Melissa Gira Grant

"We’ve been told we’ll rise up together, that women will break barriers for each other,..."

Fri, 26 Feb 2016 17:23:27 -0500

“We’ve been told we’ll rise up together, that women will break barriers for each other, that our not-being-like-men means we won’t stand in each other’s way. That hasn’t worked, and now we can see: The glass ceiling is also a mirror, and it is made of the reflections of other women.”

- Who Cares for Feminism, at Pacific Standard

Dietrich sings him off in her last film role. Legend is, they...

Tue, 19 Jan 2016 10:32:46 -0500

Dietrich sings him off in her last film role. Legend is, they were never even in the same room together when this was made.

Photo

Mon, 18 Jan 2016 11:19:26 -0500

Votary.

Tue, 12 Jan 2016 19:25:31 -0500

Votary.

Sound + Vision

Tue, 12 Jan 2016 18:52:25 -0500

In order of my introduction, roughly, though honestly just what I remember:

1992. At home, my parents’ tv. A meeting by way of death.

1994. Cassette cut-out from the $2 bin at Newbury Comics. This wedged on the back of side B. Wearing lipstick to school for the first time that fall.

1997. Burroughs dies. My friend Andy shaves my head. This becomes the song of the summer:

1997. Dropping out of school the first time. A boy who put it on and made dropping out seem even more sensible.

(He played this next, as if to drive the point home:)

(Not wrong.)

1998. First song at the truck stop strip club. We have to/get to play our own CD’s. I bring along the Rykodisc Sound + Vision box set.

(If I was more religious about the reference I was going for, though, it would’ve been this:)

And the next song. They sang along:

1998. Winter solstice on repeat for ages…

…then the flip side, giving me the name of the place I wouldn’t know was a place until I was sleeping there down the street from a Turkish-run brothel a friend worked the phones at, in the winter of 2006.

We skip around a lot. Because I know I had this by then:

And when I felt like I could get away with it, I closed out one of my sets dancing to this:

And so I loved:

1999. We (me, the girl I was in love with who wasn’t really a girl, and the girl she was in love with) found out about this, and it changed everything.

Our love directed looked like something someone else could have (for him), too.

I went to see Todd Haynes give a talk at nearby Amherst College and had the idea to ask him what he meant by the green brooch and the faeries. I did, but I can’t tell you what he said back.

Things began to speed up.

I started writing, or trying to write, about the future. I have one professor who humors me. (He plays sax.)

2000. I fell for a girl who had a webcam who wanted to put Bowie in a movie about her and the future. She sent me a camera. I failed her (on the movie) but it was never a question: of course she let me keep the camera. This was what she told me to listen to:

We’re supposed to see him at Roseland Ballroom – the boy who put on Low, the girl in love with the one who wasn’t just a girl anymore, me – and he has laryngitis and cancels (“It’s the first time I ever had to do that in my career“) and so we do other things, like eat sushi on St. Marks and spot Deborah Harry in a club which will all have to do in the meantime.

I buy this in a bin in the East Village.

I make webpages and stay up late a lot that year, sometimes with this:

2001. I’m here in the room. If there’s only one song I see him perform, this will do. (Forgive us, we didn’t know about YouTube yet.)

He’s a fixture now. Nothing is new. Everything with us. No one owns him.

A boy can crush my heart around this and the boy won’t own it, it’s still mine:

I can hear this with fresh ears on a train from Hamburg to Koln and know it’s going to be part of something I haven’t imagined yet:

I can fall harder for someone because we love this and it won’t hurt me:

Here’s what I’ve had on rotation the last day (to be played at maximum volume). He’s yours:

Do you happen to know if Melissa Gira Grant was a FSSWer?

Wed, 30 Dec 2015 19:10:25 -0500

Do you happen to know any of the reasons why asking one sex worker to publicly speculate on the illegal activities of another sex worker might be inappropriate?

"Is there a difference between nostalgia and gentrification…?"

Thu, 24 Dec 2015 19:22:47 -0500

“Is there a difference between nostalgia and gentrification…?”

- Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore from “Nobody Passes Alive” in make/shift magazine (via marginalutilite)

"Telling your story does not guarantee you will be believed. It doesn’t guarantee anything positive."

Thu, 24 Dec 2015 13:50:41 -0500

“Telling your story does not guarantee you will be believed. It doesn’t guarantee anything positive.”

- Melissa Gira Grant, ‘IX Lives’ (Book Forum)

at Kansas/Missouri State Line

Thu, 24 Dec 2015 13:49:25 -0500

at Kansas/Missouri State Line

Photo

Thu, 24 Dec 2015 13:49:04 -0500

Photo

Thu, 24 Dec 2015 12:43:03 -0500

queershoulder: “… I will know that in the crux of any...

Thu, 24 Dec 2015 12:42:36 -0500

queershoulder:

“… I will know that in the crux of any reckoning, this queer desire defines a locus wider, more than where my dick has been and who it has regretted.”

– Justin Chin (from “Pisser, ” Bite Hard, Manic D Press, 1997).

#justinchin #rip #queerlit #hivaidslit #qtpoclit #qtpocwriters #wemissyou #cwsex #cwdrugs #bitehard

marginalutilite: If only ‘twere so! (_Sisters of the Night_ by...

Thu, 24 Dec 2015 12:41:01 -0500

marginalutilite:

If only ‘twere so! (_Sisters of the Night_ by Jess Stearn–historical johnalism from 1956)

👯👯👯

Mainstreaming

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 15:16:28 -0500

pausanias53:

I never expected this to make the print edition of Saturday’s Guardian.

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/dec/04/how-stoya-took-on-james-deen-and-broke-the-porn-industrys-silence

Thanks for posting the print edition <3

"I am on my own kind of strike from doing anyone else’s work on sex work. I will not answer your..."

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 15:13:32 -0500

“I am on my own kind of strike from doing anyone else’s work on sex work. I will not answer your requests. I will not give you interviews. I will not be a token on your program. I will not direct you to resources. I will not introduce you to subjects. I will not do work you are paid to do. I will not do work which has value to those who employ you. I will not do work which has value to those who place advertisements around your work.”

- Journalist Melissa Gira Grant on refusing requests from other reporters (via charoshane)

days-of-reading: Melissa Gira Grant, Playing the Whore: the...

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 15:13:08 -0500

days-of-reading:

Melissa Gira Grant, Playing the Whore: the Work of Sex Work

"Whether you are a porn performer or not, for anyone who speaks out about rape, often it’s one’s..."

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 15:12:31 -0500

“Whether you are a porn performer or not, for anyone who speaks out about rape, often it’s one’s sexual history that becomes the object of inquiry, not the rape.”

- Melissa Gira Grant
The entire piece is a must read: How Stoya took on James Deen and broke the porn industry’s silence
(via versobooks)

emilybooks: Today is International Day to End Violence Against...

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 15:09:56 -0500

emilybooks:

Today is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers! Looking to become more informed on the global push for sex worker human rights? We highly recommend our previous Emily Books pick, Melissa Gira Grant’s Playing the Whore. It’s a quintessential read on the politics, praxis, and people behind sex work.

Early computer equipment being used by Edison workers Joseph...

Mon, 07 Dec 2015 17:56:51 -0500

Early computer equipment being used by Edison workers Joseph Fadler 1961

fette: Left, polaroid by Donna Trope, Susie Bick, 1998. Via....

Sat, 05 Dec 2015 18:16:51 -0500

fette:

Left, polaroid by Donna Trope, Susie Bick, 1998. Via. Right, Balz Isler, from the series Intimate Matter / An Algorithmic Privacy, 2015. Via.

–

I sleep six hours not much sleep for one night I usually like to sleep ten to twelve hours wash my face go to radio show. I want to fuck someone who I can talk to.

Kathy Acker, from Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula, 1978. Via.