Posted on by Amanda Brooks

desiree alliance 2010 — register today!

Today is the last day to register for the Desiree Alliance 2010 conference. If you want to come to and melt with us in Las Vegas for a week you won’t forget — register now!

Sex workers and allies are welcome. If you’re an ally, you will have to give a bit more detailed explanation of your interest. Genuine supporters are very welcome. I know a couple of blog readers have already registered and I can’t wait to meet ya’ll!

Here’s what you’re going to get:
Dr. Joycelyn Elders
Norma Jean Almodovar (personal hero of mine)
Nina Hartley
Dr. Brooke Magnanti (yes, her)
the one and only Robyn Few
Carol Leigh
plenty of other industry luminaries
moi
Vegas Vegas Vegas
the most amazing people you’ll meet having the time of their lives
lots of love, support, acceptance

You’ll leave with:
tears in your eyes
100+ new best friends
a head full of ideas for business and life

More of the details:
Registration Fee = $250
Student Fee = $200 (Must provide proof of enrollment for school (student ID)

Registration fees for the conference include: Attendance at any or all of the workshops, presentations and sessions; name badge and registration packet; Welcome Reception with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres (July 25, 6pm); Continental breakfast (July 26-29); Lunch (July 27 & 29); Farewell Brunch with keynote speaker (July 30); and a significant discount on lodging (please note that this location will not be disclosed until registration is complete). You can make the lodging discount more significant by room-sharing.

Registration fees do NOT include: transportation; lodging; lunch on July 26 and 28, dinner; Fundraiser After Party (you will have the option of purchasing a ticket during registration); dinners, souvenirs, extra-curricular activities or personal expenses.

Please note: If financial trouble is the obstacle that stands in your way of attending this conference, please contact Susan Lopez at Susan@desireealliance.org. Desiree Alliance is more than happy to think “out-of-the-box” in terms of finding ways to help those who would be able to volunteer their time in exchange for partial deductions (i.e. registration fee or a possible room-share arrangement so that the cost would be $12.50 per night plus tax and fees).

Needless to say, if you want to support but don’t want to go (or can’t), then donations are always welcome. Donations will go to helping others get to the conference and paying for the conference facilities.

Posted on by Amanda Brooks

an arrest story

Not sure how many of you follow the comments, but recently Lailah commented on a couple of my posts about her arrest. I encouraged her to write her story down to share with the general public over at Bound, not Gagged. I’m very proud to say that she did.

For anyone who is curious about what an arrest feels like to a consenting adult sex worker, please read her well-written story. She’s doing very well for such a recent shock. I like intelligent, angry, uppity women. Feel free to comment there to offer her support. And do question if you feel your tax dollars are really working to keep you safe at night.

Posted on by Amanda Brooks

no

A few weeks ago I Tweeted: Afternoon w/Zi Teng. The power and ability to say “no” defines privilege – it has nothing and everything to do w/money. (Zi Teng is a sex worker rights group in Hong Kong. I will be writing more about them and you can see some photos of their office in my album.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about that enlightening day with Zi Teng (I’m still in contact with them but obviously am not physically close). Power and agency are two very big words sex workers and the antis in the US like to toss around. I can’t define how anyone else uses/abuses these words. I like to define power and agency as a self thing. Power over one’s life and one’s body; agency over one’s life and how one chooses to work. It’s a very loose and open definition. Sometimes I feel like I have a lot of both, other times not so much. That’s all part of it.

Meeting with the HK sex workers and learning about their main style of working led me to think about the word no. There’s so much power in it. It’s taken mostly for granted in the US. It’s not for these sex workers.

In this case, the myths are correct: what we sex workers learn in childhood echoes into our sex work. The power and agency learned in childhood by applying the word no leads us, as adults, to believe (or not) we have the right and ability to say no in any other situation. I have no studies to back this up but I’m guessing that children learn far more from being able to apply the word no to their own lives than saying yes.

Even the ultra-paranoid child-safety programs believe this. They teach children to say no to inappropriate touches, to say no to strangers, to say no as a way of protecting their physically-vulnerable selves. Female adults are taught that yelling NO! is a way to prevent rape or assault.

No is a powerful thing.

The HK sex workers, by and large, have their power of no taken away by how their sex work is structured by society and by their clients. I don’t know much about how HK society raises its girl-children but I’m going to guess most of them are not given the power of no.

If you can’t say no, you can’t set boundaries with clients. You can’t demand payment up front. You can’t demand condom-compliance. You can’t say no to doing something that disgusts or physically hurts you. You can’t demand your rights because you cannot say no to societal practices and laws that cause you harm.

The lack of no does not render these women helpless victims. The sex workers I met were spirited, fully-aware adults. They were not different from the sex workers I know in the US except they spoke a different language (and had a different work situation). Their lack of no erodes their rights, their strength, and causes them harm.

Nor do I believe that society must give one the right to say no before it can be said. Obviously not. A society which values the word no does make it easier to say. A society which believes that at least some people are allowed to say no makes it easier to say. It’s not that one be must graciously allowed to say no before it’s said, it’s only worth being said if it’s heard. I think part of Zi Teng’s mission (and the mission of sex worker orgs around the world) is to get no to be heard and acknowledged.

Having your no trampled on is deeply painful.

Some might think the word no is completely negative. It’s not. It’s far more powerful and positive than yes. Ask any sex worker which of those two words she wants her clients to hear when she says it.

disclaimer

I’m just musing on this one word and its meaning for sex workers. I’ll get into detail about HK later on. I don’t want anyone reading this to think I’m talking of victimization or exploitation. I’m talking about inequality. That does not always and automatically equal victimization or exploitation. I think suggesting such things to the women I met would get their “Are you an idiot?” response. It would be offensive to them that I assume they are victims just because their work situation is different from mine. All I’m commenting on is what I noticed. (I’ll get into the money/class/status thing later on too.)

The big chasm I noticed between their work and mine is that I can say no almost with impunity. They cannot.

Posted on by Amanda Brooks

virtual seeping into real life

I was hoping not to feel the need to address this on any blog but that has changed. For those of you not deeply involved in the online escort community, the furor is over Alexa DiCarlo and her degree of “realness” . She’s a prolific blogger/Tweeter (among other things) and generally spends a lot of time online and active. She’s developed a huge following, mostly mainstream, though every sex worker I know reads her blog or Tweets or is familiar with them.

She and I have corresponded for about two years, if not slightly longer (would have to check but the real info is on my desktop currently in storage). We have written a couple times about this “faux ho” incident. Nothing I say here isn’t anything I haven’t already said to her. No, I have never met her. All our contact has been of the virtual kind.

I have questions I feel are unanswered. Though I have heard questions about who she is for over a year, I didn’t feel that asking her via email would solve anything. I did not think a public airing was the way to get answers either. But it was done. Indeed, what should have been just a discussion — a chance for everyone to say their piece and ask questions — has turned very ugly and non-sex workers feel that sex workers are turning against each other because of the hideous ripple effect happening online. Apparently, some have been moved to make physical threats against her (and her loved ones). This is crossing a major line. Threats solve nothing and I certainly do not support this treatment of Alexa. (That these threats probably can’t be carried out is irrelevant to me. There is no need for threats, period.)

Read more

Posted on by Amanda Brooks

Dec 17, words and remembrance

Today (for me) is December 17 — The International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. The history of it is here and I highly recommend you read it. It’s also particularly relevant today because they’re recently discovered more remains in Oregon of yet another Ridgeway victim.

Dec 17 is our day to remember that stigma kills. Sticks and stones break bones, words like “criminal” “illegal” and “No Human Involved” kill. I encourage you to peruse the list of victims, updated every year through word-of-mouth and news stories. Though no one has done a Google map of the victims yet, I’m willing to bet that the greatest numbers of victims occur in countries where prostitution is illegal. Words — i.e., the local criminal code — kill. Words — i.e., shame –kill.

If you think I’m over-generalizing, think again. Criminalizing and shaming sex workers kills us. Forcing us underground leaves us to the mercy of predators. Though some sex workers embrace their outlaw status, I’ve yet to meet a single one who wouldn’t like to be able to freely press charges when raped or robbed. Every one of us want police to take the murder of a sex worker as seriously as the murder of a college student or housewife. None of us see violence as part of our job description.

Nor do we see shame as part of it either. Shame is a by-product of society, not the work itself. A lot of sex workers unfortunately internalize the shame — as we’ve seen when sex workers commit suicide after arrest or trial. Words can kill.

There are plenty of strident “feminist” voices in mainstream America who wish to abolish all prostitution. Most recently, they won a victory in Rhode Island by getting prostitution criminalized. Aside from the arrests of consenting adults, what do you think will be the consequences of this criminalization? The empowerment of criminals. Not those who are made criminals by an act of words (i.e., exchanging sex for money instead of sex for love), but real criminals — people with the desire to cause harm to others.

Dec 17 is not a day to say that sex work is violent and that all sex workers are going to meet a bad end. Not at all. It is a time to recognize that more needs to be done to prevent us from being targets. The criminalization of prostitution continues to create a class of people who have no rights, including the right to live and their families the right to justice.

Dec 17 is a time to remember my brothers and sisters who were killed merely for working to pay their bills, for doing the same thing I’m doing. Their families rarely receive justice; were something to happen to me, I doubt mine would either. If that turns your stomach — it should.

I feel the real criminals in this situation aren’t even the men who kill sex workers — the real criminals are those who work to uphold the current broken legal system in the US that perpetuates a class of so-called “criminals”, probably the only class of criminals in the world who are simply targets for other criminals. The crimes against sex workers are far worse than our so-called crime (felony robbery, assaults, rape, homicide; compared to misdemeanor charges of prostitution, solicitation or loitering).

Dec 17 is not a time to paint sex workers as victims. Hardly. Few people are willing to go through as much as shit as we do just to put food on the table. The victimization comes not from sex work itself, but from the helpless vulnerability the legal system forces us into. This is true of all countries where prostitution is illegal.

Dec 17 is a time to remember daughters, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons, friends, colleagues. The difference between you and them is only in your mind.