Join in on Red Umbrella Project’s conversation about Slave Hunter, End Demand policies, and distinctions between sex trafficking and voluntary sex work on Twitter #rightsnotrescue
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Join in on Red Umbrella Project’s conversation about Slave...
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Lesbians Who Eat Their Young on PrettyQueer.comby ELLA...
Cottonmouth simply made Cleis Press nervous. But why?
In June of this year I sent out a story to be considered for Best Lesbian Erotica 2014, a popular anthology put out by Cleis Press. The largest independent queer publisher in the US, Cleis has established itself as the de facto clearinghouse for lesbian erotica. BLE’s call for work had no content constraints, no limits on subject matter, and so I assumed the bottom line was simply whether or not the words on the page had the power to make the clit jump. I could not have imagined the tangled internal politics that would ensue, nor could I have imagined that those politics would culminate in the censorship of my work. The fight with Cleis is emblematic of a broader schism in the queer community, one that calls up all the old questions of assimilation versus liberation.
Read more…
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Suggest a safety or self-care tip for our upcoming anti-violence workshop!
What do you do to feel more safe with clients?
How do handle transphobic violence?
What activity helps you feel calm and safe after work?
Red Umbrella Project wants to know how you practice self-care and keep yourselves safe! On Tuesday, December 10th from 7pm-8:30pm at the Brooklyn Community Pride Center, Red UP and Center for Anti-Violence Education are putting on an Anti-Violence and Resilience Training & Community Gathering. You can learn more about the event on our Facebook page.
While we are pleased to announce that this curriculum was created with the help of people currently or formerly in the sex trades, we believe even our perspectives as a peer led group cannot cover the wide array of experiences of people in the sex trades. That is why we are asking for your help: submit your safety and self-care tips either to our Tumblr, Facebook, or info@redumbrellaproject.org and we will include them in the workshop or the free self-care packages given to each participant.
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sexworkerproblems: Botswana’s blitz on sex workers took off...
Botswana’s blitz on sex workers took off over the weekend with at least 30 women arrested as part of a campaign to curb the influx of sex workers and gays in the southern African country.
.Botswana recently embarked on a campaign that prostitutes will either be detained if they are locals or deported if they are foreigners for their “disorderly and indecent” behaviour.
Acting Botswana Police Services (BPS) public relations officer, Mr Dipheko Motube insists the campaign must be treated like any other operation targeting emerging crime trends. “Sex work, like any other offence, is worrisome in this country.
It’s one of the offences that are prevalent in this country, but we treat it like any other offence,” Mr Motube said.
http://www.nation.co.ke/news/africa/Botswana-starts-purge-against-sex-workers/-/1066/2061984/-/f3so5iz/-/
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“The Cross Border Collective is a Sydney based group that has...
“The Cross Border Collective is a Sydney based group that has been working on projects around race, the border, migration and the state for around two years. In the past, the Cross Border Collective has organised conferences, events, forums, protest and direct action.” Read more about Cross Border Collective activities here.
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theheftyhideaway: petermacc: I actually need this. I never...
I actually need this.
I never noticed that Jan Terri is on this. Aaaaaah! Killing me!
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Issue 3 of Red Umbrella Project’s Prose & Lore: Memoir...
Issue 3 of Red Umbrella Project’s Prose & Lore: Memoir Stories About Sex Work will debut on January 21, 2014. It will be our biggest issue yet, with more than 30 stories - and for the first time, we’re featuring stories by writers from outside of our NYC-based programs.
You can get print and digital subscriptions here or enter our Goodreads giveaway for a chance at winning one of four copies of the book.
Aaaand, we’ll be launching applications for the spring cycle of our memoir workshop in NYC as well as pitches for issue 4 here on January 6th.
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The Soho raids show us the real problem with sex work isn’t the sex – it’s low-waged work itself
The Soho raids show us the real problem with sex work isn’t the sex – it’s low-waged work itself:
Masked Indian sex workers participate in a protest in Bangalore after the alleged gang rape of a prostitute by policemen. Photo: GettyOn 4 December, hundreds of police, some in riot gear, raided more than 25 premises in central London. Under the guise of looking for stolen goods and tackling trafficking and drug dealing, they raided the flats of prostitutes and turned them out on to the street. They invited members of the press to witness them taking women into custody and confiscating their money and possessions, all in the name of “saving” them from a life of prostitution.
Britain is not the only European country taking a tougher line on sex work right now. France has just passed a bill making it illegal to pay for sex, despite protests from prostitutes who say that laws criminalising clients make their work more dangerous, driving it underground. Germany, which has had progressive prostitution laws since 2002, is considering reversing them after a national debate on the issue. At a time when millions of women and girls across the continent are being forced to make hard economic choices – including prostitution – why does the biggest public feminist conversation still revolve around whether or not it is moral to have sex for money and whether doing so should get you locked up and deported?
The public shaming of sex workers has been a feature of the recent years of austerity in Europe. For the press, it’s a spectacle that plays well with readers drawn to a bit of titillated outrage. If you can’t get mugshots of the women, you can illustrate stories with stock photos of disembodied legs in miniskirts and heels, informing readers that this item will make them angry, horny, or both.
The recent raids in Soho were not the first occasion on which journalists and photographers have been invited by the police to cover the story. “What more clear signal do we need that the police are more interested in exposing these women than ‘saving’ them?” asks Melissa Gira Grant, author of the forthcoming book Playing the Whore: the Work of Sex Work. “How is their safety compromised now by these images and their spread online, as well?”
The story that is not being told in pictures of riot police raiding brothels is that the same police are authorised to keep a percentage of the cash they take from prostitutes. Under the Proceeds of Crime Act, money and valuables confiscated from sex workers – including anything set aside for rent, medicine and food for their children – get divvied up between the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the HMRC.
Worse, sex workers who are also migrants often find themselves turned over to the UK Border Agency (UKBA) following these “compassionate” raids. The English Collective of Prostitutes states that, during the recent Soho raids, “Some immigrant women were taken into custody on the pretext that they may be victims of trafficking, despite their protestations that they were not being forced to work.”
If tackling human trafficking is a priority, arresting the alleged victims, taking their money and handing them over to the UKBA seems like an odd way to go about it. Elsewhere, the public shaming of sex workers has a more explicitly political agenda. In Greece in the spring of 2012, the right-wing press ran stories blaming sex workers for the spread of HIV. The infection rate had indeed risen by 60 per cent in just one year – but not because of prostitution. Rather, the surge in infection was a direct result of swingeing cuts to the health budget, including the removal of needle exchange programmes.
We have been here many times before. It was Emma Goldman who first noticed, in 1910, that: “Whenever the public mind is to be diverted from a great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency.” The idea that the dangers and indignities of certain kinds of work can be separated from the economic circumstances of that work is a seductive one but, as Goldman reminds us, “What is really the cause of the trade in women? Not merely white women, but yellow and black women, as well. Exploitation, of course; the merciless Moloch of capitalism that fattens on underpaid labour, thus driving thousands of women and girls into prostitution.”
Most of the public conversation about the rise in sex work in Europe, particularly among poor and migrant women, assumes that it’s a consequence of immoral laws, immoral women, or both. The notion that five years of austerity, rising unemployment and wage repression across the continent might have something to do with it rarely comes up.
Separating prostitution from all other work and driving it underground does not just harm sex workers. It also allows people to imagine that just because they might be serving chips or wiping bottoms rather than having sex for a living, they are somehow preserving their dignity – they may be exhausted, alienated and miserable, but at least they’re not selling sex. Women who work as prostitutes do sometimes face abuse on the job – and so do women who choose to work as night cleaners, contracted carers and waitresses. The truly appalling choice facing millions of women and migrant workers across Europe right now is between low-waged, back-breaking work, when work is available, and destitution.
Even if we accept the shoddily supported notion that most women who choose to work as prostitutes do so because they have been traumatised in childhood, it does not follow that they should be stripped of agency, denied privacy, robbed of their possessions and arrested.
The public shaming of sex workers is a global phenomenon and too much of the media is complicit. The moral crusade against the sex trade, whether it is pursued by the police or by high-profile feminists who have never done sex work, serves the same function that it has always served. The problem with sex work isn’t sex, but work.
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Sex work laws: The New York Times praises France’s new legislation, and gets it wrong.
Sex work laws: The New York Times praises France’s new legislation, and gets it wrong.:
The proposed French law introduces new penalties for activities related to buying and selling sex, only one of which is the highly publicized “fines for johns.” The law is quite broad, and targets many more people who are involved in the sex trade than customers. Internet service providers in France must block websites—including those hosted outside the country—that are believed to violate the new law; this could potentially include sex workers’ own websites. One French MP asserted the law would also permit cybergendarmes to monitor Internet and telecommunications activity related to commercial sex, which sex workers fear could invade their privacy and publicly expose them.
So this is meant to prevent harassment of sex workers, but none of this sounds like it’s going to make their lives any better. Rather than criminalizing prostitution, it would make far more sense to reinforce the safety net so that people do not feel forced to prostitute themselves to make ends meet, and then regulate the rest of the industry so that those who voluntarily provide sex can be safe and healthy.
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Taking the Boom Out of the Boom-Boom Room: Why Are Strip Clubs Banning Rap?
Taking the Boom Out of the Boom-Boom Room: Why Are Strip Clubs Banning Rap?:
Strip clubs and rap go together like peanut and butter and jelly. Why are some clubs banning rap?Gentlemen’s clubs didn’t imitate steakhouses and make stripping “classy” for aesthetic reasons, they did it to increase profits by making them acceptable places to bring expense accounts. Today, expensing champagne rooms is a thing of the past. (The strength of that imagined culturally conservative customer base will show itself sooner or later in accounting ledgers.) A rap-free strip club already feels out of touch. And will soon be about as common a phenomenon as one that only plays ragtime.
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World Leaders: An East Asian Sex Worker Round...
World Leaders: An East Asian Sex Worker Round Table
Participants: Ho Lee Fuk 1, Nada 2, Christian Vega3, and Kate Zen; moderated by Mariko Passion
We at Tits and Sass wanted to run a series on racial fetishization in sex work. We were interested in questions like “What is it like for sex workers of color to labor in an industry where customers’ racist attitudes are often allowed to run rampant and may even be encouraged by management or workers themselves as a way to generate more income?” “How does your race shape the way you create and market your work persona?” “Are there advantages as well as disadvantages to being of color and working in the sex industry?” Mariko took this idea, found four great participants, and ran with it, creating an Asian sex worker round table. We’d also love to hear from non-Asian sex workers of color on their fetishization in the sex trade and how they cope with it, capitalize on it, and rise above it.
What are some racialized marketing techniques you have experimented with in your sex work?
Ho Lee Fuk: My ad did say Asian, and I had a full face pic, but it was both to advertise my race and to warn off clients who weren’t seeking [an] Asian [provider]. Of the great and minor disappointments in life, there’s nothing like getting dim sum when you really want lasagna.
Nada: I just try to be myself, I don’t put ASIAN ASIAN ASIAN everywhere.
Kate Zen: Oh, I market it consciously. Especially here in Quebec, where there are fewer Asians around.
Ho Lee Fuk: There are like four male sex workers in the whole East Bay (location, location, location!), and I was the only Asian. Which meant I didn’t have to compete with these muscle girls with nine inch cocks working in SF. I was kind of the prettiest dish on the knick-knacks table at the church bazaar.
[Read More]
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From Prison CultureOne Billion Rising, Eve Ensler and the...
From Prison Culture
One Billion Rising, Eve Ensler and the Contradictions of Carceral Feminism(s)
...Ensler’s language basically masks a Western Liberal project of “giving voice” to the oppressed. But as Arundhati Roy has said, “We know of course there’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.” Millions of women across the Globe are and have been organizing for their own liberation. They’ve used their voices for that. Even if the formulation of ‘giving voice’ wasn’t problematic on its face, we should be troubled that Ensler et al. seek to ‘give voice’ to incarcerated women, for example, without offering a substantive critique of the prison itself as violence.
Even within a supposed critique of prisons as sites of sexual and physical violence, the prison is still positioned by Ensler as inevitable and immutable. There is no acknowledgement that prisons are violence in and of themselves. There’s no mention in the campaign recently promoted that women who use violence against their perpetrators often find themselves trapped within these same prisons. It’s as if they are invisible in the campaign. Are they not prisoners too then? Are they not survivors of violence too? What this underscores is that One Billion Rising’s analysis of the sources of violence in people’s lives is too uncomplicated.
[Read More]
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No men grow up on the wrong porn. They grow up on porn that...
No men grow up on the wrong porn. They grow up on porn that dehumanizes and objectifies women, especially trans women and women of color. Porn can be a healthy sexual practice if we understand that it is staged and support porn made ethically that portrays all people as human beings. -Emma C.
From Huffingtonpost
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Also in Whorephobia...
Also in Whorephobia...:
“Canada is currently in a position to take a nuanced and progressive approach with regard to prostitution law, as France has done.”
^^^ This is utterly untrue. I suggest y’all read the following:
- The rollout of France’s new prostitution law that further criminalizes sex workers was…
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Grin and Bare It All: Against Liberal Conceptions of Sex Work | anarchistnews dot org
Grin and Bare It All: Against Liberal Conceptions of Sex Work | anarchistnews dot org:
The logic of “saving” women (savior rhetoric tends to ignore people who aren’t women) from performing this kind of marginalized labor is a direct legacy of the emerging middle-class social-working women of Victorian England and their contemporaries in the US. Rarely discussed is the classist, coercive, and hypocritical history of women’s entry into the “caring professions”—particularly with regards to the construction of the “prostitute” as a particular subject in need of saving, reforming, and steering into respectable middle-class life by “benevolent” ladies during the “rise of the social” of the late 19th century.
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fairydust: Sex worker gets murderedSociety: “She deserved it” Sex worker gets raped"She deserved...
Sex worker gets murdered
Society: “She deserved it”Sex worker gets raped
"She deserved it"Sex worker gets outed
"She deserved it"Sex worker loses her straight job
"She deserved it"Sex worker loses her children
"She deserved it"Sex worker makes millions
"omg ew what a lazy gold digger"
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Sex Work & Serenity
Sex Work & Serenity:
Right off the bat, I’m going to say that I am not a member of the Joss Whedon fan club. “But he’s soooooo feminist and has complex female characters and he totally wrote a really positive sex worke…I tried to pick a quote from this, but couldn’t because there are so many good points. Read it.
-SW3
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THAT'S NOT EMPOWERING!!!!
THAT'S NOT EMPOWERING!!!!:
"I believe sex work should be decriminalized."
"DID YOU KNOW that sex work isn’t empowering? AND DID YOU KNOW that most sex workers hate their jobs?"
"I never said it was. I just think people deserve rights and respect regardless of how much they like their jobs."
"Silly sex pozzie! SEX WORK…
Ugh. This conversation.
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Nice to see a journalist pointing out the true cause of child...
Nice to see a journalist pointing out the true cause of child prostitution: economic disparity and colonialism. From 4 News:
The social price of gold: child prostitution
Since the price of gold nearly doubled five years ago, thousands of illegal miners have flocked to a remote corner of the Peruvian jungle to take advantage of a once untouched ‘El Dorado’. In a few short years they have not only created a huge environmental problem, but also a tragic social problem: child prostitution.
While gold mining takes place all year around, the most productive months are in the dry season from March to December. During that time hundreds of young Peruvian women arrive in Puerto Maldonado, in Southeastern Peru and its surrounding areas. These are often women dispatched by their families and lured on the false promises of well paid jobs as waitresses, they end up working in one of the regions hundreds of so-called prostibars.
The average prostitute is around 16 years old, but many are as young as 12.
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