Life After Mass Media Humiliation, with Author & Former Sexworker Melissa Petro

Melissa Petro was working a NYC elementary school teacher in 2011 when she authored a 700 word essay for the Huffington Post that changed her life. In it, she argued that Craigslist should not take down its sex services page based on the assumption that all callgirls on CL were underage or trafficked; she could attest to this, she wrote, having been a former callgirl on Craigslist herself. It wasn’t long before a reporter connected her name on that article with her job as a NYC public elementary school teacher, and over night, she was a mass media pariah.

 

Forced to resign by the DOE, the aspiring writer experienced humiliation on a life changing scale. And while she had never actually hidden it, Melissa also had not yet fully processed the violent backdrop of her childhood, the slippery slope from stripping to actual prostitution, or the escalating substance abuse that numbed her just enough. Today, Melissa has placed her moment in the unwanted spotlight largely in the rearview mirror, she is a journalist with a family of her own, and she has authored a book called SHAME: HOW TO BE A WOMAN IN THE AGE OF MORTIFICATION.

On today’s podcast we are diving right in. Does feeling sympathy for sexworkers made you a bad feminist? What exactly was empowering for Melissa about sexwork? How did she dissociate at her lowest? How did she ultimately reckon with the NY POST journalist who outed her in the first place? And what were the powerful words of her estranged brother that arrived just when the media hounds were at her door? What will she  tell her own now elementary school aged kids…as they grow up…about their mother's path to the life she now loves so much?

 

Melissa is no more immune to shame now than she was when, but she’s also no longer naive enough to think that a callgirl-turned-teacher would be a remotely resistible target. The good news is that  unlike many others who have been traumatized beyond resurrection by their mass media humiliations…Melissa Petro has just kept on going. And once you hear her story…you will see, just like I now do…why.

For More on Melissa Petro:

hhttps://www.melissa-petro.com/

https://www.instagram.com/melissa.petro/

For more on The Release Podcast:

https://thereleasepodcast.com 

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https://www.poonam.info 

@MELISSA.PETRO @MELISSAPETRO @MELISSAPETROWRITER