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Archive for the ‘Human Rights’ Category

JULIE BINDEL loving sex work (NOT) in the Spectator.

Posted in Anti Sex Work, Government Reviews and Change, Human Rights, sex worker politics, Trafficking, Uncategorized, VAW, tagged , , , , , on 4 February, 2013 | 29 Comments »

OUR JULIE.....GAWD BLESS HER LITTLE COTTON SOCKS

Julie Bindel, hater of sex workers, transsexuals, gay men, men, vegetarians and women who are not middle class journalists ( and ideally lesbian ) has been hating again, this time in the Spectator.

She claims that Amsterdam is regretting its liberal attitude toward prostitution and is actively closing brothels and sweeping back on positive legislation in regard to sex work. “READ HERE”

First thing I would say is that this is not true, or at least not quite in the way our Julie presents it. Amsterdam is not the model that any sex worker I know holds up as an example of excellence. All sex workers in the UK noted that it was better than the model we have here but it is not one we are generally eager to adopt. Amsterdam has legalised licensed brothels and windows. Naturally its liberal and tolerant approach attracted both tourists and sex workers from around the world, legal and illegal. The illegal workers have over time become a problem in the eyes of the authorities. The illegal brothels and workers have created an alternative and unregulated market in competition with the legal market. The result has been an increased tension between legal markets and unregulated markets. Undoubtedly criminals have to an extent exploited this situation. Has this resulted in the creation as Julie claims of a human trafficking and sexual exploitation hub? Very unlikely.

The truth is that the usual confusion between what is an illegal worker and what is a so called trafficked and exploited worker has focused the attention of the authorities who, as we know, far too easily confuse the two with very damaging and dangerous consequences for all sex workers regardless of their status.

Add to this political hot topic the fact that the red light district is in the historic and commercially valuable and sought after historic centre and you have a confusion of interests and some aggressive lobbying by all concerned parties.

The Amsterdam authorities are as prone as any authority ever is to commercial pressure which when placed alongside lobbying from pro sex work and anti sex work groups has resulted in some confused messages which Julie Bindel has exploited in this article. Some brothels and some windows have been closed. She is also right in noting that the sex worker union is small, as most sex worker unions in the west are. Sex work carries with it huge stigma and is often transitory so not surprisingly few bother to register with any organisation, never mind a trade union. She is also correct in saying that some politicians are pushing for the registration of all sex workers and for the criminalising of clients who use the services of sex workers who are not registered. Others are pushing for an increase in the age of entry into sex work. These however are debates that are attempting to deal with issues that are symptomatic not just of sex work but of all labour. Migratory issues and rights issues about labour, legal and illegal, is an issue that is affecting the world.

What Amsterdam is not doing is attempting to follow the failed Nordic, Swedish model. What Amsterdam is doing is debating how to support the human rights of sex workers while curtailing illegal immigration and the exploitation that so often accompanies it. Amsterdam is having an adult debate which Julie Bindel is incapable of doing because of her ideological position that ALL sex work is violence against women and that all Men are pimps, traffickers and rapists.

We need a similar adult debate in this country. We need a debate that places sex workers firmly in the driving seat of any discussion and one where Julie Bindel and her cohorts of hate are understood as being that rather than spokeswomen for sex workers which they certainly are not.

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Sex workers back on the care home agenda, say activists

Posted in Health, Human Rights, tagged , , , , , , on 4 February, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

Maggie McNeil a prolific sex-worker blogger wrote a piece in Cliterati concerning the Sussex care home which allowed sex-workers on the premises.  I omitted to mention her piece when I pointed out the hate filled article from Ann Tagonist.

I apologise for this, and here is a reblog of Maggie’s as always excellent article.

First of all, I applaud the caring people at Chaseley and their willingness to recognize that disabled people have just as much right to physical intimacy as everyone else, and that this right is no more removed by their residence in a care institution than any of their other rights would be; most of the comments on the story were also positive and supportive.  The same cannot be said, I’m afraid, for the council, the newspaper (judging by the scare quotes around words like “therapeutic”) and a minority of the commenters, all of whom seem to believe that sex is not a need and that there is something lurid, amusing or even harmful about paying for sex.  The council spokesman would never claim that the nursing home itself presented a credible threat of “exploitation and abuse” to “vulnerable residents”, but he thinks nothing of making the same specious claim about sex work, which is every bit as much a caring profession as nursing is.

The full article Caring Professionals can be read HERE…..

While on the topic, there is an article in Disability News Service concerning the rights of the disabled to a sex life.

Campaigners are calling for more awareness of disabled people’s right to a sex life, after newspaper reports suggested that staff at care homes across Sussex were “facilitating” the visits of sex workers.

The article mentions two organisations working for sexual expression for the disable, The Outsiders and the TLC Trust.  The TLC Trust brings together Sex Workers and the disabled.

Its sad  to read that two years ago, a survey of councils by The Outsiders and the TLC Trust, found only three per cent of local authorities had a policy on the use of sex workers by disabled service-users, with the same number happy for sex workers to be paid using money from a disabled person’s personal budget or other council funding.

The full article Sex workers back on the care home agenda, say activists  can be read HERE…..

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17th December, International day to End Violence against sex workers.

Posted in Escorting Lives, Feminism, Government Brutality, Human Rights, Safety, sex worker politics on 17 December, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Today was international day to end violence against sex workers. Sex workers exist in every culture and in every nation. Sex workers, male, female and trans work in a diverse industry and in many different environments. Sex workers represent every socio and economic and academic strata within society. The media and governments present sex workers as stereotypes but the truth is there is no stereotype of who a sex worker is or any shared reasoning for why anyone becomes a sex worker. Every story within sex work is unique just as every client has a unique reason for why they use the services of sex workers.
Once, long ago, sex workers were respected within societies that rejoiced in pleasure but now sex work has become an easy target for moralists, often posing as feminists and for lazy governments eager to prove they care, especially about women. Their eagerness to show how much they care however has resulted in discriminatory laws that harm sex workers. The truth is that every sex worker who is beaten, raped, murdered is the direct result of governments who claim they have created laws that will protect the vulnerable, protect women, and protect sex workers. These laws more often than not represent an ideological and aggressive understanding of sex work rather than reflect the realities of sex workers lives and experiences. They are laws that infantalise women as incapable of autonomous thought and behaviour and which perpetuate myths and untruths about sex work.
Sadly existing injustice toward sex workers is to be made worse if proposals to criminalise clients presently being presented to the governments of Ireland and Scotland become law. Sex workers and the public must now unite to tell government in clear terms that state violence toward sex workers in the form of laws that deny sex workers their basic human rights will no longer be tolerated. Sex workers are mothers, daughters, sons and brothers; they are human beings, workers, citizens who require the full protection of the law. Politicians must listen.


Dr Brooke Magnanti, formerly known as Belle de Jour, wrote this article about the 17th of December campaign, which appeared today in the Telegraph.

You can access the full article with links “HERE”

The event calls attention to crimes committed against sex workers all over the globe. (Don’t worry; you don’t have to get me a card. Cards Galore isn’t stocking any for this yet.)
It was created by legendary sex goddess Annie Sprinkle in memorial for the victims of the Green River Killer in Seattle, Washington.
The International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers encourages people from around the world to come together and organise against discrimination and remember victims of violence.
In particular I would like to remember Michaela Hague, a woman in Sheffield who was brutally murdered in 2001.
At the time I was a student there, not yet a sex worker, living in student accommodation in an area of the city that had once been well-known as a red light district. During that time the city began a crackdown on kerb crawling and street prostitution that drove sex workers out from the well-trafficked, well-lit and policed city centre to the industrial fringes of the city.
Related Articles
Scotland’s proposed sex bill ‘won’t protect sex workers’ 10 Dec 2012
Plan to criminalise buying sex from prostitutes rejected 20 Apr 2010
It’s no surprise students are turning to the sex trade 14 Dec 2012
It was in this time that Michaela was attacked. Stabbed multiple times, her killer got away unobserved. She died far from where anybody could have been alerted to her distress in time to save her life.
I became aware of the crime because I was working in the city’s mortuary the next day (as my doctorate was with the Forensic Pathology department). I saw a woman who in her life had been not just liked, but loved. A daughter, a mother, a friend. Michaela’s murder had a profound effect on me: it seemed clear to me that her death was the result of a policy that cares more for the appearance of propriety than for the welfare of sex workers.
Michaela’s murderer has never been found.
Sex workers talk about what we want, in terms of rights and treatment. We want a say in the policies that directly affect us – almost none of the legislation currently grinding its way through the UK and Ireland has consulted sex workers in any meaningful sense. We want acknowledgement that widespread attitudes against sex work make things more dangerous for the people involved. Some nod towards the reality that not all sex workers are the same wouldn’t go amiss. And we want people to realise that behind the highly publicised and politicised images are people, not just prostitutes.
Throughout this week sex worker organisations and their allies will be holding vigils to raise awareness, not just of crimes against us, but of the laws that aid these crimes. Laws that criminalise sex work thus preventing sex workers from reporting violence. The stigma and discrimination that is perpetuated by the prohibitionist laws makes violence against us acceptable. Thankfully I never experienced any attempts of violence against me while I was a sex worker but I am all too aware of the scale of the problem.
Please join with sex workers around the world and stand against criminalisation and violence committed against our communities.
Like I said, it’s a pretty new holiday, so you don’t have to get me a card or anything. But a donation to a local sex work outreach programme surely wouldn’t go amiss.

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RESEARCH PAPERS AND Sexualities Journal Special Edition on LGBTQ sex work

Posted in Escorting Lives, Human Rights, LGBT, NSWP, Organisations Comment, Uncategorized on 8 October, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

I was forwarded the following by Rossie Campbell at the UKNSWP.
It is a link to Sexualities Journal Special Edition on LGBTQ sex work. Many of the readers may be interested in acquiring the journal “Sexualities” .
I have also very kindly had links to research papers forwarded which readers may find of interest.
Permission has been granted for their publication. I have included the abstracts and links to the full papers after this introduction to the special edition of the “Sexualities Journal.”

Enjoy.

    Special section
    Introduction: Working
    outside the (hetero)norm?
    Lesbian, gay, bisexual,
    transgender and queer
    (LGBTQ) sex work
    Nicola J Smith
    University of Birmingham, UK
    Mary Laing
    Northumbria University, UK

Recent scholarship on sex work has highlighted the diversification of the sex industry under late capitalism. There is now a wealth of research that interrogates and documents how sex is sold in a plethora of spaces, through multiple mechanisms and by a multitude of actors for diverse reasons (see for instance Agustin, 2007a; Cavalieri, 2011; Kotiswaran, 2010; Sanders, 2006). By exploring the complexities of commercial sex in analytical, empirical and normative terms, this literature has done much to expose and challenge the entrenched polarities – such as those between oppression and liberation, violence and pleasure, and victimhood and agency – that have long underpinned political and philosophical debates surrounding the sale and purchase of sex. For example, commercial sex has been theorised in terms of a wider discourse of ‘intimacy’ and central to this has been an emphasis on how understandings, experiences and performances of intimacy are not fixed but instead change over time and space (see especially Bernstein, 2007; Zelizer, 2011). It is thus surprising that much of this varied scholarship remains focused on the sale of sex by women to men, be it on the street, over the telephone, in a brothel, via escorting, on the internet or through a multiplicity of other means. While these debates are extremely valuable in terms of their academic merit and often in terms of their policy relevance, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) sex work is rarely treated as an object of substantive concern. Although there is undoubtedly an extant literature on men who sell sex to men (see inter alia Aggleton, 1999; Kaye, 2007; Kong, 2009; Logan, 2010; Mai, 2009; Morrison and
Corresponding author:
Nicola J Smith, University of Birmingham, Department of Political Science and International Studies, Edgbaston
Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK.
Email: n.j.smith.1@bham.ac.ukWhitehead, 2007; Padilla, 2007; Whowell, 2010), other embodiments and performances of LGBTQ sex work remain largely unexplored.
The overarching aim of this special issue is to shine a spotlight on LGBTQ sex work and, in so doing, enrich the existing body of scholarship in four specific ways. First, we hope to contribute to the literature in empirical terms, in particular by
self-consciously broadening the empirical focus beyond that of analyses which, whether explicitly or implicitly, are predicated on the imaginaries of the female worker and male client. The contributions to this special issue cover a whole diversity of empirical case studies – including lesbian exotic dance, male street work, transgender migrant sex work and gay hospitality services – that are drawn from a variety of social and political disciplines such as history, geography, sociology, criminology, and political science. As such, we aim to bring a multidimensional and multidisciplinary voice to debates about the sex industry that moves beyond
preoccupations with commercial sex as a moral issue but rather attempts to document empirically ‘a rich field of human activities, all of them operating in complex socio-cultural contexts where the meaning of buying and selling sex is not always the same’ (Agustin, 2007b: 403).
Second, by exploring sex work through the lens of non-normative sexualities, we wish to interrogate the complex ways in which sexuality, intimacy and, importantly, ‘sex itself’ can be performed within the commercial sexual exchange. Our intention here is to broaden the multifarious ways in which ‘sex work’ can be conceptualised, not least withrespect to heteronormativity. For example, in her article ‘Dancing for women: Subverting heteronormativity in a lesbian erotic dance space?’ Katy Pilcher explores how the performance of erotic dance by women for women reinforces and reproduces heteronormative prescriptions for femininity even as it challenges and subverts them. Conversely, in ‘Gay hospitality as desiring labor: Contextualizing transnational sexual labor’, Dana Collins discusses how ‘gay’-identified hosts in Malate are able to ‘negotiate the exclusionary relations
of gentrification and neoliberal gay travel’ precisely by constituting themselves as active participants in the production of gay culture. Jody Miller and Andrea Nichol’s paper, ‘Identity, sexuality and commercial sex among Sri Lankan nachchi’, provides an important contribution to the literature on desire and subjectivities in sex work as they explore the nachchi, who are described to be ‘transgender’ and ‘homosexual’. Miller and Nichols explore the sexual desire of the nachchi for men, their need to be desired as men, whist being treated like – but not as – women.
Some of the key themes explored demonstrating the complexity of commercial sex in this context include exploitation, violence and sexual desire through nuanced conceptualisations of gender and sexual encounter.
Third, a key motivation behind the special issue, and a prominent theme to emerge in many of the articles, is that of exposing invisibilities. This allows for a consideration of how and why LGBTQ sex work has tended to be rendered invisible in debates about commercial sex and it also encourages reflection on how current debates concerning sexuality, inclusion and exclusion might be reframed in the light of LGBTQ sex working.

In ‘The fractal queerness of non-518 Sexualities 15(5/6)heteronormative migrant sex workers in the UK sex industry’, for instance, Nick Mai notes how the reproduction of heteronormative understandings of gender relations and identities serve to obscure the diversity of migrant sex workers’ experiences and identities, including those of ‘non-heteronormative people’.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with male and transgendered people working as migrant workers in London’s sex industry, Mai discusses the complexity of their life and work experiences as they seek to navigate the queer, homonormative and
heteronormative worlds that they traverse through migration. Similarly, in ‘Body issues: The political economy of male sex work’, Nicola Smith highlights the crucial contribution that feminist scholarship on global sexual economies has made to the study of globalisation and capitalism, but points to continued gaps and silences surrounding the existence, experiences and status of male and transgender sex workers. She then offers an example of feminist political economy research on male sex work through discussion of her qualitative fieldwork with men working as gay escorts in San Francisco.

Fourth, this special issue offers comment on the impact of formal and informal regulatory and punitive actions taken by communities and official bodies in areas of outdoor sex work. In Becki Ross’ and Rachael Sullivan’s incisive historical article ‘Tracing lines of horizontal hostility:
How sex workers and gay activists battled for space, voice, and belonging in Vancouver, 1975–1985’ there is a discussion of the historical decimation of street beats in downtown Vancouver by local anti-prostitution campaigners. The article demonstrates the lack of cultural, political and social capital felt by street-involved sex workers as they were unable to fight back against the homonomative, masculine and neo-liberal politics at play in a gentrifying neighbourhood. Conversely in ‘Walking the beat and doing business:

exploring spaces of male sex work and public sex’ Atkins and Laing explore a space of sex work which also operates as an area used by men for public sex. They offer a richly empirical conceptual analysis of how ‘beat’ spaces are created, exist and dissipate through embodied peripatetic and sexual practices.

With these four threads running through the special issue, we very much hope that it will be of interest not only to scholars who are specifically interested in commercial sex but also to a wider interdisciplinary audience, as the contributions featured consider the overarching themes of (in)visibilities, regulation, practice, sexualities in the city, spatial control, inclusion, exclusion, embodiment and sexual citizenship. We would very much like to thank Sexualities – and, in particular, Ken Plummer and Agnes Skamballis – for making this project possible, and
special thanks must of course go both to the contributors themselves and to the colleagues who gave up their valuable time to act as referees for the articles included.
Funding
Nicola J. Smith would particularly like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for supporting this
project.

Papers and Abstracts:

    Sexualities 2012 15: 622
    Michael Atkins and Mary Laing
    and public sex
    Walking the beat and doing business: Exploring spaces of male sex work

    Abstract
    This article draws on two research projects to explore how spaces of public male sex
    work come into being through commercial and public sexual practices. Utilizing a
    blended methodology of ethnography, participant observation, interview materials,
    map making and photography, the article explores an area known for commercial and
    non-commercial sexual encounters between men in a city in the UK. It makes conceptual arguments about the material and discursive significance of walking in the making,
    and continued existence of ‘red light district’ spaces. Specifically, we will look at how
    men engaged in sex work (those described to be ‘doing business’) and other men
    seeking non-commercial sexual liaisons recognize the potential for sexual encounters
    in the space through environmental and embodied signifiers. We also discuss how
    patterns of walking and waiting mediated by this reading of the environment contribute
    to the emergence and persistence of a ‘beat’ space

    “full paper”

    DOI: 10.1177/1363460712445980
    Sexualities 2012 15: 538
    Dana Collins
    Gay hospitality as desiring labor: Contextualizing transnational sexual labor

    Abstract
    This critical ethnographic research explores gay hospitality as a ‘testimony of desire’ by
    working-class and ‘gay’-identified Filipino sexual laborers who ‘work’ as companions for
    foreign tourists in a gentrifying tourism district, Malate, the Philippines. I analyze gay
    hospitality as informal sexual labor by applying the concept of identity work, which
    involves hosts’ construction and maintenance of their ‘gay’ identity and connection to
    urban place. I argue that their testimonies of desire are subaltern development discourses, which speak to significant lived experiences of work and place and, which offer
    alternative configurations of identity, relationships, and economic exchange.

    “full paper”

    1
    Sexualities 2012 15: 570
    Nick Mai
    sex industry
    The fractal queerness of non-heteronormative migrants working in the UK

    Abstract
    Contemporary debates on migration and the sex industry have been characterized by a
    marked emphasis on the extent of trafficking and exploitation of migrant women in
    heterosexist contexts and relationships. Migrant sex workers’ complex understandings
    of exploitation and advantage have been reductively manipulated into a heteronormative dichotomy between free (male) migrants and (female) coerced victims. In the process, non-heteronormative migrant sex workers’ experiences of advantage and
    exploitation were neglected. This article draws on original research material and
    findings about the specific life and work trajectories of non-heteronormative people
    working in the UK sex industry. It focuses on the way they understand the opportunities and predicaments posed by the homonormative and heteronormative worlds
    they ambivalently reproduce and challenge by migrating and working in the global
    sex industry

    “full paper”

    Sexualities 2012 15: 554
    Jody Miller and Andrea Nichols
    Identity, sexuality and commercial sex among Sri Lankan nachchi

    Abstract
    This study investigates the complex and contradictory ways in which gender identity,
    sexuality, and desire are configured in nachchi understandings of their lives in Sri Lanka.
    Nachchi was an insider term used by a group of sex workers best conceptualized using
    western understandings as both transgender and homosexual: nachchi celebrate their
    feminine gendered subjectivity, but also embrace key facets of their biological ‘maleness,’
    and are ardent in their sexual desire for men. We examine the relationships between
    nachchi gender and sexual subjectivities, including how they compare and distinguish
    themselves from women and men. Particularly in the context of transactional sexual
    exchanges, we investigate the intersections of economics, desire, stigma and exploitation in shaping nachchi experiences.

    “full paper”

    Sexualities 2012 15: 521
    Katy Pilcher
    space?
    Dancing for women: Subverting heteronormativity in a lesbian erotic dance

    Abstract
    This article utilises participant observation, interview and collaborative visual data,
    collected with women erotic dancers, management and customers, to ascertain how
    far heteronormativity is subverted in a UK lesbian leisure space, Lippy (the name is a
    pseudonym), which provides erotic dance for women customers. The potential for
    a female ‘gaze’, the ‘normativity’ of gendered and sexualised bodies, and the notion
    of a ‘women’s space’ are taken as areas for analysis. Women’s engagement with erotic
    dance is complex, and this article examines the connections between sexual agency and
    gendered power relations, questioning how far women can exercise autonomous sexual
    expression in commercial sexual encounters.

    “full paper”

    Sexualities 2012 15: 604
    Becki Ross and Rachael Sullivan
    battled for space, voice, and belonging in Vancouver, 1975 −1985
    Tracing lines of horizontal hostility: How sex workers and gay activists

    Abstract
    In the mid-1970s, indoor sex workers were pushed outdoors onto the streets of
    Vancouver’s emergent gay West End, where a small stroll had operated for several
    years. While some gay activists contemplated solidarity with diversely gendered
    and racialized sex workers, others galvanized a campaign, alongside business owners,
    realtors, police, city councillors, and politicians to expel prostitution from their largely
    white, middle-class enclave. Sex workers commanded inadequate capital to thwart
    the anti-vice, neo-liberal lobby. Instead, an assimilationist, homonormative gay politics
    played out on the backs of an even more vulnerable and stigmatized sexual minority –
    the majority of whom were low-income, street-involved women, men, and maleto-female (MTF) transsexuals of colour.

    “full paper”

    Sexualities 2012 15: 586
    Nicola J Smith
    Body issues: The political economy of male sex work

    Abstract
    The analysis of global sexual economies has emerged as an important part of a wider
    feminist project to re-imagine the boundaries of what constitutes the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of globalisation and capitalism. Emphasising the importance of such an agenda, the
    article argues that continued understandings of commercial sex as ‘women’s work’ place
    male and transgender bodies on the outside rather than the inside of the analysis of
    global sexual economies. Highlighting the need to address this gap in contemporary
    theorising and empirical analysis, the article then offers an illustration of research into
    male sex work through discussion of how male escorts in San Francisco negotiate the
    complex meanings and practices surrounding gender, sexuality and political economy

    “full paper”

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NATIONAL UGLY MUG SCHEME, IS IT GOOD NEWS?

Posted in Campaigns and Groups, Escorting Lives, Government Reviews and Change, Human Rights, Law, Organisations Comment, Research, Safety, sex worker politics, Uncategorized on 16 August, 2012 | 3 Comments »

Time will tell if the introduction of the first UK nationwide Ugly mug scheme will be good news for sex workers or bad, or more likely indifferent. An ugly mug, for non sex worker readers, is a client of a sex worker who has been violent or abusive.
Ugly mug schemes are nothing new. Although in this “article” it is claimed that local sex work projects have operated ugly mug schemes for twenty years, real sex workers, however, have operated them for as long as there have been sex workers. In the north east where I work, local agencies have shared information for the last fifteen years, and most agents/brothels have lists of hundreds, if not thousands of clients who have either, in the worse case scenario, been abusive or violent, to repeat, no shows clients. (Clients who book appointments, in call and out call, but who never show up, or, who/and, send sex workers to the wrong address deliberately).
These schemes work very well on a local basis and in theory should work nationally. There are however flaws in this system which are being ignored in the enthusiasm to welcome it.

The scheme relies on local projects. Local projects are social work groups who provide out reach to sex workers. The effectiveness and the usefulness of these projects is a post code lottery. Most work only with women, usually, street workers or sex workers who are socially disadvantaged. Most projects have little or no contact with the vast majority of sex workers who work indoor, ie in brothels, through agencies or who work independently. Often, not only are projects selective in terms of whom they support, ie, only street women, but they often have age restrictions, especially gay projects, who only work with so called “rent boys” or very young boys, men. Effectively, most sex workers never, or rarely, have any contact with any outreach project.

The scheme also relies heavily upon the co operation of the police. Sex workers do not trust the police, with very good reason. The police, as sex workers know to their cost, are more interested in persecuting sex workers than in caring for the safety of sex workers. Brothels and agencies, representing consenting adults, are still being raided across the UK and sex workers prosecuted and their assets seized. This is one recent “example”.

Before any national scheme can be truly called successful the relationship between the police and sex workers must improve. Although the new national Ugly mug scheme promises that sex workers can report crimes anonymously through their local project, the real advancement would be if sex workers were able to report crimes against them, just like every one else, to the police directly, with out fear of arrest or harassment. One is tempted to suggest that the first ugly mug listed on the scheme should be the police themselves, or perhaps the government, who empower and encourage the police to target sex workers. This important point aside, the ability to report crimes to projects, depends therefore, largely upon the relationship, if any, that exists between any projects and the sex workers, and often, as I have explained, there is no such relationship.

The NUM (national ugly mug) scheme also promises sex workers and agencies etc the ability to share and access telephone numbers. The problem is that the law prevents the sharing of full phone numbers. So sex workers, if wanting to check a client, will only be able to access part of a phone number. Better than nothing one may think, but hardly fool proof and unlikely to replace or improve on existing, local, sex worker run, ugly mug schemes. It is of course these very important local schemes, already established within sex worker communities, that are so often destroyed by the police, our new protectors, when they raid brothels and agencies (yes I am being ironic). The same also goes for car registrations and names. If the police were truly interested in creating and maintaining a comprehensive list of ugly mugs then they already have a valuable source to tap into. Sadly the lure of easy convictions and lucrative proceeds of crime confiscations are currently however, more important than the safety of sex workers.

Sex workers have told me personally, when discussing this scheme, that the sharing of incomplete phone numbers is pointless. Mobile phones do not pick up ugly mugs by imputing incomplete numbers and sex workers, often in a hurry to organise and confirm appointments; do not have the time to troll through hundreds, if not thousands of phone numbers or car registrations. The reality is that this is a pointless exercise for most sex workers. It is an exercise for the police and for projects. As one sex worker said, “It makes them look like they are doing something”.

So we sex workers have to ask if this is a good idea, will it be helpful to us in our work?

My answer, as a sex worker, is that it probably is a good idea, although, its real worth is not to sex workers as a practical tool in their work, but rather it is an aid to projects and the police, who hopefully, will now more easily coordinate the sharing of information about ugly mugs, especially those who target street workers.

If I were to be cynical I would also argue that it will also certainly provide monies and opportunities for projects regionally, and probably, will also be helpful in creating a whole new tier of administrators. If this is the case, it will be nothing new. Sex workers have always provided lucrative opportunities for saviours on both sides of the debate, those who persecute us and those who live off us by, erm, helping us.

There is however, a danger, not yet mentioned, that the scheme may, at some point, also be used against sex workers. Any future anti sex worker government, like the last labour government, for example, may use the information gathered in a national ugly mugs scheme, to justify further persecution of the sex industry. The information, they may claim, of hundreds, possibly thousands, of ugly mugs, wanting to rape and murder, poor, abused, sex workers, could, if wrongly interpreted by moralists, (of any governing party) be used, to justify for example, the criminalising of all clients, which is what the Labour party, when last in government desperately wanted to do. Information is dangerous in the wrong hands.

In conclusion, as an ordinary sex worker, I give this nation wide ugly mug scheme a tepid welcome and wait to see how it develops. It is up to sex workers to comment and inform projects and the authorities in general, what we, British sex workers, really need. What we really need is a discussion about decriminalisation and a trusting relationship with the police. I don’t think that this is it. I may be wrong.

It will be interesting to read comments from other sex workers and also from projects.

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Back to Brothels

Posted in Campaigns and Groups, Government Reviews and Change, Human Rights, Law, sex worker politics, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on 25 June, 2012 | 5 Comments »

Image

On Tuesday the 19th, every sex worker’s rights activist in Scotland was either at Holyrood or on the phone monitoring the progress of the Justice Committee’s decision re Rhoda Grant’s proposed changes to the legislation around paid sex, which would criminalise our clients. With baited breath we waited until the news came in that she had failed in her attempt and there was much jubilation, short lived though that was. We cheered and allowed ourselves our first deep breath in several days, but we know it’s only a matter of time before she is back with a new consultation.

Having prepared ourselves for the worst, we all had a full diary of appointments lined up, meetings with MSP’s, interviews and meetings with sex workers too, most importantly. I very much enjoyed Holyrood, what I found most interesting was the “contemplation seat” that MSP’s have at the back of their office, it’s a space by a window to allow them to mull things over. Those visitors who have to be accompanied by an assistant at all times are given a badge with an enormous “V”, you seriously don’t want to know my thought processes around that.

Mulling things over was not a luxury available to myself and my colleague N, we hit the campaign trail with gusto on Thursday and Friday and visited many saunas in Edinburgh, to talk to the ladies therein and inform them of what is going on. I loved every minute of it, it was like a trip down memory lane for me because I began my career in the biggest sauna in Dublin, run by a huge Irish country man (to be polite) who wasn’t the brightest star in the sky. I still remember with great fondness the day he announced loudly to the masses that in order to cut back on his costs he had decided to wash and dry the towels on site and that very day we could expect delivery of his proudest investment, a “tubular dryer”. (I damn near wet my thong at that, in fact if memory serves me correctly that was the day I got the sack for the third time.)

Although I had my own experience of working in saunas many years ago, I was very nervous about visiting the contemporary equivalents, I really didn’t know what to expect. Well, all I can say is that I left every single one of them beaming and more determined than ever before to work with our team and protect those wonderful women I met. To be perfectly honest, there was a moment when I walked through the door of each one when the women threw me a distrustful eye, and who can blame them ? Right now they feel as if everyone is against them, politicians who are determined to take away their livelihood, feminists and abolitionist campaigners who are determined to “rescue” them, not to mention various members of the public in their commentaries who have suddenly become experts on what it is to work in the sex industry and the psychology behind it all too, it’s almost impressive.

As soon as I let it be known that I am on their side, the change in their body language was quite remarkable. Arms were unfolded and they leaned forward and listened. In fact, in most of the places we went to, N and I had a really good laugh. As I deal in truth and not fiction, I can tell you that there was not one lady who appeared to be trafficked, every lady I met was perfectly happy to be working there and in fact they were enraged when I explained to them the full ramifications of the proposed changes to the legislation. Having explained why they enjoyed working as they do, their next question was simply – “What can I do to stop this?”

Continuing in the vein of honesty, I can tell you that out of all of the women I met, there was ONE woman who was very clearly on drugs, the rest were perfectly ordinary women, busying themselves with hair straighteners and make-up. That was my experience of the “horrors” of the Edinburgh sauna scene and I’ve no doubt that when we begin visiting flats we will find pretty much the same scenario.

The trouble with the debate that’s raging at the moment around the scene in Scotland is that the anti’s are relying heavily on the street scene to back up their arguments, when they speak of drug use, beatings, arrests, pimps etc. Now, I’m not going to pretend for one moment that any drug addicted woman happily applies her make-up and goes out on the street night after night to earn enough money to feed her own addiction and quite possibly that of her boyfriend too, of course not. I will say, that there are some women who choose to work “the beat” because it’s just what they’ve always done, like the woman two doors down does in the run up to Christmas too. The problem with some of those women is not prostitution, it’s POVERTY, and it’s drug addiction. If that’s the case, why don’t we ban drugs ? Oh wait, we have, that didn’t work either. If those women cannot get their drugs from the proceeds of paid sex, no matter how dangerous that is, then they will source the money any other way they can, spot of shop lifting anyone ? Of course, that alternative course of earning might get them arrested, they might even end up in “The Vale”, where they really will meet the creme de la creme of Scottish society, but that’s OK, because they are morally superior to prostitutes.

Is not the answer to support these women rather than criminalise them ? If they want to get clean and get off the streets, HELP THEM, if they want to continue to work on the streets but do so in safety, HELP THEM. Looking at the Merseyside model gives us all some scope for hope, in that case the police have been treating sex workers as the victim of hate crimes where they have been assaulted or harmed in any way and the result of that is, the human rights and the safety of the women have become paramount, not futile arrests and harassment.

I don’t claim to be an academic, (far from it, although I am working on it) but I do know the sex industry, because I have been working in it for quite a while and therein lies the reason why I do what I do under my “real” working name, I cannot be debunked. Oh sure, I can be discredited, jeered, all the usual fun stuff, (you know, if the best a purportedly educated forty-something woman can come up with is ‘fat bitch’ then I fear for the educational future of us all) but no-one can claim I am a pimp, a client, or just some (ahem) alternative person who gets their kicks out of writing as an escort, (they exist, believe me).

Nope I’m just me, a common garden variety escort, and a rather content one at that.

Laura

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OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER OF THE ROYAL GOVERNMENT OF THAILAND.

Posted in Campaigns and Groups, Escorting Lives, Human Rights, In the Media, Organisations Comment, Safety, sex worker politics, Thailand, Uncategorized on 8 June, 2012 | 1 Comment »

The sex workers of Thailand have sent an open letter using the offices of the Empower foundation to the Prime Minister (also sent to related Ministeries, UNIAP and various media) of the royal government of Thailand calling for the recognition of the human and labour rights of Thailand’s sex workers. The open letter is below.

Thailand is a country that is not represented especially well on Harlots. I am doing my best to remedy this. If any one of our readers would like to write more about sex work in Thailand please contact me and if you wish you may join our list of authors.

Open Letter to: The Prime Minister of the Royal Government of Thailand,
On the occasion of 5th June 2012, National Anti Human Trafficking Day, Empower alleges that successive Thai governments have sacrificed the rule of law, their international human rights obligations and the well-being of migrant sex workers and their families, in an attempt to please the US government and satisfy the American anti trafficking agenda.

We accuse the United States government of using the issue of human trafficking to coerce its allies into tightening border and immigration controls. The US agenda has also created a climate where women crossing borders are all seen as suspect ‘victims’ of trafficking.

Recently on the 21st February 2012 Empower released an in-depth research report, ‘Hit & Run’ done by sex workers which clearly identifies how the State is breaching rule of law and police procedure while arresting wrong people. (Report available “HERE”)

Even though Thai governments have tried hard to appease the USA, Thailand remains on a Tier 2 watch list and risks being further downgraded in the annual Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP Report) due for release later this month. Empower sees the Trafficking in Persons Report issued by the US State Department as subjective and bias against the Thai Entertainment Industry in particular.

Furthermore Empower says the Thai government has so far failed to recognize the many improvements the Entertainment Industry has undergone in the last decade. The old days of the ‘green harvest’ and locked brothels are over. In the modern context, sex work is similar to other jobs. Exploitation in the industry is an issue of access to identity and work documents, labor rights and occupational health and safety. These are labor and human rights issues, not police or criminal issues.

Society is all too familiar with media images of uniformed police, fully armed storming Entertainment Places and apprehending young unarmed women. Women desperately try to hide their faces; sometimes the women are naked and not even given time to cover themselves. The women and girls never fight back; most don’t even dare to think about trying to run away and not one woman or girl has ever been found carrying a weapon. These events were commonly shown in the media well before the new human trafficking hysteria. The image of a hero or rescuer has now been added to the scene…it’s all very exciting.

However society never sees or hears of what happens after the rescue. Society is not told that the women are put through a range of unnecessary medical tests regardless of consent or their human dignity. They don’t know that women have been detained against their will for over a year in government shelters. No one knows about the pain and suffering brought about by the separation from children and family. Who could imagine that the women, who are the main family providers, are not compensated in any way by the State, and given just 3,000 Baht, (about 200 Baht per month) from private anti trafficking fund when they are eventually forcibly and formally deported?

Under the law there are provisions for social assistance but in reality the focus is on punishment. Little wonder women escape from their rescuers when they can.

Police enforcement of the law using raids encourages violence. We suggest that instead of continuing costly, and ultimately useless “raids and rescue” missions, it is time Thailand resisted being bullied by foreign governments and instead worked to ensure migrant sex worker’s access to documentation and fair working conditions in Entertainment Places.

Today Empower Foundation is calling on the Prime Minister of The Royal Government of Thailand to:

Review the practices of anti trafficking act in relation to the protection of human rights and the rule of law
Stop using sex workers as scapegoats in foreign policy and other political games.
Stop police entrapment which contravenes police policy. Stop raids on entertainment places which are violent actions usually reserved for apprehending dangerous criminals. Stop arbitrary detention of sex workers.
Protect the human rights of women arrested or assisted under the Anti trafficking Act and ensure they receive the full entitlements according to the Act e.g. translation, legal representation, compensation.
Work together to promote accurate information about the modern context of sex work in Thailand to all agencies involved in anti trafficking.

The letter has been endorsed by:
Sex workers of Krabi
Sex workers of Phuket
Sex workers of Samut Sakon
Sex workers of Nontaburi

Sexworkers of Chiang Mai
Sex workers of Mae Sai, Chiang Rai
Sex workers of Mae Sot, Tak

Sex workers of Mukdahan
Sex workers of Ubon Rachatani
Sex workers of Udon Thani

Sex workers of Pattaya, Chonburi
Sex workers of Soi Cowboy, Bangkok
Sex workers of Soi Nana. Bangkok
Sex workers of Patpong, Bangkok

CC:

National Human Rights Commission
Office of the Prime Minister
Ministry of Social development and Human Security
Department of Special Investigations (AHTD)
Office of the Attorney General – Public Prosecutor, Ministry of Justice
United Nations Interagency Project on Human Trafficking UNIAP

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“Are they bad girls or brilliant?”A Harlots review of a brilliant book by Aphrodite Phoenix.

Posted in Escorting Lives, Feminism, Government Brutality, Human Rights, In the Media, Law, Organisations Comment, Religion, Safety, sex worker politics, Uncategorized on 10 May, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

I was delighted to be congratulated by Aphrodite Phoenix on a paper that I recently presented at the Brunel university sexual cultures conference.

Aphrodite asked me if I would be interested in reading and possible reviewing her book “Are they bad girls or brilliant?” I was delighted to be asked and agreed at once.

The book is actually two books in one. The first is entitled “A personal journey” and book two is called “18 audacious essays”.

The first book primarily details her experiences working as an escort in the USA. Aphrodite tells us about her reasons for joining the business, her family life, illness and tragedies and joys and also about her intellectual journey and her spiritual awakening through her work as an escort. In book two Aphrodite gives us her thoughts about feminism and sex worker activism through a series of essays. She includes an idealised manifesto for a sex worker future where sex work is once again revered and understood as a positive force within society.

I found myself agreeing with so much in this book which reaches out both to the public and academics. It is an easy and enjoyable read that is also insightful and positive.

Aphrodite’s experiences as an escort in many ways resembled my own experiences. Her thoughts about her work, her views on activism and about feminism also mirrored in many instances my own thoughts.

Her book intriguingly is titled “Are they bad girls or brilliant?”. She used the question mark because she wants her book to answer the questions that an outsider to the sex industry may want to ask in order to understand why someone like her would enter the sex trade. She leaves the answer to the question posed in the title however, to the reader.

This is a journey that we can all empathise with in so many ways. Aphrodite, for example, describes in an early chapter; entitled, “Just an afternoon of terror and joy”, the mixture of excitement and terror that escorts in the USA, where prostitution is a criminal offense, feel when meeting a new client. That excitement is however tinged with a real sense of danger. The fear is not that the client may be dangerous but rather that the meeting may be a police sting. The danger, the fear felt by the escort is also experienced by the client who is equally fearful of a police sting on him, because in the USA the client also is criminalised. The sense of relief felt by both the escort and the client as they hug and discreetly frisk each other for hidden wires is palpable. It is a story of two people in danger, not of criminals.
At the end of that chapter Aphrodite gives an early explanation for why she is prepared to risk arrest. She writes:

“I walk back through the bustling housekeepers. We resume all those sweet wordless greetings. My heart goes out to them now. I think of all the cleanings they have to do, and how, as with me, their work is performed for strangers. They purge away dust, lint, litter, loose hairs. Used sheets, semen-streaked towels like the one I’ve just left behind, tub scum, toilet filth…I consider their low pay. I consider how awful some people think my work is. How much “worse” it must be for the maid’s.
I think of the pleasure I give. I think of the stress I relieve. I think of how I do it all-naturally. Not Toxically. Not pharmaceutically.
And I think of the money I make.
I feel so good I could shout.”

I think this just about sums up how most sex workers feel about their work when criticised for their choices. I am sure the public will also sympathise with the fear and ask; where is the crime?

I also felt a personal resonance when Aphrodite describes how sex work has had a positive effect upon both her physical health and mental well being. She understands this as part of her personal awakening to an awareness of Goddess worship. She describes (with many references) the fact that healing once was the preserve of women and that part of that healing process was sexual healing. The sacredness of sex as practiced by priestesses who were also sacred prostitutes resonates through out the book.

Aphrodite describes her life as an escort as a learning experience, a journey of discovery. It is an experience in which she learns not only about herself but also about the human condition. She writes:

“I INTUITED RIGHT FROM THE ONSET, THAT SEX WORK CAN BE HEALTHY BECAUSE SEX WORK CAN BE SPIRITUAL”.

Aphrodite goes on to say:

“I was a mother, homemaker, gardener, exerciser, healer, writer and whore. All were seamlessly, wholly, my path”.

“Are they bad girls or brilliant?” is a revelatory vision of a woman’s journey of discovery. It is the story not of a “Happy hooker”, and many will try and dismiss her as such, but of a real woman who falls in love, is arrested, brings up children, is a mother, who copes with illness and loss and does all of this while also being a sex worker.
This is a story of an intelligent and well read woman whose intellectual and emotional journey has resulted in the writing of a book that will become a classic.

This book is available exclusively as an ebook from Aphrodite’s web site “HERE”.

The book will also be available in good old fashioned print very soon. Details will be available on Aphrodite’s web site and also from Harlots Parlour.

I genuinely recommend this book….enjoy and please write and leave reviews.

Both myself and Aphrodite will be speaking on the Charlie Spice show tonight at 8pm UK time. We will be discussing the book and coming out as a sex worker activist.

Please join us: “HERE”

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Good ECP video at Slut walk- Shame about the stereotyping.

Posted in Anti Sex Work, Campaigns and Groups, Escorting Lives, Feminism, Government Brutality, Human Rights, Law, sex worker politics on 1 October, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

I think that the essential message within this video is important. I don’t personally agree in any way with the politics or the assumption that sex workers are all poor women forced to sell sex through circumstances. I find that insulting. People choose sex work for all kinds of reasons and most people who are “poor” do not sell sex. Selling sex is an option, a choice among many. I loath the stereotyping of sex workers in this manner.
I also wish that the ECP and their friends would recognise that the labour Party has led a nasty crusade against sex workers. Before being thrown from office it was the Labour Party that made things much worse by increasing the powers of the police to arrest sex workers and by encouraging the police to raid sex worker premises because they would benefit substantially because of changes within the proceeds of crime act.
The present government is not perfect by any means but they are not ideologically driven to hate sex workers unlike the previous Labour administration and they at least are talking to sex workers. I feel frustrated that the political bias of the ECP and other groups in London are hampering efforts to forge links with the present government.

Unfortunately those with strong left wing political opinions control the leadership of sex worker groups and therefore dictate the nature of relations with any government, not least the present administration. When the president of the GMB sex worker London branch publicly declares his unwillingness to talk to conservatives for example then you understand the problems the industry faces by not having lobbyists fit to the task in hand. This is why it is so important that moderates and real industry representatives become more involved in representing sex workers. Personal politics should not affect your ability to lobby with any government regardless of the political colour of that government.
Sadly I fear that so often those representing sex workers at government level within the UK are the real enemy.

The basic message within this video however is good and that is why I have posted it on Harlots. Enjoy.

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RAIDS ON GODDESS TEMPLES ARE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION… Understanding sacred sexuality and sacred prostitution.

Posted in Anti Sex Work, Government Brutality, Human Rights, Religion, sex worker politics, Uncategorized on 22 September, 2011 | 5 Comments »

This video is accessible at bottom of page

The recent raids on the Goddess temples in the USA are a sad reminder of how badly our society is damaged by centuries of orthodox monotheism that has denigrated human sexual expression and sexual joy as both sinful and dangerous. Orthodox monotheism has done this through dogmas that denigrate human sexuality as a distraction from its contemplation of the world of the dead rather than the world of the living. Once; sex was an expression of human joy, of the pleasure we take in our humanity for its own sake, a benediction given without expectation or censor.
Sacred prostitution sprang from this concept of sex as a civilising benediction. When the words “A prostitute I am, compassionate am I” were inscribed on the temple walls of Innana and Ishtar they were a declaration of sex as a blessing given from a prostitute in honour of the goddess to anyone who sought her company. The prostitute was an instrument of the Goddess. The Goddess as the compassionate whore tamed the wild nature of man and invited civilisation, romance, poetry, music, pleasure in all its forms into the world. Sex was perceived as a benediction that healed the sickness of the body and of the mind and was given to all with out question or demand.
It is this understanding of sex as a positive expression of the Goddess that we have lost. Today the prostitute instead of being acknowledged as a vehicle of joy has within a monotheist society become a symbol of lost virtue, a dangerous distraction into sin in a world where sex is sinful, dirty, destructive, secretive and furtive.
Our modern revulsion of the prostitute reflects our own self loathing of our need for sexual pleasure for its own sake and any understanding of sex as a healing and positive influence within society.

The men and women who now face prosecution were brave to challenge our modern misunderstanding of sex and of the positive role of the prostitute in dispensing sexual healing in its broadest sense. Orthodox monotheism has corrupted our understanding of sex as a positive expression of the divine and of the importance of sex in maintaining a healthy and balanced body and mind. The compassionate whore is an important reflection of the Goddess of compassion who reaches out to bring the sacred intimacy of human sexual interaction to those within society who may not easily access sexual relations or suffer because of sexual inadequacies or who; perhaps, fear sex or have no understanding of the importance of “good” sex to maintain a healthy body and mind that then reflects positively not only upon the individual but within society as a whole and within personal relationships. Teaching sex as a blessing rather than something to be feared and teaching humanity to understand the sexual needs of their human body as something positive and teaching that sex can be a path to spiritual enlightenment and to discovering the divine was once a duty of the sacred whore within the ancient temples. From my understanding re-establishing this teaching was an important aspect of the worship at these modern temples. Embracing sex as positive and not as something dirty or sinful was and is to the Goddess simply a reflection of her love for humanity.
We have forgotten that access to sexual expression was once understood as important in maintaining a complete and healthy “whole” person. When western society was forced to embrace the repressive dogmas of orthodox monotheism, sex outside of carefully prescribed so called norms; was, and still is perceived as dangerous. The result of this repression has been centuries of punitive legislation that has degraded sex into something criminal. In criminalising human sexuality society has also degraded our shared humanity. The arrests at the temple reflect another example of this brutal repression of human sexuality. Once again the prostitute is the scapegoat, presented as dangerous to a society still governed by patriarchal notions of good women and men and of course of sex that conforms to “their” carefully prescribed so called normality.

The arrests have also sadly revealed many leaders within modern paganism as either lacking in knowledge of important aspects of the Goddess or more probably unwilling to acknowledge aspects of the Goddess that do not fit easily within their sellable version of the goddess to an audience corrupted by centuries of orthodox monotheism.
There is no doubt that it would be a brave pagan leader who would stand side by side with those arrested at the temples for prostitution. The prostitute is so degraded within modern society that they fear that monotheists will find yet another stick with which to beat followers of the Goddess and to label them as sexual deviants. There is nothing new in this of course; it is what they have done for centuries and what they will always do. This however is not a good enough reason to shy away from avoiding explaining prostitution as a positive refection of the goddess of compassion and to explain sacred prostitution in the name of the goddess as a benediction and not something to be feared. It should not be just sex workers like myself who defend an aspect of the Goddess that some so called pagans feel uncomfortable with. This is religious persecution and it should be understood as such within the pagan community. Pagans who deny the goddess as prostitute and yet talk of sacred sex and sacred healing while denying the sensuous, unadulterated and very explicit and overt sexuality of the goddess is like denying the Goddess as destroyer and bringer of death. The Goddess is not a fluffy Barbie doll. The Goddess has many faces and to deny even one aspect of the Goddess because it does not sell easily tells us so much about those so called pagans. Those pagans who deny the link between prostitution and goddess worship and who try and dress sacred sexuality to appeal to the sensibilities of a corrupted audience are no better than those masked policemen who held guns to the head of the women and men within this temple. They are gaolers of the Goddess and not her priests and priestesses.

It is important that everyone does what ever they can in what ever way they can to defend the arrested practitioners at these temples and to stand up bravely in defence of the goddess and her prostitutes both male and female.

You can read more

“HERE”

“HERE”

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