Take Me to Church
***Sorry for the sloppiness. I might polish these recent blog posts up later, or I might not. It’s 7/24/2019 3:00AM. I wanna get things down fast and I want to sleep. I’ll be posting more in the coming weeks about the people and organizations at the event specifically. Stay tuned.
Sex workers, Whores, Prostitutes, Criminals, Deviates, and Sinners Protesting Outside a Church
The back of my black hair giving a speech outside the church steps.
The Jesus I read about, dined with prostitutes and told them they were loved. He was a nomad who spoke with and socialized with the poor, and told us heaven and God's love was our home. He didn't say "you need a reservation, this is private property." If God is real, and if he were there, he was with us tonight. Even in our anger, our breathlessness, and our imperfections. We’re criminals. We’re told we don’t have agency, we don’t have voice that should be heard. We are told that we are commodities, sex objects that exist because of “demand” that can be easily eliminated. We aren’t people with families, communities, friends, minds, or souls.
Publicity advertisement from the Incarnation Church in New York
Are we human? Or are we objects of sin, objectification, and evil itself? The illustration, seems to answer how certain people who claim to want to “liberate” us really view us.
I am the daughter of Eve, the original sin that all mankind has inherited. I am temptation, the tree of knowledge, the fruit, the bite, the consumption, I am people’s sinful thoughts, hunger, and desires.
I wonce was “a woman”
Now I am a whore.
And whores aren’t women.
They are things.
They are sins that people consume, and are corrupted by.
I am blamed for the fall from grace. Perhaps now you’ll understand why I named myself Gilda.
This film was controversial when it came out
Two nipples, a belly button, and a vagina in the form of a perfect hourglass eaten apple. That’s the representation that sex workers/trafficking victims get as a symbol.
The apple symbolizes the forbidden fruit. The bible doesn’t say what kind of fruit. Mankind simply used their imagination, and decided that the forbidden fruit was a red apple. It’s fitting.
Sinners and consumers insist, “I am innocent!”, “I am not to blame”.
The fruit,
the woman,
the serpent,
the devil,
SATAN
they, tempted me.
And so.
I am still ignorant,
I am still innocent,
I am without sin.
How did God know they were lying? Nothing had changed. They were still naked, they were still in paradise, and they were always having sex. But they knew they were naked, and they were ashamed for the first time. And so they were sinners. They had disobeyed, deflected blame, and lied. They had projected their guilt onto others, even objects of desire and consumption.
How do you “end demand” for “sin”, when you inherited it? And if sex workers are of the same seed as the original sin, the descendants of mankind made by God, are non-sex workers from a different tree?
I could feel the echos of history in my bones, pulsating through my veins, anxiety, and fear, and anger at the injustice. It was fitting we ended it with a poem from Maya Angelou “Still I rise”. Maya Angelou was a sex worker and a madam ("a pimp"). We're going to speak the truth about our lives, even if people struggle to understand.
If the church, community, god, and salvation were to belong to anyone, it belongs to us.
Your humble criminal and sinner,
Gilda Merlot