Tag Archives: activism

Stop the Arrests (of sex workers): Campaign launches in London 18 June

If you are in London next Monday, come to the launch of the Stop the Arrests campaign. The event will be short and sweet and it would be good to see a lot of people not only turn up but also join the resistance to yet more policing and repression of sexual practices involving money. It’s also a good central location with numerous pubs nearby for socialising afterwards.

It’s not to late to put your signature on the list of supporters.

I will be speaking about the lack of evidence linking sporting events with trafficking. I wrote about the background to this initiative a while back.

INVITATION: Stop the Arrests Campaign Launch

WHEN: 1830 Monday 18 June 2012

WHERE: Centre for Possible Studies, 21 Gloucester Place, London W1U 8HR (nearest tube: Marble Arch)

Campaign group Stop the Arrests will hold a public launch in central London this Monday to outline its call for a moratorium on sex worker arrests during the London 2012 Olympic Games. The panel includes Laura Agustín, trafficking expert and author of Sex at the Margins, Georgina Perry, manager of Open Doors, a sex worker health project operating in Hackney and a video link up with Brooke Magnanti, aka Belle de Jour and author of The Sex Myth. Stop the Arrests is concerned that the policing of sex work and sex establishments in the lead-up to the Olympics threatens to compromise the safety and autonomy of sex workers.

The launch will also feature voices from workers in the sex industry.

The Met have recently been in touch with Stop the Arrests to inform that they have developed ”an alternative system of dealing with sex workers during the Olympic period”. This protocol, which will be made public on Monday 18 June,  has been developed without any input from sex worker organisations or other specialist services working with sex workers, such as health and harm minimisation organisations.

Ava Caradonna, Spokesperson for x:talk said: Stop the Arrests has tried for months to get an audience with the Met to discuss policing protocol during the Olympics. A senior Met officer has assured us that that the relevant department is aware of xtalk and the proposal for a Moratorium and yet we have not been consulted. The current laws and policing around sex work have been criticised from many different quarters for the lack of consultation with sex workers and sex worker-led organisations, and the failure of these policies to take into account the realities of the sex industry. It is deeply worrying that the Met continues to develop policies that ignore these criticisms and the views of those affected.

Media Enquires:

Xanthe Whittaker: 07901335613
Katie Cruz: 07917732990

NOTES

1. Campaign group Stop the Arrests issued the Mayor of London with a letter on June 6 calling upon him to use his powers, in co-operation with the police and UK Border Agency, to stop the arrest, detention and deportation of sex workers during the Olympics. Signatories to the letter, which was initiated by the xtalk project, include John McDonnell MP and chair of the Green Party, Jenny Jones, author Brooke Magnanti (Belle de Jour), Jane Ayres, manager of The Praed Street Project – a sex worker health project operating in London, and the UK Harm Reduction Alliance. Full details of campaign and list of signatories here.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Sex work organising at the Sex Worker Open University: workshop

I am doing a workshop at the Sex Worker Open University which runs from 12 to 16 October 2011 at the Arcola Theatre in London.

Sex worker organising: A brief historical tour

Sex worker organising has been going on for several decades, taking different shapes according to local contexts. Not a country-by-country description, this workshop will take up themes: for example, attempts to unionise, harm-reduction projects, political lobbying groups. The more people who come from diverse contexts and want to participate, the better this workshop will be.

Not intended to be an exhaustive chronological encyclopedic view! I haven’t limited number of attendees but it’s for sex workers past and present only.

If you are a reader here, please do come and introduce yourself either at the workshop (1600-1800 on the 16th) or during previous days, although I won’t be there all the time. I do plan to be at the rally at 1800 Thursday 13 October next to the Houses of Parliament.

Get further information from the SWOU website.

Can’t be there? There is a sex worker activism photo gallery on this website, and I have published versions of history in Spanish, Swedish and English.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Sex worker activism around the world: a Rights argument

Recently I published a gallery of pictures of the sex industry. Now another gallery of pictures is on the website now, depicting activism by self-identified sex workers and prostitutes. The photos show public actions projecting a message about rights, about laws, about having a voice. Many of the photos show groups of sex workers with their allies marching in public spaces on designated days or at larger events. There are other less visible activities that are, of course, forms of advocacy, but photos of ordinary people sitting at meetings or writing or working on computers are not so interesting to look at. Sex worker performances at shows and conferences often have activist intentions and some of those are here, but the collection would get unwieldy if I tried to put all of them in.

You will see a lot of red umbrellas in photos after 2005. This symbol was chosen on the occasion of a big conference held in Brussels in October 2005 (I was one of the organisers). We were going to march through the city for a long time and it was possible it would rain, and we wanted to have something to unify us visually. Umbrellas seemed obvious and someone suggested red ones. There was no grand plan to spread the symbol internationally, nor did we think the umbrella itself meant anything. It turns out it had been used in Venice in 2001, but I don’t remember hearing about that in 2005, though maybe it was in the back of someone’s mind. History is a moving target.

The way it has been picked up as a symbol is suggestive: you don’t see it used in Latin America or India where the movement was well-established long before 2005, but the USA, a big country with many small groups,and regions with little activist tradition, like eastern Africa and eastern Europe and China, picked it up quickly – I suppose it is strengthening to have a symbol showing their struggle is international. Even where the umbrella isn’t used, the colour red tends to be – though not always. I wrote an abbreviated history of the movement in Spanish some years ago, and more recently a Swedish version was translated to English as Note to anti-prostitutionists: Sex worker movements are nothing to sneer at.

Despite goals that may differ greatly according to local politics, and internal political conflicts, all activists unite around fundamental principles. Words and phrases repeatedly seen in placards and signs include:

  • Rights (Droits, Derechos)
  • Respect
  • Access / HIV / AIDS
  • Decriminalize
  • Human rights
  • Whores (Putas, Putes)
  • Violence
  • Prostitution
  • Sex workers (Trabajadoras del sexo/sexuales, Travailleuses du sexe)

These pictures have been collected randomly. I make no encyclopedic claims, and some countries get more coverage than others (though consider, before objecting to how many India has, how big the total population of sex workers is liable to be). The whole collection is here – comments can be made individually on each photo. Contact me with any problems. The photo at the top is from Ukraine.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Sex Industry Pictures: Sex work, sex tourism, brothels, history

There is now a sex industry picture gallery on this website intended to informally illustrate the variety of commercial sex. Nothing x-rated in it, actually, but the gallery shows something of the diversity of activities and places encompassed in the idea of a sex industry, across time and geography. By no means encyclopedic or representative it also does not include every picture ever used on this website. The gallery is imported from facebook, where I have been keeping it for the past couple of years; I didn’t take the pictures myself but have given credit where I could. Contact me if an uncredited picture is yours and you want your name to appear or the photo removed or if you have more details about a picture (or comment directly on the picture’s page).

The collection is part of my effort to break down the monolithic term prostitution that exercises such a strong hold on the popular imagination. People say prostitution as though it were completely obvious what it means, as though we all knew – and then, quite often, as though we all were in agreement that it is bad and wrong. Nearly every media article reporting about the sex industry uses the same tired image of a woman in fishnet stockings and high heels or high boots leaning into a car window or standing in the street waiting for a car to stop. This stereotype is what sticks in everyone’s brain and is associated with the sex-money exchange that most bothers everyone: the one that neighbourhood leaders protest about, and police try to get rid of, and researchers show to be most violence-prone and where the classic pimp figure is most likely to be seen.

In this collection, people are often shown socialising, not just standing about being symbols. Some of what’s shown is undoubtedly not fair and not legal, but only if we understand what people are actually doing can we hope to improve the world overall. Included here are images of tourism and sex worker activism, both interesting facets of the industry in our times. Campaigning against the industry is not included – you can find those images all over the place.

Words are my own usual vehicle, as in my proposal for a Cultural Study of Commercial Sex, which I have written about several times. But images do something else. I look at pictures to process ideas differently, and I actually like that this gallery doesn’t classify in any way – there is no meaning to the order of the images, though facebook provides the date on which I happened to decide to upload the pictures to that website. The whole collection, which updates when I update at facebook, is a page on the menu at the top of this site.

Bedford v Canada: Report from the courtroom on prostitution law and sex work

Last October an historic decision was made in Ontario, Canada – suggesting that Canadian laws are antiquated, endanger people who sell sex and violate their civil rights. Immediately, opponents began crying about all the scary things that would happen if decriminalisation came to pass.

Here is an interesting report on last week’s events in an appeals court, in which  the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network clearly supports sex worker rights. I added links to rights organisations.

Bedford v Canada: Report from an intervention

From June 13–17, 2011, five justices of the Ontario Court of Appeal heard arguments about the constitutionality of Criminal Code provisions relating to adult prostitution. This was an appeal of an Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision from September 2010, when Justice Susan Himel struck down the communication, bawdy house and living-onthe-avails provisions of the Criminal Code because she found they forced sex workers into more dangerous situations and contributed to a greater risk of violence and other threats to their health and safety.

Besides the applicants in the case (namely Terri Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott — all current or former sex workers) and the Attorneys General of Ontario and Canada, seven groups were granted intervener status in order to assist the court with the issues before it. The seven interveners included a coalition of the Christian Legal Fellowship, REAL Women of Canada and the Catholic Civil Rights League; a coalition of organizations that included the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres; the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; the B.C. Civil Liberties Association; a coalition of PACE, Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society (or “SWUAV” — both sex worker organizations in Vancouver) and Pivot Legal Society; a joint intervention from Maggie’s (Toronto sex worker organization) and POWER (Ottawa sex work organization); and a joint intervention from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE).

In their appeal, the Attorneys General of Canada and Ontario argued that the purpose of the prostitution-related provisions in the Criminal Code was to eradicate prostitution by discouraging sex work, an argument forcefully countered by Alan Young, a lawyer and professor at Osgoode Hall who represented the applicants. The Attorney General of Canada also argued that the law was not the cause of, nor did it facilitate, the harm sex workers face — an argument that did not seem to persuade the panel of judges.

Among the interveners, the coalition of PACE, SWUAV and Pivot was particularly compelling because it represented the perspective of street-based sex workers, upon whom the communicating provision has had a tremendously harmful impact in terms of safety and health. Counsel for PACE, SWUAV and Pivot as well as Maggie’s and POWER also decried the “asymmetrical” or “Swedish” model, whereby clients and employers of sex workers continue to be criminalized but sex workers are not. This argument, also endorsed by the Legal Network and the BC-CfE, submits that the asymmetrical approach fails to lessen or eliminate the risks to sex workers exacerbated by the current provisions. Under an asymmetrical regime, sex workers would continue to be prevented from screening their clients by negotiating in advance the terms of their transactions, since it would still be illegal for clients to engage in these communications. Also, sex workers would still be prevented from working indoors, where the work is safer, because the bawdy house law would apply to clients and others found on the premises. Additionally, it would still be illegal for sex workers to hire a bodyguard or a driver, since these persons could be criminalized by the living-on-the-avails provision.

The Legal Network and the BC-CfE argued that, in addition to the violence to which sex workers are subject as a result of the law, they are also prevented from taking precautions to negotiate and practise safer sex. The communicating provision, for example, hampers sex workers’ ability to negotiate condom use. Even more broadly, the criminalization of prostitution hinders sex workers’ access to health-care services, including HIV testing, education, prevention, care, treatment and support.

The impact of the prostitution laws on the health and safety of sex workers was a central theme at the Legal Network’s Symposium on HIV, Law and Human Rights held June 9– 10, where sex workers Émilie Laliberté (Stella) and Nikki Thomas (Sex Professionals of Canada) and lawyers Elin Sigurdson (SWUAV) and Alan Young were featured speakers. The timely discussion helped inform the pressing issue of “next steps” in the event of a positive or negative decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal and, ultimately, the Supreme Court of Canada. The road ahead is long, but one thing is certain: there is no shortage of passion, commitment and activism from sex workers and their colleagues to change the law to protect and promote the human rights of all sex workers.

Trabalho sexual é trabalho: Porto, Portugal

Otra vez las trabajadoras sexuales de Porto (Portugal) están con otros trabajadores en la marcha del primero de mayo. Sigue un editorial de Alexandra Oliveira sobre la manera de estigmatizar a las mujeres que venden sexo, por parte de gente que debería saber mejor (por ejemplo los comunistas). Apunta Alexandra:

No desfilo do May Day aqui no Porto, a União de Sindicatos do Porto que pertence a essa central sindical, queria impedir a nossa palavra de ordem “Trabalho sexual é trabalho”. O nosso grupo não deixou e levamos a nossa faixa.

Sigue pulsando en la imagen para aumentarla.

Sweatshop jobs or sex work in Cambodia: Rescue Industry fails to understand

Is buying sex a better way to help Cambodian women than buying a T-shirt? reads the subtitle of an article in Slate. I don’t think we need to generalise about all sex jobs or all jobs in clothing factories/sweatshops, but given the Rescue Industry’s obsession with getting people out of sex and into other work, it is always good to see information showing it’s not that simple. By which I mean that finding alternative jobs that are actually satisfactory to people is not easy and neither is helping them. Helping people is not only difficult but meaningless unless there is an understanding of what people want themselves.

Moral crusaders intent on saving people from sex work rarely engage with the enormous subject of what activity will provide income instead and how. The present worldwide craze assumes that any job will be better – meaning more dignified, fulfilling, heartwarming – than any sex job. Alternative occupations offered, however, are universally gender-stereotyped for women who are assumed to be traditionally feminine and domestic. Aid organisations and rescue projects relentlessly treat women in poorer countries like backward children and still call attempts to help them out of selling sex rehabilitation. The photo at the top illustrates a nearly universal association of sewing with obedient, meek women, but organised sex workers have specifically addressed the sewing-machine cliché in protests, as shown below.

It is true that a lot of people who sell sex wish they could do something else instead, the way probably most of the planet does. We fall into jobs by chance, or because someone told us they would be good for us, or because we studied some skill and then felt we had to use it even if we don’t enjoy it much. We stay in jobs because we don’t find another better one, and nowadays we are afraid to lose even the worst of jobs. Note how the concepts of precarious labour and the new precariat apply to sex work.

These excerpts from the conclusion of Ken Silverstein’s A Brief Tour of the Cambodian Sex Industry (Slate, 19 May 2011) demonstrate the problem of assuming a job making clothing is always better than sex work. Note: apparel means clothing in the US.

. . . 20 percent of Cambodian sex workers interviewed for the 2009 U.N. report said they took their jobs because of good working conditions or relatively high pay. (Fifty-five percent did so due to “difficult family circumstances.” About 3.5 percent were lured, cheated, or sold into sex work.)

Are sex workers exploited? Absolutely. But so are textile workers. When I was in Cambodia in 2009 to report on the apparel industry, I obtained the “company profile” of a firm that produced T-shirts, trousers, and skirts for companies like Aeropostale and JCPenney. It said the plant’s 1,000 workers produced 7.8 million pieces annually. Taking a rough estimate of $25 per piece retail, each employee generated approximately $195,000 in retail sales annually, for which she received about $750 in pay, factoring in typical overtime rates.

A lot of women no longer want apparel jobs,” Tola Moeun, a labor-rights activist with a group called the Community Legal Education Center, told me. “When prostitution offers a better life, our factory owners need to think about more than their profit margins.” 19 May 2011, Slate

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Hating sex workers, and parodies thereof, and a Copenhagen event

I wrote about hate and hating last year in a somewhat jocular tone, noting that I maintain a sort of parallel cv in which Important Enemies appear as a category (note that readers’ comments were highly entertaining). I also noted that some anti-prostitution activists question the right of people even to disagree with them. Then not long ago ex-movie star Sorvino attempted to stop me from talking on a BBC World Debate where I was a panelist – without succeeding, but her sense of entitlement is amazing (BBC editors softened the effect of her attack considerably in the published version).

Here is an example of another actress, Anne Grethe Bjarup Riis, making a nasty attack on a mainstream Danish television show (Go’ Morgen Danmark, TV2). Here no editing has softened the full effect; even without subtitles, even with the sound turned off completely, you get the gist. Bjarup Riis feels entitled to scream at and interrupt the other guest, hog screen time and use insulting language (fissehul = cunthole). The object of her attack is Susanne Møller, spokesperson for SIO, sex worker rights organisation in Denmark. Sus reacts to the attack by smiling and remaining calm.

Anne Grethe Bjarup Riis’ pinlige optræden på Go’ Morgen Danmark, TV2

Link in case embedded video fails

The attack backfired, since SIO got lots of positive attention from viewers who did not appreciate Bjarup Riis’s behaviour and, especially, from those who repudiated her claim that she speaks for all women. This is a perverted version of feminism, to put it mildly. A parody was soon made of the encounter which is quite funny, and this time the presenter has a way to turn the screeching off.

Live fra Bremen 4 – Diskussion om sexarbejderne – Nyhederne sådan cirka!, DKWebTV

Link in case embedded video fails

For those in or near Copenhagen, there is a sex worker festival on three days next week; I will be there on Sunday.

Sexarbejderfestival 2011

27 februar 1300 – 1800 Festival begins at Jemtelandsgade 3, Kvarterhuset, near Amagerbro Metro station (the metro to and from Vanløse to the airport). Map.

12:30 – 13:00 – Ankomst – Kom gerne i god tid

13:00 – 13:15 – Velkommen – Eini Carina Grønvold fra De røde paraplyer byder velkommen og fortæller om dagens forløb

13:15 -14:00 – Antropologen Laura Agustín taler om migrante sexarbejdere
14:00 -14:30 – spørgsmål og debat

14:30 – 15:15 Sexarbejderaktivisten Pye Jakobsson taler om forholdene for de Svenske sexarbejdere
15:15 – 15:45 spørgsmål og debat

15:45 – 16:00 Pause

16:00 – 16:30 Historikeren Nina Søndergaard vil kort skitsere op hvordan prostitution er blevet opfattet og reguleret i Vesteuropa gennem de sidste 150 år.
16:30 -16:45 spørgsmål

16:45 – 17:15 Talskvinde for SIO, Susanne Møller, vil fortælle om SIOs kamp for sexarbejderrettigheder
17:15 -17.45 spørgsmål og debat

17:45 – 18:00 – afrunding og og tak for i dag

1 marts kl 18:30 – 20:30
Filmaften i Virus Bio på Valhalsgade 4, 2200
Der vil blive vist film, der tematiserer sexarbejde fra forskellige vinkler. Efterfølgende debat. Entré 20 kr.

3 marts kl 17:00 – 19:00
Festivalen slutter d. 3 marts hvor vi vil markere Sexarbejdernes Internationale Rettighedsdag med en demonstration FOR sexarbejderrettigheder og IMOD sexkøbsforbud fra Rådhuspladsen til Halmtorvet. Alle er velkomne!

Breakthrough: anti-trafficking activist says I have the right to speak

Mira Sorvino was not worried about stating, in front of rolling tv cameras, that I should not be allowed to speak at the BBC debate in Luxor. Why are you doing this? she asked me, as though having a different point of view made me some kind of enemy. After the debate was over, several people from the audience came up to me to say You were very brave. This all reminds me of 1984 and Brave New World more than anything else, dystopic visions of societies where not agreeing with the state renders people dangerous and in need of silencing, surveillance and sedation.

Imagine my happy surprise, then, when I was advised of the following blog post from the Freedom Center in Ohio, in a description of David Henry Sterry’s interview with me in the Huffington Post:

While the anti-trafficking movement is still in its infancy, it would be a shame to cut off internal debate just because some may have already determined the parameters of the issue.

What a relief to hear a reasonable voice from the so-called Other Side. How much better all our efforts would be if there were more collaboration and listening. Here is Upsetting the Human Trafficking Apple Cart, by Paul Bernish, Director of Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Initiatives at the Freedom Center.

Anyone engaged in the anti-human trafficking cause today is bound to notice a certain sameness to the ongoing discussions about the issue. It’s no surprise that people are passionately against modern forms of slavery, abuse and exploitation, and it is certainly good that they communicate that passion at local meetings, regional and national conferences and especially by posting their outrage at traffickers and concern for victims in the social media world. I know, because I often do this myself.

Yet cumulatively, I feel a growing sense that modern-day abolitionists (again, myself included) are existing in an echo chamber where our thoughts, ideas and suggestions are repeated in a continuous loop, with very little that is new or insightful about the issue and what to do about it.

There’s a lot of conventional wisdom, as a consequence, that may actually be preventing us from seeing the issue clearly and objectively. This point came home to me rather abruptly in an early December during a meeting with three visitors to the Freedom Center from Thailand. One runs an anti-trafficking NGO; the other two are police officers who deal with the reality of trafficking every day.

I asked about efforts in Thailand to raise public awareness about sex trafficking, which, as most everyone asserts, is virtually endemic in this south Asian country. All three, through their interpreters, gave me an insight about the situation in their homeland that I had not heard, or considered before. Yes, they said, sex trafficking is a major issue in Thailand. But forced labor was the the much broader and difficult trafficking issue. Thousands of men, women and children from Cambodia, Myanmar, Viet Nam, as well as Thai citizens, were working as virtual slaves in back alley sweatshops and isolated manufacturing plants throughout the country. This, they said, was Thailand’s trafficking nightmare.

What they said called into question my assumptions about Thailand. More broadly, their comments about what’s the real problem in their country was a reminder that it’s always helpful to question long-held assumptions about the nature and extent of trafficking in the world.

A similar reminder came from an article on Huffington Post about a person who’s engaged in the trafficking issue, but is an iconoclast who has no problem challenging conventional thinking about the problem. Laura Agustín, who describes herself as the Naked Anthropologist, delights in going against the grain of the anti-trafficking establishment on her website and in her controversial book, Sex at the Margins.

Agustín recently took part in a “debate” at a well-publicized anti-trafficking conference in, of all places, Luxor, Egypt. The conference attracted the usual coterie of celebrity abolitionists, government officials and anti-trafficking leaders, but Agustin was apparently not on the guest list until the BBC asked her to participate in a debate on trafficking trends. Her presence set sparks flying, as recounted in the Huffington Post interview.

The point of all this is to say that while the anti-trafficking movement is still in its infancy, it would be a shame to cut off internal debate just because some may have already determined the parameters of the issue.

There’s much about trafficking and forced labor that we don’t know (because the data is so suspect and many of its victims remain invisible) and much that we don’t know we don’t know. Outliers like Laura Agustin provide a valuable check on reality. If we want to abolish slavery and trafficking — and we’re all agreed on that — let’s keep an open mind, and regularly tip over our apple carts of assumptions.

Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Note to anti-prostitutionists: Sex worker movements are nothing to sneer at

WTO causes rural economic bankruptcy, Peasants become sex workers: Ziteng

Ordinarily I avoid ideological debates, but this time I had to chime in, because the author of a nutty Swedish book actually lied about me in it. I don’t mean she distorted my ideas – that is conventional amongst feminists who feel they are engaged in a battle to the death about prostitution. No, this was a lie about me and my life: she described me as an employee of the Network for Sex Work Projects, and the company publishing her book didn’t get anyone to check her facts – even about living people, which is reprehensible. Since I am independent with a highly precarious income, and because my opinions are only my own, I could not allow the lie to go uncontested.

The book’s an attack on two activities: commercial sex and surrogate motherhood. The drivel about me is a very small part of the book, which also provides an egregiously selective and ideologically driven version of the history of sex worker rights movements. I decided to use the publishing opportunity to provide a more honest, if still very brief, version, complete with links to the evidence – probably the first such thing published in Sweden. The original book title can’t be translated exactly but means something like Being and Being a Product – the idea of commodification. 

Here now is the English version of the piece, with its original title, changed (of course!) by the Newsmill editor to Kajsa Ekis Ekmans okunnighet om sexarbetare är skrämmande (KEE’s ignorance about sex workers is frightening). I would appreciate everyone disseminating this, please: Nowadays it is possible to virally combat disinformation.

Radical feminist pleasure in sex worker misfortunes: not a pretty picture

Laura Agustín, 24 October 2010, Newsmill.se

At international events, radical feminist campaigners point and whisper about their enemies: She’s paid by the sex industry, you know. Or by the global pornographers. Or: She’s a known associate of traffickers. Disinformation as a technique is common in espionage, malicious election campaigns and rabid crusades to manipulate the emotions of an uninformed public. Disinformation means the deliberate telling of lies or the omission of key information.

If Kajsa Ekis Ekman in Varat och varan did not deliberately lie about me, then her research ability is very bad indeed. I have lived in Malmö for two years, my blog with its contact form is easily found. Ekman could have checked her facts with me personally but chose not to.

I am not, as Ekman claims, ‘an employee of the lobby organisation (anställd av lobbyorganisationen) Network of Sex Work Projects – which she could also have verified on their website. I am an independent researcher, writer and speaker, working freelance and best known for Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (Zed, London). Ekman avoids mentioning this title, called by The New Statesman one of the most important books on migration published in recent years’. Neither this book nor the previous one, written in Spanish, are correctly described, in Ekman’s words, as ‘books about trafficking as a media myth’ (böcker om trafficking som mediemyt).

Anyone looking at the the publisher’s website can see that Sex at the Margins does not say we should ‘stop talking about trafficking’ (sluta tala om trafficking), but rather that all migrant women who sell sex do not feel themselves to be total victims and that to drastically label everyone that way disempowers the migrants whilst increasing the power of people – like Ekman – who believe they Know Best how everyone else should live. I did not ‘christen trafficking victims “migrant sex workers” (döper traffickingoffer till »migrerande sexarbetare«) however. Ekman failed to notice in her own research that Tampep, funded by the European Commission, began in 1993 (long before I appeared on the scene) as European Network for HIV/STI Prevention and Health Promotion among Migrant Sex Workers.

Citing quotations out of context is a standard tactic of unscrupulous crusaders. Given that I have published 50-odd articles and essays, apart from a blog, Ekman clearly went out of her way to find a paragraph that, removed from its context, would make me sound like a monster. When asked to write for a book called Women and the Politics of Place, where other authors were writing about women’s attachment to local geographies, I made an argument about cosmopolitanism as a ‘place’ migrants inhabit (thus the title).

Lies about me are ultimately unimportant (though I do treasure my independence): my reputation will not be ruined by an ideologue’s rantings. Leopard Förlag say they publish history, social debate and popular science (historia, samhällsdebatt och populärvetenskap). Ekman’s must belong to the debate category, since she is no historian. But for any category, Leopard had the editorial duty to check claims about living persons and prevent authors from engaging in disinformation – or doing such poor-quality research. Did Leopard not send Ekman’s manuscript out for review?

Distortions and omissions about a social movement are more important to uncover. Ekman pretends to give a history of a complex movement she despises, rights for sex workers. But ethical, competent historians, whether academics, journalists or popular writers, simply do not manipulate their material through selections and omissions in order to make a political point. When I am sent papers to review or edit that bristle with this kind of selective presentation of facts and polemical tone, I return them for rethinking, restructuring and rewriting. In a case like Ekman’s, I do not list all the errors, omissions and out-of-context citations – it would take too long. Instead, I provide some examples and expect the author to understand the lesson and do the research properly.

For many serious activists, theorists, researchers, social workers, epidemiologists, psychologists, policymakers and feminists the world over, the struggle of marginalised people who call themselves sex workers to have a voice in debates that concern them is nothing to laugh at. The movement focusses on health rights, sexual rights, labour rights, individual rights or human rights, according to the time and place.

Eurocentrically, Ekman focusses on a few countries near Sweden, but this rights movement has roots all over the world: Empower was founded in Bangkok in 1985, AMEPU in 1986 in Uruguay, the New Zealand Collective of Prostitutes in 1987, Rede Brasileira de Prostitutas in 1987, among numerous examples. Many of these groups were set up before the Internet made it easy to ‘network’, advertise or disseminate information on problems and principles. DMSC, founded in Kolkata in 1995, now has 65 000 sexworker members from the most disadvantaged social classes. AMMAR has been part of national labour union CTA in Argentina since 1996.

The movement does not have a single centre or directing board. According to local cultures and needs, arguments for rights as sex workers are couched differently. Sometimes the argument revolves around sexual rights, as with the South American project Ciudadanía Sexual. Sometimes, human rights are the basis of demands, as with Cambodian activists’ protests against police that force people into compulsory rehabilitation programmes. None of the organisations claims to represent sex workers as a general category; all know this would be impossible in the criminalised, stigmatised contexts where most people sell sex. What they do is bring together people with similar values, interests and demands, sometimes physically but often online. Note that some of these activists call themselves prostitutes, suggesting that Ekman has not understood that this movement’s core is not about changing words.

By reducing this movement to the only aspect that matters to her – ideology – Ekman distorts – or failed to understand – the history of debates on Violence Against Women at the UN level. She seems not to know that an official statement was made on trafficking and prostitution in the Vienna Declaration on Violence Against Women in 1993, in order to distinguish between genuine victims and people not totally coerced. She appears ignorant of the lively and conflictive prostitution debates at the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995, whose final Platform for Action called for fighting forced prostitution and trafficking, not prostitution itself. Omitting these key events in contemporary feminist history, Ekman makes Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women Radhika Coomaraswamy’s use of both terms, sex worker and forced prostitution, sound like part of an arbitrary and sinister conspiracy.

In Sweden Ekman can get away with sneering at harm reduction, but she cannot begin to comprehend its importance in the rest of the world. Does she really believe harm-reduction theory and practice should not be used to decrease the incidence of HIV amongst marginalised populations in Asia? Grassroots networks of both drug users and sex workers have increasingly been influential in fora such as the International Harm Reduction Association, using principles of sexual self-determination and bodily autonomy. Scarlet Alliance, founded in 1989, is a network of sex worker organisations participating in Australia’s Federation of AIDS Organisations and using health promotion approaches, including peer education, community development and advocacy. Sex workers in Ghana receive HIV-prevention support on the basis that they are a Most-at-Risk Population, like men who have sex with men and transgender people.

The Ghanaian sex workers call themselves a union, by the way. Ekman tries to debunk the very idea of labour unions for sex workers through selective research in Europe, particularly through a parochial hatred of the Netherlands (long associated with several kinds of harm reduction). Although she claims to have spent two years on this research, most of the information she presents is available on organisation webpages. Her insinuation that the whole movement has been engineered by a few Dutch activists is sign of a true neocolonialist mindset: implying that people outside Europe are incapable of organising themselves or choosing the principles they believe in.

Ekman cherry-picked the European history, too – unless she simply failed to discover it. Sneering that the ICRSE ‘don’t really act anywhere’ (agerar inte fackligt någonstans), Ekman reveals an inability to comprehend that advocacy and social movements without significant funding function online in most of the world, through email discussion lists, skype conference calls and social networking software. Ekman sees only part of the ICRSE website, because she is not a member. Although she ridicules an early conference held in Brussels in 1986, how did she manage to omit a direct ancestor of that event held in Brussels in 2005? The ICRSE was founded at this conference attended by 120 sex workers and 80 ngo allies from around Europe.

There is no need for me to exaggerate what has been achieved in a movement beset by opponents at every turn. There is also no excuse for Ekman to sneer, in an unfeminist, unsolidary way, at the efforts of activists who do not happen to share her manichean world view. Why does Ekman want to smear this movement? Why does she hate people who advocate for their right to self-determination? Why does she lash out at people attempting to reduce the spread of HIV? Why should she appear to gloat when a sex-worker union (Comisiones Obreras in Barcelona) fails to attract members?

By focussing on Europe, Ekman tries to make all sex worker unions sound ridiculous, but she fails to understand that traditional trades unions are but one method for organising and advocating for rights. It may well be that classic trade unions are not the associative model destined to characterise the sex worker rights movement. Unionisation in all industries has weakened and diminished in most countries. In the case of the sex industry, the effort is severely impaired by numerous factors Ekman doesn’t understand. When businesses operate in informal economies, workers are hard put to negotiate with them. When people who sell sex are migrants without work permits and legal status to live somewhere, unions seem irrelevant. While the stigma attached to being a prostitute is so strong, most don’t want to label themselves, register with the state or otherwise assume a professional identity.

Ekman’s errors about London’s IUSW (part of the national GMB trades union) could have been avoided through a little real research rather than reliance on an old quarrel in the British blogosphere. She could even have consulted me, as I was once an active member. The man she accuses of running the show never did; the figure she provides on membership is seven years out of date. Since the GMB allows managers to join all its branches, the fact that an escort-agency manager joined is less significant and sinister than Ekman would like readers to think. She seeks to discredit STRASS in France by citing data from an abolitionist group without giving the date of its document, which anyway cannot be found at the webaddress she provides (note 167).

Ekman’s pleasure in other’s misfortunes – schadenfreude- is deeply unattractive. In a recent decision in Ontario that struck down several discriminatory aspects of prostitution law, the judge observed about ‘expert witness’ Melissa Farley:

Dr. Farley’s choice of language is at times inflammatory and detracts from her conclusions. . . Dr. Farley stated during cross-examination that some of her opinions on prostitution were formed prior to her research. . . For these reasons, I assign less weight to Dr. Farley’s evidence.

The judge would undoubtedly dismiss Ekman’s evidence, too, as should all critical readers.

– Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

A post-trafficking view of Sex at the Margins

zimbabweRecently I contacted a number of practitioners, consultants, evaluators, social workers and other non-academics in the field in a search for reports on how people who’ve participated in rescue projects liked the services they were offered. I mean, people who through one means or another were rescued or removed from an illegal or terrible situation, whether by police or other campaigners, and ended up in a shelter or other sort of programme: legal victims.  Meena Poudel is one person I contacted because of her work with formerly trafficked migrants: Post Trafficking Livelihoods in Nepal. Meena also published the following review of my book in Feminist Theory, 10, 1, 133–140 (2009).

Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry. London: Zed Books, 2007.

This is an engaging and deeply researched study of women migrating into Europe, which explores a domain that has been enormously influenced by global forces, both economically and culturally. Through her combined ethnographic observations, anthropological theory, feminist epistemology, historical insights and migration discourses, Agustín precisely organizes various contradictions and myths surrounding labour migration, market, services and the agency of travelling women within a rapidly globalized economy. Travelling women, in the context of Agustín’s analysis, range from women leaving home to explore the world to those who do so to sell sex.

The issue of sexuality has become increasingly politicized in recent years within the labour migration and sexual trafficking discourses partly due to the efforts of an ‘influential moral crusade’ (Weitzer, 2007) led by some of the ‘social agents‘ who, in Agustín’s words, ‘consciously attempt to better other people’s lives’ (p. 5). From her extensive travel across Europe and some parts of Asia, Agustín draws boundaries between myths and realities around the sexualities of travelling women.

Using testimonies of travelling women selling sexual and non-sexual services in the European market, Agustín illustrates how invisible jobs, the ‘services’ (p. 53), are available for highly visible migrant women who sell sex in the countries they arrive in. She asserts that the visibility of migrant women selling ‘services’ does not necessarily achieve the goal they had when leaving home, partly because these ‘services’ are excluded from the definition of the (formal) economic sector. This assertion parallels that of many feminist scholars and activists who advocate for the rights of migrant women working in various sectors, including ‘sex work’.

Although this book focuses on the European context, by establishing a tension between service providers and service receivers Agustin opens a global intellectual debate on both the meaning and role of the ‘social agents’ helping women in need. This tension is outlined in Chapter 3, ‘A World of Services’, where she examines Western European demand for sexual and non-sexual services from migrant women and argues that selling sex is not exploitative for some women in certain circumstances. Her robust analysis of the political economy of migrant women selling their sexual and non-sexual services sharply contrasts with the views of some feminists, who oppose all forms of prostitution as morally degraded and understand all migrant women selling sex as ‘victims’ to be rescued. For example, by situating experiences of migrant
women selling sexual services, in her analysis, Agustín sees no significance in debating whether ‘prostitution’ is a job or not, if the concept is replaced with ‘commercial sex’ (pp. 64–5). In this chapter, while examining immigration policies of Western European countries, Agustín also raises fundamental questions about the masculine interests of policies and takes contemporary feminist debates in sexual trafficking, prostitution and labour migration further.

By connecting colonial and postcolonial economics, Agustín carefully exposes the dual nature of European processes of ‘civilization’ in Chapter 4. She argues that migrant women selling sex, are (most) needed to boost European economies, and yet these are the women who are seen as threatening to European societies as ‘prostitutes’ and the ‘bearer of syphilis’ (p. 108). Furthering her argument on the necessities of migration for women and the circumstances created to sell sex, Agustín critically questions the dominant view of labour migration. The key facet of her argument is that the dominant view of labour migration not only undermines the agency of migrant women selling (or made to sell) sex, but also ignores their importance to the formal economy. In this context, Agustín’s work poses an important research question: what are the consequences of such exclusion that migrant women face, while they contribute to postcolonial economies?

In Chapter 5, Agustín opens up a methodological question. She argues that most of the ‘social agents’ are able to rationalize their actions without realizing the possible consequences for the migrant women they help. Agustín’s analysis suggests that, in addition to being viewed as a moral problem, prostitution has increasingly been seen as a classed issue in Western Europe. Agustín sensitively describes the complexities around the ways social reform and welfare, in the name of ‘help’, are formulated, enforced and regulated in contemporary Europe. Across the chapters, the term ‘help’ ranges from providing information on the nature of the job before women commence their journeys, to removing women from their work by police forces in rescue measures to ‘rehabilitate’ women. A desire to ‘help’, Agustín argues, often re/constructs and re/enforces the stigma attached to women who sell and/or are forced to sell sex.

Summarizing her arguments in Chapter 7, Agustín suggests that concerned authorities should listen to the migrant women they intend to ‘help’. In its powerful argument and thoughtful analysis, this book is essential reading for all those who intend to engage in researching migration, sexualities and sex
trafficking.

Meena Poudel, Newcastle University

Case history, transgender migrant sexworker, Kyrgyz Republic

Gulnara Kurmanova sent me this text, which I have edited minimally for clarity. It takes you through the series of obstacles and contradictions that migrants who are sex workers may face, and not only in Central Asia.

Documented by: Gulnara Kurmanova, Tais Plus NGO, Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic
With kind assistance from: Selbi Jumayeva

Presented at: 24th Program Coordinating Board (UNAIDS) Meeting, Thematic Segment People on the Move, June 2009

About me: My name is Gulnara Kurmanova. I have worked in HIV programs in partnership with sex workers in Kyrgyz Republic, Central Asia, since 1997. We actively support sex workers’ empowerment and self-organization. I would like to present a story documented by me in my own country.

About my country: My country is very poor. Recently it became the poorest country in Central Asia which is the poorest region of the post-soviet world. My country is corrupt. Many people in my country have no stable source of income and must think every day about food and a roof. The majority of those who think about them are young women and men who have no education or needed skills but have families who need their support.

About people who sell sex. For these women and men, sex work becomes an income-generating activity and way of surviving. Many of them seek an opportunity to sell sex to earn a lot of money (in their dreams) and at least some money for bread for their children and a place to sleep (in their reality). Many sex workers I know personally are braver and more enterprising (in order to become financially independent, self-sufficient and to survive) than their peers who are housewives and suffer their husbands and mothers-in-law in villages. But women, men and transgendered people who sell sex are often poorer, not well educated and deprived of family support. Their first motivation for sex work is to earn money. Sex work is work; this is an income-generating activity. But to earn money they must leave their town or village.

Activists from Tais Plus

Case of Venera, a 31-year-old transgender woman who is a sex worker. Five years ago she came to Bishkek from a small village in the north of the country. Her mother died giving birth to her younger sister. She lost her father because of tuberculosis when she was still a kid. She had changed schools and been placed in an orphanage in the village near the bigger town of Talass. Venera didn’t receive her secondary school diploma; like many others, she is embarrassed to say she is barely literate. She has no chance to get a good job in a nice place. At the same time she has dignity; Venera wants to be the woman she sees herself to be. Unfortunately, street sex work is the only space where she can come close to being herself. She is ok with earning money by selling sex. As a sex worker, she cannot work in her village because neighbors know her and judge her. She cannot work in Talass because she cannot wear women’s clothes there, a city with old Muslim traditions. Venera came to the capital city, Bishkek, to do sex work.

Currently Venera lives and works in Bishkek. She has problems with the police often, once or even two times a month and recently every week. The police arrest and detain her ‘because she has no passport.’ She prefers to say that she lost her passport, because her passport is a man’s passport, and her appearance is a woman’s appearance. For these reasons, she is currently an undocumented migrant. The police tell her that she is arrested for doing sex work and that she is not a human being anymore since she is a prostitute. She cannot argue that sex work is itself decriminalized in Kyrgyz Republic, because she is nobody to the police: she has no passport. The police ask her about money. They use her vulnerability to extort as much money as they can. She feeds the police, not herself, because they extort almost all the money she earns. Maybe the passport and resident permit could make her life better, but it is too expensive to pay for trip to Talass where she originally got her passport, and it would take months to collect all the necessary documents.

Her clients and street hooligans beat Venera often because of her feminine appearance. They think that she is not a human being anymore if she neglects ‘men’s honor’. Last October she faced a life-threatening situation when young men dragged her to their fancy black Mercedes without plates and took her to the outskirts of the city. They beat her severely, her face, her chest, her genitals; they raped her, burned her eyelashes, nipples and genitalia and threatened her with a gun. They said they would kill her if she told anyone. She wanted to file a report with the police, but they insulted her for being transgender and for sodomy and did not accept her complaint. Now she trusts the police even less.

Venera learned about a health problem three years ago but didn’t believe those who tested her. She didn’t receive proper pre-testing counseling. A doctor just told her that she should be tested when her friend convinced her to visit a clinic to ensure that she had no STIs. The doctor didn’t speak Kyrgyz, and Venera doesn’t speak Russian well. She didn’t understand a lot of what he said. Venera doesn’t discuss her health status with her friends. She does not trust medical services that treat her behavior, not her needs. In order to identify whether she needs treatment or not, she has to visit a doctor. She doesn’t visit a doctor because she doesn’t believe in any governmental institutions and tries to avoid contact with them. She knows from her experience that there is no confidentiality in governmental clinics and her secret could be revealed. She is afraid they might inform the police about her health status. She thinks that in this case she will be not able to work any more and lose her only source of income. She knows that other sex workers prefer to move to another city to be tested there. She is going to do the same later when she earns enough money. But if it is revealed that she needs expensive treatment, how will she pay for it?

Tais Plus works in collaboration with Labrys, a local LGBT NGO. Contact: taisplus at gmail.com.

Taiwan: decriminalization of prostitution and the classic debate

Brothel Museum, Taiwan

The other day activists were happy because Taiwan’s government announced a plan to decriminalise prostitution. Here is the rather predictable follow-up, with both sides’ arguments represented. One point needs to be clarified, however. When anti-prostitutionists say that Amsterdam’s recent actions ‘prove’ that legalisation doesn’t work they are vastly oversimplifying and misleading. The law is a process, a series of initiatives that are considered, written up and tried out. It’s quite common for them to be modified, whether by liberalising or specifying or narrowing, without the fundamental sense of the law changing. No one law’s passing is going to change a culture overnight or, probably, get everything right the first time! Note the anti-migration component in New Zealand’s law, often cited as the best available. To understand the Dutch situation, read an in-depth analysis.

Taiwan’s women split over prostitution issue

Brothel, Taiwan

Amber Wang, 8 July 2009

Taipei (AFP) — Sex workers in Taiwan have cautiously welcomed a government plan to legalise prostitution, but the scheme is being opposed by an alliance of women’s groups who fear it will breed crime and violence. A red-light area similar to Amsterdam’s famed canalside sex-for-sale district has been proposed for the capital Taipei, with legal and zoning measures due in place within six months. Prostitutes and their supporters say they see a ray of hope after many years of campaigning for legalisation to protect them from both customers and police, but some are concerned about being moved into special zones.

“I hope the government will allow us to stay where we are and give us legal protection,” said one prostitute who wanted to be identified as Hsiao-feng. “I don’t want to move to a new place to start again.” Hsiao-feng earns a living in Taipei’s Wanhua district, which is believed to be home to thousands of sex workers plying their trade illegally even though prostitution was outlawed in the city in 1997. “Who wants to have red-light districts near homes?” she asks. “The government would have to put us in the mountains but then we can’t make a living because nobody wants to travel that far.”

Observers say paid-for sex remains big business and the ban has driven it underground, where brothels operate under euphemistic names such as tea houses, massage parlours, clubs and even skin-care salons. There are also women known as “liu ying” or “floating orioles” — a metaphor for flirtatious and seductive women — who find patrons on the streets.

There is no official record on the scale of Taiwan’s sex industry but the advocacy group Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters (COSWAS) estimates that it involves 400,000 people and is worth 60 billion Taiwan dollars (1.8 billion US) a year.

“Right now we are helpless when customers don’t pay, or even rob or hurt us,” Hsiao-feng told AFP. “We have to watch out for the police and their informants because we can end up in prison if caught.”

Prostitutes face three days in detention or a fine of up to 30,000 Taiwan dollars if arrested, while their clients go unpunished. “The government should protect sex workers’ human rights and stop treating them like criminals,” says COSWAS chief Chung Chun-chu. “It should allow a blanket decriminalisation to regulate the sex trade.”

The public is divided on the issue, with 42.3 percent supporting the plan to legalise prostitution while 38.8 percent oppose it and the rest are undecided, according to a poll by the local China Times.

Arielle Su, an elementary school teacher in Taipei, says legalising the sex trade cuts both ways. “I think it can help prevent sex crimes as some people have needs and they would prey on the general public if they are unsatisfied,” she said. “But as a mother and a teacher I am also concerned that it would corrupt morals.”

A dozen local women’s groups have formed an alliance against legalising prostitution, warning that it would encourage crime and injustice against women. “We oppose making prostitution a legal industry because it fosters sexual violence and exploitation of women,” said Chi Hui-jung, head of The Garden of Hope Foundation.

Chi pointed out that the Dutch authorities were reducing the size of Amsterdam’s red-light district due to concern over criminal activities such as human smuggling and money laundering. “The government should offer welfare programmes and job incentives to women so they won’t go into prostitution out of economic desperation,” Chi said.

Hsiao-feng, a 45-year-old divorcee, says it is difficult for street walkers like her, with little education or job skills, to find regular work. “I don’t like what I do for a living but I have to raise my children and pay the bills. I don’t regret becoming a sex worker. I just hope the government will protect my safety so I am not always at the mercy of others,” she said.

Copyright © 2009 AFP

Marcha de trabajador@s sexuales en Perú: un bochinche/Sex workers march in Lima

Mira este video de una marcha en Lima llevada a cabo el 2 de junio, Día Internacional de los/as Trabajadores Sexuales. Here’s a great, colourful video of a pro-rights march held in Lima on 2 June on International Sex Workers Day.

La marcha forma parta de un proyecto de CiudadaniaSx: activismo cultural y derechos humanos, que enfrenta el estigma y la discriminación a través del arte y el activismo cultural. El proyecto sobre el trabajo sexual, llamado Intervención Bochinche, tiene como meta

confrontar el estigma y la discriminación que sufren cotidianamente las trabajadoras sexuales mujeres y trans (travesti, transgénero, transexual) debido a la criminalización del trabajo sexual, motivo por el cual suelen ser víctimas de diversas formas de violencia y violación de sus derechos.

Según donde estés, la palabra bochinche significa jaleo, alboroto (mess, row, racket, upheaval) o chisme (gossip). En el caso de esta inciativia, los dos significados pueden servir. Antes de la marcha, el proyecto colocó por Lima pancartas con interesantes mensajes, jugando con las palabras y las políticas represivas de la municipalidad. Entonces:

Street prostitution is advancing – neat!

Caresses available

Pick them up – We’re not watching you

The city is filling with lust – great!

Operation Sodom is also coming

Hookers’ Summit in Lima

1 de Maio em Lisboa: Sex workers march in Lisbon on May Day

Lisboa, 1 de mayo 2009

Este texto viene de Alexandra Oliveira de Portugal, autora de un excelente libro sobre el trabajo sexual llamado As vendedoras de ilusões. La foto es de Sérgio Vitorino, quien cuenta su experiencia aquí con más fotos. My English translation of Alexandra’s text follows her original.

‘No dia 1 de Maio, um grupo de prostitutas integrou a manifestação do May Day, em Lisboa. Acho que foi um dia histórico: foi a primeira vez que tal aconteceu em Portugal e partiu delas, spontaneamente. Elas perguntaram às trabalhadoras sociais de um projecto de intervenção porque não iam juntar-se aos outros trabalhadores no dia do trabalhador. Eu estive lá com elas, a dar apoio. Foram 7 mulheres que desfilaram sem máscaras, cheias de coragem – duas delas levaram as filhas pequenas com elas. O apoio veio das Irmãs Oblatas – umas freiras fantásticas que fazem trabalho de rua com mulheres trabalhadoras do sexo -, dum grupo de activistas LGBT (Panteras Rosa) e duma associação artística que tem uma bailarina que faz com elas trabalho de dança e expressão corporal (c.e.m – centro em movimento). Fomos todos no desfile. Eramos um pequeno grupo mas chamamos a atenção com os nossos guarda-chuvas vermelhos. Aos poucos, está a criar-se um movimento. Fiquei feliz e orgulhosa por estar lá.’

On the first of May, a group of prostitutes joined the May Day demonstration in Lisbon. I think it was an historic day: it was the first time this happened in Portugal and came from the women spontaneously. They asked the social workers from an outreach project why they shouldn’t join other workers on workers’ day. I was there with them to give support. They were 7 women who marched without masks, full of courage – two brought their little daughters with them. Support came from sisters of the Oblatas order – fantastic nuns who do street work with women sex workers -, from a group of LGBT activists (Panteras Rosa – Pink Panthers) and from an artistic association that has a dancer who works with the women on dance and body expression (called c.e.m/centro em movimento – movement centre). We were all in the procession. We were a small group but we attracted attention with our red umbrellas. So a movement is created, in gradual steps. I was happy and proud to be there.

Sex worker rally in London against Policing and Crime Bill

Thanks to several readers who sent me versions of this news.

Morning Star online.co.uk

Sex workers rally against new Crime Bill

Tuesday 31 March 2009 – Paul Haste

Sex workers smothered London’s Piccadilly Circus in red umbrellas on Tuesday to protest against the criminalisation of their profession.

Scores of workers from the nearby Soho district gathered at the Eros statue in the heart of the capital, stopping traffic to highlight their opposition to the government’s Policing and Crime Bill.

Carrying the red umbrellas as a symbol of their resistance to the new law, sex workers’ rights activists declared that it would “push prostitution further underground and push us into more danger.”

English Collective of Prostitutes organiser Cari Mitchell explained that the Bill, championed by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, would “make it easier to for the police to arrest sex workers on the street and give them powers to seize our earnings and property regardless of whether there is a conviction.”

Referring to reports that Ms Smith’s ministerial expenses included pornographic DVDs, Ms Mitchell said: “It is ironic that the minister makes expense claims for products from the sex industry while waging this fundamentalist moral crusade against us.”

Ms Mitchell pointed out that “many sex workers are single mothers and prostitution is a survival strategy to deal with debt, low wages and unemployment.

“As the recession hits harder, more women are likely to resort to prostitution and the government should be providing resources and support for them, rather than stigmatising and criminalising them.”

Sex worker activist Ava Caradonna, who organises English classes for migrant workers in Soho, insisted that the women and men who sell sexual services “don’t need and don’t want other people making choices for us.

“Ministers want to criminalise our work, but we want to do what we do – and we want to organise and take charge of our own lives to make conditions better,” she added.

Danish activist Zanne agreed, pointing out that “sex workers all over the world are organising,” while Italian Andrea added that the government should “legalise the industry instead of attacking us.”

Ms Caradonna added that “those who want more oppressive laws need to listen to the workers and their union.”

“Abolition is not the answer because prostitution will never end. Instead we need some respect,” she stated.

Sex Traffic at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts

The organiser of this event, James Harkin, got in touch with me some months ago about doing a panel. I told him I was not keen on having a pointless confrontation with activists who think I’m the devil incarnate – or worse, a sex trafficker. The result is this panel, all of whom i expect to see the complexities and nuances in the topic. We’re only meant to speak five to ten minutes apiece, so I haven’t yet figured out exactly what to say. Perhaps something more rip-roaring than my usual anthropological gaze, given current proposed anti-Demand legislation in the UK. There will be general discussion, so please do come along if you have questions or contributions in London that evening.

SEX TRAFFIC at London’s ICA – Institute of Contemporary Arts

11 March 2009 – 1900 / 7pm

The media and NGOs have raised awareness of sex trafficking in recent years, but does it serve the interests of migrant sex workers to suggest they have been trafficked, or does it collude in their criminalisation and deportation? Should our priority be to give migrant women in the sex industry more control over their own lives, or to stop the traffic?

Speakers: Laura María Agustín, author of Sex at the Margins and a former educator working with expatriate sex workers; Georgina Perry, service manager for Open Doors, an NHS initiative which deliver outreach and clinical support to sex workers in east London; Catherine Stephens, sex worker; Jon Birch, inspector, Metropolitan Police Clubs and Vice Unit. Chair: Libby Brooks, deputy Comment editor, The Guardian

Nash Room.  Book here  £10 / £9 Concessions / £8 ICA Members

The ICA is located on The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH. How to get there.

Box Office: 020 7930 3647 Switchboard: 020 7930 0493

The Institute of Contemporary Arts is a registered charity in England No 236848 and a Limited Company registered in England No 444351. Registered offices as above. VAT No 853 7217 17

Will a famous prostitute be allowed to rest alongside Calvin in Geneva?

Grisélidis Réal was known for decades as a prostitute, author and defender of sex work’s uses and skills. She died and was buried a few years ago but now either will or will not be honoured by having her remains moved to a Geneva cemetery where cultural icons like Calvin are buried. The story below illustrates how such honours are interpreted in opposing ways by different people. For some, the fact of having sold sexual services should overwhelm everything else about a person who was, obviously, much more than a prostitute or sex worker. For others, she was an ordinary human being who ought not to be singled out so much. For the sex workers’ rights movement, she is a hero.

swissinfo.ch – 21 January 2009

‘Revolutionary whore’ to rest alongside Calvin

Simon Bradley

A decision to transfer the tomb of a former prostitute to Geneva’s most prestigious cemetery, where Jean Calvin is buried, has sparked controversy.

Supporters of the move claim Grisélidis Réal, who died in 2005 at the age of 75, played an important role in Geneva society as a writer, personality and activist. But opponents say relocating Réal alongside Geneva’s heroes is an outrage.

Following a decision by the city council last year, Réal’s remains are to be transferred to the Cimetière des Rois graveyard in the centre of Geneva on March 9.

The former prostitute will be buried near the Protestant reformer – whose 500th anniversary is being celebrated this year – as well as Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio Viera de Mello and 350 other famous politicians, artists, lawyers and local celebrities.

“She spent part of her life defending the dignity of prostitutes,” said Geneva city councillor Patrice Mugny, in charge of cultural affairs, who was one of the driving forces behind the move to honour Réal as a writer and personality.

Mugny told swissinfo that he was not defending prostitution, but “from the moment we accept the phenomenon exists, it’s legitimate that it is practised in the most decent conditions possible”.

“Réal was also an important novelist who wrote several books about subjects that had rarely been dealt with before; she deserves her place at Cimetière des Rois,” he added.

The fact that few women were buried at the prestigious graveyard was also said to be a motivating factor.

Rides roughshod

But in a letter to the Tribune de Genève newspaper lawyer Odile Roulet said the council’s decision was scandalous and insulting to women, and “rides roughshod over Geneva’s honour and reputation”.

Martine Brunschwig Graf, a Liberal parliamentarian, also jumped on the plan. It is “not very clever” to make Grisélidis Réal an example for others, she said.

“It’s one of those nice leftwing ideas: burying an old tart at the Cimetière des Rois,” Geneva lawyer Marc Bonnat told Le Matin newspaper. “In her younger days Grisélidis brought some people a lot of joy, if they paid. She’ll be able to offer Jean Calvin some long-overdue pleasures of the flesh.” Continue reading

Strippers spoof Sarah Palin at a Vegas strip club

Here are pictures from the Toronto Sun of a contest held a few months ago in a Las Vegas strip club. The prize was $10,000 and a trip to Washington for the presidential inauguration.

Since I advocate a more cultural study of commercial sex, I like the way these pictures show culture, politics and humour mixing it up in businesses often thought of as being about one thing only: Sex. The guns make a nice social comment, too.

  

If you’re interested in these, take a look at descriptions of a few kinds of sex-industry venues in Spain. There’s a lot going on in these places besides sex!

-Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Sex Workers Parade Themselves

HIV and Disease – Violence and Exploitation – Crime and Punishment – Moralising and Ranting: This is what most writing about prostitution and the sex industry come down to. A few years ago, in the name of just plain knowing more about what so much debate and conflict is about, I proposed a new field of study to be called The Cultural Study of Commercial Sex. All sorts of sex businesses, from regulated brothels to street work, are included in the idea of the sex industry, and all participants are included: clients and workers (whether escorts or in brothels and massage parlours or lap dancers or street hookers). Also managers, madams, pimps, ‘traffickers’ and owners of businesses, as well as vendors who sell to workers in the venues, and so on.

Elena Jeffreys of Australia’s Scarlet Alliance of sex workers has sent me her contribution to an issue of the Journal of Australian Studies called Parading Ourselves (#89, 2006). That title is what first caught my attention. The issue is about the different meanings of public protests, marches and processions – anything that can be called a parade – and includes items on military masculinity, indigenous people’s revolt against whiteness, mardi gras and, in Jeffreys’s case, Contemporary Sex Worker Cultural Practice in Australia: Sex Workers’ Use of Sex Industry Skills in Public Protest and Performance. Here’s the link to the article, but I’m afraid only academics can get access to it without paying.

Jeffreys notes:

Dominant social mores demand that sex workers are invisible. Discussion, disclosure, recognition and visibility of the sex industry is perceived as evidence of a ‘slight’ on society, at best impolite and, at worst, to deserve micro-management on the visual landscape with criminal penalty for non-compliance. The stigma and discrimination sex workers experience when their sex-work status is known is a punishment for their ‘indiscretion,’ however it is hard to know if it is the act of sex work that is challenging to mainstream society, or the first-person telling of such acts, by sex workers in particular.

Examples of performance/protests described:

Christmas Eve Demonstration outside Northbridge Police Station 2002

Dressed in red and green, and wearing identity-concealing fluffy white beards and face masks, the sex workers approached the Northbridge Police Station as a group . . . carrying armfuls of large boxes wrapped in glossy Christmas paper and marked with large labels. . . A song had been penned by the sex workers, titled ‘Silent Whores’ and sung to the tune of Silent Night, telling of police corruption and sex worker objections. The new laws were outlined in bold letters on the gifts, reading ‘Strip Search Without Charge,’ ’Enter Premises Without Warrant,’ ‘Move On Notice‘ and ’Restraining Order‘ framed by the message, ‘To the Police, Love from Michelle Roberts xx’.

Lamington Ladies Stall at Dumas House 20th June 2003

The West Australian sex worker community fought back by adopting what is recognised in Australia as a modern archetype of wholesome family goodness, a character you can trust with your money and what you put into your mouth – the Lamington Lady. Dressing as Lamington ladies challenged the over-sexualisation of the issue in the West Australian media and refocussed on the issue of community services. . . Pastel pink and blue tunics made the basis of the transformation, with cream and white stockings, sensible shoes, frilly aprons and catering caps. Standing behind lace topped card tables with plates of lamingtons, the activists smiled for the cameras and explained that they had lost all of their health and advocacy services

Debby Doesn’t Do It For Free, a group of performers all named Debby.

In February 2004 they performed their first full length cabaret show, complete with mock national anthem: “Advance Australia Fear” . . . and ‘Olympic Whore’, which involved performing feats of gymnastic capability while demonstrating sex on a massage table . . . Other aspects of the performance included Mr Big Pants, a politician who claims to be ‘helping’ sex workers while trampling their rights . . . and live vaginal fisting on stage whilst reading poetry . . . These performances use archetypal characters to convey little-heard messages about sex work and its complexities, from a purely sex worker perspective.

Congratulations are due to sex workers in Australia for their cultural creativity and actions that blur the supposed lines between suffering and pleasure and injustice and power.

And if anyone wants to know what a Lamington is:

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