I've stopped asking, Why have we made prostitution illegal? Instead I want an explanation for, How much violence against "prostitutes" have we made acceptable?
-
lee :Fire_Trans:replied to lee :Fire_Trans: last edited by
(continued directly from above)
All this isn't to say that with increased visibility sex workers' lives have unilaterally improved, that these recommendations have been adopted without struggle (if they have been adopted at all), or that a new focus on sex work as work has meant an end to the social phenomenon of prostitution.
-
lee :Fire_Trans:replied to lee :Fire_Trans: last edited by
if sex workers' speech is where whole lives are made criminal, how does that carry through to public demands to make sex workers' lives visible and relatable through "sharing our stories"?
-
lee :Fire_Trans:replied to lee :Fire_Trans: last edited by
[Anne] McClintock argues, with reference not only to specific treatment in the courts but throughout sex workers' lives, that this is precisely the point of soliciting their testimonies: "By ordering the unspeakable to be spoken in public, ...by obsessively displaying dirty pictures, filmed evidence, confessions, and exhibits, the prostitution trial reveals itself as structured around the very fetishism it sets itself to isolate and punish." Sex workers are to understand that they're outsiders and outlaws for selling their bodies, and yet what's called for in relaying their stories is the repetition of that sale, and to a much broader public than they encounter in their work.
-
lee :Fire_Trans:replied to lee :Fire_Trans: last edited by
Very rarely does sharing anything in these venues serve them [sex workers], or the public. Sex workers are there for the sake of some unseen owners' profits.
-
lee :Fire_Trans:replied to lee :Fire_Trans: last edited by
The men, she said, would call the mobile phone number listed in an ad in the paper. Some met her in a motel or hotel but many also invited her into their homes, and in those homes they would leave their mail out, their family photos. It was astounding, she said, how many men felt so safe, to do that; that men maybe always feel safe, even around strangers who are women; that what she knew about these men's lives could put her in far more danger than if these men were cops.
-
lee :Fire_Trans:replied to lee :Fire_Trans: last edited by
A division had been constructed between them and me, prostitutes and all other women, which had resulted in a break in transmitting such vital information. It was the breakdown, not the sex work, that kept us apart, that could cause us to suffer unnecessarily. Now I wanted everyone to know exactly what it could be like, what their choices were, what power they had, should they ever be in the situation of explicitly trading sex for something they need.
I remembered the workshops during college, held each spring in a barn on a nearby campus where you could learn how to perform a menstrual extraction--which can be used as a form of abortion--at home. There was no subtext: This information was shared in case abortion was criminalized again in the United States. Did you ever want to have to use it? Most likely you didn't. Were you ashamed to know it? You should not be.
-
lee :Fire_Trans:replied to lee :Fire_Trans: last edited by
Sex workers' ability to share information among themselves is essential for supporting all sex workers in negotiating their work, and in turning down work that is unsafe, underpaid, or undesirable. This is true of any job. But what does make this aspect of sex work unique, and what creates the thump of panic in my gut when I open such an e-mail, is that to share this lifeline of information could be construed as criminal. Selling sex in the United States is usually a misdemeanor, but sharing information with someone about how to do it is considered a more serious criminal offense.