We aren't defined by our work. People think if you over-identify with your work, then that must mean you're giving over too much of yourself to it, that there's something wrong with that. We're trained to believe in things like work-life balance. So much work is tending towards service. It's very much about creating experiences rather than products, and it makes those boundaries between life and work very slippery.
Melissa Gira GrantI remember being in high school in the '90s, and even then somehow hearing about the the Canadian Supreme Court's Butler decision which was meant to keep "obscene" material from entering Canada. The stuff being stopped at the border was almost all lesbian.
Melissa Gira GrantOnce when I told sex workers about my own sex work, it ended up building inappropriate trust with some people. But there have been events now - like covering the protests against Backpage at the Village Voice - where I've talked to sex workers who don't necessarily know that I've done sex work.
Melissa Gira GrantWork doesn't have to be great in order to dignify it as work. Work just is. It's quite value-neutral. The issue is about what kinds of power and control you have at work as a human being. That's the commonality. It's not necessarily what the task is.
Melissa Gira GrantAlmost everything I've learned about journalism has been from other friends who are journalists, taking advantage of the money I hope they don't think they threw away at j-school. I studied comparative literature, but the professional vagaries of journalism I've learned through other people's trial and error, and my own.
Melissa Gira GrantThe value we're all raised with, that women don't have the capacity to make moral decisions for themselves, particularly around their sexuality. That if they make the wrong decisions they are ruined for life. That someone more powerful, a man or even a more powerful woman, should be responsible for them. That's the value animating all of this. It's incredibly racialized as well.
Melissa Gira Grant