librarypunk - 052 - I Was a Stripper Librarian and Library Defense Network feat. Kristy Cooper

Episode Date: May 12, 2022

Readings Video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=455589028208337 I was a Stripper Librarian on Amazon and Barnes & Noble Kristy’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/librarydefend  https://www.kristycooper.com/ Lola Davina: https://www.loladavina.com/ https://www.sexworkinfoshare.org/  https://www.swopbehindbars.org/  Mutual aid https://twitter.com/LysistrataMCCF https://swopusa.org/

thing. Also, Justin likes his drops. Ignore him. Talk through them. He does drops a lot. No copyright law in the universe is going to stop me. Just, I don't have all the podcast term. Yeah. Yeah. That helps though. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Someone like sometimes. Yeah. Someone will just like, he'll, you know, air horn someone. Like, they freeze up and don't know what to do. So did I cover it, Justin? I'm the person who does the disclaimers now, apparently. People didn't just want to fuck the one slur. They wanted the one slur to fuck himself. That's what Tumblr wanted.

Pizza Hut wants to fuck me, apparently. I feel like I should confess, too. I realize most people are either audiobook people or podcast people. And so I always like, I want to listen to more podcasts, but then I'm like, well, that's going to interfere with my audiobook intake. And then on podcast, people say the same thing to me about audiobooks. I'm a neither person, actually. Yeah, I can't do audiobooks because I can't pay attention to them.

And the only podcasts I can listen to are like comedy people talking about the news that I don't pay attention to why I drive and clean. I'm going through Poddam America right now. Oh, all the back catalog? That's a lot of stuff. Yeah, it's unending. I don't have to worry about what comes next. Yeah, I guess I do listen to less audiobooks now because I listen to podcasts. But because during grad school, that was all I did was listen to podcasts,

listen to audiobooks and then play mindless video games. And that was what I did. Yeah, I got really into listening to like memoirs on audiobooks because then normally they get the person who wrote it to read it. And I really liked that. I had someone else read my... Really? I don't like, I'm not in love with my own voice and I feel like it was a younger time in my life. And so I want like a younger voice.

I don't know. Yeah, I like Roger Eberts because obviously he had to have someone else read his. So I thought that was interesting that he was like still alive when it was recorded. You know, because normally they just get the person to do it. Carrie Brownstein for Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl. They actually had interviews between her and the director of the audiobook as part of the audiobook as well as like her like doing little guitar riffs here and there. So that was cute. I like that a lot.

No, I just finished your book on audiobook today while I was trying to sleep for my night shift. Yeah, that was not my voice. Yeah. Makes sense. No, I didn't realize until like the end because I guess I didn't notice at the beginning when they were like, oh, here's the person reading. And then at the very end, I was like, oh, okay. Okay, that's someone else. So I'm going to hear someone else's voice tonight.

It's good. All right. Introductions. I'm Justin. I'm a Scalcom librarian. My pronouns are he and him. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library.

My pronouns are they them. I'm Jay. I am an academic metadata librarian. My pronouns are he, him. And we have a guest. Would you like to introduce yourself? Sure. My name is Christy Cooper.

My pronouns are she, her. are they? And then, yeah, I'm an adult services librarian at a public library in Michigan. Welcome. That was our live studio audience. Arthur's there. Yeah. Yeah, they'll turn on you. Arthur would never. Arthur would never. So, Christy, we wanted to have you here to talk about your book. I was a stripper librarian. Is there anything you want to tell us about the book up front that, as we jump, into it.

I think one thing I like to tell people from the beginning is I actually, let's see, I think I wrote the first draft of it about eight years ago. And then I just sort of sat on it for a long time. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to publish this one day. So it became one of those things where I was like, I'm going to get, you know, I wanted to get this, I wanted to do this. I'm going to do this. And I think at that point I had this vague idea that I could do it anonymously.

and I feel that that plan was never really worked very well anyways. So, I mean, at this point in my career, I'm okay with everyone knowing I just don't care anymore. So it may affect my advancements, but here we are. I mean, I feel like it also is important, you know, to kind of form more former sex workers to be out, to kind of normalize that as, you know, something that a lot of people have experienced, then don't talk about. And I met with other library workers and talked to them who are, you know, current and former sex workers trying to get jobs in the library world too. When I was reading your book, I realized that towards the end of the book, you start talking

about like getting sort of accidentally into library advocacy. And I was wondering if that was like the same, what gave you, if that coincided with you deciding, oh, never mind. I'm just going to publish this not anonymously. Yeah, like I developed a certain amount in notoriety in Michigan libraries, just from some of the advocacy stuff that I've done. So at that point, I feel like I'm already a bit of a well-known, least in name, least in, you know, anyone who's paying attention to what's happening to libraries in Michigan. And so I know people have opinions about me. I got used to people having opinions about me without knowing me.

And in that, I don't know, I'm just, I've accepted that. And I, having done more activism, I am. comfortable with whatever, whatever heat that puts under me. So yeah, I can imagine, especially having to organize a whole lot of like protests and board meetings, which just is the scariest sounding thing to me to have to constantly organize and corral people into a meeting every week. I realized I really enjoyed that. That was, I wish I had more time to fight the bad guys in the way that I did during

that period of my life. I feel like it's something I'm, it's a niche skill. combating, you know, really corrupt library administrations. Yeah, we can jump into all that in depth in a moment. But for people who might be interested in getting it, what got you started on the book? Like, how did the process get started? Like, what made you decide to end up writing it? Well, like I said, I sat down to write it about eight years ago.

And at that point, oh, gosh, I'm not to try to describe time now. but at that point I think it had been like six or like six or seven years since I had since I had stripped so I don't even know if I sat down now if I'd have the memory for it but having I had that draft I finally went back to it and I you know I edited a bunch and I had other editors help me but it was something I just felt like I really wanted to get down and get out yeah and then you came back to it in 2018 was when you sat down to set down to edit it in well i oh 2021 and what i actually what i did was i um i already had an editor go through it and i i need a little fire under my butt to finish it

so i um announced it for pre-release and that forced me to finish going through the edits and like get it ready for publication. Nice. Now, that's probably what I would have to do too. Oh, shit, I've got to work on that article tonight. Okay. Well, I'm working at night shift tonight. My brain's kind of scrambled.

So I am curious, you know, what responses the book has gotten so far because it's, it really came out recently. I guess I had just bought it and assumed it had been out for like a year or something. But I think I got it like right when it came out. So what other responses been from like library workers? Good and bad. I think overall people have been pretty positive about it. Good.

If they weren't, I was going to get mad. Well, when I first, yeah, when I first announced it, like I shared it on Facebook to like the LA think tank, you know,

I'm just like, I'm just starting it. Everyone's going to find out everywhere now. And I had like nothing but positive reactions. You know, and I'm sure there's some people who quietly thought, oh no, this is,

but those people at the very least, they felt like keeping it to themselves or having those conversations more quietly. They didn't feel, I really only had one library worker get negative on my Twitter too. And then I didn't even notice it happened. By the time I logged into it, a bunch of other library workers had like got, you know, had kind of just argued that person down. So. I'm proud of the think tank.

I wouldn't expect that of them. I honestly feel as though if I did this five or ten years ago, I wouldn't have gotten as positive a response. I think that because the library world is trying so hard to, like, be more inclusive and open-minded and a lot of people are, I mean, I honestly, I have a lot of thoughts on that, and I think a lot of stumbling is happening, but there is at least that effort, you know,

so I think people are trying. You're going to stumble. There's that. Yeah, there's, yeah, people are trying, so. There was that open letter that I wasn't really planning on bringing up, but it was about the anti-neutrality guy. And a lot of people were kind of dogpiling on it like you should. But the reason I didn't say anything about it and didn't plan to was because someone pointed out this letter was not written for library workers.

It was written to external parties to make them think libraries are getting too woke or something to then like further this main author's career with them and like think thinks or conservative politics or reactionary. liberal politics. Yeah, I thought it was funny because we had a whole bit on here about how I'm also against the, like, radical empathy framework, but like not for like bootlicking neolib reasons. Yeah. So I didn't want to overly get into it, but it was, you know, I think that kind of reaction is not even aimed at changing the library world. It's like aimed at, you know, just the sort of position of the people doing that kind of work, if that makes sense. Yeah, it's gross. I think I totally missed this on Twitter because I haven't been on social media at all.

It's bullshit, don't bother. Somebody send me a link. I feel like I'm always behind on the latest, like, hot topics in the library world lately. Yeah, that was why I did make the bad library takes Twitter, but then I've never kept it up. But the only reason I was thinking about it was because I went to one of the meetings of the ALA group. that's working on the radical empathy and alternatives to neutrality meeting. And I was like, oh, no, they didn't plan this meeting out very well. It was kind of a bit of a train wreck.

It was the first one, though. So it's like, okay, fine. They know, but then this letter came out that was just against the whole idea and had just missed all of the previous discussions about it. It was also shitting on Sam a whole bunch. Yeah, I didn't even read it. Yeah. everyone else did. They had plenty of time to dunk on it,

but I was like, I don't think this is in good faith. I scanned it. I did not do a deep dive into it. Well, I'm glad that library workers were pretty cool, but I also wonder if it's because a lot more people are involved in sex work in some way or know someone who is, particularly like with their eyes of Onlyfans or something. I wonder if that's an irrelevant impact or if people,

people are making a conscious political choice to be more sex positive and sex work are positive. I perceived it as a more conscious political choice because I feel like, you know, you can move, like, within like the more radical circles of library land, I mean, everyone knows someone who's done sex work probably. But when you go into more kind of mainstream liberal, honestly, like that librarian is a very sheltered person. And we all know who that person is. they do not know anyone who has an only fans. Yeah, I forget how much my bubble is a bubble sometimes. Yeah, my coworkers are pretty much just, they're liberals, so. Not everyone has like a friend who's just like posting nudes on the timeline just every day for like a joke.

I just realize it's not everyone's experience. No. I'm trans, so I've like seen all my friends naked, you know. know. It's a, you know, that's how we talk to each other. Yeah. Maybe it's a little generational too. Yeah, could be. I hope the Gen Zs are, I hope the Zoomers are having a good time and we'll figure everything out for themselves. I'm so excited for like Gen Z and Zoomers and are they the same thing? I don't know. But for them, when are they old enough to start like being library workers? I think they're beginning to me.

Yeah, like, yeah. I think so. Yeah, I'm in the middle, so 23 would be the oldest Zimmers. Yeah. Cool. I want to see Zimmer librarians. But that's the oldest ones. Yeah.

So they're going to, they're going to be the zennials, but the other way, not with the X. Yeah, I don't think I realize the exact age group because my, my housemate, he is 22. He's a Zumer, but I just sort of like, I just. assume everything's like the same as him. I see your cat. Hi cat. Yeah, he positioned himself like, just right there.

The new armies are different. They don't give a shit about Inouyasa. Where do you get these? I'm getting into V-tubers lately. Oh, no. I know. It's a weird world. Why would you do that? I want to be a V-tuber.

I want to be, I want to pitch-shift my voice and be an anime girl for 50,000 people. I would pay so much money for, like, you and Steve to be V-tubers. That'd be very funny if we did like a Dilo thing. So I actually, as I was finishing up your book today, I had to pause it a few times to just like pace around my apartment and get mad because one part of the book that I enjoyed, I was. Matt on your behalf was the job hunting process because I was also unemployed a long time after grad school. Not as long, but had to go through a lot of very stupid questions and interviews. And the one that made me have to get up and start writing some notes was the one where you were interviewing to do a web librarian job. And the person said, don't you know anything about

second life in the job interview? And they're like, this is. the future of online library services. It was rough. Time is past. I was vindicated. That did not become an important thing. So, you know, that's actually another big, that was one of the most common pieces of feedback I've gotten from people.

It's just like resonating with my job search experience and just being like, this is like, you know, one of the first places I've seen somebody talk about that. And how much, how. Oh, and a few people saying that they decided not to go into libraries because that was like because how hard it is to find jobs. So yeah, like makes me think about like so I'm always curious about like if people had jobs before being librarians, even if it was like, you know, in high school or during college or whatever, like how those skills like transfer over like, oh, you are good at this as a librarian

because of X. Like I can always kind of tell if someone's done like a public, like a service worker. kind of job or like done retail or worked in a restaurant or something by the way they react to the public. So I'm so curious like how have like the skills you have as like a sex worker like translate over to library land and you know anything like that. I know that's such a like corporate question but I'm like really curious. I think being patience with difficult people I think even prior to that, prior to stripping, I had, you know, I worked in restaurants and stuff, but I think stripping stretched my patience level further than it had gone before. And I think that, like, if libraries didn't hire you on the spot for that skill alone. Like, yeah, and I posted something on Twitter after I had talked to this woman who was in library school and she was like trying desperately to get any type of library experience. Like I helped her with, you know, her resume and stuff and just like kind of just putting it out to people who, you know, how they feel about hiring former sex workers.

And, you know, of course, everyone on Twitter's like, yeah, I told you what. That's a great skill. That's a great skill. But I'm just like in practice, though. These are these are the Twitter people, though, versus like what's actually happening when people are looking at her resume or she's going to an interview. So. Yeah. I mean, and something you brought up was if you do.

full-service sex work in a place that isn't where it isn't legal, that comes up on a criminal background check if you at any point get caught and arrested. So in my university, that would be immediately disqualifying no matter what I thought. Like if I was the chair of the hiring committee, it wouldn't matter because the HR department would kick the applicant out. So I hope people are considering that when they say that they would hire someone before that person goes through the process of applying if you have a criminal record related to it. And I think with public libraries, it varies too, like, depending on how you're structured and how if you're run by the city, if you're run by the county, if you're independent from all of that.

And in Michigan, we have like a bunch of different types of legal, legal ways libraries can be established. So in my state, it would depend on what kind you're in. But if you are in like a system that's more HR heavy, yeah, that's definitely going to be a problem for you if you have a record. But I would say, and it depends on what you, what kind of sex work you were doing too. But even for someone doing full service, you're a lot less likely to be arrested if you are working, you know, if you're working online versus somebody who is working on the street too. So that's also a privilege consideration. And if you're able to be more picky about, about customers.

If you're in a position to be like, you know what, this vibe feels off, not happening, you know. Yeah, it was really interesting part of the book when you were talking about the conference and meeting all the other different types of sex workers there and then their considerations about like, if you're going to be an escort, how much should you charge, how many minimum hours, how many, what your considerations are.

And then you talk a lot about Fasta Sesta, well, not a lot, but you kind of close out that segment on Fasta Sesta and everything we've all heard a million times about how this creates dangerous for sex workers and also means there's a lot fewer. I don't know why this shocked me in any way, but when you were just talking about being on like the stripper message boards and just being like, oh yeah, this is like our four, like our strippers or whatever and just feeling like, oh yeah, we're, I'm out of town this week and this city was great. And then I came back and I made a lot of money. I don't know why

that shocked me that existed. But you, you did sort of mention that that was harder to do now, I would say at the beginning of Sesta Fasta, there was like this, there was more fear about giving advice online. I think that though if you look on like sex work or Twitter, people are giving advice. But it depends. You have to be careful. Like you still have to be careful about how you say it. But that is for me, you know, I, before I went into stripping, I nerded around on the internet. And like, I know this is a very privileged position for me where I,

was able to just like read a bunch of forums and like get advice and figure out what I was doing before I ever started versus just sort of showing up and hoping for the best. Which this would have been, if I remember the timeline, right? This would have been like 2005 when you started? Yeah, that sounds about right. So was there like Stripper Myspace? There was. There was something called Stripper Web.

That was the internet forum. I hung out on to like learn the ropes. Yeah, I'm now going to geek out on like old technology, not old technology, but like just things that people have used in the past. Every time when this comes up, I get fixated. There should be like stripper neo-cities. That would be fun. So how are we going to strip in the metaverse?

I feel like, you know, if you want to get this position here at librarypunk. dot ink. You're going to, you know, I think like Metaverse is the future. So I really want you to explain a stripping in the Metaverse, please. Christy, 30 seconds. I'm still not sure, like, what the Metaverse is going to entail. It's second life, but it's, yeah, it's like my foot worse and straight. It's second life, but it's destroying the environment.

Yeah, instead of being a haven for trans furries, it's Mark Zuckerberg. It's Mark Zuckerberg. It's WeSport. It's We Sport. It's just Bitcoin, but second life. It's so stupid. So yeah, that's what it is. So the answer is nothing. It's a, it's a technology in search of a use case. The worst kind of technology, in my opinion. That does beg the question of like, have, because I know with like crypto, there's been like aggressive marketing towards like in marginalized groups and communities. use like fucking

oh god I'm so bad at name sometimes he directed do the right thing Spike Lee Spike Lee yeah Spike Lee did like a Bitcoin ad right and like talking about like how frees you from banks and stuff so I wonder like

have crypto people and like companies been like targeting sex workers at all especially with like the anonymity aspect of it a bunch of dudes who have tried to pay strippers and Bitcoin. I guarantee it. Yeah. Like I haven't, I mean, I would say probably in the club where it's cash, that's like, that

wouldn't, I don't, you know, it's, I don't know if I don't know if that would fly. Yeah, but I don't, but there are escorts that take Bitcoin. Yeah, I would imagine. Internet people are weird. I tried to buy a Twitter handle one time and I was like, I can give you real money. And he's like, no, I don't accept Bitcoin. I'm like, okay, but like, US dollars, the real ones. I can give you the money.

I'm not getting a Bitcoin wallet for this. So I imagine, yeah. And since sex work is the ultimate customer service, it's sort of like you have to put up with people insisting on paying you in extremely weird ways. If anything, though, you can be more picky about how people pay in order to ensure that you get paid too. What are you say, Jay?

Oh, I was just going to say, I know, I mean, it's still bad and wrong. but I know in like privacy circles, like sometimes things are ranked higher than others and like privacy scores based on whether or not they take Bitcoin because of the anonymity. I mean, obviously it's a public chain. At least the NFT ones are or something. But in theory, there can be a degree of anonymity if you're using. Bitcoin to buy things. Like you shouldn't.

But that's why I was curious if it had caught on with sex workers or not because of any sort of anonymity provided by it. I think that, no, the appeal would be if you have customers who are kind of paranoid, then you just know, okay, fine, you can pay in Bitcoin. Oh, okay. It's like that, you know, like, so you just kind of get over that, whatever barrier that they're afraid that if there's a credit card charge. or whatever. Makes sense. I did want to ask about, like, how do you feel

library workers and library patrons who are sex workers could be better supported by the field? Well, I think that kind of just more awareness among the library field that you have

patrons who are sex workers and you don't even, like, it's not going to be obvious to you, you're not going to know. not going to come in with big hair and lots of makeup and platform, you know, platform heels. Like that's, they're not going to be wearing that in the library. I think, you know, having resources, having resources, having, actually this is a big thing that I encountered too. Like I was kind of looking at the, and I have some of this at the end of my book,

some of the current like literature that kind of gives people safety advice. And a lot of libraries don't order that stuff. So even just getting books like now I'm afraid, Lola Davina, like getting books by Lola Davina. I don't know if there's somewhere I could like drop her name in the chat, but she has a number of great resources on how to do sex work safely and to understand the financial side of it or just having books by sex workers as places like places that resources people can use. Yeah, I found Lola Davina. I put their stuff in the notes so that people can go and order their work. at their library. Hopefully, I wonder how many people who listen to this have actually gone and ordered the books we've told them to go order.

Probably at least a few. I want to see, like, a little... I would put in a request right now. A little library punk sticker on the spine of all of the books that were recommended by us. Oh, we should get, like, the Oprah, like, Reading Club sticker that goes on the front of, like, best-selling paperbacks. It's just a bunny. Yeah. It's that weird bunny I made is the first logo.

It's like, you know, those cats that are just like black and they have the big yellow eyes? I've been a bunny like that. That'll work. Let's see. Let's see. Let's see. I was thinking specifically about like institutional policies in codes of contact. I was thinking about academic context because that's what I work in in terms of like, you know,

if you have students who are doing sex work, are there institutional policies that you could start pushing back against that are, generally like, you know, if there's something in student codes of conduct or employment or student employment, stuff like that. But I didn't have time to go look and see if any of those policies, like what those policies typically are. It's been kind of a chaotic week for me. Sadie and I are both moving at the same time. So our research team is down to Jay. And I have other things happening. And also I'm on work to roll right now. Fuck the system. Yeah. The president sent out a like fear mongering message and it just fired up everyone instead of

scaring them and I was very happy. Yeah. No, I mean, I think I'm definitely more versed in the public library world. I think any, you know, and that's a problem in public libraries in general are just policies that, you know, make it difficult for somebody who, you know, who's living in poverty. You know, I think that any of those kinds of policies, like rules against sleeping in the library or rules against different types of behaviors that the library is going to have a problem with, you know, that are not really actually disrupting other patrons.

They're just different. I don't know. I think any of those, I think rules about how you're using the bathroom. One thing that I just occurred to me is I think at least in one of the jobs I've had a no moonlighting policy. Like, so I think you can, like, it's considered the main employment. So if you have side jobs, you're supposed to keep this as like your primary employment and like not do like moonlighting jobs. I'll have to look it up. That is a ridiculous rule in the library world when they don't pay enough.

So that. Exactly. I literally just started a side gig today. Yeah. Well, and I remember I remember seeing it. I think it might have been, I think it might be in my current job. But I remember, yeah, being kind of like, what the hell is this? Just because I was part time when I first hired at a library, you can't live off of a

pages salary. So, you know, I worked in restaurants and stuff too. And I had been doing that for a lot longer than libraries. So who are you to say that this is going to be my primary employment, you know? But yeah, I wonder, I wonder how many other public libraries have things like that and how like that would affect anybody who works like a second job or, you know, especially if it's something that's not considered like a respectable air quote position like, you know, stripping or other forms of sex work.

Well, I think like any other job, like it's none of your employer's business what your other job is, you know, like you're not providing enough hours and money. Like, I'm showing up and I'm supposed to. Yeah. No, that makes absolutely no sense. If it's okay with everyone, I want to move on to like the library defense network and how that has been going. Could you tell us what the library defense network is and what it does? Sure.

So that started about a little over five years ago. I was up late one night and I saw this Facebook post at a former library I used to work at saying that five of the librarians there had just been fired. they all incidentally had been trying to unionize. And the thing, and they were told that they were, you know, trying to, you know, save money, you know, for the library. And I'm like, I had personally worked on the millage campaign for that library. So I didn't, I knew that the money was there, that the funding was there for their positions. And none of this made sense. Like I got, I just got really mad.

I ended up going to the next board meeting, along with other, bunch of other former staff who were really, really pissed off at that board. of directors and their puppet director that they had hired. One of the librarians had asked me to live stream it so her parents could watch from home. So I did that and then I may have shared it a few places too, including the Michigan Statewide listserv. And then after that, like the board president started coming after me to like attack me on the list serve, which if anything all he did was stir up more librarians who got pissed off because he was so condescending and just basically said, I don't know anything about how libraries are run. And you know that, you know, Christy was a librarian here, but you know, she is now staying home with her children, like a good mother should

or whatever. And he just made everyone mad. So since he was such a good villain, I don't know, I just took about three and a half months. I ran a bunch of protests. I did a public pressure campaign online, but I ended up getting the entire board to resign, the director to resign, and all five of the librarians got their jobs back. And I... Damn. Hell yeah. And I mean, I had the time at the time. And I just realized, like, this is something that I, and, you know, I'm good at doing this, but it also pisses a lot of people off. And so since then, people have, like, come to me and I've helped with other campaigns. Like, I helped in a campaign in Cincinnati to stop the sale of a major downtown library building. I more recently, in other local library in Michigan, I had some people who had got to, mass furloughed during the beginning of the pandemic. Again, there was no budget issues whatsoever.

There was just like a garbage person on the board who was, you know, making everybody or very bullying everybody into like treating the library workers like garbage. That one took longer, but eventually the director did resign and he resigned and they're rebuilding now. And the reason that campaign worked though is because a lot of the people who, it, were directly impacted, stayed the course and kept fighting. You know, so a lot of the stuff I did was advising at the beginning about strategy. And I think that's, and I've had other people, like other things I've advised on on smaller scale. But one of the biggest things or takeaways, I always want to let people know is that if you want to fight,

you have to dig in. It is going to take a while and keep trying things, you know, and there needs to be people who are there, who are going to fight for it. And there's ways to do it anonymously, to do it. quietly and not have them know that it's actually you, but people have to stay dedicated. Because I've had other people reach out to me and try to hand me something like, oh, can you just go stop this? And I'm like, it's not that simple. There's a lot more to it than that. You have to be invested and you have to go to the course yourself. I can't just do it for you.

So, and now I'm at a point in my life too where, you know, I'm part time at my library. I'm 26 hours. And then my other job, I run a small house cleaning business. So, and I'm a single mom with two kids. So I'm just very busy. So I'm just there now if people like want to chat strategy. That's about how I can capacitate. So and that's the other reason I got the book finished was the pandemic had allowed me to slow down and like finish it. If people do want to reach out to you about strategizing, should they just use your your regular email? Yeah, my email is fine. Okay. There's like a library defense network Facebook page. or any of my social media stuff.

Okay, cool. I'll track all that down and get it so people can bother you. I'm sure we have plenty of people who listen who want to absolutely get all of their board members fired. And so that'll be a great inspiration for them. But that was pretty cool. You also, you didn't mention with that first campaign that got all of the board members to resign, you threatened to FOIA all of their connections to local contractors because they were trying to expand. the building, right?

Yeah. Yeah, that was one of the things. Like, that was, there's a few things I suspected that may have pushed things over, and I think that was one of them. I didn't even have to do a FOIA. I hate doing FOIAs. I usually like to find someone else who likes to do them. This seems like a skill I should cultivate.

I feel like I would be good at that. I got, like, my data from, like, Westlaw one time just, like, for funzies. I'm trying to do it with Elsevier recently, but I think you have to be in California, and I don't know if I lie and say I'm in California, they'll still send me the information. Because I think you have to send a copy of your driver's license, usually. You have to scan it.

So if anyone is in California and wants to help us do a little experiment on certain vendors and what they collect on you, I don't know, tweet at me. That'll be fun. That'd be fun episode. I just want to say that I just recommended a purchase for both your book and the Alola Divina.

book at my library. Did it. I'll do that too. Let's see. Anything about the library defense network? Oh, you're also a member of a library freedom, right?

You were in the second cohort? Yeah, I was in the second cohort. Sadie, which one were you in? I was in the first crash course, which was like a slightly different program. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, she's kind of reformatting it a bit now, I think.

Yeah, the crash courses weren't as intensive, I think. as the cohorts were. Yeah, I'd still like to do it someday. I think they ran out of funding for it, though. So whatever happens next, I'll try and get involved. Yeah, I always try to like, you know, I've never done it because I try to like save space in it for like people who don't already know this stuff. And for like public library workers since I work in academia and don't have a lot of say over that kind of thing.

Yeah, but you can always write policies that at least inform people. That's kind of what I'm doing, and I'm kind of doing it alone, which is a huge pain in the ass. Oh, yeah, I've definitely given presentations to faculty and stuff. Yeah, I just want something I can point to and say, like, here's the data we collect through the library specifically so, like, you can know what we're doing. And then by outlining that, hopefully getting the systems people to be like, that's kind of embarrassing that we collect this, data, maybe we'll stop doing it. So that's my plan. Yeah, we tried to stop using Google Analytics for our library website,

but we don't have a say over that because university merged IT, and so we no longer have library IT. We only get to say what goes on our website, but we don't get to do any, like, we don't have that much control over it anymore, which is sad. Don't even get me started on Primo. I don't even look at the analytics most of the time. It's not my business. I'm sure you can find all kinds of good stuff.

Well, I skew the most popular searches because I always search ghosts every time I test things. And so that's like the most search thing is ghosts. And then all the other things are what the instruction librarians teach students to search. You have the gothist discovery layer. Well, because no one else is going to fucking search for ghosts except for me. And so our top search terms are like functionally useless. When everybody's like, oh, what do people search? And I'm like, doesn't matter.

Garbage data. It's garbage data. I love it. I guess we can go to the action-oriented question, which is usually how we start to wrap up, unless there's anything I missed. But what should library workers be doing to support their colleagues who are doing sex work or have already done it? specifically about colleagues?

I think showing that you're like a safe person to come out to. So I think that's a big thing, you know. So, you know, how are you, you know, demonstrating that? And I hate to be like, oh, yeah, you know, show them you're reading my book. And then you're, but, you know, like this isn't something, you know, what, but like anything else, are you getting media from the source? And are you showing people that that's something that you do? Yeah, I mean showing that you're a safe person to come out to, essentially. Do you know if anyone has done any sort of programming in libraries that's aimed at, say, like, strippers specifically, like sort of fully legal sex work?

I don't think so. I actually know someone who did. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't think they worked there. anymore. But one of my librarian friends in Baltimore, who worked in the Enoch Pratt system,

did a privacy workshop for people doing like online sex work and also sexting about like, here's what to not show in photos and on camera. Here's how to safely hide your information and whatnot. I was like, hell yeah. I don't know if it happened, but I know I remember them telling me about it and like how they were planning it and setting it up. So, yeah, I know one time it happened. You should reach out to them, see if they made anything, then we can share it. Yeah, I'll bug them. Well, I would say, too, yeah, related to like your previous question, yeah, help or being privacy advocates, you know, that you're able, that you're a resource that people can go to for people who are trying to figure out how to make sure that they are doing things privately online.

Yeah, like something I, and I mentioned this in a few episodes, something that I've studied a lot that's related to my work and like my research interest, but is not, is information seeking behaviors. And so I'm curious if you know of any studies or would have anything to share about like the information seeking behaviors of sex workers, either in a library or else. where that like librarians and people who make these systems and teach people how to use them and stuff would be helpful for them to know? That's a good question. I think I talked about that in my book where I linked up with a researcher. And that was initially what she was trying to do, was trying to find. And then that, but instead we ended up doing like a meta-analysis instead.

But that was initially what her goal was to like look into the information seeking behaviors of, she called us. Exotic dancers. But it didn't, yeah, as far as I know, I don't know that if anyone has studied that through an information lens. That researcher had done something before with street sex workers, right? Yeah. And that did get finished?

I am not sure. I'd have to go look back and see if she published something there or not. I can look it up. And if I find it, I'll put it in the notes in case anyone wants to know. move that research forward. I'm sure there's people out there who do. ACRL 2025, we're going to talk about the information needs of sex workers. That actually is a really good presentation idea, so someone please do that. Yeah. And that's another thing I've been playing. I used to do, I used to speak at conferences more when I had time.

And now I, I keep thinking, oh, I need to put together proposals for just talking about making more inclusive collections for sex workers. that is something I, then I forget to do it. Yeah, I was going to ask if you, if you were interested in keynoting, because I'm always doing conference service, and I got to really skew a conference I'm working on in terms of what we're talking about and more keynoters were, yeah, I just sort of bulldozed everyone because I was like, this conference has to happen.

This topic has not been talked about. Well, especially if it's online. But, yeah, no, I keep thinking, like, this is something I should do. And then it just, it needs to get more officially on the to-do list. Cool. Well, let me know when you do. And I'll, I'll make a whole, I'll try and just like bulldoze a whole conference and you're talking about information needs for sex workers.

That'd be cool. I don't know if I can pull that one off. Which conference did you, did you bulldoze? Oh, open Texas. So it's open education. It's a new one. But I said we have to talk about labor. We can't not make it a central theme.

And so it was, yeah, it would be a lot of things, especially to talk about like diversity and equity and things that always just sort of annoyed me was like, yeah, we hired a bunch of like brown students to be the face of the project. And it's like for $10 an hour, like, are you kidding? Like, are you fucking serious? Like they don't have any control over the project. Like, and I would ask these questions, people would get defensive. It's like a nice white lady or whatever. And I'm like, you're not giving me anything here. Like, what control do they have over the project?

How is it there? Why are they the face of it? If it's your project. The irony there, too. Yeah. So that just, you know, there's always one presentation in every OER conference that, like, gets me annoyed on a labor level. And I'm just like, we need to correct this.

Jay is telling secrets in the chat. I'm not going to read it out. Don't make friends. Friends don't make secrets. I'm not going to read it out. I'd be the one who has to edit it out. Yeah. Hopefully soon we can actually talk about it for real. Lord have mercy, I'm about to bust.

I really am. I can't keep secrets for shit. I love telling people everything. That was bust.wav that I was hinting at last week. I don't know where I found that. I think it was another YouTuber. Oh, yeah. I was like, what was the?

that thing that you posted, and I couldn't tell anywhere in the episode. Did you even put it in? No, that was it. I made the drop after the episode. Lord have mercy, I'm about to bust. I'm never getting rid of it. Who said that? I don't know.

Some old dude. It's very funny. On a V-Tuber? No, no, it was like a clip they use. Oh, okay. I still people's drops. I'm a drop thiefed. Yeah.

Swiper. thing. So donation opportunities. I think I put in Lysistrata MCF, which is an online-based sex worker activist co-op. I think you shared it, so I just grabbed it and threw it in the notes so that people would be aware of it. But are there any other things that you'd want people to send their extra dollars towards if they can?

Yeah, I mean, that was a good one. It's a mutual aid. and, you know, which prioritizes trans sex workers of color. You know, it's funny. Mainstream is maybe not even the right word, but the biggest, it's sex work advocacy, right? But one of the biggest organizations, it's late, my brain is old, is swap swopUSA.org.

Sex Workers Outreach Project. There are, I mean, there's actually a lot of good, a lot of good groups out there. But I like Lissistrata because of the way that their emphasis. And Swap is just the biggest one that's been around the longest in terms of doing sex work advocacy. I think there's also like an online like sex worker archive or something. And like you can actually volunteer to do like metadata for it and stuff.

So metadata librarians. Yeah, Scott Carlson told me about this. metadata librarians go do some metadata for some sex workers. Yeah, there are. And I'd have to look it up, but there are like groups that are trying to do more of that kind of history. I mean, when we look at a lot of working class history across the board, so much of that is buried and erased. And even more so when it's some marginalized group like sex workers. So just kind of there are groups of people trying to do that excavation, which I think is really cool.

Yeah, that would be a really interesting project. But you have to be super careful about not being exploitative or being condescending or not white knighting. What sort of I'm looking for? Like a savior narrative on yourself. Oh, yeah. I'll try to find the exact organization that Scott sent. Cool. So we can put in the notes.

Yeah, I think there's lots of local swaps because I think there's a swap in Tampa that had a really big Twitter profile. And I was like, oh, that's my home area. So I'll just follow them for a long time. So I learned a lot of really cool stuff from their Twitter. And there's also SWAT behind bars. Get educated, folks. Yeah, so SWAT behind bars does a research archive website called SexWork Info Share is what Scott sent me. I'll drop.

And I'm trying to find some that are in the Seattle area. I'm sure there exist. Well, I promised I would keep it to an hour, and I know it's late where you are, and I'm going to try and go back to sleep too for like an hour before I start my overnight shift. So was there anything else you wanted to plug or share or do you want people to leave you alone? I like how I have so many options. Yeah, I mean, if people, I'm here to talk to anybody who has done, you know, any sex workers. who wants some support, breaking into libraries. I'm also here to help you strategize or tell you whether it's realistic to fight your administration.

Awesome. Good night, everybody.