Here’s what I said this afternoon:

Like many people who lay claim to the word feminist, I am a white cisgender woman. I am also a sexual assault survivor, and I am a former sex worker, and so I want to complicate a few things for you.

I stand here with a great degree of ambivalence, because the work that needs to be done to make feminism do good is huge and complex, because I’m glad that we are getting together and having these conversations, but also because I know that these conversations have only come to a head bc a cop used the word slut and white cisgender women were pissed off about it. I want to charge women like me with the task of being better activists and allies - and that means listening, and sometimes it means shutting up, or responding to criticism by rerouting projects completely.

I exist at the nexus of several different kinds of privilege, but as a sex worker I quickly became aware that many institutions I previously thought existed to help me - like public health care providers and the police- were actually quite terrifying and had a lot of power to make my life harder and more miserable.

Now I know that it is important to speak up, to get loud and resist the many oppressions that face us. But I also know it is as important to listen and make way for many voices. Claiming solidarity means not just showing up and showing outrage when people like you are negatively affected, but showing up when people who are not like you need solidarity.

It means showing up for the October 22 Coalition against police brutality, it means showing up at the Trans Day of Remembrance on November 20, it means showing up at the Intl Day to end violence against sex workers on Dec 17, and it means closely examining and resisting public policies that may make your life better at the expense of others.