"The membership restrictions of [The Foundation for Personality Expression], and the form and the content of its meetings, demonstrate a familiar pattern in minority identity politics in US history- it is often the most privileged elements of a population affected by a particular civil injustice or social oppression who have the opportunity to organize first.  In organizing around the one thing that interferes with or complicates their privilege, their organizations tend to reproduce that very privilege."

- Susan Stryker, in her book, Transgender History.

I thought it was interesting to see a historian observe this about the trans rights movement - since similar criticism has also been pointed at white middle class sex workers.

"In wanting the world to understand me, so too do I strive to communicate in a way that is understandable.  Such is the beauty and the pain that is felt by anyone who belongs to a 'non-normative' community, we want to be who we are but we don’t want to be not normal forever so we conform in an attempt to educate, to promote, to belong, if not in a conventional in way, in a way so that we stretch convention so someday we won’t have to stretch it anymore."

- Dylan Ryan, in Queer on dylanryanx.com

One of the big themes in my life this year has been realizing how profoundly and permanently non-normative (*cough*abnormal*) I am- and that it's okay.

"I had but one interest in writing, and it may surprise you to know, it wasn't turning out a book.  I wanted a column.  A big, glossy, Sunday-magazine column in a reputable broadsheet.  I was going to be the girl Millington.  And possibly even start dating a German and dye my hair fuschia as well.

But, I was promptly informed, that was never going to happen.  'It won't fly at the Guardian,' one person advised me.  'Half their Saturday magazine staff threatened to walk after they offered a column to stripper.'  And that was only a stripper.

I grumbled and harrumphed, and that revelation, plus the predictably rubbish reviews from the Guardian and Observer a year later, led me to a single conclusion: it's quite alright to be a self-identified feminist, and a whore, so long as you're Valerie Solanas and want to kill the men you fuck."

-- Belle de Jour, in a July 2005 entry on belledejour-uk.blogspot.com

"See, the problem with raids is that you have the people who want to rescue women and children who are in prostitution, using the oppressive arms of the state - the most oppressive arm of the state, which is the police - to conduct this 'rescue operation' through a raid.  [...]  The community is never ever going to respond to anybody who is bringing in the police to rescue them, because they do not view that as a 'rescue'.  They view that as another oppressive thing that's done to them."

- Meenu Seshu, founder of SANGRAM in India, in Caught between the tiger and the crocodile on sexworkerspresent.blip.tv

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