2024 Positionality Statement

TW: mention of mental health, su*c*de, trauma, houselessness, DV/SA, colonization, racism, oppression

I am a nonbinary queer author and sex worker. My pronouns are they/she/fae.

My first 11 years of life were affluent. I lived in an upper-middle-class suburban neighborhood in the Bay Area. I was raised LDS (Mormon/Christian). My experiences and unconscious biases are shaped by the privileges and opportunities I have experienced as a white-passing, woman-passing, straight-sized, able-bodied person with familiarity in affluent business spaces.

I grew up with a brown father and white mother, in an intensely religious and white-washed culture in my home and church. As a child, I bore a Spanish (Basque) last name, which adults stuttered over and always mispronounced. In elementary school I was a minority by skin color and culture, in a predominately Mexican and Asian school community.

My Latina heritage and any customs were erased by grandparents and great-grandparents who sought assimilation for survival. My Scandinavian heritage (Danish dominant) was celebrated and revered as LDS pioneers, who colonized the West, upheld systems of oppression, racism, and lived on the stolen land of Indigenous people.

I experienced poverty in my later teen years, and brief houselessness in young adulthood. I am twice divorced, and a domestic violence and sexual assault survivor (DV/SA). I am neurodivergent. I have survived alcoholism, suicide attempts and ideation, having a lifelong battle with clinical depression, PTSD, mood disorders, and other mental health disorders. I am two years sober.

I have experienced the majority of my life under patriarchal and religious oppression, both inside the establishment of the LDS church as an active ‘temple worthy’ member, and outside the establishment as an ex-Mormon in Utah. I survived conversion therapy, erasure of my sexuality, and erasure of my gender as a teen and adult. I experienced religious, familial, and community traumas, and loss of home when I left this establishment. I am still healing these wounds, and grateful for the few LDS people in my adulthood who have loved and embraced me as I am.

I have experienced frequent social oppression and systematic rejection and erasure as a sex worker. I have participated in sex work in desperation for survival, and also by choice in a way that has enriched my life. I have briefly experienced being pimped out, but the majority of my sex work has been self-designated. I have experienced oppression by banking institutions which have erased and denied my legitimacy as a licensed sex worker at a legal brothel and tax-paying citizen.

In my youth, I mostly attended a public elementary school, with a year in a homeschool co-op. My teen years were mixed in a private LDS school, homeschooled, co-ops, and in public schools. I was a licensed cosmetologist for six years, and have been a sex worker for 14 years. I did not complete formal education at a university.

Some of my special interests include animals, writing, human psychology, sex, taboos, herbalism, witchcraft, and dancing.

A portion of all book proceeds are committed to reparations within marginalized communities and eco-conservation including BIPOC communities, LGBTQIA+ communities, and intersectional environmentalism.