To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
As I have stated many times in this blog, in interviews, and in public speech, I am firmly convinced that criminalization of sex work in the United States will only end by judicial fiat. Some people have (either sincerely or willfully) misinterpreted this position to mean that I prefer it that way, but that is not the case; it’s simply that it is the only realistic strategy open to us. History has demonstrated over and over again that the vast majority of politicians are self-centered, morally retarded pigs whose actions are never determined by what is right, but only by what will get them re-elected; they can be counted on never to defend the rights of the weak against the powerful until it becomes politically popular for them to do so. Democrats pretended to oppose George Bush’s various police-state actions on principle, but once their man was in the White House doing exactly the same things they suddenly stopped speaking up. And the recent reversals on same-sex marriage are a striking example; hundreds of politicians who had vowed to fight it forever had a sudden change of heart as soon as it became politically expedient for them to do so. Even then, the issue had to be reframed as being about wholesome “love” rather than dirty, nasty sex; had that not been done the puritans would still be fighting it just as viciously as they attack all sexual expression.
The rights to birth control, to abortion, to non-vaginal sex, to view sexual materials, etc have all been won by court decisions; had these things been left to politicians they would all still be illegal (as we have seen repeatedly demonstrated in the cases of abortion and “obscenity”). Furthermore, it would be absolutely impossible to stop every little tin god with a title in every state, county and city in the US from working to enact laws favored by loudmouthed busybodies and designed to abrogate the rights of oppressed minorities and docile, silent majorities alike. The only way to stop politicians from gaining power and money at the expense of those they criminalize is for a more powerful entity to prevent them from doing so, and that generally requires the decision of a higher-level court. State supreme courts can put a halt to the oppressive schemes of all politicians in their state; federal district courts can do so over several states at once; and the US Supreme Court can quash the power-madness of any politician, even the President and Congress.
For years, I’ve been hoping for the sex work version of Eisenstadt v. Baird, Roe v. Wade or Lawrence v. Texas, and perhaps it is now on the horizon. Last week Maxine Doogan of the Erotic Service Providers Legal, Education and Research Project contacted me to help publicize the group’s direct legal challenge to prostitution law in California. She provided this background summary:
As soon as we lost Proposition K I called Margo St. James. She pointed us to Coyote vs Roberts, the case which decriminalized indoor prostitution in Rhode Island; we won’t be settling out of court as they did, because we want the highest court’s ruling we can get so as to help as many people as possible. Also, a court ruling would have enduring effects, while a settlement would put us at the mercy of legislators (as in Rhode Island, which recriminalized in 2009). Our next step was to file for non-profit status (which took 3 years); Larry Cohen and I become founding members of ESPLERP, and now donations are anonymous and tax deductible.
Our case is about having our commercial sexual privacy legally noticed and protected by the courts. Our plaintiffs’ privacy will be protected during the proceedings; we have a customer plaintiff, prospective worker plaintiffs and a union plaintiff (to cover our right to associate without being prosecuted for conspiracy). Louis Sirkin will be representing us; he came highly recommended by the Free Speech Coalition due to his victory in Ashcroft vs Free Speech Coalition. It is both his belief and ours that asking the highest court to strike down anti-prostitution laws is vital to ending the American war on sex and the expansion of ridiculous anti-trafficking laws such as Proposition 35. What we would really like to get is a summary judgement based on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because a long trial would be much harder in the US than in Canada; though our case is similar to Bedford vs Canada, the two countries’ respective constitutions and the way anti-prostitution laws are written (state by state as opposed to nationally) and enforced (local district attorneys rather than provincial) are different. Getting that judgment would be the beginning of the end of all the discriminatory laws against our class. It won’t be overnight magic; it will probably take much more litigation to force police and prosecutors to stop arresting and charging us.
This will of course require a large war chest; it’s always been about the money and always will be. We’ve asked certain groups like OSI for support and I’ve not received any response from them, so though we’ve launched our own GoFundMe page I’d welcome any suggestions about how to secure additional funding. Even though groups like the ACLU and Open Society Foundation regularly throw us under the bus, I don’t mind asking; the worst they can do is to refuse. I’m not going to waste any more time reaching out to non-funding groups, though; getting them to return my phone calls, emails or FaceBook messages on any issue over the past several years has never been fruitful (if I wrote a book about the subject, it would be called Nobody Home).
We at the Erotic Service Providers organize like our lives depend on it because they do. Many of us have suffered greatly under criminalization – we’ve been arrested, jailed, and lost our ability to pay our rent and provide for ourselves and our children. Our lives have been shattered when we’re held hostage for years in court proceedings where we are publically humiliated by officials and the press, and we don’t want one more person to suffer that fate.
Readers often ask how they can help, and to whom they can donate; I don’t think I need to tell you how important this is. Maxine believes that once the case is filed, there are several organizations which will support it with amicus curiae briefs; they’re just waiting for us to make the first move. The goal for the funding drive is $60,000, and I plan to do my part next week; I’d like you all to please consider making a donation as well. As Maxine says, this isn’t going to be a magical solution, but it’s a necessary first step; civil rights are not won at a single stroke, but by a long series of judgments which clear out successively-larger areas of breathing room. Sex workers in other countries have led the way, and now it’s our turn to claim the rights to privacy, sexual agency and productive labor which are violated by prohibitionist laws.
While all of those so-called ‘wins’ have been happening, we have been slipping deeper and deeper into penury and slavery.
The courts cannot free us from the system.
Eventually there will be another revolution in this country – probably within our lifetimes. I predict it will be as violent toward politicians and judges as anything the French saw. I plan on eating a lot of popcorn and watching TV if this stuff is televised. 🙂
Politicians, Judges – and news media – they won’t be spared imo, the backlash will be horrific as is usually the case when a grand civilization crumbles.
I’m not a fan of the courts. The courts are a part of the system – no doubt. When the system goes down – law will be whatever is within everyone’s hearts. I think we need to win hearts and minds – especially in the South. Southerners, for the most part … REALLY DO get what liberty is about but they just can’t seem to free themselves from the Biblical notion that some things have to be prohibited.
I’ve lived in both the North and the South, when the North goes after sex they tend to be super serious about utterly eradicating it. It’s part of the idea that they can transform people into some kind of “New Feminist Man” above such petty things as sexual desire. College, up north, especially, was a haven for women’s groups who wanted to eradicate the very concept of lust from the male mind. I think they’d have hooked us all up to electroshock devices if they could, so looking at an issue of Score magazine would produce a painful shock!
In the South, they usually go after sex work if they think it’s giving them an image problem, I remember Tampa’s crackdown started because they were worried that Tampa was getting a reputation as a “wide open town” where sex work was concerned. I got another degree in Tampa and I used to have so many fun working girls over to my place… those were the days. Oh, and you’ll get political leaders down here who will openly admit that they are going after sex work because they have been chosen to do so by the Lord, rather than on the idea that they will change people into Clockwork Oranges (as in the North).
This would probably explain why all my experiences with prostitutes happened South of the Mason Dixon line. It’s not that there are no brothels in the New York Metropolitan area, but they just don’t have them, seemingly, on every other block. (An Evangelical Christian coworker of mine never tires of complaining about all the VIP Executive Relaxation Spas we pass on the way from the office to any of the local restaurants. )
Still, I think it’s one case to be tolerant and look the other way (especially when the local places are generously contributing to the police retirement funds) and another thing to get them to openly allow this kind of thing. Still, gambling still seems to keep growing down here, so maybe there is hope. (Though part of that is the courts again, ruling Seminole territory was sovereign and they could have casinos if they chose.)
I was amused to notice that one little strip mall had a “Smoke” Shop, a “Charity” gambling arcade and a Tokyo Massage Parlor all in the same strip, that’s what real freedom looks like!
TEXAS is the Promised Land!! Check ECCIE.net – most of the girls work in Texas!
It’s kind of weird that the South is known for it’s God-Fearin’ people while at the same time you can point to countless instances of debauchery!
It’s just too hot to be righteous in these parts. Besides, some of those church going ladies are wild….
“I think they’d have hooked us all up to electroshock devices if they could, so looking at an issue of Score magazine would produce a painful shock!”
If this were done consensually, someone would call it kinky.
I agree with Dr. B, it’s a nice thought and all but you really cannot beat the system from the inside, you have to go outside it more than anything. It’s like was said in war games, the only winning move is not to play. Once you consent to playing the game at all, you put yourself under its’ rules, the only way to absolve yourself from them is to remove yourself from the game, and not consent to playing it any longer. They cannot touch you then.
No, then they kill you.
It goes back to that court video I showed once before about consenting, same type of idea.
Anyway, my philosophy is “win however you can” I will try to contribute something before the end of the month. (It’s been a bit tough with all the birthdays and upcoming graduations lately. Why does everyone pick this time of year to get born?)
The court occasionally makes completely unexpected decisions, hopefully that will happen in this case.
Winning such a case would not be a victory as such, more of gaining a beachhead, but I think it is a worthwhile effort.
Fighting within the system only locks you in when you have something to lose. As it stands, the sex industry is already under determined and well financed attack from all directions. To not fight back at all is to surrender the initiative to the enemy.
Even if it is just a holding action until the barricades arise or the zombies attack, it is worthwhile if it can simply raise public awareness and allow the sex industry to present its case in a “proper” forum.
For the record, as it pertains to fighting back I am not saying we shouldn’t, but we need to know how. The best way to do so is to stand on the rights we ALL have, sex workers and non sex workers alike, the rights no court, no law, no judge or officer can take away from us. That’s how you fight back, you claim what you already had to begin with and refuse to consent to them taking that away. Trying to do it other ways really isn’t gonna do much in the end, you put yourself at the mercy of majority.
Challenge accepted! (contributed)
I just made a contribution as well. They still have a long ways to go so everybody that can ought to go and help out.
Thank you Maggie and everyone who has contributed towards this cause so far. Your help is inspirational. Much love and piece.
Wouw, Maggie. Wonderful exposition. I agree with u, it’s necessary to prevent politicians to have more power because -inevitably- they will abuse of it. Not it’s just a moral, political or electoral issue but also economic. What I have found here in Spain is that main reason to have prostitution “tolerated” but not legalized and often criminalized by city councils is economic. Taxation is done in an underhanded manner by policemen (whose the californian Norma Jean Almodovar call “the blue mafia”, and I “the smurf pimps”) and I suspect that this is being an undercover way to ilegally finance political parties (this kind of scandals are not rare here).
Here, laws about prostitution are never done listening SWs. The approach is always in a repressive way, considering prostitutes as a nuisance (traditional, prohibitionist thinking) or as victims of foreign mafias that must be saved and liberated, they want it or not (abolitionist ideology). Results are the same, prostitutes arrested, jailed, deported and their money decomissed. As prostitution is not ilegal but other activities around it are, girls are often blackmailed by authorities making their working condictions a real living hell. Those are the consequences of public intervention: abuses, poverty and harm to the ones they declare to want to “help”.
Take a look at this new (http://www.murciatoday.com/murcia-city-council-continue-with-project-to-regulate-prostitution-in-the-city_15107-a.html). See that photo? Is the sample of what I’m telling, it’s a town council surrounded with policemen working on the regulation about street prostitution in Valencia (the 3rd most important spanish city). Politics always say they are acting in our behalf, but they end worsening our lives.
Unfortunately, here in Spain division of power is only theoretical, not practical. We haven’t got a developed democracy like u (with all it’s faults) have. This is a farce and the judicial way is a closed path for us. I think that we have two possibilities, first one is to support a new party not linked with the corruption of the two main ones (hahaha, weird idea) or other is to show abuses to citizenship in orden to achieve a social uprising of the civil society (what is even more crazy).
Sadly, conclussion is that there is little we can do. And one gets even more dissapointed when see that organizations that are supposed tobe in ur side of the fight, “are not at home” as u say.
So it has been a great surprise for me to find a blog like urs, so combative and focused in the legal and political issue around prostitution (I have linked many blogs from prostitutes in spain but they speak almost all the time only about the business, u know, new photos, personal feelings, anecdotes of their work…)
Let me u and all ur readers to invite mine (from a spanish punter, almost all is written in spanish but I’ll begin to post in english soon):
http://barriorojo-esl.blogspot.com/
See you!
I hope this works out. From gays to pot, there seems to be a tide of freedom rising in the US. I hope it lifts the boats of sex workers as well.
May I suggest a sex worker sponsored kickstarter campaign?
I am sure if some industrious ladies offered various services in exchange for appropriately tiered cash donations you’d hit 60k in a week.
[…] I fully agree with the plaintiffs’ argument that a court challenge is the proper strategy to pursue for changing the law. As I wrote in “Challenge“, […]
If you are in the 1% elite, you can afford soi-disant “justice”; everybody else, the 99%, works out to be too poor to get it. This principle-in-practice crops up in every society.
(Merci, Maggie, pour élargir mon vocabulaire Français💕)