It’s been 5 months since Beef Jerky and I released the video Every Ho I Know on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTdBXLCo1Qk. We have had so much positive feedback on the YouTube thread, through conversation and emails… it’s been really amazing! The video is an important and FREE resource for many people.

Every Ho has been screened at sex worker gatherings, community events, university student events and also in university classrooms, anti-violence against women conferences, and will likely be screened at upcoming festivals in 2011 like Trigger Fest in Toronto, RheD symposium in Melbourne, San Francisco Art and Film Fest, Sex Worker Open University in London, Entzaubert Queer DIY Fest in Berlin, Ladyfest in Bellingham, at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit. People are listening to sex workers talk about how they’d like to be respected and heard! Yay!

Let me thank the participating sex workers again for opening their hearts and putting themselves at risk by being so out about their work, their challenges, and their lives.

This is an update on what’s next for this project. Right now, Beef Jerky and I are:

*providing closed-captioning for the video in English, German, Spanish and French so that it is more widely accessible and available to sex workers around the world. If you have contacts for doing additional languages, let us know!

*building a website where sex workers can upload additional videos from anywhere in the world. If your advice didn’t make the first cut of the video, or we had to edit you down, or we didn’t have time to interview you, we are hoping to upload more and bigger clips to this site. We hope to have this site up by the end of May 2011! Then we hope you will encourage all your sex worker friends to submit video! (And anonymity will be possible!)

-funding ourselves! We are collecting screening fees where ever possible and selling DVD copies of the film to funded student groups and university libraries and professors, as well as clinic/social service providers. If you are connected to any group like this, please put me in touch with them. NO VIDEO LIKE THIS exists. Wouldn’t it be amazing if people could find it in their university library, community centre, or trans or women or queer group resource library? We will continue to leave it on YouTube so it is FREE but we also want to collect funds where we can.

If we can collect sufficient funds, the goal is to share out proceeds. Right now, our major unavoidable costs are DVD printing and mailing and web hosting. We hope to pay the DVD cover designer and the webworker, and then hopefully pay contributors. (All of whom are sex workers who volunteered their time.) We will see what happens, fingers crossed.

In the meantime, if you want to share thoughts, ideas, or anything at all on this project, please be in touch.

Whorelicious hugs,

xxx
Lusty

HO LOVER zine layout

I hope it is useful to you. Print it out and leave it laying around where ever you hear people making whorephobic comments.

xxx
Lusty

This is a critical conversation we need to be having with people who are concerned with juvenile involvement with the sex trades, especially the involvement of young people of colour and youth Aboriginal people.

xxx
Lusty

The Native Youth Sexual Health Network is proud to be a member and contributor of the Collective that has just put out this statement (stay tuned for more statements and work coming from our Collective soon!)

As a collective of radical women and queer people of color and Indigenous people who identify as sex workers, people in the sex trades, people doing what we have to do to survive, and people who have been trafficked into sex work and other forms of labor, we wanted to respond to Rinku Sen’s recent Colorlines blog post The Complexities of Sex Trafficking, and Some Simple Solutions because, for us, there are no simple solutions to the complex circumstances that inform our lives. Simplified responses do not do justice to our lived realities, or to the systemic conditions that inform them. While we appreciate Sen’s distinction between trade and trafficking, unfortunately this distinction is not made within the laws currently being promoted to respond to harms experienced by people in the sex trades. In fact we believe that in all too many cases these laws increase harm to the very people they  intend to help

As young people and adults with experience in the sex trades who are directly impacted by current responses to prostitution and trafficking, we recently came together as an affiliate of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence to think more deeply about how to respond to the wave of legislation, funding, and conversation about sex work and trafficking in a way that represents our truths and realities. We are deeply rooted in INCITE!’s analysis of state violence as integrally connected to interpersonal violence, and its commitment to community-based solutions to violence that do not rely on law enforcement, which is in and of itself a source of systemic and widespread violence against women and transgender people of color. Indeed, a ground-breaking youth-led participatory research project conducted by the Young Women’s Empowerment Project, to which Sen refers in a comment addressing responses to her piece, found police and social services to be the primary sources of harm experienced by young people with experience in the sex trades.

Like Sen, we oppose and resist any and all forms of violence, including but not limited to: coercion, extortion, violence by police and other law enforcement agents, structural economic, gender- and sexuality-based violence, and racial violence against all people, including people in the sex trades. Such violence also includes the denial of affordable housing, health care, and access to living wage employment. We also challenge those in both the anti-trafficking and sex workers’ rights movements who claim to speak on our behalf, and those who use our lives and experiences to advance their own agendas without recognizing our leadership.

We know that each of our experiences of the sex trades are unique, and there are no one-size fits all solutions. We are members of families and communities struggling to survive and make the best possible choices given the options available to us. For many of us, the truth about the sex trade is somewhere between a completely empowered experience of the sex trade, which requires only decriminalization to eliminate harms, and a completely harmful experience of the sex trade which negatively presumes all of us to be victims in need of “rescue.”

The Safe Harbor Act, along with initiatives like it that Lloyd and others are promoting across the country, are NOT simple or solutions for most of us. First, they don’t stop arrests of young people for prostitution-related offenses, or the police abuses of young people in the sex trades that, including police trading sex in exchange for promises of dropping charges. They also don’t stop arrests of young people in the sex trades that involve “charging up,” i.e. charging young people with weapons or drug-related offenses which may be easier to prove. Second, while they may stop criminal prosecutions of young people for prostitution-related offenses, these laws do not eliminate detention and punishment of young people involved in the sex trades, they just shift young people from the jurisdiction of the criminal courts to family court systems, where they can remain entangled until the age of 21. And, in the end, only a very narrow group of people can benefit from these laws.

For example, in order for the Safe Harbor Act to benefit a young person, they must be under 16 and arrested for the first time and must never have been in family court before.  Young people between the ages of 16-18 continue to be charged in adult court. Even those under 16 who can meet the Act’s criteria must still convince a judge that they are a “victim” of a “severe form of trafficking” – a hurdle that both Sen and Lloyd acknowledge is almost impossible for young girls of color.  This is also a problem because most young people’s stories do not fit into a neat box.  A National Institutes of Justice funded study by researchers at John Jay College in New York City found that only 8% of young people involved in the sex trades in New York City had been forced into prostitution by a “pimp,” and only 10% currently worked with one. The same study found that 16% of girls and 6% of boys trading sex were coerced, but the vast majority of girls (84%) engaged in the sex trades in New York City had never come into contact with a “pimp.” When young people can’t respond to police and prosecutors’ pressure to give up a “pimp” they never had  they get punished  by law enforcement and service providers alike, and find themselves back on the delinquency and detention track.  Even when the Safe Harbor Act (and other laws like it) is found to apply to a young person, they must still follow the rules a family court judge sees fit, which can involve attending a court-mandated program like GEMS, many of which enforce Christianity on participants. Additionally, for young people for whom no such services are available, including LGBTQQ young people and young men in the sex trades, such legislation offers little or no relief whatsoever.

In fact, current ways of thinking about trafficking and the sex trade make LGBTQ youth invisible. The 2007 study Lesbian, Gay, and Transgender Youth: An Epidemic of Homelessness found that, of the estimated 1.6 million homeless young people in the United States, between 20 and 40%, or approximately half a million, identify as LGB or T.  Research also reveals that LGBTQ teens are more likely to remain homeless because they also experience homophobia and transphobia in foster care, shelters, and from service providers. A recent study, Hidden Injustice documented the systemic homophobia and transphobia LGBTQ youth experience in family and juvenile courts and in service provision, and the increased rates and lengths of detention they experience as a result. For these reasons, many LGBTQ homeless youth stay on the streets because they feel safer there.  Once homeless, LGBTQ youth, and particularly LGBTQ youth of color are also at increased risk of profiling and police abuse in the context of “qualify of life” enforcement. They are also likely to become involved in the sex trades and street economies as a means of survival. Yet young men and transgender women, including those who are coerced into the sex trades,  are denied access to programs such as GEMS, remain invisible as “victims” in the eyes of law enforcement, judges, and service providers.   Additionally demands for increased penalties for prostitution-related offenses expose young people, including LGBTQ youth, who work in non-exploitative peer networks, to significant jail time for sharing resources and engaging in practices aimed at increasing safety and survival.  They also drive the entire industry further underground, and the young people we reach further away from help.

As we work to develop a comprehensive statement that centers the voices of Indigenous people, people in the sex trades, and radical women and queer people of color, we call on movements for racial justice, civil rights, reproductive justice, LGBTQQ rights, immigrant justice, and those struggling against racial profiling, police brutality and abuse, criminalization and mass incarceration to develop responses that reflect the complexities of our lives and experiences. Most importantly, there are no simple answers.

- an INCITE! affiliate and collective of radical women  of color, queer people of color, and Indigenous people who identify as people in the sex trades

 

xxx Lusty

Sadly the reality is that sometimes I am inundated with requests and questions from people wanting to get into the business. I am flattered you asked me for my advice! But I will tell you that what you think is a simple question – is not. People contact me, I think, because they can see that I am a professional, community-minded, and that I love what I do. All these things are true. However! This means that I have a lot of information and knowledge and so when you ask me a question, I just can’t do you justice by giving you a simple answer. Selling sex services might look like a simple process – advertise, book, fuck – but it is skilled work that takes some thinking and planning. So please keep this in mind if you send me a request, and please  - write me back, tell me how it went, continue to share information, and at the very least – I love me a thank you.

Over the past year I have offered a very DIY workshop called Working It Down Under: Escorting in Australia a few times. I recommend a trip to Oz to anyone who wants a sunshine holiday and the opportunity to work in a decriminalized environment (in only some Australian states). Of course, there are some limitations, some of which are discussed on the handout below.

Legally things are changing over there, especially in Western Australia. Also sex workers are embroiled in constant fights with city councils to keep brothels firmly on the agenda during elections. Australian and migrant sex workers down under are very well organized to fight back against the moral crusade to keep laws on our bodies.

All this to say that my caveat is that some of the information on this handout I made back in July 2010 might be inaccurate or a bit misleading (since I couldn’t give the whole story), I hope it gives you all a taste of what to expect. I highly recommend going on over to Scarlet Alliance to get the whole 411 on what’s happening now, and of course, to make friends with some of the smartest, sluttiest and most empowered hookers I know.

xxx
Lusty

Friday night, 10pm. My friends are going out to dance, drink and fuck. I’m arriving at work. In the back alley, I buzz the security door and smile for the camera. As I wait for the receptionist to let me into the brothel, I give myself a little pep talk: You kick ass. Every guy in here will want you. You are the most beautiful and sexy one here. You deserve respect. Don’t sell yourself short, charge extra for extra services…I’m going to need these words to keep my chin up.

The receptionist Amanda answers the door with Hello, gorgeous! and I squeeze through the big door as she holds it open. This comment is far from sexual harassment, because on this job the brothel staff KNOW that my hardworkingness depends on my sexual self-confidence. All night long Amanda will be encouraging me to hustle, which I will really appreciate around 4am when I’m dragging my ass. Her praise will be all the more needed as the hostility from the other girls will be heavy.

I walk through the client lounge area to the girls*** room to get primped up. Women in lingerie are draped over all the sofas, reading gossip mags, eating Chinese food, watching TV, and smoking cigarettes. No one even looks up when I walk in. I camp out in front of the mirror and start applying my make-up, stripping into my sexy duds, and the room is quiet ‘cept for the blaring TV. I see them slyly glancing over the tops of their magazines at me, icily assessing my looks. Am I more blonde, more tan, more toned, more skinny? Do I attract the same guys as them? Others allow their breath to slowly seep out from between their clenched teeth, telling me to stay on my toes. I do a quick count-up of 10 girls, and likely there’s a few more upstairs doing jobs. That’s heaps of girls. The brothel management doesn’t limit the numbers of workers on shift, because it looks good on them to have a wide variety of girls for the clients to choose from. It means that we will be fighting for the clients who show up, ’cause we all got to pay the rent, pay for fun, and enjoy our work instead of sitting in this pink windowless girls’ room cave watching bad Law and Order reruns.

Hardly any guys are coming in, there’s a big rugby game on, we all hope that they get drunk enough with their buddies at the pub to come here afterwards. We are crowded in here, everyone is chain smoking, and people are starting to talk. When Amy keeps getting every job that walks in, Scarlet claims she knows that Amy’s a total freaky slut when she gets ‘em upstairs and does it without a condom. (Which is against house rules.) No one wants to say the obvious: that Amy has a nice smile and attitude, the skinniest waist, and the best boob job. And of course she’s white and blond. Jody starts crying that she won’t have enough money to convince the judge to get her kids back, and everyone rolls their eyes, since the word on the couch is that she spends it all on drugs anyways. And then Valentina comes down from a job looking for a dish of the house dinner and it’s all gone: so she blames that fatty Mercedes for eating more than her fair share, and yells at me for not saving her a plate. Holy shit this brothel is tense!

Mostly I try to keep my head down and chalk up the cattiness to the real and mostly invisible foe: capitalism. We are WORKERS, like anyone else, and sex workers are people trying to feed themselves and their families, go on a holiday, or do whatever the fuck we want with our money. And if you think that the demands of market capitalism are fickle, you haven’t seen the most capricious demand side force around: the male penis. We get nasty when we don’t get work, when we get duped by the rules and laws, when we get ripped off, or when we get hurt/assaulted at work. We too are caught in this world that demands we sell our labour to have access to housing, to food, to sociality, to leisure, to community. Shit, to almost everything.

Why are we bitching at each other? It’s called horizontal hostility, my therapist tells me. Waaaay easier to hate on that slutty bitch in my face than on the intangible roots of our oppression as women, queers, people of colour, transpeople, poor people, and dis/abled people. To do so would demand more than just hard work but also critical self-reflection and I think that’s hard for sex workers. It’s hard to sit with your shit because we have some deep-seated SHAME about shaking ass and smiling when our mouths are full of bullshit. Reading rude comments online about you and your body, seeing other escorts get treated well or poorly, it makes you hate clients, and then you have to keep being nice to them to keep the work coming. For all the whore power we claim when we’ve got amazing Lucite heels strapped on and rich guys are tripping over themselves to worship us and FINALLY FUCKING PAY US a living wage as women workers….well it still sucks as a job, like most jobs do, and I don’t mean suck in a good way. It sucks because as a sex worker, you are considered the shit that people step in, you are the bad joke, you are the undate-able, and you’ve got no “real” skills. And that’s STILL the easy part – even worse, the whole world finds it acceptable that we are abused, assaulted and murdered because we dress slutty and put ourselves in harm’s way. We asked for it. When the world treats us as disposable, as less than human, we start thinking of ourselves like that. It sneaks in deep. It’s called internalized whorephobia.

And then unearthing that shame is hard work. Usually it just sits there in your belly. You start noticing other sex workers who charge less, and you get annoyed at them for undercutting you with bareback service. You see sex workers who make more money than you, and you hate their high-class attitude and privilege. You notice sex workers who make rad art, music and writing and you resent them, because you don’t have the self-worth or pride to make it for yourself. It hurts to see other people doing all those things when you feel like silence is often your best option for your safety and mental health and wellbeing. And when sex workers organize for sex worker rights, you get annoyed at the ones who always get the microphone, because no one ever asked you for your goddamn opinion, did they?

Whew. I hate writing this, especially thinking about non-sex workers reading it. I fear it will just reinforce a stereotype that we are all purse-slinging cat-fighting greedy slutty bitches who undermine each other. That we are all the world says we are. So I wanna switch gears, and say that yes, we are bitches, but in our frustration and anger, we are also lovers. Our work and community is not all happy rosewater enemas, but let me dream my dream and invite you all in.

Hooker-on-hooker competition stinks extra smelly because we really fucking NEED each other. Even as we hate on each other, the only way we stay ALIVE is by sticking together. There’s no Hustler University, only those already in the business. Many of us were turned out by a friend, and becoming a sex worker is an induction into a secret society of old-time knowledge not taught in any school. We are so often held and understood only by our own. Shunned, hated and treated as less than human, we turn to each other for support, knowledge, and survival.

Sex workers hustle together, push clients to hire us in duos, trios, and more for fun and safety. When a client calls for a service I don’t offer, I recommend a friend who does. In the snuggle bed, I dirty talk clients into the merits of other working girls who I know are not getting many calls. Dicks are fickle and wandering, so why not point them and their wallets to the pussies I respect?

Sex worker love looks like talking a girl down when a condom breaks. Giving her options, assessing the risks, saying it happened to me, too. Going with her to the clinic. Figuring out what to say and what not to say to asshat doctors and nurses.

Whore support is girls posting to mug lists, bad date books, and on elists about nasty-ass clients who do not respect you, who rip you off, and assault you. It’s other workers responding fast because we are often by our computers and phones waiting for work. We hold each other with trauma support and sexual health information when shit goes wrong. We post about which health care providers are whorephobic, dangerous cops, and legal changes that affect our criminalization.

We call each other when the job starts and when it ends in front of the clients so they know they can’t fuck with us.

Whore community asking asking other workers to fish menstrual sponges out of my cunt almost every month. This is just the way it works – I can’t get my hand in there, so will you? It’s like asking a co-worker to pick some lint off my business suit! I trust they will do it with respect, body knowledge, and also, some laughs. (Thanks everyone!)

Our meetings at Maggie’s are whore love, where we eat and snack and share what’s up. Whore love is me asking for everyone’s advice on how to do better dirty talk, and then choking on my tortilla chips as four girls autopilot raunch-talk simultaneously. The filth is amazing. The gutter is where we belong, and are also comfortable. Whore love is total non-judgement for this sex positivity.

Whore-time is our time: we have strange schedules that isolate us from the world. We work nights, we work alone, we are on call, we cancel plans so we can work at the last minute. Other whores get this, and don’t feel snubbed (and they don’t say: can’t you just not see him, aren’t you making enough money anyways with that hourly rate?). We find ways to hang out in inbetween times, when everyone else is doing something else 9-5. Sometimes we are together even while alone.

Whores are healers, and not just in that icky woo-woo culturally appropriative way (although yes, that’s there too). I know massage, shiatsu, acupuncture, herbs, tantric, talk and hydro therapists who are also sex workers. We give each other healing help that responds specifically to the needs of our working bodies.

Sex worker community is other sex workers nodding, hugging when you have a fight with your partner because he can’t accept your sex work.

Sex worker community is outrage and action when a sex worker is murdered, assaulted, abused, shamed, ostracized. It’s telling everyone that an injury to a sex worker, especially an assault or a rape, is rooted in the same shit as an assault on non sex working women – ie that we looked and acted too slutty, that we have to give it up to our boyfriends and partners because that’s what good girlfriends do.

We learn and love each other through sexual assault and abuse because we KNOW that we don’t deserve it and that another way of safe, consensual negotation around sex is possible, because we do it every day.

We don’t always have our shit together, but when we do, it’s so sweet and good.

I just wanted to share this link with you, it’s a video that my friend Jackson and I made over the past six months called

Every Ho I Know Says So: A Resource for Lovers, Partners and Sweeties of Sex Workers

Just in time for December 17, I just want to say a few words about why we came to making this video. This year, we were both struggling with lovers and friends who weren’t able to understand, support or celebrate the work we were doing as sex workers. We saw that our loved ones were trying their best, but there were really very few resources out there for them. For me personally, a significant relationship in my life ended in violence because of my partner’s whorephobia. We set out to interview sex workers on two continents, seeking their wisdom.

Every Ho I Know Says So is a response to the lack of resources for people looking for advice on how to be good to a sex worker. We want to support our lovers to fight stigma against sex workers, especially in intimate relationships. Sex workers themselves have valuable advice and direction to give our partners. With this video, we are saying “We support you in becoming a sex worker-positive and supportive lover and person in the community!!! By continuing to work on your attitudes about our work and educating yourself, you are showing us that you care. We love you!”

Please share it around and if you have any comments, contact me.

xxx
Lusty

Of course, my powerhouse friend Jessica Yee seems to always go straight to the punch, and in this recent note, she has articulated some of what I have been feeling lately, and much more. I am reposting her letter here, hopefully mine will come soon too.

My open letter to the sex work movement – and our relationship that’s become unhealthy

VAMP (Prostitutes Collective Against Injustice) respond to their depiction in the film ‘Prostitutes of God’ made by filmmaker Sarah Harris.

What is this project?
EVERY HO I KNOW SAYS SO is a video project documenting the advice that we sex workers want to give to our lovers, partners and dates on how to be supportive to us. This video will be a resource for partners/lovers of sex workers who struggle to understand and accept sex work.

Who is making this video?
This video is being made by two sex workers, Jackson and Lusty Day. Lusty Day is a white, middle-class genderqueer kinky independent escort hailing from Toronto, where whorephobia was a major reason for her breakup of a four-year relationship. Jackson is an australian, white, class privileged queer trans boy who works it as a lady hooker and dancer with a rainbow of experiences including dating fellow sex workers, dating workers while not a worker, and also dating non-sex workers. We are making this video with no budget, just our own labour. And we will distribute it at no cost to the viewer.

How can I participate?
Contact us! We will do a super short interview with you where you speak as if you were speaking to your lover from your own experience. An example:

“I want you to understand that my work is sometimes sexually fulfilling but that that doesn’t threaten our relationship, it’s just a positive aspect of my work.”

We realize that many sex workers are not out about their work to lovers, family, friends, immigration officials, police, etc because of criminalization and reasons of personal safety. If you don’t want to be identified, we can video you without showing your face (ie focus on your hands) and also change your voice. We can also accept written statements. We are open and willing to negotiate the best way for you to participate. AND you can change your mind about being in the video at any point. Talk to us!

While you might want to vent (and we’ve all got a crappy story of a lover who just didn’t get it), this video is trying to build a gently challenging space. Anger is powerful to express, but please also remember our goal of creating a resource for partners and lovers that helps them listen and grow.

Why are we making this video?
EVERY HO I KNOW SAYS SO is a response to the lack of resources for people looking for advice on how to be a good support person to a sex worker. In turn, we want to support our lovers to fight stigma against sex workers, especially in intimate relationships. Sex workers themselves have valuable advice and direction to give our partners. With this video, we are saying “We support you in becoming a sex worker-positive and supportive lover and person in the community!!! By continuing to work on your attitudes about our work and educating yourself, you are showing us that you care. We love you!”

This video is a platform for sex workers to share their voices, including at the forefront sex workers of colour, Aboriginal sex workers, trans* sex workers, queer sex workers, disAbled sex workers, sex workers of all ages, working class sex workers, and migrant sex workers, too. As two relatively privileged sex workers, we are committed to using strategies that centre the people most affected by whore stigma and oppression.

How will the video be distributed?
We intend to distribute the video on YouTube and we hope you will blog and distribute it online for us, too. We hope to complete the video by October 2010.

Can I pass this callout to a friend who is a sex worker?
Yes, absolutely. Please share it as we are hoping to connect with many different sex workers.

To participate or to answer your questions, please email jacksonisforcutting@gmail.com and lustyday@gmail.com.