Edit: I've been informed the specific incident in the link is an urban legend: http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp - I really should have checked the date, as is good practice in general. However, that article served only as my prompt; the conditions and treatment of unemployed people I wrote about is true and drawn from my personal experience. Original post continues unaltered.

According to an article in the (UK) Telegraph, a woman in Germany faces the loss of her unemployment payments for refusing work at a brothel.

The problem here is the way we as a society construct unemployment, not that this time it is a brothel. That just serves as a newsworthy example and perhaps misdirection because of the disgust and contempt we tend to direct at sex work culturally.

Because we insist on treating the unemployed as suspect, as lazy losers and scammers, and because it looks good for organisational numbers to get as much throughput as possible, we require anyone receiving assistance to accept any job offer they are physically capable of performing. So you end up with situations like this, where a person is threatened with being cut off unless they accept a job they personally find repugnant (or soul-killing, or etc.).

Having a quota of documented job applications to meet, and rules like this, meant that when I was actively searching I had to restrict the applications which I thought might get a response to only the positions I felt I wouldn't be trying to then get out of a few weeks later, and then make the rest of the numbers with applications I thought looked plausible but which would not be interested in me as a candidate.

Rules like this led to me saying yes to a lot of offers from the agency I was assigned to, despite believing I would be a bad fit for the job in question, because I was worried my income could be cut off if I refused. This led to me having a whole week of training and a job interview for an area - sales - which I have actually worked in before and found to be a field which- well. I am certainly capable of attempting to sell things to people but I've never actually managed it, and since that earlier position was commission-based I had quit without ever being paid. So I spent the whole time being trained for this interview and actually having the interview afraid that I was going to get pushed into a job I hate and would be no good at simply to get an organisation another "successful job placement" check-mark, while also believing that if I appeared to do anything less than my best to get that job, I could be reported and penalised.

Well, I got lucky that time, and they didn't want anyone from that group that had been coached for the job on offer. But, my point is, the problem here is not that in this specific case it is a brothel this woman could be punished for not working in. The problem is how we treat unemployed job-seekers.

Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. As usual I'm not doing myself doing anything for it such as attending a vigil. That doesn't mean it isn't an important day to have, nor that somehow the often-vicious murder of people for being who they are doesn't matter.

It is entirely possible that the reason I'm not doing more is that I don't feel vulnerable. Being a white, middle class person who is not a sex worker, I'm not as much at risk of my name appearing on next year's list of the dead as far too many others are.

As much as trans people are subject to violent revulsion in our society, too many of the dead were women of colour, and / or were sex workers for that not to play a significant factor in who is murdered. There doesn't seem much point having the Day of Remembrace without acknowledging this unless we aren't interested in improving the situation; there'd be no such bias in the dead if women of colour weren't already so marginalised in general.

Many others die from the consequences of two prevailing myths: a) that sex worker lives are worthless and b) that all trans women are sex workers. Even if you don't support the rights and freedom of sex workers for their own sake - and you should - the ways we degrade and disrespect people in that field as a society makes easier the mistreatment and murder of anyone who can be lumped in with them.

I suppose that isn't a very effective argument. I doubt there are many who hate sex workers who don't also hate trans people, so they'd be unlikely to support the one in order to incidentally benefit the other. Very disheartening when "Don't perpetuate the conditions which enable the murder of others for their job or identity" is such a difficult proposition to get people accepting.

I am fumbling with this. What am I trying to say? People die because being cis is regarded as the only legitimate, non-shameful way to exist. People die because because white people are treated as more human and deserving than any one else. People die because sex workers are degraded, criminalised and silenced.

If we keep denying each other, there will continue to be a Day of Remembrance.

Back in June I got linked to a BBC article, about an autistic boy who died after getting hold of medication from an online pharmacy, and whose parents are now waging a campaign to protect others.

Except, that's not what happened. The photo included in the article is misleading - this was not a school-aged boy, this was an adult, 26 years old. And this does not appear to have been any sort of accident. He had attempted suicide several times before using pills from other sources before finally succeeding. If restrictions had been in place such that he could not order this online, what then? I expect he would have tried some other means to end his life.

Blaming online pharmacies because a suicidal person made use of one to end eir own life seems more an act of desperation than a useful response. While I believe people do and ought to have the right to end their own lives, it would be a far better response to campaign for better mental health services and support rather than pursuing doctors in other countries for not breaking local laws.

I'm also worried the repeated mention of the deceased as being autistic, along with the photo used for the article. It seems an attempt to infantilise him, as if by being autistic he is not capable of making his own decisions. It seems like an attempt to portray this as a tragic accident, rather than a deliberate act.