Whatever Happened to Class?

An Essay by Jo Weldon in Radical History Review

My short essay on my antipathy toward the word “classy” is available to read online for two months! If you want to read it while it’s available, check out Whatever Happened to Class .

It’s part of Duke University’s Radical History Review Issue 149: Troubling Terms in the Sex Trade.

“Contributors to this special issue examine language associated with the sex trades, including contentious words—and feminist issues—with complex histories and diverse political effects, such as prostitution, sex work, trafficking, and decriminalization. The authors trace the intellectual genealogies of terms such as sex worker, red light district, and white slavery to consider how such terms are affected by competing histories, political and linguistic cultures of translation, and different contexts of scholarship, advocacy, and policy.”

Here’s the song that inspired the title:

The Full Online Issue, Free Through July

Hard Copy (Paperback) Edition

There’s a 2022 zoom video from the editors:

I was honored to be alerted to this call for papers by Dr. Mireille Miller-Young, author of A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography, which I consider required reading for anyone with an academic opinion about the sex trade:

“A Taste for Brown Sugar boldly takes on representations of black women's sexuality in the porn industry. It is based on Mireille Miller-Young's extensive archival research and her interviews with dozens of women who have worked in the adult entertainment industry since the 1980s. The women share their thoughts about desire and eroticism, black women's sexuality and representation, and ambition and the need to make ends meet. Miller-Young documents their interventions into the complicated history of black women's sexuality, looking at individual choices, however small—a costume, a gesture, an improvised line—as small acts of resistance, of what she calls "illicit eroticism." Building on the work of other black feminist theorists, and contributing to the field of sex work studies, she seeks to expand discussion of black women's sexuality to include their eroticism and desires, as well as their participation and representation in the adult entertainment industry. Miller-Young wants the voices of black women sex workers heard, and the decisions they make, albeit often within material and industrial constraints, recognized as their own.”

Like many of my posts, this one is a bit rambling! There’s just so much to tell. I’m working to get back on a real writing schedule soon, after several shows and events took over my time during the past couple of months.