North American snow report: how is everyone doing this week? In Edmonton we had snow twice this week, but fortunately it melted during the day each time. This pic is from Friday morning:

I am referring to world-wide, not just the US, including places where it is legal.

Where I live (Canada), it is illegal to pay for blood donations, surrogacy (except for expenses with receipts), and sperm donations. Plasma is a grey area (it’s illegal in some provinces but not others) but I can see it becoming illegal to pay for it across the country, too. I googled and found this article:

Most sex workers, worldwide, don’t want to be doing it. They’re under one or another form of duress (social, economic, physical). I’m concerned about the greatest good for the greatest number here.

The difference between sex work and most jobs is that it is embodied. You aren’t just producing labour outside your body, but also inside it. With most jobs, you use your body and mind to produce something outside you. With sex work, your body is the job. I mean, it’s sex. It’s intimate.

When I was trafficked into prostitution, my “clients” were middle class married men in their 30s. All of them had access to sex at home. It may not be universal but it’s a common pattern, not rare, for men who can get free sex to pay for it.

I’m familiar with and support the Nordic model. And I would have no problem telling off a friend who wanted to try sex work because of how dangerous it is. Like, when someone you care about wants to do something stupid, you’d say something, right? From what I’ve seen, there’s no way of avoiding a dangerous degree of…

If a friend of mine wanted to do sex work, with its high risks, when she had lots of other choices, I would recommend therapy. There’s calculated risk, and then there’s stupidity.

Unfortunately many countries have found that legalizing sex work doesn’t help with cracking down on trafficking. The US is a particularly difficult country to talk about, though, because there are fewer social services (e.g. welfare) in the US (compared to other western countries) that sex workers could turn to as an…

It figures. We had snow last night. Would you like some?

Ah, we are sharing a polar vortex. I googled and it’s ridiculous how much territory it’s covering. We can’t even get above freezing most days (or even close to it). At least you seem to be warmer than that.

I have done self-employment taxes in the past (in Canada), a long time ago, though not quarterly installments. (It was for a summer job where I was a contractor.) I googled and it seems you estimate what your taxes will be, based on current income or last year’s income, or CRA will estimate them for you. So you will…

That unicorn is amazing.

Thank you.

I don’t know what to say about your mental health, other than I hope you figure it out. I’ve read that bipolar people can get depressed as the days get longer (which seems counterintuitive to me, but I had a friend who had this happen to her every year).

I made paper flowers this week to brighten up my new place. Ignore the scotch tape please - my glue stick-fu is not good. But I like the colour.

Well, it’s easy to dismiss the claim that it’s for profit because sexualized content is negatively correlated with box office, even when you control for budget. But I don’t think they’re being deliberately sexist either - it’s just what they know.

Every generation has their version, at least as far back as the Victorians.

Sex work would still exist in a utopia, as would rape and murder. But it would be an anomaly, rather than how vulnerable people make ends meet, the way other types of slavery are now. People didn’t used to be able to imagine a world without chattel slavery, not that long ago.

Nothing I do to my computer is as easy on my eyes as most paper.