Sex Work – Page 2

Stopping Police and DAs from Using Condoms to Convict Sex Workers

By Crystal DeBoise, cross-posted at On The Issues Magazine

Last winter, “Sheila,” a sex worker in her early 20s, had just finished her counseling session with me at the Sex Workers Project, and was heading out the door. Sheila was seeking counseling from the Sex Workers Project to help her make a career change, but had no financial support and was still working in the sex industry. I gestured towards our colorful shoebox of condoms, lube and pamphlets about safe sex and reminded her to take whatever she needed. She looked at me as if I were suggesting she walk into the January snow barefoot and said, “Are you crazy? I’m not carrying those things around! You want me to get arrested or something?”

Sheila was referring to a situation in New York that permits the use of condoms as evidence of prostitution, resulting in their collection and confiscation from women who are detained by the police. This practice is an outright slap in the face to the decades of hard work that public health advocates have undertaken to increase safe sex, decrease HIV and create a positive shift in the cultural acceptance of condom use. This policy discourages a stigmatized and marginalized group of sexually active people from carrying the tools they need to be healthy and safe. And this occurs despite the fact that the New York City itself runs a free condom distribution program because “Using a condom every time you have anal, oral or vaginal sex protects you and your partners from getting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases … and prevents unplanned pregnancies.”

Staff at the Sex Workers Project had been seeing police reports of arrested sex workers that listed the possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution for some time. Many of the arrests were not of even sex workers, but, rather, incidents of profiling transgender individuals as sex workers — their personal condoms were confiscated and used as “evidence” of prostitution.

Sentiments like the one Sheila shared have become more prevalent among sex workers, and for good reason. Prostitution convictions have an extremely negative impact on the lives of sex workers.

Arrests themselves are often abusive and traumatic, as well as costly. A criminal record is a major hurdle to joining the mainstream job force. Many jobs require disclosure of crimes or out-and-out disqualify people who have such records. When hired despite their records, those with prostitution-related crimes on their record often face discrimination on the job; others encounter sexual harassment when arrests for prostitution are disclosed. If carrying condoms increases the chance that a sex worker will have to experience these consequences, there’s a difficult decision to be made.

New York State Bill A1008/S323, cosponsored by more than a dozen state senators, would stop police and prosecutors from using possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution in specified criminal or civil proceedings. According to the summary of the bill, it “provides that possession of a condom may not be received in evidence in any trial, hearing or proceeding as evidence of prostitution, patronizing a prostitute, promoting prostitution, permitting prostitution, maintaining a premises for prostitution, lewdness or assignation, or maintaining a bawdy house.”

The explanation for the bill says, “It does not promote public health and welfare if the law discourages prostitutes from carrying condoms. If anything, their use by prostitutes should be encouraged by public policy ….” As of fall 2011, the bill was sitting in Judiciary Committee of the NY State Senate and the Codes Committee of the NY Assembly.

The Sex Workers Project is participating in an active campaign to support the passage of the bill this legislative session. Our online public service announcement explains its importance, and we have an ongoing petition with over 5,600 signatures at Change.org. Thirteen organizations have signed statements in support of the bill, and our staff holds legislative advocacy sessions for sex workers and allies where supporters can join our “pink postcard” campaign to send a message to state senators and assembly members.

Our activism is needed to make sure that this simple health and safety measure is put into place. If the bill passes, sex workers and the general public will be able to feel confident that the condoms they have in their pockets will not be used to assist law enforcement in accusing them of committing crimes.

Outsourcing Porn

This whole article is pretty interesting — who would have guessed that porn only accounts for 4% of the internet? — but this part stood out:

So what’s the most popular porn site on the planet?

The single most popular adult site in the world is LiveJasmin.com, a webcam site which gets around 32 million visitors a month, or almost 2.5% of all Internet users!

You’re telling me a webcam site is more popular than PornHub?

LiveJasmin is the most popular adult site on the Web by a huge margin.

Basically, it’s interesting that what men prefer the most is watching women strip on a webcam and being able to talk to them while they do, telling the women what they want to see. Once this became available (through high-quality broadband streaming of webcam video) it just shot to the top of popularity; it’s even more popular than the tube sites like PornHub and RedTube.

The fact that 2.5% of the billion people on the Internet are using LiveJasmin each month is pretty extraordinary.

A global phenomenon! Where do the webcam women come from?

Almost all of the webcam girls are from eastern Europe or southeast Asia. At $8-$15/hour with no benefits, it doesn’t pay enough for American women… except teenage girls and college students.

Most of the foreign women do it without the knowledge of their friends and family and only do it for Americans so that acquaintances in their homeland won’t hear about it.

I am apparently not a very savvy consumer of internet porn, because I’ve never heard of LiveJasmin.com. And I am certainly far from anti-pornography; if you want to get naked on your webcam / watch people get naked on their webcams, fantastic, enjoy yourself. I personally find the whole concept of webcam porn kind of cheesy and hilarious and I guess sort of like the pornography equivalent of a Xanga journal, or the next logical step after some hot AOL Chatroom action? Do you start the webcam session by asking, “18/f/NY wanna cyber?” But also I am 86, so what do I know. Have fun on your webcams kids.

Oh, but.

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Marriage Tip:

If you’re freaking out before your wedding because your fiancé wants strippers at his bachelor party and the idea of your fiancé hiring strippers makes you uncomfortable, you should probably just tell him that. And if he still insists on having strippers at his bachelor party even after you tell him it’s making you really really miserable for whatever reason (you don’t want him touching other naked women, you object generally to the idea of men paying women for sexual services, you thought he had more sophisticated taste in recreational activities), perhaps he is not the dude to be marrying. Seriously, if there are “a bajillion fights” over strippers and you’re so stressed out you lose 8 pounds and can’t sleep for days because for him it is A Matter Of Great Importance that there be bare titties at his bachelor-fest? He’s a jerk, don’t marry him! If he’s the kind of guy who might cheat on you (or attempt to cheat on you) at his bachelor party? He’s a jerk, don’t marry him! If your future husband tells you that he’s not interested in having strippers but all his friends are calling him a pussy for saying no and so he has to go along with it? He’s a jerk and also a coward, don’t marry him!

But, sorry girl, it ain’t the strippers’ fault that he’s a jerk. But also, while I’m all for demystifying what goes on at bachelor parties — it’s true that it’s rarely sexy and probably does not threaten your relationship and is actually incredibly cheesy — maybe it’s not so cool to make fun of women who are distressed because their future husbands think it’s super fun to pay other women to get naked.

Oversimplifying Sex Slavery: Demi, Ashton, and Badvocacy

This is a guest post by Jessica Mack. Jessica is a global feminist and reproductive rights advocate. She enjoys exploring, making trouble, speaking out, and learning languages. She’s very tall, so that makes her extra scary. Jessica is an editor at Gender Across Borders and currently lives in Seattle, planning her next adventure.

If you haven’t yet watched the “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls” campaign from Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s DNA Foundation, do. And be prepared to scratch your head, or maybe weep a little bit.

Others have already have already pointed out the confusing and offensive messages of the campaign, which feature hunky celebs delivering messages of what real men do (i.e. laundry, cook, iron, read directions, etc.) to suggest what they shouldn’t (i.e. buy girls). Sadly, what surely began with good intentions has become an even better example of what is wrong with celebrity aid today.

Even before the launch of the “Real Men” campaign, the DNA Foundation, launched in 2007, rubbed me the wrong way. I first came across them last year, while doing research on anti-trafficking efforts. Their mission is to “raise awareness about child sex slavery, change the cultural stereotypes that facilitate this horrific problem, and rehabilitate innocent victims.” So how will they achieve their goals? The action center offers “three steps to end child slavery” (ready?): 1) Make your own “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls” video; 2) “report” any suspicious activity on Craigslist; and 3) buy a tee-shirt.

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It’s not just violent clients who abuse sex workers

Today is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. There are 21 events happening in the U.S. alone; more are listed on the site. Too many sex workers are killed, raped, assaulted and abused because, to paraphrase Oregon serial killer Gary Ridgeway, they’re easy targets. Their work is often done clandestinely, and they typically can’t go to the police to report abuse since their work is largely illegal.

But it’s not just violent clients who do harm to sex workers. As Audacia Ray explains in this great piece, human rights abuses from the state, denial of HIV and other heath services, crackdowns by police and limitations on organizing also do real, tangible and sometimes life-threatening harm to sex workers. She concludes, “But violence doesn’t just come in the form of bad clients – more often, it is delivered by the institutions that are supposed to protect and improve the lives of citizens.”

Today, support the rights of sex workers — the rights to organize, to work without abuse, and to seek help when they need it.

A great big thanks RD for spreading the word and keeping us informed.

News Flash, Pay Attention: HIV Is About Sex

This is a guest post by Clarisse Thorn, who blogs at Pro-Sex Outreach, Open-Minded Feminism.

Today is World AIDS Day. I don’t think about HIV as much as I did a few months ago, when I was still in Africa and my job was to help with the epidemic. But today, I’m thinking about it, and I have something very simple to say:

HIV is about sex.

One of the big lessons I learned about HIV in Africa is that many, many people will do amazing mental and rhetorical backflips to avoid talking about how HIV is actually spread. It’s astonishing. You’d think that when talking about HIV, you’d have to talk about sex; you’d be wrong.

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There It Is

This is a post by pro-BDSM activist Clarisse Thorn, who blogs at Pro-Sex Outreach, Open-Minded Feminism.

[Sexual abuse trigger warning on this post -ed].

A quotation from Michelle Tea’s Rent Girl, a memoir about her experiences as a sex worker:

Marina [a sex worker] had been abused by her dad when she was a girl, and she’d do coke and tell [a client] about it as he jerked off.

Marina! I gasped. I was astonished. She didn’t really care. It gave me flutters of anxiety, her blasé admission, the idea of the creepy man getting off on the rehashing of a child’s abuse. Maybe the anti-sex industry feminists were right, maybe this was evil work, work that tore the fragile scabbing of every wound a girl ever got, again and again, till pain felt regular, felt like nothing. Maybe we were encouraging the worst of men, helping blur their already schizophrenic line between fantasy and reality, what they’re allowed to have and what they’re not. I knew that some girls thought we were actually preventing rape and incest by giving the men a consensual space to act out their fantasies, and it grossed me out beyond belief to think that I was fucking would-be sex criminals, but I believed them. What I didn’t believe was that any of us, with our cheesy one-hour sex routines, would be enough to keep these men from hurting a female if that’s what they wanted to do. And what I secretly wondered was, were we empowering them sexually to go and do just that. Go and do just anything they wanted.

I love this quotation (I’m loving this whole book and I’m not even done yet). Here’s why: because I can relate. Oh yes, I think it’s full of problematic negative stereotypes about men, so I’ll note that up front. (Though this book sure makes it easy to understand where those stereotypes come from.) And I’ve never done sex work myself, so I don’t want to come across as co-opting Michelle Tea’s experience, or saying things about it that she didn’t mean.

But I believe I recognize those anxieties, because they come up for me sometimes, as a sex-positive feminist woman who can’t stand the idea of actual non-consensual sex. Hell yeah, I get angry about sexual abuse, and it hurts to think about it. Hell yeah, it kills me to think about sex workers who are trafficked or abused or desperate, who don’t get into the industry willingly (unlike so many sex workers I know who freely chose, who enjoy their jobs). And this quotation, its worries about cultural masculinity and sexual power dynamics, most reminds me of the unease I once felt so terribly about my own S&M sexuality. Unease that still surfaces sometimes, somehow, against my will. Surfaces, for example, when I hear about tragic cases like abusive relationships that masquerade as BDSM relationships.

How to reconcile being an S&M submissive?

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I Can Never Tell

This guest post is by Thomas MacAulay Millar, feminist, kinkster, litigator and essayist. He blogs regularly at The Yes Means Yes Blog and is a frequent contributor to Feministe.

I don’t buy porn from any of the big companies that make BDSM porn. It’s not that I have a problem with consenting adults making depictions of sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of arousing viewers. In concept, I’m a fan of some writers who also make porn, and I’m friends with a few people who make or have made porn. And when it’s my friends, I’ll watch as much of it as I can get, because I have some certainty about what kind of experience they had.

But when the producer is some big company far away and I don’t know any of the people involved, how would I know if the bottom’s limits were negotiated and respected? If the bottom had a good experience? I recently posted about the Bagley abuse case in Missouri, where a woman was kidnapped for years and raped and abused, in a relationship that had all the underlying dynamics of a near-terminal domestic battering case. She ended up on the cover of a mainstream porn magazine with a BDSM theme. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that that’s a fluke. How common are those flukes? I have no way of knowing.

It has become common in BDSM-themed porn to give post-scene interviews of the bottom, or of the top and bottom together, and the bottoms always seem to say they had a great time and would do it again. They never had a tough time. They never felt the experience was mixed. They never say that and even if they are glad they did it, they probably won’t do it again. They never felt stressed and at sea. I’m not even talking about having been forced beyond their boundaries; that’s rape. I’m talking about normal emotional processing that sometimes goes with a hard scene. I’ve been in the “that was tough, and I’m glad I did it but I may not want to do it again” place with certain activities. And a month later I’ve been in the “I remember how hard that was, but I want to do it again” place. What we do pushes our physical and emotional boundaries, and that’s part of the point. But the interviews I’ve seen are just about all sunshine.

Clarisse Thorn interviewed Tim Woodman, who works in that industry niche. Here’s what he says about the interviews:

I know too many models who have been paid “hush money” to keep quiet about their injuries at the larger fetish porn companies. I know too many who have had their paychecks withheld until they do a positive interview. They are forced to lie on camera, telling how they enjoyed it and would do it again, when in fact the opposite was true. I know too many girls who have worked for these larger companies, and when they refused or even objected to activities that were beyond their limits, they were told that they were a “problem girl” and that they would not get much work with an attitude like that.

This kind of business practice is reprehensible. In the BDSM community, if you play like that, word quickly gets around that you are an asshole and are not to be trusted. But in the adult movie business, you can threaten and cajole women by withholding their pay. You can intimidate them by warning that nobody will hire them if they have self-respect, and are unwilling to bend or break their personal limits. That is rape. That is illegal.

[Emphasis in original.]

I’d love to cosign what he says about the BDSM community, but I’ve written before that it doesn’t always work that way. People make excuses for their friends and avoid washing their dirty laundry in public, and the effect is that too often people — and in my experience, too often women — who have been sexually assaulted in scenes are silenced.

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black girls like us

look. i am not abusive to my kid. not even close. and neither is her father.

she is a happy, healthy three year old. she speaks three languages, loves to dance middle eastern style, and explains to strangers that ‘mama is from america’ but she is from bumblebee (the name of her preschool).

but, us american society, history, government is abusive to black children.

and egyptian society and government is abusive to black children. i know this cause i worked with sub saharan african refugees in cairo. i worked with ex child soldiers and teenage sex workers from sudan, refugees from eritrea and ethiopia. they are stuck here in limbo, cairo, legally segregated from the rest of egyptian society, not allowed to attend public schools, hospitals, racially profiled by the police, making 150 dollars a month is a considered a good job, living in ghettos, and struggling to either be repatriated or moved to europe, the usa, or australia.

they have been my teachers, my students, my friends.

some of them are mothers, and many of them didn’t have a real choice in the matter.

a lot of them look like me.

a lot of them don’t have the luxury of child free spaces, because many of them are children, themselves.

i know what abuse is. i grew up with it, day after day, year after year. and there are times when i would rather have my daughter with me at a bar, than with a babysitter that i barely know.

i work really hard so that my daughter knows that she is a person. because it is rare for black girls or women to be allowed to be people, a full fledged person, in this world.

In D.C., New York and San Fran, Carrying a Condom Can Give Cause to Arrest

You’d think this was one of those mythical laws from one of those Puritan colonial states, but it’s not. D.C. police confirm that carrying a condom, while with another person, can contribute to cause to arrest for prostitution.

Making condoms a factor for arrest, discourages prostitutes (or anyone, really) from practicing safe sex — this is especially terrifying news for the District, which has the highest HIV infection rate in the U.S.

Sign the petition to keep condoms from being used as evidence.

Hat tip to Tyler for the link.
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Kate is guest blogging for the week at Feministe. She’s a part-time journalist and a full-time law student. Follow her on twitter @itscompliKATEd.