Peoria, Ill. Upon arriving, attendees encountered a sobering display of bloodied T-shirts representing missing and murdered women in Peoria. A moment of silence was followed by a series of speeches by Peoria organizers and activists. Speakers focused on education as a means to reduce both stigma and the number of assaults. Prevention and keeping children safe is the focus. According to erinslaw. Ulrich thinks educating children about consent is critical so that they can recognize abuse and get help to prevent harm and hold abusers accountable.
We have to have these laws. This is usually due to anxieties that parents have about what their children are being taught in school about sex. Johnson emphasizes that there is a difference between sex education and consent education. Can I borrow your pen? Can I have a hug? Can I pet your dog? Given their early exposure to sexual content in media, consent educators, including myself, aim to reach them proactively, before their perceptions of what is acceptable are shaped by depictions in pornography, movies, TV shows, music, and other sources.
A strong presence was felt at the rally from local strippers and their legal defense fund and advocacy group, the Red Umbrella. Several spoke about the double bind of trying to survive financially while simultaneously facing intense stigma, the challenge of existing at the intersection of economic necessity, and negative public attitudes toward their profession.
What do you do? The Red Umbrella group operates a legal assistance fund and raised money through a silent auction organized around the SlutWalk, which remained open over the following week. The money raised will go to provide lawyers to strippers or sex workers who are assaulted by customers and work together to keep each other safe as fellow workers. Sex work is a stigmatized industry and is treated as a vice by most legal authorities, but advocates push back on the morality narrative and instead present the issue as a matter of worker safety on the job.
She explained how the job can be physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing. That is a full-time gig. Sex work is typically not a very lucrative business. Despite some media portrayals of the glitz and glam of stripper life, most strippers do not earn much for their work. The industry was also hit especially hard by the pandemic, not unlike restaurant and other entertainment work. Charlie and Destiney both stressed the importance of solidarity in the sex work industry.
