The Story of the "Hooker Teacher"

    From Salon

     Just because she shouldn't have been surprised that this happened doesn't make it right.

    She forgot that a lot of even relatively progressive Americans stop thinking rationally as soon as the words "sex" and "children" are combined in the same sentence.

***************

I have two master's degrees, five years' experience in the nonprofit sector and three years' experience teaching -- and I cannot get a job. Why? Just google me. I'm the "Hooker Teacher" -- at least that's what I've come to be called ever since Sept. 27, 2010, when I found myself on the cover of the New York Post.

"Meet Melissa Petro," the story began," the teacher who gives a new twist to sex ed." The piece describes me as a "tattooed former hooker and stripper" who was "shockingly upfront about her past." Indeed, earlier that month, I'd written an Op-Ed on the Huffington Post that criticized the recent censoring of the adult services section of Craigslist and came clean about my own sex-worker past. Because I was arguing that sex workers shouldn't be ashamed to speak for themselves, I signed my name to it. The New York Post wasn't interested in my politics, however; its interest seemed only in cooking up shock that an elementary school teacher would dare admit such a shady history.

The Internet shaming was fast, intense and seemingly unending, summed up in February by columnist Andrea Peyser, who wrote: "Hooker turned teacher Melissa Petro is a disgrace."

Eight months after the story broke, I am jobless. I cannot get hired. And even my biggest supporters ask me privately: "But seriously, what were you thinking?" The answer is complicated. I was being idealistic. I was being provocative. I was naive. I picked a fight that I thought I could win -- and I was wrong.

    Much more at the link.

Be seeing you