Diary of a call girl

So right now, i'm working as a 'call agent', basically that's a buzz word for tele sales, I don't loathe it and i don't love it, at the end of the day it's a job. Some customers are nice some aren't so pleasant, there are parts of this job i enjoy and parts I loathe..case in point inappropriate men.

I don't know what this Tom Dick or Harry aims to achieve when he phones up asking to have a new phoneline put in, but it certainly shouldn't be a girls phone number...I ask a guy if he's done his Christmas shopping yet he replies "I hope you've got me a Christmas present" its lewd and suggestive and I hate it, i don't know what makes guys think that they can talk to us like that, my girlfriends at the centre get it all the time, it's degrading and it makes us feel guarded with customers, i.e were trying to have a normal chat with them and they change it into an innuendo, a crude remark or a request for your facebook URL..it just makes you not want to build rapport with a customer because you're picturing what it could result in..you feeling used that's what.

I don't know what kind of twisted link they form in their heads, because we work on the phones we're some kinds of simpering women who will laugh at their every joke, because they're the customer and the customer is always right..well I have absoloutly no problem with hanging up on them and losing a sale, but it does give me more satisfaction to sell them a product at full price and give them no offers, in a little sweet revenge for their attitude.

Dispel that Slut-Shaming, Victim-Blaming..anti-love

                 

                 "Women should stop dressing like sluts to avoid being victimised".

A statement given by a police officer in Toronto January 24th 2011 that sparked a Worldwide outrage...from this outrage Slutwalk was born.

Slutwalk began in Toronto, but has gone on to become a Trans-atlantic movement, with protests happening in the UK,India,  Amsterdam, London Sydney,Santa Cruz,Texas. Slutwalk is a Worldwide march of solidarity, for anyone to do anywhere (wearing anything), that raises awareness of the message that no matter what you wear, look like your gender expression, how much/little sex you have, what you've been called, how you're body has been de-valued in the past... No means no, in any situation! The movement has been produced from one officer's bigoted comment is just amazing, and has given women faith that things can change, and not to just sweep comments like this under the carpet, thankfully that these women did something about the harassment that they received, however their are Voices Unheard around the globe, women who have received harassment like this, and not reported it because they think it's the norm, it's not . 


"Of course we don't blame the victim but..."
She looked older than she was, she was drunk, she was dressed provocatively...the list goes on.


One aim of the Slutwalk movement is to work on dispelling the idea of 'Slut-shaming', the idea that just because a woman was say, drunk, or wearing very little clothing, she somehow deserved  what happened to her. I know what you're thinking, in what world does a woman deserve to be raped, but then unfortunately you get cases like this one. 


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17781842

The backlash that followed the Ched Evans case was unbelievable. A stream of what is currently referred to as 'rape apology' (rapists that do whatever they can to imply that the survivor deserved what happened to them) started on Twitter, this particular gentleman caught my eye

@Joseph Westley "In a premier Inn with two footballers after a night out. Expecting Tiddlywinks?" 

So many things are wrong with that statement, but let's just focus on the fact that Mr Westley has twinned being in a hotel room being akin to a woman's consent, pretty shocking, and this is why we march, to combat viewpoints such as this one and to raise awareness that this kind of ideology is not ok, and that rape, in whatever form, is never ok.


Some groups have criticised the Slutwalk for 'opressing' women even further by the use of the word 'Slut' in the title of the event. An example of this being an article in the Guardian, that read..

“Advocates would be better off exposing the myriad ways in which the law and the culture enable myths about all types of women – sexually active or “chaste” alike. These myths facilitate sexual violence by undermining women’s credibility when they report sex crimes. Whether we blame victims by calling them “sluts” (who thus asked to be raped), or by calling them “frigid” (who thus secretly want to be overpowered), the problem is that we’re blaming them for their own victimisation no matter what they do. Encouraging women to be even more “sluttish” will not change this ugly reality.” - Gail Dine

What these groups seem to disregard is that by re-claiming this word to (and utilizing it to their advantage) the founders of Slutwalk have brought empowerment to women, by putting positive connotations and feminist solidarity behind a word that has been used as a derogatory insult for years. Heather Jarvis (a queer sex and body-positive feminist, and co-founder of the Slutwalk movement) comments on the reclaiming of the word by stating that

"'slut' is not going away, not even close. So why not challenge it and utilize language to our benefit?"

People have raised questions as to why girls are dressing in skimpy clothes for these marches, does this not portray a negative message? Sonya Barnett (another co-founder of the Slutwalk movement) answers that this kind of negativity further enforces the stereotype that people should be ashamed to be sexual beings..you can dress how you want to, if you feel confident dressing in next to nothing then so be it, no still means no, just because i'm wearing a short skirt in the summer doesn't mean I want my ass pinched thanks very much. And this kind of stigma works both ways, a woman wearing joggers and a jumper is at risk of assault too, this message was shown by a demonstrator at Chicago Slutwalk, who held up a sign saying "My friend was raped wearing a snowsuit".

Slutwalk has brought a whole new awareness of the discourse surrounding rape apology and slut-shaming, discourse that I have not come across anywhere else in society (this is a super shiny thing) hopefully our march in Edinburgh this year will have a great turn-out and raise awareness of this important message, I wrote this to try and explain the connotations behind the controversial title of "Slutwalk" hopefully this has come across..

We'll be holding our own Slutwalk in Edinburgh (date still to be confirmed)
We invite people of all gender expressions and orientations, all walks of life, levels of employment and education, all races, ages, abilities, and backgrounds, from all points of this city and elsewhere to come as you are, dressed as you feel comfortable. Look at your local Slutwalk movement too, I know Toronto's is on the 25th May this year

Pussy Manifesto, out
xx

If you can't stand the bigotry get out of the bathroom!

We've all been there, the bathroom standoff. Some girl flounces in gives you the bitchy eye, bounces her immaculately sleek hair applies a trowel-load of lipgloss,..the girls toliets = the epicentre of bitchiness.
Australian Tampon company Libra portray this brilliantly in their new advert except it's not so brilliant, more along the lines of Transphobic really..

We watch shows like 'Rupauls Drag Race' and 'America's next top model' that are peppered with characters such as Ms J and Rupaul. Here, in the modelling world the cross-dresser is accepted. Generally in the media I think that Drag Queens are accepted. Even if they are sometimes caricatured and made to over-exaggerate themselves.

But Libra have done one better. Their now banned commercial portrays a bathroom standoff between a pretty ordinary looking girl and an overly made up drag queen. The girl gives a snide look to her opponent and applies mascara, they mirror her, she applies lipgloss so does her opponent, the girl next door then adjusts her bra, so does her opponent.

Now comes the part that has caused the transphobic accusations. For her next move the girl-next-door pulls out a tampon and smiles smugly as if to say 'you don't have female reproductive organs, now step bitch' and sure enough the trans woman scowls and leaves.

The commercial then flashes the delightful slogan 'Libra Gets Girls. Love Libra'.

What I dislike about this advert is the exclusion factor in it. What Libra are saying (whether it is intentional or not on their part) is that a trans woman can never be a proper woman, there is always going to be one hurdle that they can't overcome, anatomy. I.e you're not a proper woman if you can't menstruate.

Now to be fair Libra have released this statement

' We will immediately review our future position with this campaign based on the feedback received. There are no further advertisements scheduled in New Zealand.'

The company states that the commercial was tested before it was aired and that it was met with a positive response, my response to this is get a better sample next time, this commercial is really offensive and will upset a lot of people who have seen it! The thing is, can we really be making a joke out of this scenario, when it is one that many trans women will have encountered already i.e hostility in the bathroom, it's actually pretty poignant if you think about it.

This advert will make people feel alienated, trans or no...the commercial delivers a powerful image of the alpha female dominating the ladies bathroom, one mistake and you're out. I'm glad to see that Libra have removed said commercial from our TV screens, however they only did this because of a petition that was started, ad companies really need to take off those rose coloured glasses and take a look at their target audience, I'm sure this ad will have lost Libra alot of customers.

Sources from pinknews.co.uk and youtube x

A very long engagement

I don't know if you guys have heard of this film. It's about a couple who've been together 42 years, but when they first met they would waited for decades before they could even get married. The picture above perfectly encapsulates the concept of the soulmate. That one person who is always on your mind, who makes you feel warm without them even being there, who will phone you when you're sad or angry and who understands your dreams and ambitions and fully supports you in them.

These women were clearly soulmates Edie says that three days before Thea died they realized 'they were still as completely in love as they had been the day that they met'. I'm so glad that they actually got the chance to make that commitment to eachother, even though Thea died a year later, but sometimes this kind of love transcends death.

I sometimes jolt myself awake and realize that this is what my life will be like. That I will be so totally and completely besotted with someone that i will want to give them my all, who says i'm not already. I will want a family and a house with them, but all this seems so far away. With little impending stresses of everyday life sometimes it's hard to make time for the issues that are at your core, but we must see the bigger picture. I'm swamped with deadlines at the moment, but I'm sticking my head out of a book of criticism for a moment and organised an equal marriage campaign drive next week on my campus, because right now Scotland is on the brink of equal marriage, you can almost taste it everyone's waiting with bated breath for the decision, we're wearing our 'LOVE' rings hoping that the message will etch onto everyone's hearts.

Because sometimes you don't realise how fast life is going until it hits you in the face like a speeding train

And you see that ceremony right infront of you like a mirage with white lace, close your eyes and you can see it, it's touchable, we are on the brink of societies earthquake

So please sign the petition

Already same-sex marriage has been legalised in the Netherlands (2001), Belgium (2003), Spain (2005), Canada (2005), South Africa (2006), Norway (2009), and in the USA the states of Massachusetts (2003) and Connecticut (2008). 


Let's put Blue and White on the map!
http://www.equalmarriage.org.uk/what-we-want

Wrote this in a huge mindsplurge

One of the best ways to write (I feel) is by sensory experience. I recently performed at an open mic night, it actually went really well and I was pleased with my delivery, haven't done it in a while so was a bit shaky to start with! 

I was just going to post some prose I just wrote, opinions welcome, I know the punctuation's not dead on, but this was literally a huge splurge of writing I just did so I will probably look over it and amend it later.

xx

Prisoner

The world spun. In a haze of crying girls and drunken catcalls

I wiped smudged mascara from my eyes. Bent myself over the cattle trough sink, looked blearily into the mecury vortex. The liquid curdled in my stomach, my body felt fuzzy without mass, how did I get myself here, I felt your hand on my arm, my skin pimpled like poison ivy

Sour Vanilla

Coco Butter

I bowed my head away from you, straggled wet hair covering my face. Cowered like a vulnerable animal, my pores sweating dread. You caged me, obstructing my freedom.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   I see the bright lights of a club over my shoulder, the wild gleaming bodies of the night, oh to be there now. I don’t want you to hug me, my skin prickles with an unknown hatred, I wish I had defensive venom, claws to scratch you away.  We have been realigned in this cosmos, in this steel scent of now, with the cold metallic stench of the blue bathroom, we are not compatible. I summon every hazy force in my body, try and repel you with a feeble shove.                                                  You choke me with apologies and excuses. They fly at me like a suffocating musk, still you repeat yourself like a broken cuckoo clock, the inane vowels circling round my head like a furied carousel ride. My head aches with motion sickness, the vomit writhes again in my stomach, I belch.  I don’t want you, I want her, Acaii, Acerola cherries. Beijos bella. Want her to envelop me in soft arms, plant kisses on my confused forehead, sing sweet words, angel, tell me everything is alright, that in this world that I do not quite comprehend right now everything is alright. Rock me back into reality.

You trap me like a hunter, my body is contorted like mutant origami, my arms at a defensive angle my knees bent. I want to go for a piss, just let me go for a piss. Still I face an onslaught of could have been’s and what if’s, this is just the beginning, I know I am in for a long night, I see the battery gauge on my phone slowly run down, the red fading into white, like a rope slipping into oblivion, my last chance of survival. I raise my head and glare defiantly into your eyes, if it’s a fight you’re wanting, then baby…

Adventure

                                                        
One of the many Market's at Brick Lane

So ..I hang my head in shame, as I admit that like Rupert Murdoch, I have broken a scared bond between us (although I don't really think anythings sacred about that man, or his goblin side-kick for that matter).

I recently moved down to London to start a new job, a PR internship with a company in Shoreditch (I have been told since that it's the 'hub' of london's PR scene).

Although one side of PR strikes me as glorified tele-sales, I'm really quite enjoying it. It's so refreshing to be learning a new trade and although (as in every job) some people are getting on my wick, everyone seems fairly amicable. We're working on some really exciting projects just now, and I love the electricity in the atmosphere that tells you that you need to get this done, and you need to get it done now..it's great for ones motivation! I've also learnt alot, its very strange that in just one week i've changed alot. I've become a hell of a lot more self-sufficient because in this job you listen to what you're told, you don't ask for recaps, and you diligently remember every method they teach you, it was scary at first but now i'm used to it.

I'm really loving the routine too..a bit too much I feel. I smell the whiff of old age pensioner as I eagerly pay 20p to the vender for my copy of i, then sit engrossed on my tube journey and await the free bowl of promtional cereal that appears at my tube exit three times a week, it's pretty cushty, I don't even have to spend anything on breakfast (which in Landan, trust me, is a very good thing).

Loving Brick Lane too, reggae music from the food halls (and setting myself up for lunch by eating all the samples, seriously that's what I did one day) there's this huge bazaar near me where the air is heady with incense and old powdery scents and hats and trinkets and cabinets are strewn all around in an organised mess. I could walk round that alladdins cave for ever. I love the mix of big buisnesses and tatty little sideshops, all the street art and the amazing begals (that's how they spell it, don't ask me) from Brick Lane's oldest bakery, it's really inspiring and I'm writing alot poetry-wise because of this.

Weekends in London are proving to be awesome, I'm at the end of my first one now. Yesterday there was a metropolitan monsoon and I was without brolly! Met my friend at a mish-mash little pub for lunch (where they played eve cassidy, then bullet for my valentine, brilliant) then we went to check out the Chapman exhibit at White Cube.

After reading the reviews I wasn't expecting much. The bleeding religious idols were pretty much hideous, I found the christ child and mother with forked tongues espescially horrifying. However the Chapman's have been getting a pretty bad review for this exhibition, all the papers saying "same old same old, tediously boring etc." I found the religious artwork really beautiful, but then it was just copies. The statues annoyed me, although my friend did point out that they were meticulously done (blown glass for the tongues etc). However Dinos Chapmans exhibit mesmerized me, and sparked a really interesting discussion about the work. It's basically kids in tracksuits with animals faces, doesn't sound that impressive, but the way they are placed in the gallery is quite harrowing and there is one inparticular (a small toddler with a ducks bill) that leaves quite an impression on you. I think it's the way that Dinos has moulded their faces, they are contorted and other-worldly, a human hybrid Hitler-youth, scary to think (as my friend pointed out) that if WW2 had been won by Hitlers army, then there may have been similar uniforms etc for children today. Also I thought it was interesting how they used glass animal eyes for the children, it made their gender ambiguous and unerving. The papers hated it, I quite liked it, ys maybe it's been done before but it still makes an imrpession.

In other news I got a weekly travel card, lasts me till sunday so i'm making the most! Going to go to "Boat-ting" tomorrow a jazz/latino poetry night on a boat, if i'm brave enough I may go up and read some stuff, yeek

Oh and I went to Tottenham Court road yesterday and found an awesome comic book shop, found some amazing artists too, I want this picture in my flat next year! Beautiful! Bill Ward you pervy legend!

hope everyone had a good weekend !

                                                      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0nOp9234GE

Wish I was at Lovebox this weekend..boo

Over and out xx

Sexymarche etiquette

Hi hi

It's been really sunny in Dundee of late. Sunny enough to go jogging (whilst not getting caught in torrential hail - has happened before) sunny enough for people not to care about your outfit and give you dissaproving looks as you schlomp in the street donning a sonic youth tee and jogging pants. And, sunny enough to take a nice trip to the erotic emporium aka Dundee's creepy sex shop.

This shop amuses me in man different ways. It's like a cartoon sex shop, or how I imagine a sleazy backstreet shop in Amsterdam to look, there it is nestled in between the homely looking "peggy's pantry" and a fragrant flower shop, except it doesn't really 'nestle' more blares out S-E-X with leather corsets and dildos peeking over the semi-tasteful window display. There's a 60 year old man who runs it, with a roving eye who once said he could "order something special in" for me and my girlfriend..whatever that means. It kind of made us sound sexually disabled. This man obviously knows his stuff, he's got a right little Alladins cave in that place everything from gags to freaking fetish feet (modelled on the feet of a porn star - boke).

What amuses me is the beautfiul etiquette that people use in this sleazebucket...the lady in the bank is never this nice to me, although I guess i'm not asking her which buttplug to buy, maybe if I did she'd crack a smile.. the conversations in that shop highly amuse me, its like British aristocracy with dirty words thrown in I love it!

Creepus: "Hello sir how can I help you today?" (said in a put on posh accent)
Customer: "Hello. I'd like to purchase a waterproof strap on"
Creepus: Ah I see, we have a variety of those I can show you a selection if you want.."
Customer: "That would be excellent, thankyou"
Creepus: "Do you know that you can also stick this on the window, it has suction cups"
Customer: Really..fascinating

(some words have been stolen from the L Word)

It's like he was choosing a tie at Harrods, seriously hilarious although he asked questions such as "can I attatch another dildo to this? BEST PLACE for people watching everrrr, and one time I saw an ancient old lady in there and silently squealed with disgusted glee.

God., I've made myself sound like a regular sex shop creep..oh well I needed to tell the blogosphere
Rose out..i've copied that from the icooper column in 'i' newspaper, I have a big man crush on that one, must be his cynicism.

x