dec 17 — survival

Tomorrow is December 17: the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. You can find the 2012 list of names here, and events here (there are less events than some years).

I don’t think anything is going on in Dallas this year, so as usual, I’ll be doing my own thing.

Michael (Mike) Meisenbach

A friend of mine was brutally assaulted by Michael Meisenbach. She found out he had done the same to others — after the fact. Naturally, she put him on the National Blacklist and other bad client lists because at the time he wasn’t on any that she used. Yet he keeps on raping and/or beating escorts. He does not hide who he is — it seems that girls aren’t doing their screening. His violence is escalating and at some point he will kill an escort, either deliberately or accidentally.

Avoiding violence is better than trying to pick up the pieces afterward. For your own sake: SCREEN. Use Google if nothing else. If you have a friend who doesn’t bother to screen, volunteer to Google her client info or be her safety call. No, this isn’t going to suddenly stop all predators but it could very well reduce your chances of being hurt. The life you save may be your own.

Survive this work.

Not every sex worker is going to retire with a huge nest egg or some other safety net. Neither do you have to exit this work harmed beyond recovery. Take care of yourself. It’s very obvious in this society that no one else will.

robyn few — memoriam

Robyn Few passed away Sep 13 after a long battle against cancer. Most of my readers probably don’t know her and I can’t say I knew her well. What I did know of her was great. She was one of the biggest points of light in the movement. She was the first activist who remembered my name from one meeting to the next (which were months apart). She loved every sex worker without reservation. That level of acceptance is hard to come by, even in the movement. She is an example to follow.

Beyond the lovefest that was Robyn’s trademark, she was a rabble-rouser. She was tireless as an activist, not afraid to get in anyone’s face over the issues. However, she didn’t seem to pull a stunt just because it was there to be pulled. Whatever she did had a point. I didn’t know her before her cancer diagnosis so perhaps that was the reason for her focus, or perhaps it was just her. I can say that she fought cancer and won several more years than the doctors predicted. Yes, she died younger than she would’ve without cancer. I don’t see her life as a tragedy, though. Her life was something to be proud of. She earned every day she had and I don’t feel she wasted them.

Arguably her biggest accomplishment was designating Dec 17 as the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Last June the Robyn Few Sex Workers’ Resource Center opened in Tuscon, AZ (no website listed yet). Her impact on the movement is profound because of who she was.

I can’t think of enough good things to say about Robyn. I knew when I hugged her bye at the end of the Desiree Alliance conference in 2010 that it would be the last time I would see her and it was. Unfortunately. Reading about her can’t explain the radiance she always carried or the love she freely gave to everyone who met her. She does have her own website if you’d like to know more. It’s very sad knowing she won’t be around anymore. She leaves behind a family and a global network of friends.

dec 17 — back in the usa

Not only am I late with this post, but I’m honestly not doing much of anything about it this year. Last year I was in Hong Kong, marching with Zi Teng (still need to post about that). This year, in Dallas, going to spend the evening with someone I’ve just started seeing, someone who I feel isn’t sex-worker-friendly. So there is only so far things can progress. A good friend’s relationship just went down the toilet, due in part to issues surrounding her being a sex worker.

Though none of that compares to the lives lost this year. SWOP-USA has put together a great Dec 17 site, so please peruse at your leisure.

Expendable can happen in so many ways. The job can overshadow so much: who the sex worker is, their basic civil rights, their claim to humanity.

sympathy for the she-devil

Years before I ever self-identified as an activist (I usually considered myself “an army of one”), I emailed Michael Connelly complaining about his book Chasing the Dime. A client had given me a Harry Bosch book and I really enjoyed it. When I discovered Connelly had written a book about the murder of a callgirl, I bought it immediately. I finished the book only because I’m a stubborn cuss. Then I hurled it across the room, with great force; and dug up his email address.

I complained because the callgirl who was the driving force behind the entire book was dead before page 1. She was murdered by an advertising mall that reminded me of CityVibe. (I’ll assume Connelly’s research led him to create a company that was a combination of CityVibe and Eros with a whole lot of stereotyping thrown in. Believe me, I don’t think the CityVibe folks go around murdering their Verified Escorts, no matter how flaky the girls are.) The girl even did some BDSM scenes for online consumption, which included the horrors of having hot wax dripped onto her torso by her female modeling partner and the obvious faking of facial expressions for money. I asked Connelly why he felt the need to murder his callgirl, why couldn’t she have been alive at some point in the book, why did she have to be such a victim?

His assistant replied that Connelly was building sympathy for the character. I immediately shot back, commenting that not only was that lazy writing, people are capable of being sympathetic while alive, even callgirls. I never heard back and honestly did not expect to. Why would his assistant waste time arguing about a fictional dead callgirl with some partially-fictional blonde escort in Dallas?

That exchange has always stuck in my mind. Connelly has obvious fictional talents; I enjoyed his Harry Bosch book and millions of other people have enjoyed that entire series. The main character in Chasing the Dime wasn’t very sympathetic, should he have been killed too? On the other hand, this character was so intrigued by the callgirl that he solved her murder. That doesn’t happen too often in real life. Obviously the cops were less than concerned, which reflects reality precisely.

That the only way an experienced crime-writer like Connelly felt a sex worker could ever possibly be a “good girl” is to be a dead girl is profoundly disturbing to me. Millions of people read his books and they’re absorbing his message: the only good hooker is a dead one. The only way they can feel sorry for us is if we’ve paid for our sins with death. Even the mundane details of the girl’s life (she drank milk! she has a good credit rating! a cute little house! a pet! a family who misses her!) are presented as exotica. As if she is somehow completely removed from all normal human existence, as though she was created, lived and worked in a vacuum. Her murder was her only connection to the “real” world in the book.

For Connelly, the problem is that he could not have sympathy for her as a normal, living human being.