I was talking on the phone to someone I love. They were expressing frustration about a girl in their life. They decided that the way to deal with their frustration was to repeatedly call this girl a whore.

I told them to stop denigrating sex workers. If you don’t like that this girl runs her mouth off, say you don’t like how she runs her mouth. If you don’t like how lazy she is… say you don’t like how lazy she is. If you think she sleeps around too much… just shut up that’s none of your business. Don’t call people whores.

They defended their right to do so. “I’ve been at the bottom of the barrel and I didn’t have to stoop to that so I don’t approve of sex work.”

I said, “I need to get off the phone and not have this conversation. I love you and I’ll talk to you later.”

Boundaries.

I’m kind of ridiculously proud of myself for being clear and direct and unequivocally setting my boundary without attacking. Naw. You don’t get to bad mouth sex workers to me. Nor do you get to bad mouth women by placing them sex worker adjacent. That shit just won’t fly.