Doing It Professionally

(on one of my last cafe days, East Village, 2009)

(I meant this to be a much longer and thoughtful sort of retrospective, sum-it-all-up, make-it-all-make-sense sort of blog post. But in the interest of moving my life along rather than documenting the back story perfectly, here it is:)

On Wednesday I’ll be joining the staff of the Third Wave Foundation, a feminist, activist foundation that works in the United States to support young women and transgender youth. As External Relations Officer, I’ll be finding ways to amplify the stories of our partners’ work: advocates intimately engaged in supporting reproductive justice & sexual health and rights. A good deal of that will involve using new media, and a good deal will be done the beautifully old-fashioned way: through relationships, trust, storytelling. It’s a crossroads move for me: from San Francisco to New York, from working out of cafes and bedrooms to a Midtown office with other people in it, from staying up until 3 am writing to oh who am I kidding!

True and appropriately embarrassing story: I first came to Third Wave as a loud-mouthed but shy-faced sex worker activist, invited to speak on a panel on sex work and feminism. I dug up the bio I submitted for that gig on Valentine’s Day in 2003, and oh god I am not it sharing here but! It is young and precious and earnest and also, not that off-the-mark. Now six years later, I just had to pull the same kind of thing together, but this time, for my new staff bio. And this is what I wrote:

Melissa Gira Grant is a writer, artist, and activist working at the intersection of sexuality, new media, feminism, and human rights. She is the incoming External Relations Officer at Third Wave Foundation, and the former Development Coordinator and Social Media Coordinator at St. James Infirmary, a peer-based clinic for sex workers in San Francisco. Working in collaboration with grassroots community-based organizations and non-governmental organizations, including the Open Society Institute’s Sexual Health and Rights’ Project, the Tactical Tech Collective, the Desiree Alliance, THE LINE Campaign, and the Internet Sex Information Service (ISIS-Inc), Melissa develops editorial content, education and advocacy campaigns, and offers technical assistance and peer-led workshops in using new media for social justice. She is the co-founder of the sex worker policy watch and media advocacy blog, Bound, not Gagged, a columnist for $pread magazine, and a contributor to Slate, The Huffington Post, and RH Reality Check. She lives in Brooklyn, and her website is melissagira.com.

Aside from the fact that not a lick of that existed in 2003, again: I don’t feel I’ve changed all that much, honestly, in who I am and what I do — even if I rarely spell it all out in one neat paragraph (and how I have tried). What does feel like a shift is that now that I have a title on my head, some people are going to look at me as a sort of professional feminist. With all the attendant and marvelous baggage that brings.

Like more pencil skirts and smart blouses and heels! Of all of the things I’ve done for money, I’ve never got to wear office drag in a legitimate office environment quite so often as I’ve donned it for the purposes of slipping in and out of hotel lobbies and airports to look as little “like a prostitute” as possible. And because of the beautifully curved way my life has come around itself, I do not even have to offer this story as a grand coming-out gesture to any of my new colleagues. For once, that outing moment is actually among the least incendiary things I could say about myself. They know. They’ve funded the sex worker run clinic I once called home, St. James Infirmary, based on a proposal I co-authored. They’ve already seen me blushing and awkward and ready to take on whatever long before I was ready for everything I’d set myself up to take on.

There are no closet doors here.

But of course there always are.

Just give me at least a few weeks to obsess on the one that’s directly across from my own bed before I start talking about how it feels to emerge from the rest.