I closed my previous campaign, after seeking the advice of some comrades about what i should do to fund myself. After I expressed a need for a better laptop for rendering media, one of them was kind enough to connect me to a better laptop. I was also able to get a small amount of funding to allow me to repair my car and buy an eyepatch for my left eye (I have thyroid eye disease). I was told that what i need is a fellowship. So i decided to start a new campaign. Financial setbacks and lack of institutional support have been at the root of my delay, so I hope to raise at least $35,000 in order to fund myself for a year or two. I set the goal at $50,000 on the advice of a comrade. I am currently living off $20,000 a year (give or take). I am a 33-year old mother of three. I do not have a well-connected or wealthy network—everything I have been able to do has been due to people discovering my writing via social media, Twitter in particular, and to my incessant grinding. Through Twitter I have been able to build a platform of around 21k. Normally I do small GFM campaigns to meet various needs, but this is not sustainable. A (graduate) fellowship is usually connected with an institution, but since I am not officially a student I must crowdfund my own. Here is a description of my current major project, birds of a different feather: After becoming a single mother and dropping out of college, @thotscholar began frequenting Twitter to make connections as a burgeoning comic book artist and sex worker. Homeschooling her dyslexic son and unable to secure flexible employment which covered all of their expenses, she started a Patreon to pay the bills and to pursue art and writing full-time. Unexpectedly, her account took off over a thread that collected alternatives to Backpage, and of-the-moment critiques of FOSTA-SESTA. Between 2016-2019, she developed a cult following, securing invites to speak on multiple panels including the Rebellious Lawyering Conference 2019 at Yale University. Known for her vulnerability, intermittent crowdfunding, and persuasive racial and sexual critiques of taken-for-granted ideological constructs, her visibility led her to attract the ire of various groups, who accused of her of digital vagrancy and questioned her authenticity. As her visibility continued to increase, she became subject to an intensification of technology-facilitated violence, including doxing, defamation, and other forms of psychological abuse. Poor people and people of color often lack access to resources, and many end up commodifying their body in order to generate income. In digital spaces, identities are often refigured as tools of morality and inherent or essentialized knowledges. Reflecting on the concept of “digital dualism,” @thotscholar chronicles her shift from shea butter feminist to self-taught, independent scholar through recounting her experiences on social media. A narrative about the digital and material entanglements involved in the commodification of identity, this book is an an undisciplinary fusion of memoir, speculation, and cultural criticism. Merging legbics (rather than erotics), history, anime, anthropology, and more, birds of a different feather exposes the fallacy of the separation of the virtual from reality and is a critical examination of racial and sexual digital publics on the platform formerly known as Twitter. I have been published in various places under the names “femi babylon,” “moses moon,” and suprihmbé. I have published one book and one zine, and I hope to publish more in the future. I am seeking donations to fund a sort of fellowship for me to continue writing. I am already in touch with a prospective editor who believes in my writing and has encouraged me to complete a draft and send it to them. Here is where you can find some of my work: My Substack: https://thotscholar.substack.com Symposium Introduction: Sex Workers’ Rights, Advocacy, and Organizing (Columbia Human Rights Law Review) WE TOO: Essays on Sex Work and Survival [Edited by Natalie West, with Tina Horn] (Feminist Press) Erotic Labor within and without Work: An Interview with femi babylon (Duke South Atlantic Quarterly) A NEW SEX POSITIVITY DICHOTOMY (Part of the Yale Law & Political Economy symposium on the political economy of sex work)
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