing I'll say to non-sex workers today: it should deeply concern all the comrades when shit like this happens, not just for obvious human + ideological reasons but the very practical fact that so much activist work on the left is funded by the sexual labor of women + queers.
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The kicker is that I wanted to sit outside, but they had just ended outdoor dining + I had a gift certificate there. Bring back the street tables, the half-open sheds, the heat lamps. We have created social, structural barriers to safer socializing by wrongly minimizing the risks.
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Every time the age gap discourse comes around I wonder if this will be the time we have a wealth gap discourse or a citizenship gap discourse or address literally any other power dynamic in romantic relationships and it never is.
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I’m a sex worker, I’m not essential, and I’m not a release valve for violent men. Next time just tweet “decriminalize it and tip well,” thanks.
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I almost entirely avoided indoor dining throughout this pandemic, hardly traveled (def not on a plane), stayed in Christmas + NYE last year + let me tell you I know it's hard to restrict your social life that severely when the gov't has forced us all back to in-person work.
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I know indefinitely avoiding a thing you enjoy sucks ass + the gov't has been wildly unhelpful in all of this. But now here I am, back to avoiding ever eating indoors at restaurants *and also* I can barely walk upstairs or lift anything and am out of work.
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Millions of people just lost remote work during a pandemic. I don’t even have to read the coverage to know that’s not how it’s being talked about, though.
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As an addendum, I don't want to contribute to the ableist, fatalist 'Long Covid means your life is over' discourse either. My life is hardly over. There's a lot I can do + enjoy + there's reason to believe I'll continue to improve as I learn how to manage symptoms. But!.
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The thing that happens in your early thirties where fewer men try to take advantage of you and society tries to convince you it’s because you’re somehow appreciably less hot but it’s only because you’re appreciably wiser is real wild.
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Sex workers and people who use drugs just staring into the camera right now.
One historian of abortion argues that abortion stays at pretty much the same rate per capita over time whether it's legal or banned. What changes when you make it illegal is how many women die from it.
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Another example: many people in abusive relationships eventually use violence in self-defense against their abusers. They are then often punished by the state, which usually fails to take power dynamics and the psychology of abuse into account, and will treat a woman who. .
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Oh to be a small fuzzy beast having a snooze with my belly in the sun
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My life was severely interrupted + I'm having to draw on all of my resources + relationships to get it back on track, reconfigure my career goals, my housing plans, practice patience + ask for assistance, and all that was not worth a fancy birthday dinner.
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I like to tell anyone who will listen that they should just make every dating show 100% bisexuals. Imagine an all-bisexual Bachelor— clear logistical improvement.
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This, as they say, blew up. I know Twitter is the enemy of all nuance, so please allow me to add a little nuance before it blows up further: whether or not something constitutes abandonment really depends on the particulars of the relationship + trauma is a subjective experience.
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. shot her abusive husband while he was sleeping because this was the only 'out' she could find, the same as an abusive husband who shoots his sleeping wife. Even though only the latter is a continued risk to the community.
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