Were whores to fail to remember our dead, they would be forgotten entirely…and we refuse to let that happen. – “On December Seventeenth”
Though this is the thirteenth annual Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, it is the first one I’ve been able to spend in the company of my sisters; tonight I’ll join the vigil procession with the members of SWOP Seattle, which like many others in cities around the world is intended as a memorial to our dead, 160 of them so far this year. Some of the violence which claimed those lives was the direct result of stigma which portrays us as subhuman; some of it is due to the fact that evil men recognize that cops aren’t likely to care about (or even believe) sex workers who have been attacked. But nowadays, most of it is a direct result of prohibition and prohibitionist propaganda:
Some prohibitionists say we bring violence upon ourselves by our choice to live outside of the sexual restrictions that repressive cultural norms have imposed on women for the past several millennia; others try to rob us of our agency, claiming that the violence comes from imaginary “pimps” and demonized clients. But the truth these would-be social engineers don’t want you to know is that the majority of violence against whores is inflicted by the police, either with the blessings of the state (in the name of “fighting prostitution” or “rescuing victims”) or in the shadow created by the state’s definition of harlots as creatures outside the bounds of humane treatment. The state, Western religions, and carceral “feminists” teach that a woman who has sex for practical reasons rather than emotional ones is robbed of her “purity”, and that an “impure” woman would be better off dead. Furthermore, since they only value women for our sexual characteristics, they teach that a woman who sells sex “sells her body” or even “sells herself”; a person without a body is a ghost, and a person without a self is nothing at all. Given these beliefs, is it any wonder those who adhere to them think dead hookers are of no great import? As far as they’re concerned we were dead already, or worse than dead. And if we are, is it any surprise that violent, weak-minded thugs in or out of uniform believe they can rape, rob, brutalize or even kill us with impunity?
Until our society grows up and stops believing in ridiculous fairy tales about magical sex acts and ritual purity, sex workers will continue to be treated as disposable. And until the day that sex work is universally recognized as work and sex workers recognized as fully human, we must never stop reminding our society that it has our blood on its collective hands.
[…] —Maggie McNeill […]
Do u really think that abolitionists believe on the popaganda spread by police? Or that they are not stupid at all and they just support it bcause their own selfish interests? I had the opportuinity to talk in person with some of the most notorious abolitionists in my country and I found that, when confronted by facts, they keep the lies but they couldn’t avoid to smile and in their eyes I could read that they know all is bullshit. But there are to many ppl earning so much money in the rescue industry. Its impossible to change them bcause its not a matter to coinvince about sth but simple economic interest.
What would u do with ppl who has no other job than “save” imaginary “victims”? They dont know to do anything. They are protecting their way of life.
Maybe we could have a program to “rescue” them and reinsert these ppl into society. Do u think its possible?
I don’t mean to diminish the deaths of these sex workers in any way: there was a very disturbing and hard to watch programme on BBC last night. It was about 88 women in the UK who were murdered by their partners in 2013. I don’t think any of them were sex workers; it doesn’t matter.
Nonetheless, the level of violence by men against women is highly disturbing. The men in the programme were controlling, jealous, egotistical, and were mentally disturbed. I guess that this is much the same as the men who kill harlots, whether cops or not.
Somewhere, somehow, men’s education is significantly lacking. It is simply not acceptable to murder women because they are women (or for any other reason). I’m not at all certain how this attitude developed in so many men.
More men are victims of murder than women. How can we say that female victims are murdered ”because they are women”? By definition, shouldn’t the subject of gendered violence be the sex that is victimized the most often? Or is it just that it doesn’t count because men should be able to defend themselves?
The number of people who prey on sex workers is relatively small. It takes just one Robet Pickton to kill 50 women. These criminals are enabled by bad laws and social stigma. It’s not about re-educating the masses because of the crimes of a few. Most people know we shouldn’t kill sex worker or anyone. It’s about giving sex workers the same protection as anyone. The same holds true for violence against any group in general.
“It’s not about re-educating the masses because of the crimes of a few.”
Indeed, and I think it’s worth asking ourselves if we don’t engage in the same sort of ‘otherization’.
Excuse me for a moment, I need to wipe some tears from my eyes.
160. That’s the one’s we know about. And the indifference of humanity to those numbers disgust beyond expression.
Maggie, it breaks my heart that too many men see women in general, and sex workers in particular, not as human beings, but as things. To me, making human beings into things is the very essence of evil, whether its SS troopers doing so to inmates at concentrations camps, employers doing so to their workers in their factories, or men thinking of women–and society in general thinking of sex workers–as disposable. And with sex workers, I do include ,ale and transgender individuals, I just couldn’t figure out a way to include them in that sentence.
It is time to change the perceptions of the world.
It’s easy to be encouraged by steps forward – by the Amnesty decision, by seeing public opinion changing about nonviolent “crimes” in general, etc. – but that makes days like today even more important, I think.
For all of u that can understand spanish, some brazilian prostitutes telling the journalists that they were threatedned, assaulted, beated, blackmailed and sexually abused…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7EbsmizRlU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBkltuejFvQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybsZbunPmeAh
Yep. Here u are. Tales abolitionists tell are true. Fully true.
But hmmmm, who are the ones that abuse of the girls?
Here I post some sentences, translated, of the post I wrote about 17th Dec on mu blog
(http://barriorojo-esl.blogspot.com.es/2015/12/por-una-prostitucion-sin-violencia.html)
“Policía mala. Policía folla mucho y no paga”.
“Police bad. Police fucks a lot and doesn`t pay”.
A.M. Prostituta amiga de Cliente X
“La violencia no es de los clientes, es de las instituciones”.
“Violence doesn’t come from clients, but from institutions”.
Paula Vip, prostituta y presidenta de APROSEX
“La violencia institucional (pública) hacia nosotras (las putas) no se puede desconocer”.
“Violence from (public) institutions towards us (sex workers) must be acknowledged”.
Georgina Orellano, prostituta y Secretaria General Nacional de AMMAR
“Nos asesinan a las compañeras en las residencias, en los hoteles, y las sacan a la calle. Las sacan fuera de Bogotá, a las periferias”.
“They killed our mates in the residences, at the hotels, they take them out into the streets. They take them out of Bogotá, to the outskirts”.
Fidelia Suárez Tirado, vocera de Asociación de Mujeres Buscando Libertad (Asmubuli)
“Los últimos casos de los que tengo conocimiento se refieren al abuso de la autoridad del que son víctimas las trabajadoras sexuales por parte de la Policía. Es el caso de mujeres que han sido obligadas a prestar servicios sexuales a los agentes de Policía por el hecho de no portar un certificado de salud que les exigen para ejercer su oficio”.
“Last issues I know so far are about abuses from authorities that sex workers suffer from Police. There are women that have been forced to have sex with police officers because they don’t carry an health certificate that is mandatory in their job”.
Lucía Bastidas, concejal de Bogotá
“Con un móvil grabamos a estos hombres una vez poniéndoles las esposas a las chicas y haciendo el sexo, y otras veces apuntándolas con la pistola… todas tenemos miedo”.
“With a phone we recorded those men arresting the girls and then having sex, and other times they were aiming them with the handgun… all of us are frightened”.
Prostituta agredida y violada por la policía en Marbella (España)
“El asesinato de una prostituta a manos de un cliente no puede considerarse violencia de género al no existir un vínculo afectivo entre el agresor y al víctima”.
“Murder of a prostiute at hands of a client cannot be deemed as genre’s violence due there is not an affective connection between agressor and victim”.
Gobierno de España
“Las mujeres que venden su cuerpo no significan nada (…) Yo nunca daría dinero por sexo. Yo no soy un hombre feo”.
“Women who sell their body mean nothing (…) I’d never give money for sex. I’m not an ugly man”.
Farooq Shah, asesino
“Solemos hacer una ronda, por toda la colonia, para ver… controlar un poquito (a) las prostitutas que están aquí trabajando (…) Hay algunas que han llamado a la policía porque se sienten acosadas por nosotros”.
“We usually patrol the whole neighborhood, to check… to control in some way the prostitutes that are here working (…) Some of them have called the police because they feel themselves harassed by us”.
Lola, vecina de Villaverde