International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

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Photo by Paul McKinnon


So today (Dec. 17th) is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.

Due to the bus-strike (and my having scheduled therapy - at Lees Avenue Campus - with NO bus-strike in mind) I ended up missing the rally and the speakers.
But I was able to join in the march, and I heard the speakers outside the police station, and I got to chat with Chris Bruckert and Nicholas... oh, blast, what's his last name... He does the facebook account for POWER and he did an article for Xtra on the subject of sex work and what it is and does.
Anyway. it was good chatting with them. (And there were awesome mango-and-orange-and-chocolate cupcakes at the reception! Wah! Those were so yummy!)


Anyway. My sister was out walking her dog, Fletch, and happened upon us marching along, so she walked with us for a while, and I tried to explain some stuff to her (I didn't do very well, I admit). So I think I'll be cutting a pasting part of this post into an email and sending it to her.


Basically, what she said was: She doesn't aprove of sex work(ers) because by chosing to take on this role of Totally Sexual Woman they help to maintain the belief held by some men that *all* women exist for their sexual gratification/titilation/stimulation.

The answer I gave her ('cause I'm not very good at thinking on my feet) was short, somewhat garbled, and not very helpful.

The answer I should have given goes something like this (it's pretty similar to a conversation I had with Hyel a little while ago):



Mainstream porn [she sited the work of Jenna Jameson as an example of a very popular porn star who she sees as perpetuation the stereotype of the Purely Sexual Woman] - like music videos, non-porn movies, advertisements, and other mainstream media - reflects and reinforces the norms and assumptions of the culture from-which it comes and towards-which it's targetted. And, in the case of mainstream porn, that would be the lowest common denominator of cisgendered males raised in a sex-negative, mysogynist environment.

By-which I mean: If you grow up in a culture that says:
1) Sex = Bad, Evil, Naughty, Impure, Unhealthy, Immature, etc.
AND
2) Lots of Sex and/or Lots of Sex Outside of the Confines of a Vanilla, Monogamous, Hetersexual Marriage = Worse: Disease-Prone, Disease-Spreading, Stupid, Dangerous, and Out of Control
AND
3) Good Women are not overtly sexual
AND
4) Women who *are* overtly sexual (or who *appear* to be overtly sexual based on cultural assumptions about clothing, but also heavily based on cultural assumptions about race and class) are Less Valuable as Human Beings than woman who *aren't* overtly sexual (or who can maintain the illusion, through dress, skin, and class-based demeanor, that they aren't overtly sexual) AND women who are overtly sexual are ALSO both a joke (dumb blonde jokes, for example) and a threat (the vamp or the femme fatale) at the same time.
AND
5) that sexually gratifying/titilating/stimulating men is what women are *for*

... What you get is a society that says:

Women are for men to fuck (or imagine fucking or what-have-you). Good women, however, are NOT for men to fuck. They are for taking care of babies (which is another story all together, but the whole madonna/whore dichotomy that says "Moms aren't (supposed to be, or supposed to want to be) sexual" is the same one that says "Whores aren't capable of, or deserving of, love").
BAD women, however, are definitely for men to fuck.
However, since sex is bad, and sexual women are REALLY bad, the women that exist for men to fuck are:
Wicked
Immoral
Immature/Childish (and therefore need other people to do the thinking for them)
Likely to spread disease, and
In need of being controlled (or disciplined, or punished, or whatever, because they're Bad).


Ick.

And mainstream porn will relfect this crap.
So, however, will your average sitcom.
They will put the emphasis on different areas, but they are reflecting and reinforcing the same ideas. (Seriously. Watch an episode of "Family Matters" with that stuff in mind, and see what you notice).


The violence perpetuated against sex workers (and against the most marginalized ones most often - that being the ones who work the street, which is more visible and less safe by a long shot) is tacitly approved-of by The Law - both because the current laws that make sex work punisheable by jail-time and so-on are the same laws that make sex work unsafe, and also because (a) the way the police force (in Ottawa, but not just here) deals with sex workers is by humiliating and brutalizing them - and making it difficult for them to go back to their homes, as they tend to work in the neighbourhoods where they live and going back to those neighbourhoods gets called a "violation of their parole", and because (b) most - okay, most *rape* cases don't make it to trial because "no" is so open to negotiation that unless you were screaming "stop raping me right now [insert full name here]", it's still "open to misunderstanding" (yes I'm serious) - but most crimes against sex-workers aren't investigated all that thoroughly and are generally treated as isolated incidents rather than parts of a significant pattern.
Which basically means that sex-workers' lives are seen, by the legal/justice system, as *disposable*.


And this is a REALLY BIG PROBLEM.

Because people are dying because of this. And even the people who aren't *dying* are still stuck, to one degree or another, playing jump-through-the-loop-holes in order to avoid getting arrested, and to avoid getting hit by the massive, heavy social stigma against (A) sexual, or sexual-looking/overtly-feminine, women in general and (B) sex-workers in specific.


And it's crappy.


And the laws aren't protecting anyone.

They aren't protecting the sex workers, they aren't protecting the other women in the neighbourhoods where sex-workers work (because if women in an area are assumed to be sex workers, they will be stigmatized and threatened whether or not they are, and the laws currently in place are *adding* to that problem, rather than helping to solve it, by maintaining the belief system that says that sexual women are criminal women and therefore disposable), and they don't protect the wives/girlfriends/boyfriends/husbands of the (almost always) guys who *hire* sex workers (because, hey, the guys in question could just be picking someone up at a bar -- it's not the sex work that's causing the cheating).


And they *are* attempting to control society's sexuality, by saying what kind of sex is Acceptable (Good) Sex, and what kind of sex (everything else) is Unacceptable (BAD) Sex.
Basically, these laws are trying to govern what concenting adults decide to do together.

And those laws can be (and have been!) used to screw around with the queer community, the poly community and the kink community as well as with the sex work community.

Which, as a queer, kinky, poly gal, I have a significant problem with.


And Dear Old Pierre had a thing or two to say about that kind of 'governance' -- in that particular case talking about hetersexual, monogamous marriage, in fact -- something about the state having no place in the bedrooms of the nation?

Which basically goes to show you that laws like this - laws that try to govern what consenting adults can do with each other - are screwing with the non-queer, non-kinky, non-poly people, too.


And they have to stop. Those particular sections of the criminal code need to be taken off the books because they are helping absolutely no-one, and they are hurting a lot of people, on a lot of levels.




So that's my story, so to speak. I'll send it to my sister.

She headed off to finish walking her dog, after Chris Bruckert spoke. And she said "Well, I don't like violence. But I don't like hookers either. But I *will* read those books you said you'd lend me".
So I'll hook her up with Carol Queen and Carol Leigh, and see if they can't do something to help change her mind. :-)



- TTFN,
- Amazon.