Posted on by Amanda Brooks

dec 17 — accessing justice

Today is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. I feel it hardly needs introduction anymore, thanks to social media and a lot of sex workers starting to have an interest in activism, or at least interest on social media.

This year the December 17 memorial site has short bios for some of the victims. It’s about time. Credit to whomever implemented the idea. Humanizing and properly memorializing the victims is so very important.

Accessing justice is very difficult for sex workers living and working under US laws.

Violence against sex workers is legally-sanctioned here in the US. Unless you get really lucky and find someone who is willing to help you and has the power to do so (and that someone likely won’t come from a sex work org), you’re going to end up dead. I’m not trying to derail this day to make it about Jill and I because we’re alive and I can’t complain about that. But it was perfectly clear to us through the last six months that the system was willing to let us be killed rather than take minimal measures to protect us. It wasn’t just that we were fighting an enemy entrenched with the legal system (Pig), a large part of it was that we were women, and sex workers.

How much harder is it for women who know they’re in danger but don’t have any help at all? The news is filled with women killed by former partners or men they’ve rejected but never had a relationship with. Some of those women have been sex workers. Legal protections rarely extend to sex workers. Their surviving loved ones have almost no hope of justice. Someone tell me I’m wrong and that most of the men who killed sex workers in the US this year were apprehended. I’d be thrilled to know that and make a correction.

I’m not down on sex work orgs — they do vital outreach and education in the US. The one thing they really have no ability to offer is legal protection or access justice. Legal referrals are difficult to get because there are very few people in the system who are okay with helping sex workers. Very few. (The one sex work org referral I got ended up being a vice officer who was skeptical that Pig had broken any laws — yeah, that’s a big help.) It’s far easier to find a doctor willing to treat sex workers because we’re seen as disease vectors who need monitoring. Far harder for someone in the legal system to see us as anything but ready-made criminals.

US sex work orgs are severely hampered by the laws, obviously, which makes their ability to offer protection or justice slim. Changing the laws is the answer. Always. That hasn’t changed and will never change.

The best protection any victim, or potential victim, could have is to be viewed as a citizen of equal worth to anyone else. That their life is worth defending, their death worth preventing. Not regulating them to criminal, non-human status is a huge start in getting to that place.

Jill had the idea of a lawsuit brought by victims’ families holding the people who make these laws responsible. It’s a unique idea, and worth exploring. (You can hear Jill and I discuss this, and a few other topics, on a brief radio show.)

In the same vein, the Vancouver police department issued a video statement of how sex workers are to be treated. Basically, like humans and citizens with rights. Revolutionary.

Posted on by Amanda Brooks

dec 17 — violence

“360 International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers 2010” by Steve Rhodes, is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Today is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, started SWOP-USA. Violence against sex workers takes many forms, such as the legal violence of criminalization or the stigma that gets sex workers killed. There’s also media violence, amply demonstrated by the recent raids in Soho (London) that has angered the sex work community. There is violence some sex workers experience while working, which is always aided by the stigma of criminalization (criminalization empowers violent criminals, it doesn’t protect anyone).

The worst violence is when sex workers are killed because they’re sex workers. Books and movies are filled with serial killers who “practice” on sex workers because they know no one cares. For once, fiction is reflecting reality perfectly. This is why the IDEVASW exists. This is why every year there are names to be read and remembered.

There are events scheduled, but they’re few and far between. Sex workers exist everywhere on the planet, but sex work organizations do not (for a lot of reasons). If you want to Tweet about it, common hashtags are: #Dec17 #IDEVASW #EndVASW #sexwork #solidarity. I wish I knew of an online compendium of essays for Dec 17; pretty much everyone who has a blog is using it, so start with your favorite bloggers. For many of us, it’s the only way we have of making public acknowledgment of today.

One wonders what attorney Jan Schlichtmann would have to say about the value of a sex worker’s life. Though I guess there isn’t any real reason to wonder.

It’s like this. A dead plaintiff is rarely worth as much as a living, severely-maimed plaintiff. However, if it’s a long slow agonizing death, as opposed to a quick drowning or car wreck, the value can rise considerably. A dead adult in his 20s is generally worth less than one who is middle aged. A dead woman less than a dead man. A single adult less than one who’s married. Black less than white. Poor less than rich. The perfect victim is a white male professional, 40 years old, at the height of his earning power, struck down in his prime. And the most imperfect? Well, in the calculus of personal injury law, a dead child is worth the least of all.

One victory happened last week. California has ruled to allow sex workers access to the victims of violence compensation fund. At least in the state of California, sex workers are acknowledged to be human and vulnerable to violence regardless of the circumstance of the violence. Sex workers are acknowledged to have some sort of value as people. That’s a huge step forward, considering that the LAPD used to tag dead sex workers’ case files with N.H.I. (No Human Involved).

There’s not a sex worker in the world who sees violence or death as part of the job description.

Posted on by Amanda Brooks

reactions

Since I often read things and want to comment but don’t, here are my comments. A lot of these links came from Tits and Sass since I no longer bother with my Google Alerts.

escort photo documentary

While the story is somewhat unique, the pictures of Eden working are completely recognizable to any touring hourly escort. Locales may differ, there may be a lack of cigarettes and wigs, but everything else is very, very true. Escort work really can be this boring and mundane. Just like stripping. Just like data entry. Just like anything.

Hong Kong escorts and review board exploitation

I remember Sex141.com when I went to HK. I was never on the site because it wasn’t a good fit for me. I was: too old, Western, English-speaker, outcall-only, had much higher rates than the local girls. I had no idea it developed into the terror it has. (TER is probably kicking itself for not figuring out the bad review scam Sex141 pulls.)

HK girls work in limbo. Sex work is partially decriminalized and partially illegal, depending on what, where and how. While the laws seem clearly defined on the surface, sex workers face almost as much police harassment as US sex workers. My firm belief is that anytime there is an illegal aspect to sex work, the workers will suffer. The public and police will exploit the illegal aspects as far as they can, nullifying any legality. This is why sex work has to be completely decriminalized across the board. No exceptions.

Because of this half-and-half system, they have no recourse against Sex141. Because of the market and the laws, the girls are regularly ripped off: unlike sex workers in the rest of the world, they’re afraid of getting the money upfront because the client will run away or call them a ripoff (I did not have that problem with the clients I had in HK — different market). They’re stuck with abusive clients and there is no legal recourse for them. After the murders in 2008, all the one-woman brothels had CCTVs installed and the images of bad clients are regularly printed out and circulated but there is no way to make sure every sex worker has that info. They have problems with clients every day, just like US sex workers.

This is not to say that the girls don’t want to work there because they do. It’s far safer than China and the money is better. The problem, as always, is illegality. The only solution, as always, is full decriminalization.

Read more

Posted on by Amanda Brooks

getting away with murder in texas

I had three people send me different links to the same horrible story (Gawker, MSN, and ThinkProgress). I was relieved that the vast majority of the comments show the general population to have some sense. They’re appalled that Lenora Ivie Frago’s life was worth a mere $150. Not to mention a lot of people pointed out he was insisting she perform an illegal act (i.e. sex for money), a crime he apparently was never charged with. Even better were those who understood her right to autonomy and the right to say “no” if she felt like it, that she was a human being and not a piece of property, especially not his piece of property. I can’t imagine the pain her family feels.

It’s a very sad commentary on Texas. It’s no secret to anyone who lives here what a gun-nutty, sexist state it is but…wow. This is a new low, even for our court history of allowing crimes against women to go underpunished.

For those men who want to start whinging about possibly being ripped off $150, stop. If you were planning on giving her the money anyway, then it’s already gone. Your precious penis and your presumed constitutional right to get off is not worth a human life. It really, truly is not. You’re not that special. Consider your lost money a lesson learned, and try to find someone else you think you might be more be in tune with your desires. (Escorts get ripped off all the time and they learn to tighten up their business practices. They dust themselves off and try again. This is the correct, mature, response.)

After all, Ezekiel Gilbert clearly had the money to spend tens of thousands on his defense. So why was he so upset over losing $150 he was going to spend anyway? He whines about how hard his life has been over the past four years and how he has nightmares. He could have avoided all that drama by not shooting and killing Lenora. How easy and simple to avoid all these problems! Put the damn gun down, get back to Google and find a new escort. There’s not a single escort in the country who costs more than a criminal defense attorney in a murder case.

He got away with murder because he truly got a jury of his peers. I wish every one of their names could be discovered and put on national blacklists. They set him free and therefore they believe it’s right and proper to kill sex workers who don’t do exactly as demanded. This is a horrific precedent, especially for sex workers who see clients in the evening.

Looked at it from another angle, the jury sort of sees prostitution as a legal business transaction. If that’s the case, then anytime a client beats, rapes, or rips off a prostitute at night, she should lethally shoot him (quite a few sex workers carry guns). If this case is going to be a precedent, then let it be a true precedent.

Realistically, the status quo doesn’t change. Escorts who blatantly state what they will and won’t do for money are setting themselves up for arrest. Or they can be coy, avoid arrest, and set themselves up for disappointed clients who decide to kill them. Either way, their lives are ruined. Their clients’ lives are not.

PS: I hope Gilbert changes whatever career he currently has and takes a service-industry job in Texas, preferably on the night shift. He just doesn’t strike me as someone who can get an order right, such as whether or not I want fries with that and please hold the mayo. At the very least, I hope he never gets to hire another escort again. These articles are even better than a blacklist.

Afterthoughts:

Does this mean that the deaths of strip club bouncers will go unpunished? Every year, some strip club bouncer is shot to death in Dallas, either trying to remove a [drunk, angry] patron or later in the parking lot as revenge, often for protecting the strippers. These men could be seen as thieves just as Lenora was. It’s a very strong possibility. It’s bad enough some of these low-paid, high-risk employees get killed because of stupidity (not theirs) but now there could be no hope of justice for their families either.

I have fantasized about Gilbert being cross-examined during his trial like rape victims are. Has he given away money before? What exactly, is his history of charitable donations? (do full audit in court). Does he have an established pattern of charitable donations to individuals or organizations? Has he ever been robbed before, in any circumstance? Has he ever been shortchanged at a store, or rendered poor service in a restaurant? Does he have a history of fighting back against these injustices or just letting it slide? Has he purchased items off Craigslist or eBay that were not as described? Did he leave negative feedback or shoot the seller? Does he have a habit of inviting strangers to his home at night with promises of giving them money?