In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today is the first Friday the 13th in fourteen months, and since I’ve picked up quite a few readers since July of 2012 a number of you are probably wondering what that has to do with anything. Well, it’s just this: from soon after the beginning of this blog, I’ve asked those of you who aren’t sex workers yourselves to speak up for our rights on this day. The gay rights movement didn’t really take off until the friends and families of gay people got involved, and it’s the same for us; since only about 1% of Western women ever formally work as whores, we’re going to need a lot of help to make our voices heard. We need all the sex workers (such as strippers, dominatrices and porn actresses) whose fields aren’t currently criminalized, and the sugar babies and other women who have informally or indirectly taken money for sex at least once (which might be as high as 10% of all women). We need all of the men who hire us at least occasionally, which comes to about 20% of the adult male population. We need all of the women who recognize that cops can’t tell the difference between professionals and amateurs, and that laws which can be used to arrest us will also work to arrest you. We need all of those who love porn, polyamory, BDSM or kink, because even though policing of sex usually starts with harlots, it never stops with us. We need all of the public health and human rights experts who understand the necessity of decriminalization in light of their respective fields, all of the libertarians who recognize that governmental prohibition of consensual behavior is both indefensible and dangerous to individual liberty, and all of the feminists who recognize that a woman’s right to control her own body and make her own sexual and economic choices is the primary feminist issue. And we need all of the decent human beings who don’t fall into any of those categories, but are simply disgusted by the idea of armed thugs arresting, humiliating and ruining people for the “crime” of consensual sex.
I understand that many of you, especially the men, are not in a position of being able to speak out publicly without suffering some sort of censure or risking the hostility of wives, girlfriends and female co-workers. But fortunately, we live in an age where it’s easy to speak anonymously:
…talk about the issue with someone who will listen, make a post on a discussion board, comment on a news story which spreads disinformation, or even just post a link to this column. If you aren’t confident in your ability to debate, even a simple phrase like “I think adult women should have the right to decide why and with whom they want to have sex” or “everyone has the right to equal protection under the law” might have a tiny but important impact on those who overhear.
If you’re in a position to speak or write but you’re at a loss for strategy, my last Friday the 13th column had some useful suggestions that might inspire you. And if you have a blog of your own, I’m asking you pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top to try; even just a short post would help to amplify the message. Last year, Dr. Sarah and Amazing Susan heeded the call, and this year I’m hoping for a veritable crowd; whenever one of y’all posts, be sure to email me or announce it in a comment so I can share the link on Twitter. And don’t worry if you can’t get the post done until later today: every single post y’all make today will be announced and linked in my next Friday the 13th column, only three months down the road on December 13th. And yes, reblogs of this column are acceptable, and will get your name on the honor roll come December. It’s time we let the prohibitionists know that if they want to pick on sex workers, we have a whole lot of brothers and sisters they’re going to have to face as well.
