The prostitute is the scapegoat for everyone’s sins, and few people care whether she is justly treated or not. Good people have spent thousands of pounds in efforts to reform her, poets have written about her, essayists and orators have made her the subject of some of their most striking rhetoric; perhaps no class of people has been so much abused, and alternatively sentimentalized over as prostitutes have been but one thing they have never yet had, and that is simple legal justice. – Alison Neilans
Today is International Sex Workers’ Rights Day, which started in 2001 as a huge sex worker festival (with an estimated 25,000 attendees) organized in Calcutta by the Indian sex worker rights group Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee. Prohibitionist groups tried to pressure the government to revoke their permit, but DMSC prevailed and the following year decided to celebrate their victory by establishing the event as an annual one. As I wrote in my column of one year ago today,
Perhaps its Asian origin has slowed the day’s “catching on” in Europe and the Americas, but in the light of the current trafficking hysteria and the growing problem of American “rescue” organizations in Asia, I think it’s time to remedy that. Whores and regular readers of this column are acutely aware of the paternalistic attitude taken toward prostitutes by governments, soi-disant feminists and many others, and it’s no secret that many Westerners still have very colonial, “white man’s burden” ideas about Asia; imagine then the incredible paternalism to which Asian sex workers are subjected by American busybodies! I therefore think it’s a FANTASTIC idea to popularize a sex worker rights day which began in India; its very existence is a repudiation of much of the propaganda which trafficking fetishists foist upon the ignorant public.
As I’ve written in the past, American cultural imperialism in Asia is still very much a fact; despite our loathsome record on civil rights the US State Department presumes to judge other countries on their response to so-called “human trafficking”, based on secret criteria which obviously include classifying all foreign sex workers in a given country as “trafficked persons”. The annual “Trafficking in Persons Report” results in cuts in foreign aid to countries which don’t suppress their prostitutes brutally enough to please their American overlords, and therefore provokes mass arrests and mass deportations in the countries so targeted. Nor are these operations instigated only by governments; wealthy NGOs, enabled by money from big corporations looking for a tax dodge, from empty-headed celebrities in search of good publicity, and from clueless Americans desperate to “do something”, invade Asian countries and abduct prostitutes, forcing them into “rehabilitation” which consists largely of imprisonment under inhumane conditions and brainwashing them to perform menial labor for grueling 72-hour weeks at one-tenth of their former income. When the women escape from “rescue centers” or protest, they are said to be suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome” and their children are abducted and given away.
Nor is this sort of violence restricted to Asia; local US police agencies, often financed by wealthy prohibitionists like Swanee Hunt, routinely use prostitution as an excuse for mass arrests, robbery and grotesque intimidation tactics:
Tania Ouaknine is convinced the police are watching her. She’s not paranoid — it says as much on the red sign painted along the side on the hulking armored truck that’s been parked in front of her eight-room Parisian Motel for several days: “Warning: You are under video surveillance”…From the front bumper of the menacing vehicle, another sign taunts: “Whatcha gonna do when we come for you?”…[it’s loaded with] surveillance equipment…and [decorated]…with [Fort Lauderdale, Florida] police emblems…[which they] leave…parked in front of trouble spots…”They say I am running a whorehouse,” said the 60-year-old innkeeper…[who has] been the subject of an undercover operation targeting prostitution starting in September. Ouaknine was arrested on Oct. 28 on three counts of renting rooms to prostitutes for $20 an hour…She says she’s doing nothing illegal. “They’ve tried everything to shut me down and have failed,” she said. “Now they bring this truck to intimidate me and my customers.” Some neighbors surrounding the Parisian Motel say the truck is another form of constant police harassment. On a recent afternoon, Leo Cooper watched as two undercover…[cops molested] a group of men gathered at the corner. Within minutes, one of the men ran away. A second man was charged with loitering. “This is what happens here every day. We can’t sit outside without being harassed,” said Cooper…
This is why sex worker rights should concern everyone, even those who aren’t prostitutes, don’t know any prostitutes, have never hired a prostitute and don’t give a damn about the human rights of strangers: prostitution, especially as it’s viewed through the lens of “human trafficking” myth and “end demand” propaganda, is simply the latest excuse employed by governments in their campaign to control everything and everyone. The 2005 re-authorization of the so-called “Violence Against Women Act”…
…permitted the collection and indefinite retention of DNA from, as the Center for Constitutional Rights understood at the time, “anyone arrested for any crime whether or not they are convicted, any non-U.S. citizen detained or stopped by federal authorities for any reason, and everyone in federal prison.”
Using this, Swanee Hunt (through her “Demand Abolition” organization) is now pushing for collection and retention of DNA from every man cops can accuse of patronizing a sex worker…which given the low standards of “suspicion” favored by police, means essentially any male found by cops in certain neighborhoods or in the company of a woman to whom he isn’t married. While fanaticism-blinded neofeminists cheer, the war on “violence against women” (and by extension prostitution, which is defined as exactly that by neofeminists) is used to justify the same kind of egregious civil rights violations as those resulting from the “wars” on drugs and terrorism.
I think I can safely speak for virtually all sex workers when I say that we don’t want to be passive tools used by governments and NGOs as the excuse for tyranny; we simply want to be left alone to live our lives like anyone else, with the same rights, privileges, duties and legal protections as people in every other profession. We are not children, moral imbeciles or victims (except of governments, cops and NGOs), and we do not require “rescue”, “rehabilitation” or special laws to “protect” us from our clients, boyfriends, employers or families to a greater degree than other citizens. And we certainly don’t need others to speak for us no matter how much they insist we do. Almost a year ago, Elena Jeffreys published an article entitled “It’s Time to Fund Sex Worker NGOs” and I wholeheartedly agree; furthermore, I would argue that it’s long past time to defund “rescue” organizations and all the others who presume to speak for sex workers while excluding us from the discussion. How can someone who hates a given group and opposes everything its members want be considered a valid representative of that group? It would be like allowing MADD and Carrie Nation’s Anti-Saloon League to represent distilleries and bar owners. The very idea is absurd; yet that’s exactly what governments do, even in some countries where our trade isn’t criminal. Millions of people claim to care about the welfare of prostitutes, yet contribute to groups who advocate that we be marginalized, criminalized, censored, hounded, persecuted, registered, confined, stripped of our rights, robbed of our livelihoods and enslaved…all because they don’t like what we do for a living. It’s a lot like contributing to the KKK because you claim to be concerned about minorities.
If you actually care about the rights of women, or want to look like you do; if you’re opposed to imperialism and police brutality; if you support the right of people to earn a living in the jobs of their choice, and to organize for better work conditions; or even if you just want to protect yourself from yet another head of the ever-growing hydra of government surveillance, you should consider supporting the cause of sex worker rights. Fight prohibitionist propaganda, speak out for decriminalization, contribute to sex worker organizations, vote against candidates who espouse prohibitionist rhetoric, and oppose local efforts to increase criminal penalties against whores and/or our clients. And if anyone asks why you care, please feel free to quote from this essay or just hand them a copy. Sex worker rights are human rights, and laws or procedures that harm sex workers harm everyone.
If we were really serious about ending forced labor, and human trafficking, we’d be raiding Apple headquarters. But we aren’t. Besides, they are a rich and powerful corporation that uses sweatshops so bad that the workers commit suicide.
Women have rarely ever been allowed to make our own decisions about our lives. It’s gotten better, but around the world it’s still not good.
These rescue organizations are just another bunch oppressing women. Rush Limbaugh ought to highly approve.
I’m not opposed to recusing anyone forced into prostitution against their will. Make that resource available, and see who uses it by their own choice. Also rescue people, women, men and children from sweatshops. Oh wait- if we do that your I Phone might cost more. Or Apple might not have millions of dollars in the bank.
Or even better, world wide, let’s make women equal citizens, with equal rights. That’s not going to be easy, it’s going to involve breaking down old patriarchal religions.
Unfortunately, it’s also going to involve breaking down nanny states; most of the government excuses for abrogating whores’ rights, even in countries where it’s legal, are of the “for their own good” variety.
i am sick of this .i happen to work in one of the few jobs that has not been the subject of any bastard politicians rhetoric about human trafficking(pso) or has never been threatened with criminalization but what i see happening especially to prostitutes makes me upset.in greece they are the victims of beaurocracy,in nordic countries the victims of radical feminism,in other countries victims of religion.and i have never seen a discussion about sex work happening with sex workers. one exception is in netherlands where a city council had been a prostitute(karina chaapman).she says that most girls in the rld are forced though,and makes a moral appeal to the buyer,and i dont know if she tells the truth in her reports or shes just, well the typical politician with an agenda.even then, i think it shows more a failure of the dutch than anything else,because in australia and other countries decriminalization works just fine.and i just cant stand anyone who says we are the victims of someone else,namely the patriarchy.i prefer those who call me immoral.id rather have my choices being considered immoral than telling me that im a child who cant make her own decisions and im brainwashed by so called exploiters.
I had a similar conversation recently with Furry Girl. We both agree with you; better to be thought an evil Jezebel than a passive, infantile vegetable controlled by others.
Your first point raises an interesting thought; considering how many of us go back and forth between various sex work and “straight” jobs or marriage, how do the fanatics square this with their “enslavement” rhetoric? Do they imagine we constantly “escape” and are “recaptured”?
most people out there beleive that someone who can actually do a straight job wouldnt become a sex worker and that noone would marry a whore either.very few think we can enjoy our work.i have mentioned im a phone sex operator to three of my friends.one was supportive and the other two blamed our economy that now turns women into whores,just like in eastern europe.they couldnt beleive me when i told them that even if we obtained the strongest economy in e.u i would continue to do the job.in peoples minds we are always sad traumatized victims.feminists who might beleive what we tell them,say that we are sex workers of choice,that we dont represent sex workers in general but only a privileged minority.of course if they cared about people who do sex work because they have no choice or because of forced labour they would actually listen to what sex workers have to say.they just want to promote their ideologies and the best way is to say that they prohibit buying and/or selling sex to protect the victims.
That’s why I think it’s so important for us in Europe and North America to publicize the protests and statements of sex workers from places like India and Cambodia that the traffickers label as “underprivileged”: they’re saying exactly the same things as we are.
When you talk about the harlots of Eastern Europe – and, I can tell you – they are beautiful creatures indeed …
But what people fail to understand (especially Liberals who are “all about” the redistribution of wealth) … is that, this “harlotry” (which they consider to be forced, based on economic depravations) is actually working as an instrument of wealth re-distribution – actually helping to CORRECT economic depravation.
Women from all over Eastern Europe “traffic” themselves to various places in order to make higher wages from sex work. A woman in Slovakia, for example may “traffic” herself to Vienna in order to make higher wages there. A woman from Romania may “traffic” herself to Germany to make higher wages there. It’s perfectly legal for them to do this, by the way – with the proper paperwork, which IS available.
If you come into this discussion believing it’s forced by economic conditions in the native country – well, where is that money going once the woman earns it?
It’s going back to that poor nation. It goes back in many ways too. A girl may be simply working during the summer in order to earn her yearly tuition – so a girl who may otherwise not have obtained a degree – now attains one thanks to her sex work. Doesn’t this improve the economic outlook of, not only the girl – but the country she lives in?
Many of these girls are working to send money home to their entire families.
Look at the Ukraine, for crying out loud a decade or so ago that was the place for dirty old men to travel to for sex with beautiful women at rock bottom prices – now those girls are charging a fortune! Why? Because their fortunes have now changed for the better … and they’re in high demand!
Hehe … it’s just really one of those things that “polices” itself. No government interference required – everyone just kind of plucks along doing what they need to do – for the prices they are capable of charging. It’s really pure capitalism and it helps people to pick themselves up by their own boot straps and take charge of their destiny.
Also – let’s not forget here that a lot of NON-Sex Workers are grouped into the human trafficking fiasco also. I’ve mentioned Bengali taxi drivers in Bahrain before. In fact, all over the middle east you’ll find common laborers from poor nations working in rich countries and they’re there legally – actually encouraged to come there, even recruited to do those jobs. And those guys are happy to do them.
We just flipping don’t need anyone sitting in a penthouse in Manhattan and sipping a Martini telling a Moldavan woman, or a Bengali man – what they can, and cannot do to improve their situations.
{stands up and claps}
Bravo! Extremely well said! The problem, of course, is that they’re doing it for themselves, without the help of a government or organized busybodies. And we can’t have that, any more than we can have people taking care of their own kids, defending their own families, forming their own opinions, etc.
Happy International Sex Workers’ Rights Day 🙂
Being male, what I find sad is how few men are willing to speak up in defence of prostitutes, or for that matter, admit they do business with them, even anonymously on the net. For instance, I would have thought more men would drop in on your blog to cheer you on.
Not all nanny states are so hostile to prostitutes. The designated “red light area” of Geylang in Singapore looks like any other residential area. It has some of the best restaurants in the city, and the streets are quiet, safe, and not filled with gangsters or drooling perverts. The brothels are recognisable only by the large house numbers and the constant flow of attractive women in dresses hopping in and out of taxis and cars (The women don’t work out of the brothels.). There is no oppressive police presence, and raids only happen when there is a report of foreign women working there while on tourist visas or are clearly under-aged.
Interestingly, the area is not popular with Western tourists or expats, who find it boring, too businesslike and lacking in sleaze.
“we do not require “rescue”, “rehabilitation” or special laws”
If you include certain forms of social work here, I’d have to disagree. There are some state-funded organizations in Switzerland who do valuable social work with migrant and/or drug-addict street prostitutes who actually do need it. They do it in a non-judgmental way, providing help when it is asked for and otherwise only informing about the existence of such possibilities. Most social workers also get that they only come in contact with the most disadvantaged of prostitutes, so they don’t assume all prostitutes have the same problems.
That’s why I included the qualifier “special” and the phrase “…to a greater degree than other citizens.” Street people of all types, not merely street-based prostitutes, can benefit from the help of social workers such as you describe. It isn’t the fact that they sell sex that creates the need for help, but that they are addicted and/or migrant and working on the street.
“This is why sex worker rights should concern everyone”
“Injustice anywhere damages justice everywhere”. MLK.
Maggie,
this week I actually gave up on MRAs as simply too stupid to understand what a RIGHT is and how it is claimed. Maybe sex workers are smarter. Who knows?
I have asked these questions over and over again in the MRA area.
1. Where do rights come from?
2. How do you get them?
Can you believe after THIRTY YEARS MRAs still cant answer those two questions? And then they get upset when I call them stupid and ignorant! LOL!!
The answers are simple.
1. Rights are INALIENABLE (or Unalienable) if you prefer and they are implied by he who created us.
And who are some notable men who have said so?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
We are endowed with inalienable rights by OUR CREATOR. What the guvment calls “rights” and they pretend they can grant are PRIVILEGES masquerading as rights.
2. You get rights by claiming them.
You can not have an inalienable right TAKEN FROM YOU.
You can only WAIVE the right because a right not claimed and not exercised is a right waived.
Someone can VIOLATE your right in which case it is up to YOU to organise the remedy for the violation. If your community will not organise the remedy by such as a jury trial then a sovereign has every right to dispense justice as he sees fit.
What else did they say?
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
So when our guvments, OUR SERVANTS, refuse to DO THEIR JOB and SECURE OUR INALIENABLE RIGHTS we have the DUTY to fire them and get new guards.
And that is EXACTLY what I have served on the Irish guvment last week.
So…are you and your fellow sex workers smarter than the MRAs? Are you smart enough to know that when the guvment violates your INALIENABLE RIGHTS that it is up to YOU to ensure that YOU throw off the criminals and defend YOUR rights?
Hopefully, successes being gained in one area (marijuana) will encourage us to seek successes in another (prostitution). If legal escort agencies can follow the legal dispensaries, that would be a big deal.
Yes, I know: to much legalization and not enough simple decriminalization. But look how it’s worked with cannabis: first the highly-regulated medical marijuana dispensaries in a few states, and then in more and more, and two years ago California came this close to legalizing the plant for recreational use, and they just might this year.
Maybe when legalized and regulated out the ass prostitution doesn’t cause the country to fall into the sea, those regs can be loosened up a bit.
I agree. Though decriminalization needs to be the eventual goal, I’ve pointed out on a number of occasions that we’re almost certainly going to have to get there by slow stages.
Of course there are many people involved in many activities from sex work to low paid manual work in the Middle East or Malaysia who are going by choice for economic opportunity, especially something that’s better than home; and invariably they’re doing it in part for the families. But there are also large numbers who are trafficked, not of their own free will, not just in sex work, but e.g. in this SEAsia/Pacific region on fishing boats etc, and sometimes dumped off without being paid …in many developing countries, for religious or other reasons, there’s a high negative stigma over sex work, so few would choose to do it, as they may in some other places, and that’s not likely to change overnight (whether or not one wants it to). So yes, these women and girls (largely) are largely participating from need not choice, and in some cases have been dumped into it; So, of course they need empowerment to be able to safeguard their own lives for a start (including health and safety awareness, protection and rights), but in most cases that empowerment stretches also to assisting with education and skills development and other resources to enable them to have greater choice of their future and livelihood and to be able to get out of sex work if that’s what they want, which in most cases here they’ll want to, if only to fit back into their home communities more readily…so, yes, the sewing machines may seem patronising, and in many cases unrealistic if the individual is already supporting several heads and clothes-making (or whatever) earns only a pittance, but women genuinely do want to be able at least to have more skills and choice… it may be different in more cosmopolitan and perhaps impersonal societies, and one can argue that the stigma against sex work should be removed, and maybe it will (but unlikely in a hurry)…the poor Minister responsible for welfare etc suggested decriminalization and was lambasted, especially by women, so is unlikely to a head above the parapet again for a while! Countries and societies will need to determine their own courses, which may not all be identical, but there are many lessons…Certainly, more voices from participants and less from people speaking for them/of them (including myself) is the way to go, and now becoming more possible with a (belated) arrival of mobile phones and social media here, but at this stage very few sex workers here would have any access and any voice, and some of (perhaps, but not always, paternalistic or maternalistic) NGOs etc are their best foot in the door of being heard or sometimes ‘represented”….
Paul, the reason I and many others oppose the “trafficking” narrative isn’t that we deny that there are sometimes abusive and exploitative conditions involved in migration, but rather that proponents of the narrative deny migrants agency. They reduce the migrant to a passive object or, at best, a foolish child easily taken in by monsters when, in fact, she is usually an adult who has made a choice knowing full well that it will be a difficult road. Very few migrants are literally abducted or directly deceived, yet the “trafficking” mythology insists that this is the norm in most cases. I and others argue that it is the FRAUD and ABUSE which must be prosecuted, not the fact of helping people to go where they desperately want to go.
As for leaving sex work voluntarily, I must point out this simple and telling fact: Literally every single sex worker rights advocate and organization I’ve ever heard of supports (usually vocally) the right of people who feel trapped or unhappy in sex work to get out of it, by vocational training where available but at the very least by the removal of government “once a whore, always a whore” registries and social stigma (such as that used against Melissa Petro). However, very few (if any) “rescue” organizations support the right of people to be sex workers if they want to. And when I see two organizations, one which supports the dignity of free choice and one which opposes it, I can tell you which one has the moral high ground in my book every last time.
Somebody made the statement, “No woman should be forced into or out of prostitution.”
I didn’t find it on Google, and I’m running late so I can’t try any sophisticated Google-fu right now. But it seems a pretty good rule to follow.
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[…] I think I can safely speak for virtually all sex workers when I say that we don’t want to be passive tools used by governments and NGOs as the excuse for tyranny; we simply want to be left alone to live our lives like anyone else, with the same rights, privileges, duties and legal protections as people in every other profession. – “Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs” […]