Organizing beyond Facebook against violence to sex workers

The last few weeks have been full of rage and mobilization for sex workers, as a group called “Kill Your Hooker so You Don’t Have to Pay Her” appeared a few weeks back and was quickly gaining members.The group has since been taken down, as somebody tells somebody tells somebody to report the site as offensive and eventually it was taken down. It feels good to have this small victory, but there are many many more similar sites. This kind of whore hatred is everywhere on the internet. One of my clients was once showing me a t-shirt online he wanted to buy that said “I Love My Hooker” but when he searched the apparel company’s website using the search terms “t-shirt” and “hooker” all this awful stuff came up as I watched in horror: Good hookers are dead hookers; Nobody plans to kill a hooker in their hotel room; Dirty Hookers Fishing Team You’ll definitely catch something (and that’s a real sport fishing business, grrr); etc etc I won’t go on. Can you imagine what other group of people you can openly joke about killing? Whose bodies are considered so worthless and not human? Well I can think of a few: people with disabilities, aboriginal women, transpeople… sadly I can think of all sorts of sites and jokes that make light of violence against us and others. I want to make a stand against these overt expressions of violence and the deaths they produce. But we gotta remember that violence against sex workers is not just about “stranger danger” – ie evil and random frat boys joking about our deaths online, or phantom mystery clients who chop us up. Sex workers face intimate partner violence (which has more ramifications if you are used to police violence and criminalization of your work, especially for people of colour), spiritual and psychic violence generated by whorephobia (since we often have to hide our work and we don’t have access to our histories of survival under colonialization, especially for Aboriginal people), state violence at the hands of government, police and the medical establishment, and I could go on and on. But I will save that for a later post on unpacking our ideas about risk for sex workers (but you could start with this amazing piece It’s You I’m Afraid Of by Juliet November.)

It did all feel a bit weird, though, to have everyone in my community mobilizing to send complaints to Facebook. Usually I am getting angry messages about the way that Facebook is censoring breast feeding photos, or gender pronoun options, or sex positive groups, or queer performances, etc. I guess that’s the old chestnut of freedom of speech. How do we want that right served up? Well, the learning and work I have been doing recently about advocating for decriminalization over legalization and regulation, as well as the reading and thinking I have been doing about the Prison Industrial Complex, including the inefficacy of police and state responses to violence in my community is directing me to question, more and more, the amount of time and energy I spend convincing the capitalist and governmental powers that be to hear me, or represent me, or provide services to me. All those things are important, no doubt. But I’m dreaming about other responses that build the sex worker community, that fortify us and that speak to our differences across race, class, gender, and ability, that make it possible for us to confront and transform violence in our lives.

Read more »

Posted: February 16th, 2010 under Anti-racism, Violence - No Comments.

Advertising Discrimination for Sex Workers

Dear advertisers,

I’ve edited my text from “lips” to “L1PS”, suggested explosions and release instead of orgasms, and implied I offer “erotic services” instead of plain ol’ sex. I have done all this, and more, to meet your needs, the needs of online websites and newspaper companies who gladly take my money to run my sex work advertisements (and who often charge me heaps more than any other category of advertisement) but who don’t respond to my needs for responsible and accurate representation of what I offer and what I don’t offer to prospective clients. Partly this is about following the law, but partly it is about you making a buck. “This is not large commercial brothels, this is individual sex workers being charged several times more than other advertisers. There seems to be no reason for this difference.” says Janelle Fawkes, CEO, Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association. It is discrimination because we are sex workers. Plain and simple.

This is about my safety, people. And that has me hopping mad today. You will hear from me again.

Love,
Lusty Day

Does any other businessperson have the difficulty in reaching appropriate clients that sex workers do? I spend a great deal of time crafting my advertisments, researching escort websites, taking accurate photos and ensuring that my business takes place in a discreet manner to protect my clients, minors, and my business (i.e. in areas of the Internet safeguarded by parental controls, and with appropriate adult content warnings, and accessible via iPhones and other mobile devices so clients can access my photos more discreetly). And yet! All forces seem against me when I attempt to reach clients responsibly. Read more »

Posted: January 11th, 2010 under Selling Sex: Biz Talk - No Comments.

Whore Lover Part 2

This is a continuation of Whore Lover Part I. Happy reading!

In Oz, it wasn’t enough for us to work for someone else in the Sydney brothels. So we decide to head north to a tourist town on the Sunshine Coast, place ads in the local newspaper, and run our own gig from a secluded rental townhouse on the beach. The place is more luxurious than the tents, squats and couches we are used to. Here we have mirrored closet doors, our own washer and dryer. We have our own brothel. We can do it. Fuck brothels where management takes half our fee. We can reel clients in ourselves. It’s easy with a bit of hustle, a sweet talk on the phone.

Our ads are side-by-side in the community classifieds. Soon we realize that all the clients are calling us both, checking out rates and services. We try a scam. Between us, we rotate offering a cut rate $20 less than each other. The guy always books the cheaper rate. We are bleeding the same market. After a few bookings, I have an idea.

“Do you want to pool our earnings?” I ask Juliet. “We are splitting the ad, lodging and food costs. Why not collectivise the incoming?” We have long shared our spoils through common stories, laments and rage against the whore-phobic world.

She thinks about it for a millisecond, and agrees. “Why not?” We fish out a bigger envelope. It feels radical to share the proceeds, each acknowledging that we have common interests and skills and that we support each other’s work.

I think our mutual desire for cash wafted out on the ocean breeze because before long a fellow arrived. He is a crack dealer, ready to flash his cash, and didn’t even ask the rate. Juliet hustles the guy to pay us both, at the same time. It’s what is colloquially known as the “lesbian double.” Show time! Read more »

Posted: December 11th, 2009 under Whore Love - No Comments.

Gas Girls at Theatre Passe Muraille

I went to see a great play last week at Theatre Passe Muraille, it’s called Gas Girls, written by Donna-Michelle St Bernard. The story follows two gas girls, Lola (played by Nawa Nicole Simon) and Gigi (plaed by Dienye Waboso), who sell sex for gas, or as Gigi says “love for gas, gas for cash, cash for living, living for love.” They work at a truckstop on a Zimbabwean highway. I loved the depth and emotion of the characters, especially scenes of the older and experienced Gigi mentoring the very young Lola into the ways of selling sex. The relationships between the two workers, and also with Chickn, the man they work for and sell gas to (played by Jamie Robinson), were real and difficult, complex with love and desperation. These relationships were the most powerful part of the play, although I also loved the work of actor Peter Bailey, who played two different clients/johns, Mr. Man and Henry. I usually like any work about sex workers that shows clients as multi-dimensional people who are more than just sexual predators or perverts. Read more »

Posted: November 17th, 2009 under Reviews - No Comments.

Whore Lover Part I

This is a longer piece that appeared in the first issue of my zine Whorelicious. I wrote it for the upcoming book Whore Lover, which is still seeking submissions. I will post the call for submissions in a few days. The story is quite long so I’ve decided to serialize it…hope you like it!

xxx
LustyDay

Whore Lover

Juliet and I are walking down Illawarra Road in Sydney, Australia. I am lagging slightly behind her. She is wearing her red striped dress and white flats. She is going out on a date after she drops me off at the brothel. I see a red thread trailing from the hem of her dress. I don’t stoop to grab it and fix it for her. The whole hem could unravel. And I don’t think she would really care about the thread anyways. Her clothes are always well-chosen, but not necessarily well-made.

We are walking towards Amore after the sun has set, it’s 9pm and I’m about to start my career as a brothel whore. She knows the way because she has already worked there. She is taking me there because she wants me to know the way, too.

“So one more time, what should I say to the clients in the intro?” I ask her. I am nervous. I have hooked before, but never in a brothel. Competing with other women, especially straight women, is terrifyingly about to become reality. I don’t think of myself as competitive. Or straight.

“Just remind yourself that the only thing you want to do in the world is fuck them,” she repeats. “Touch them at any moment you can – on the leg, on the shoulder, whatever. Call them handsome.”

Juliet has already lent me her knockout pink baby doll negligee from the Sally Ann. She thought it would go well with my sky-high red patent leather heels. I wouldn’t really know. I don’t know much about femme fashion other than fresh-faced admiration. My style is more clean-faced boyish gurl-nerd with sensible walking shoes. We have gone over the intro scenario before, the moment when I emerge from the girls’ room and lay my charm on the client for 30 seconds to convince him to book me. But I need reassurance, I need a wise whore to tell me I will be successful. (I haven’t learned yet that for every kind of ho, there is a client who will readily see her sex appeal.) I have barely arrived in Australia. But Juliet has already been working for nine months in brothels all over Sydney. She has encouraged me to come from Canada to have an adventure and pay off my school debts. After three grinding years in graduate school, I am ready for it. Read more »

Posted: November 10th, 2009 under Anti-racism, Client Stories, Sex Work, Whore Love - No Comments.