Bound, Not Gagged

This is a post from Cyd Nova over at Pretty Queer

I am finding my ideals located in awkward places during this odd, Saturn’s Return-esque moment of my life. Specifically, I’m finding myself doing activism around or advocating ideas that directly counter what I would have done in my early 20’s.

This came up for me while reading Sadie’s very smart piece Un-Money Shots: The Top 5 Porn Moments You Don’t See. She wrote about those pesky mundanities of porn life that the viewer is shielded from, one of which is the condom application scene.

Talking about the ‘moral responsibilities of the porn industry’ comes dangerously close to another issue currently tearing up the porno landscape — the banning of condomless porn production in California.

Now, I totally agree that in porn where protected sex is displayed, the inclusion of a ‘putting on the condom’ scene would be fantastic. The ‘I Dream of Jeanie’ esque eyelid blink appearance of a condom is childish. Sex workers, with our glamour and grace, do have the skills to eroticize acts previously thought unappealing — from a dick check to double penetration. Putting on a condom should be one of those acts. However, talking about the ‘moral responsibilities of the porn industry’ comes dangerously close to another issue currently tearing up the porno landscape — the banning of condomless porn production in California.

I’m an HIV educator and an AIDS activist, as well as being a sex worker who has done porn as both a cis-woman and a trans man. I am not unaware that my preaching against condom usage seems suspect, considering my background. But bear with me while I tell you the sordid tale of AIDS Healthcare Foundation VS The LA Porn industry and why it is this side of the fence that I stand on.

Read full post.

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For Immediate Release
Contact: Stacey Swimme
Communications@StJamesInfirmary.org
(877) 776‐2004 x. 2

Sienna Baskin, Esq.

SBaskin@urbanjustice.org

(646) 602-5695

BREAKING:  U.S. ACKNOWLEDGES HUMAN RIGHTS NEEDS OF SEX WORKERS

At UN, US Says No one Should Face Discrimination For Public Services, Including Sex Workers

March 9th, 2011- According to their statement in response to the UN’s human rights evaluation, the US agrees that “…no one should face violence or discrimination in access to public services based on sexual orientation or their status as a person in prostitution.” This marks a rare occasion in which the US is addressing the needs of sex workers as a distinct issue separate from human trafficking. Sex workers have unique needs that aren’t adequately addressed by federal trafficking policy. Sex workers are hopeful that this will present a new opportunity to work with anti-trafficking efforts to address mutual human rights concerns.

“People in the sex trade have been marginalized and stigmatized when seeking public services, including through law enforcement. This is a big step forward to acknowledging sex workers’ human rights.” Kelli Dorsey, Executive Director of Different Avenues said.

Over the past year sex workers and their families, sex workers’ rights groups, human rights advocates, and academic researchers have engaged in an unprecedented advocacy collaboration. “It has been crucial to bring together the perspectives of a wide range of communities including immigrant and LGBT groups in order to illustrate the depth of human rights violations experienced by sex workers in the United States,” says Penelope Saunders, Coordinator of the Best Practices Policy Project, who worked with the Desiree Alliance to send a shadow report to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). These initial efforts resulted in Recommendation 86 and the formation of a group called Human Rights For All: Concerned Advocates for the Rights of Sex Workers and People in the Sex Trade (HRA).

HRA had support from more than 125 organizations in urging law makers to accept Recommendation #86, part of the report of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which called on the US to look into the special vulnerability of sex workers to violence and human rights abuses. “We were long overdue for the United States to take the needs of sex workers seriously, particularly the need to stem violence and discrimination,” says attorney Sienna Baskin, Co-Director of Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York.

“Human beings cannot be excluded from accesible services because they work in economies outside of society’s accepted norms,” explains Cristine Sardina, co-director, Desiree Alliance.  “The fact that the U.S. has acknowledged the recommendation in full speaks to the current administration’s willingness to recognize the abuses sex workers have been subjected to for too long.  We look forward to working with this administration”.

Sex workers say the issues they face are complex and more work will have to be done to protect against human rights abuses. “Sex workers who are transgender or people of color face the most violence and it’s important that we continue to realize and work towards ending that, this is a good first step.” Said Tara Sawyer, who sits on the Board of Directors of the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA.

On Friday March 18th Sex Workers will stage demonstrations in cities across the country to celebrate adoption of Recommendation #86. “The U.S. has finally acknowledged that sex workers face issues separate from those of human trafficking victms,” said Natalie Brewster Nguyen, an artist and member of the Sex Workers Outreach Project of Tucson who is organizing the demonstrations on the 18th, ”Now we need to demand that steps be taken to address the issues that will actually improve the daily lives of sex workers.”

For more information on this story or the upcoming March 18th demonstrations, please contact Stacey Swimme at Communications@StJamesInfirmary.org or (877) 776-2004 x. 2

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For Immediate Release

Sex Workers Outreach Project Calls on Vallejo to Embrace Alternative Approaches to Prostitution Concerns

Contact: Robyn Few, Co-Founder
Sex Workers Outreach Project USA (SWOPUSA)
415-895-1500
swopusa@yahoo.com

March 3rd 2011 is International Sex Workers’ Rights Day. Around the globe sex workers and allies are celebrating the strength and resilience of their communities. Locally, the Sex Workers’ Outreach Project of the San Francisco Bay Area (SWOPSF) is calling on Vallejo to proceed with compassion and justice while addressing  recent concerns of residents who object to a visible increase of prostitution activities in their neighborhoods.

“Prostitution crackdowns just push sex workers from one city to the next, the problem is not being solved, people are simply being displaced.” Says Robyn Few, co-founder of SWOPUSA. “Community groups would do better to look at economic empowerment approaches rather than shame and hatred.”

We must look at the conditions that put people into street economies in the first place. Economic disadvantage, inadequate employment and educational opportunities lock people into the sex trade, whether by choice or circumstance or a combination of the two. “If you want prostitutes off of your streets, then support viable economic alternatives, not arrest or incarceration which impose further economic and life hardships,” Shannon Williams of SWOPSF said, “Spraying people with hoses is not only inhumane and dehumanizing, it’s ineffective and sends a message that violence toward sex workers is acceptable.”

Women are hit the hardest by economic recession, resulting in more of them entering the sex industry. Many turn to private venues, but online sites such as Craigslist Adult Services have been shut down, forcing people to seek business in open-air black markets. Federal anti-trafficking efforts that have been misdirected into prostitution abatement efforts have worked to censor sex workers, removing safer and more private ways of doing business.

Few says, “It’s time to come up with new solutions. Arrest, incarceration and shame have not succeeded in curbing prostitution in any city anywhere else. Don’t expect these tactics to solve any of Vallejo’s problems either.”

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: SWOP LV at info@swop-lv.org

The Sex Workers Outreach Project, Las Vegas denounces Senator Reid’s call to close down the legal prostitution businesses in Nevada. This move would put over a thousand people out of a job in the hopes of possibly attracting new businesses to Nevada who allegedly stay away because of the brothels.

“To begin with, it’s just insanity in this economy to even suggest putting so many people out of work,” said Susan Lopez, founder of SWOP Las Vegas. “Where will these women go for jobs once their livelihoods are destroyed? Does Senator Reid honestly believe that it will be easy for prostitutes to find jobs in those businesses he hopes to attract? Does he really wish to destroy these peoples’ lives in this way? This is just political posturing on the backs of real, working women with real livelihoods at stake. Will Senator Reid promise to hire all the women who will be put out of their jobs at equivalent wage rates?”

“Nevada’s brothels are safer places than the streets for selling sex,” said Dr. Barb Brents, sociology professor at UNLV. “Brothels can actually help fight trafficking. Furthermore, prostitution still exists in the 49 states where prostitution is illegal. Outlawing brothels will send hundreds of women into the already huge black market, where safety, labor rights, and access to services will become issues.”

Tessa Joy, a Nevada brothel worker and voter, says, “Harry Reid needs to listen to the voices of the sex workers who depend on their jobs in the Nevada brothel system to make a living; to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. As somebody who claims to be so concerned about creating more jobs in Nevada, it’s very hypocritical for Harry Reid to try to put more of us out of work for making a legitimate living. This is going to take away the only legal way that sex workers in prostitution can work in the United States and the results will be tragic in terms of both our livelihoods and our safety. I’ve never tried to put Harry Reid out of work, so he has no business trying to put me out of work either.”

Brothels bring in much-needed revenue to the rural counties in which they operate, helping to fund public services such as firefighters, police, schools and more. Lopez says, “Scapegoating the brothels as being responsible for the bad economy is both disingenuous and dangerous. There is no guarantee other businesses will move to Nevada even if the brothels are eliminated, and if these businesses have issues with prostitution, who is to say they won’t have issues with gambling as well? Are the casinos next on Harry’s chopping block?”

Lisa Mellott, co-director of SWOP Las Vegas and social justice activist, says, “It’s ironic that Senator Reid would single out the brothels as keeping businesses away. Las Vegas’s entire economy is based on being an adult playground. Wouldn’t that keep those same businesses away?”

“Contrary to Senator Reid’s sentiment that the brothels are a throw-back to the Wild West, Nevada prostitution policy is more in step with the rest of the world than the rest of the US. Other countries across the globe are increasingly decriminalizing prostitution, as it allows the state to more easily address harms and grant sex workers rights,” says Dr. Brents.

Jenny Heineman, a co-director of SWOP Las Vegas and a Nevada resident who voted for Reid, is outraged at his proposition to “take away [her] sisters’ jobs.” She says, “I am a tax payer, a PhD student at UNLV, a sex worker, and an advocate for human rights. As my representative, I demand that he turns his attention to the real inequities suffered by Nevadans: namely the lack of revenue to support our education system. Stop screwing us for free!”

SWOP Las Vegas will fight for the rights of brothels to operate here in Nevada- the only place in America where women truly have the right to choose sex work.

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In solidarity with our friends at APNSW and Sex Workers around the world we share: “Bad Rehab”

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Tomorrow, November 5, 2010, the United States will be reviewed as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. The session can be viewed online as a webcast.

The UPR is a relatively new way to address human rights in UN member nations. During the review session, other countries will ask questions about the overall human rights record in the U.S. and propose recommendations that the government will need to respond to over the next three months. This review is a historic occasion because the U.S. has agreed to submit itself to assessment by other countries in the UN setting – something this country rarely does.

In preparation for the upcoming review, advocates for the rights of sex workers consulted with networks and organizations working with sex workers, people in the sex trade and people who are affected by anti-prostitution policies in the United States more generally. Drawing on these perspectives, the Best Practices Policy Project, in collaboration with Desiree Alliance and the Sexual Rights Initiative, drafted a comprehensive national statement http://www.bestpracticespolicy.org/downloads/FinalUPRBPPP_Formatted.pdf that describes the ways in which stigmatization and criminalization of sex workers in the United States result in widespread violations of civil and human rights. These abuses are rampant in working class, majority African-American and Latino, and urban communities. Arrests for sex work can lead to a cycle of continued exclusion from housing, marginalization from formal employment, and re-imprisonment. Furthermore, law enforcement officers frequently commit physical and sexual violence against sex workers, while simultaneously failing to recognize that sex workers can be victims of crime, denying justice or support to sex workers who seek their help.

Two representatives from the Best Practices Policy Project are currently in Geneva presenting summary recommendations to diplomatic delegations and encouraging countries to ask the United States questions about its human rights record with respect to sex workers and other communities affected by the policing of sexual exchange. While few countries are prepared to be outspoken in defense of sex worker rights, the activists on the ground report some encouraging conversations with country delegations, and remain hopeful that this will be the first time sex worker concerns are raised within the UPR milieu.

Summary recommendations being shared with country delegates are that the United States should:

Implement comprehensive criminal justice reform that includes measures to stop human rights abuses committed in the name of anti-sex trade laws. This would include repealing laws, including laws against prostitution-related offenses, and eliminate policies, such as “prostitution free zones”, that erode legal protections barring law enforcement from detaining individuals on the basis of how they are perceived or the way they are dressed (ie racial and gender profiling). The application of felony-level charges against sex workers and people living with HIV should be halted as should sex offender registration requirements of those arrested for engaging in prostitution. Criminal justice reform must also address the frequency of abuse of sex workers, or those perceived as such, by law enforcement and other state actors. Similarly, reform must ensure that people involved in the sex trade or profiled as such receive appropriate responses from authorities when they are targeted for violence and other crimes.

Ensure health care access for those engaged, or perceived to be engaged, in sex work and the sex trade. In many jurisdictions in the United States condoms are used as evidence of criminal activity in the enforcement of anti-prostitution laws. Individuals involved in street economies face tremendous stigmatization in health care settings. Sex workers urgently need access to health care services including harm reduction oriented programs, which often are prohibited from receiving federal funding.

Reorient national anti-trafficking policy to a rights-based framework and repeal the US governments “anti-prostitution pledge” requirement on foreign aid. Migrants involved in the sex trade who experience exploitation require services and legal support, but the response to human trafficking in the U.S. currently focuses on law enforcement approaches that alienate and traumatize victims. U.S. anti-trafficking policies and practices undermine the health and rights of sex workers domestically and internationally, including requiring recipients of HIV and anti-trafficking funding to adopt a stance condemning sex work. These requirements should be repealed.

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