ABSTRACT
The Black Combahee River Collective was a Black feminist lesbian organization most famous for the Combahee River Collective Statement. The statement is an early example highlighting oppression as an interlocking system, one that transcends the bounds of a single identity or single issue. One of the most poignant lines in the statement reads: “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” In this chapter, I conclude by meditating on this question within the context of sex workers. What would it mean for sex workers to be free? What systems of oppression are at work that preclude sex workers, especially those with racial and sexual minoritized identities, from experiencing that freedom? I conclude by proposing a radical erotic politic for higher education and what it might mean for the present and future of college students engaged in sex work.
