I gotta say, I love sex! I mean, what would we do without it? Sex is
the only reason we're all here.
So why, why do we make such a No no about it. And we can't even say
vagina or penis without getting all red faced and flustered. We give
those "special" parts all sorts of cute little private names.
Have you noticed? We talk about all sorts of gross things over
dinner, murder, dead stuff in the garbage can, pus oozing out your
infected finger. All sorts of stuff. But sex? Oh no! Not during
dinner!
But maybe we ought to first learn to talk together with respect and
love. If we do that, sex will just be another conversation.
And if we're going to allow sex to be sold, legally or otherwise, then
let's treat our sex with at least as much care and respect as we do
our new car, or the 70 inch TV. Taken good care of, and you'll get
many, many years of quality use from it.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/4/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I wonder how Chris Hedges would respond to this article, given his stance
on
prostitution.
Miriam
Decriminalizing Sex Work Is a Matter of Survival
Sex worker rights are tied to racial and gender justice, which is why
D.C.'s
decriminalization bill is crucial.
Sex worker rights are tied to racial and gender justice, which is why
D.C.'s
decriminalization bill is crucial.
Lauren Walker / Truthout
By Jordan N. DeLoach, TruthoutPublished March 2, 2019
In the summer of 2018, after more than a decade of housing instability,
Nona
Conner was facing homelessness again. She'd been evicted from the apartment
she was staying in. Anxious to find another place to live, she restarted
her
old GoFundMe, titled "Black Transwoman Housing Crisis," to get the money
together.
She was relieved when there were enough donations for a security deposit
and
one month's rent. It took her three months to raise it all. In the
meantime,
she'd been sleeping on friends' couches, renting hotel rooms, and spending
as much time as possible at her jobat Collective Action for Safe
Spaces(CASS), a grassroots organization where she works with queer, trans
and gender nonconforming people of color to access jobs and job skills
during the day.
Before working at CASS, steady employment evaded Nona's grasp nearly as
much
as steady housing. Born and raised in Southeast Washington, D.C., Nona was
15 when she ran away from a physically, verbally and emotionally abusive
home. She went downtown to K Street and started selling sex to make ends
meet.
"I tried getting several jobs. I would call there, sounding like a woman,
and introduce myself as Bri - I went by Bri before I legally changed my
name
to Nona - but then I'd get there in person and they'd see that the name on
my resume and the way that I looked didn't match up with what was on my
ID,"
Nona said. "They'd go on with the interview for one or two minutes, say
they'd give me a call. But I knew what they meant."
"It was their bias," Nona continued. "I'm gonna call it like it is."
Never miss another story
Get the news you want, delivered to your inbox every day.
Your Email
Many sex workers in D.C. are survival sex workers like Nona - people who
engage in sex work in order to survive or to supplement low incomes,
especially after having limited options. Because racism, sexism,
transphobia, homophobia, and other forms of oppression marginalize people
from accessing housing and employment, many survival sex workers are Black
and Brown women, queer, trans and gender nonconforming people. Many sex
workers are also disabled peoplewho experience employment and housing
discrimination. For people with disabilities, sex work can sometimes offer
more flexibility than other trades. Some are immigrants who don't have the
documentation required to get other jobs.
These societal and economic barriers influence many people to go into sex
work (as well as other occupations that mainstream society stigmatizes as
"undesirable,"such as low-wage domestic work, service work and manual
labor). "There are a lot of obstacles that stand in the way of getting a
job," Nona said. "Just being trans alone, being African American alone,
makes it hard."
Nona's experiences inspire her to fight to decriminalize sex work and
support people in the sex trade. As an organizerin the DECRIMNOW campaign
in
D.C., she works to remove the criminal penalties from the selling and
buying
of sex, and to increase access to resources like housing, health care and
education that would help keep people in the sex trade safe.
Some cops would use the mere fact that someone was carrying a certain
number
of condoms as a reason to make them leave a public space or face arrest.
The DECRIMNOW campaign started as an effort by the Sex Workers' Advocates
Coalition (SWAC), a network of organizations in D.C. that worked with D.C.
Councilmember David Grosso to introduce the Promoting Public Safety and
Health by Reducing Criminalization Amendment Actin the D.C. City Council in
the fall of 2017 as an effort to decriminalize sex workin the district.
Nona
and other organizers canvassed and petitioned throughout 2018 to try to get
D.C. City Council to bring the bill to a hearing. Although the Council
didn't bring the bill to a hearing last year, sex workers and their allies
still have faith. SWAC plans to rewrite and reintroduce the bill in 2019.
The new iteration will include even more measures to address vulnerability
to ensure that everyone is safe and supported in making decisions that help
them survive and thrive - regardless of gender identity, race, color,
sexuality, ability, religion or nationality.
Nona believes that people shouldn't be criminalized and punished for doing
what they need to do to live, especially since a significant number of
survival sex workers turn to the sex trade to escapeabusive situations.
"When I was 15, I went into my momma's purse, took $20, and went to K
Street
to start working. I was finally free from the abuse," Nona said. "I was
around people who were like me. They'd been through abuse and that's why
they were there, too." Nona ended up working on the street for around 15
years, and she grew close with the other women along the strip. She said it
was like a sisterhood.
Engaging in sex work helped Nona pay for food each night. It helped her
find
places to stay. It helped her find people she could connect with and depend
on. She believes that sex work is anyone's right to do, even though she
doesn't like doing it. "Personally, I hope I don't do it again," Nona said,
"but I'll do what I have to do."
While some sex workers love their jobs, other sex workers - especially
those
who do sex work for survival after being denied access to other resources -
don't enjoy it at all. Like many jobs, the trade is just a way to get by.
Because our society stigmatizes Black and Brown trans people and sex
workersas less than human, as "criminals," as "deviants," and as deserving
of harm, many face hard times in the sex industry. According to the
Collective Action for Safe Spaces 2015 Trans Needs Assessment Reportthat
collected data from around 500 trans people in D.C., up to 54 percent of
Black respondents and 60 percent of Latinx respondents had experienced
violence and assault in their lives, and around 30 percent of Black and
Latinx trans feminine people in the assessment had been denied housing.
Twenty percent of respondents were currently experiencing homelessness, and
of those respondents, half reported that they turned to underground
economies like sex work to make ends meet.
As a survival sex worker, being in jail for even a few days could thrust
you
into homelessness.
"When I left home, it felt like a door opened and the whole world said,
'You
about to see what you're gonna get a taste of, just be prepared!' And I
wasn't. I wasn't ready by a long shot." Nona described what it was like for
her as a Black trans teenager in the 1990s, fleeing an abusive family to
sell sex along one of downtown D.C.'s busiest streets. "I wasn't ready to
be
robbed, cheated by dates, stranded on highways, have weapons pulled on me.
But that's what I had to deal with," Nona said. "At that time, there were
no
other options."
What feeds and compounds this harm is the criminalizationand policingof sex
workers and people profiled as sex workers. People who engage in sex work
aren't offered the same protections as others, and when harms do occur,
they
don't feel safe reaching out for help due to the threat of discrimination,
arrest and police brutality.
Treating sex workers punitively fails to address the material needs they
have that motivate them to enter the sex trade.
Police can be particularly brutal toward people in the sex trade,
especially
Black and Brown women, queer and trans sex workers. A meta-analysis
published in December 2018reviewed nearly 140 studies about sex work from
January 1990 to May 2018 from around the world and concluded that there was
a strong association between policing of sex work and increased risk of
violence, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections for people in the
sex trade. In the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, nearly 90 percent of
respondents who were in the sex trade said that they had been harassed and
abused by police, and 27 percent of respondents in the sex trade who'd had
an interaction with the police had been sexually assaulted by an officer.
In
New York City between 2012 and 2015, a study found that while Black and
Latinx people comprised only 54 percent of the city's population, they
comprised 85 percent of the people arrested for loitering for prostitution.
A 2014 studydiscovered that Black women in several cities in North Carolina
were arrested for prostitution-related charges at two to three times their
percentage of the population. In a 2008 surveyof sex workers in D.C., of
the
sex workers surveyed who'd had an encounter with police, 38 percent were
verbally abused and humiliated by an officer, and 17 percent had been
propositioned for sex.
Police in D.C. frequently profile Black and Brown trans and cis women and
gender nonconforming people as sex workers, and the law allows them to
unfairly target and arrest people in these communities. This targeting
surged in the city after the passing of D.C.'s Prostitution-Free Zone lawin
2006, which allowed the Metropolitan Police Department to label certain
areas as "prostitution-free" to increase surveillance and arrests. Many sex
workers and Black and Brown trans and cis women, queer and gender
nonconforming people reported that officers would profile them and
confiscate their condoms, contributing to the lack of health and safety
that
people in the sex trade, and broader communities, experience. Some cops
would use the mere fact that someone was carrying a certain number of
condoms as a reason to make them leave a public space or face arrest.
When sex workers give resources to someone who is being trafficked to help
them, they can be accused of facilitating trafficking.
The Prostitution-Free Zone law was repealed in 2014 after intense
organizing
efforts from several trans and sex workers' rights groups, but the general
stigma and criminalization that bred the law in the first place continues.
In the summer of 2014 in neighboring Prince George's County, Maryland,
police officers announced with excitement that they would live-tweet a
prostitution sting, including the names and photos of the "suspects." D.C.
police arrested more than 50 clientsin one month during the summer of 2015.
In the winter of 2018, two trans street-based sex workers reported that
officers in both D.C. and Prince George's County were using the threat of
arrest to coerce them, and other sex workers, into having sex.
Nona has had countless experiences with police; working on K Street for
years gave her firsthand knowledge of police and criminalization dynamics.
"A few of the officers were nice and would warn us about upcoming stings.
They'd tell us to hide out, because for the next few hours they'd be
locking
people up on sight," Nona said. "But lots of officers were assholes. They
didn't read you your rights, wouldn't tell you what was going on. They just
locked you up. They roughed you up, called you 'he' and disgusting names.
It
was horrible."
Stings and arrests don't help people in the sex trade; instead, they make
life infinitely harder. When sex workers have criminal records, they face
more barriers to employment and housing. Many landlords will refuseto house
tenants with any criminal background despite the knowledge that this
disproportionately affects Black and Brown people, who are treated unfairly
in the criminal legal system. The same often happens with employers.
Even arrests where the charges are dropped can have devastating effects on
someone's life. As a survival sex worker, being arrested means you can't
make money. When you are living paycheck to paycheck, living in hotel
rooms,
or otherwise need your money immediately, being in jail for even a few days
could thrust you into homelessness. That's not to mention those who have to
stay in jail because they can't afford bail, or people who put everything
they have on bail and end up with nothing left when they're released. This
system of criminalization, policing and incarceration makes it hard for
Black and Brown trans, queer and gender nonconforming people to be safe and
have their needs met.
Nona knows this well: She's been arrested several times. For her, surviving
life's circumstances sometimes felt like treading in quicksand. She didn't
have a safe home because of familial abuse, so she ran away. She couldn't
get a job or a home because she was Black and trans, so she did sex work
and
hustled to survive. She started getting arrested for surviving, leading to
a
criminal history, which made it even more difficult for her to get a job
and
a home. She had to rely on sex work even more to make ends meet. The
quicksand thickened.
"There are things I need to get for myself. I need food, I need shoes, I
need a heater for my apartment. These things cost money," Nona said. "I've
gone to sell sex to make some money, risking my freedom just so I could eat
that night."
Since so many survival sex workers enter the sex industry because they had
few to no other options to make a living, treating them punitively fails to
address the material needs they have that motivate them to enter the sex
trade. And while some people are starting to understand the harms of
criminalizing sex work, some worry that decriminalizing sex work would have
unintended consequences of harming victims of sex trafficking. Even though
sex work and sex trafficking are unique issues, criminalizing and
stigmatizing sex work harms both groupsby creating more dangerous
situations
in the sex industry and by discouraging people in the sex trade from
speaking up about various abuses and harms.
A key difference between sex work and sex trafficking is that sex work is
consensual, while sex trafficking is non-consensual or coerced. Sex workers
should have autonomy over their bodies and how they use their labor. Since
sex workers are immersed in the industry, they're among the most likely to
know who in the trade is being coerced, abused or exploited. However, due
to
the threat of arrest and police abuse, sex workers aren't able to work with
the appropriate agencies to ensure that victims of trafficking can get
help.
And when sex workers give resources to someone who is being trafficked to
help them, like money or a place to stay, they can be accused of
facilitating trafficking. Sex workers are also not able to report harms
that
they themselves experience - harms like rape, theft, stalking and attacks -
because of the very real threat of police abuse and harassment.
The conflation of sex work and sex trafficking is not only dangerous for
both groups- evidence shows that sex work criminalization in D.C. does
little to address trafficking at all. According to D.C. police records, of
the 2,582 prostitution-related arrests that police made between 2013 and
2017, only seven involved trafficking.
While sex work and sex trafficking are different, both the fight to
decriminalize sex work and the fight to end sex trafficking should address
poverty, homelessness and community if the goal is to keep everyone safe,
supported and free from exploitation. Everyone needs a safe place to call
home. Stories like Nona's tell us this. The statistics tell us this. Sex
workers (and those profiled as sex workers) have been telling us this for
decades. Until we recognize the need to listen to sex workers,
decriminalize
sex work, and provide money and resources to those who need it the most,
people like Nona will continue to be harmed.
Even though Nona is relieved to have a roof over her head - she's currently
renting out a living room in a house with a few other trans women - she
continues to struggle financially. The hotel rooms were expensive.
Transportation is expensive. Health care is expensive. The latter has been
particularly costly for Nona lately: she's still recovering physically and
mentally from being stabbed nearly 50 times in 2017. Still, Nona is
hopeful.
"I recently started full-time at my job at CASS," Nona said, her speech
gaining speed with excitement. "I could get an even better position there
once I'm stably housed." Although she loves the community she has with her
roommates, she still dreams of having a space of her own one day. "I'd love
to be stably housed. When I can wake up in the morning with energy and no
worry."
Nona believes that the day will come. The signs are all there. Her job,
where she gets to flex one of her many talents - bartending - taps into her
passions. The trans women she lives with, who play music, sing and dance
around her, provide her with community. The messages of support that filter
through her GoFundMe make her feel cared for. And being able to work with
and advocate for trans women of color, people who do street-based sex work,
and abuse survivors gives her hope. Similar to the hope that the trans
girls
on K Street gave her the night she ran away from home, all those years ago,
when she was just a 15-year-old Black trans girl with $20 to her name,
searching for a place where she'd be loved and accepted for who she is. A
place where she'd feel safe.
"I'd love that," Nona said. "I just really need help."
