May 26, 2019
Washington, DC -Four years into my PhD program in philosophy, I left full-time academia, disillusioned by the field’s hostility toward women. Since then, I have built a career outside of academia, which includes working as an online sex worker and social justice advocate. As someone who has recently returned to teaching, I do so as an activist-scholar and public writer, with a weekly column that runs in the Pittsburgh City Paper. I also co-host a sex and social justice podcast, Peepshow Podcast. In my journalistic and podcast work I have been able to archive and amplify the voices and concerns of sex workers and bring their stories to an audience that reaches far beyond the walls of the academy. In this paper, I discuss the challenges of working in, and communicating across, these different spaces, as well as the rewards of doing so.