This is a research brief that I wrote for school last semester.
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On the Dehumanization of Sex Workers
by Katie Armistead
Dehumanization is happening in the world today. An example of this is the dehumanization of sex workers.
“Whore” is often used as a derogatory term; this is common knowledge. This seems just as dehumanizing to sex workers as using “gay” as a derogatory term is to homosexual people. This is also proof that sex workers are often considered lowly creatures in many cultures today.
Many people seem to think that a person who is a sex worker cannot be raped. Because of this unfortunate, but commonly held belief, sex workers are very rarely able to prosecute rapists (Karen 145-146, Lockett 39-40, Gardener). An example of this from 2003 is a case mentioned in a publication by the Human Rights Watch. According to their publication, “one police officer suggested that because a woman who had been abducted was a prostitute, her case was not rape, despite the fact that the woman reported it as rape and there was evidence of significant bruising and other injuries.” Not only do many police officers not protect sex workers, but sometimes they are the people who rape or otherwise harm the sex workers (Lockett 39-40).
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Current Mood: 
bouncy
Most of y'all have probably already stumbled upon this, but for anyone who hasn't...
PostSecret
Current Music: Jonathon Coulton ~ I Feel Fantastic
Okay, so, in one of my classes, we do these things each Monday where we write 3 sentences, each one with at least one word from last week's vocabulary words, and they usually have to be about a certain thing, and written with a certain grammatical structure (such as a sentence with an introductory dependant, or a participial phrase, or a prepositional stick-up-yer-ass clause, etc. etc.).
Anywho, one Monday recently our sentences were supposed to be spooky/halloween-related/etc. (and contain a vocabulary word, of course). Here's one of mine that I liked... It's about a movie that I watched with Dracofrost on the weekend of my birthday, it was a vampire movie. See if you can guess which movie it's about!
Fresh blood awakened her former lovers, causing a fiasco in the coffin room.
And if you're Mommy, Sambear, or Dracofrost, don't tell! 
abecedarian (ay-bee-see-DAYR-ee-uhn) noun
1. One who is learning the alphabet.
2. One who teaches the alphabet.
3. One who is a beginner in some field.
adjective
1. Alphabetically arranged.
2. Relating to the alphabet.
3. Rudimentary
[From Medieval Latin abecedarium (alphabet or a book of the alphabet), from the letters a, b, c, and d.]
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Nifty word snagged from http://wordsmith.org/
Work In Progress
This is a sketch for a painting and/or oil pastel piece that I'm planning. It is also what I'm turning in for a school project... I got the idea because as assignments in my American Literature/Composition ADV class, we had to:
1. Read Bush's latest State of the Union
2. Make our own State of the Union report, which should reflect our opinions on our country's current state, in any creative medium.
What is this a drawing of?
--It's of Lady Liberty being strangled with oil pipeline (which has the names of several major oil companies written on it).
Why is this picture smaller than most of the other ones you post?
--Because it's a WIP... you'll get to see a larger version once I'm done. ^_~ BTW, I'm not sure if you can tell, since the picture is so small, but the torch is about to fall from her hand in this picture.
Best viewed large!!
