I’m lovin’ it

I’m at a new brothel *right now* borrowing the computer of this lovely young kenyan woman beside me. I just met one of the most mind blowing
clients ever. Y’know why? Because he’s a friendly young migrant to Australia (he’s Indian Sikh) who loves his job at mcDonalds. Seriously. I asked why and he raved about how much he loved the friendly competition between the two food prep teams and frying burgers. Like, the guy actually really loves to fry and prep burgers for $16/hour. Amazing. And people can’t believe I like *my* job!

I dedicate my heart: on violence against sex workers and privilege

(This was written for and read at an event my friend K and I organized to mark International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers in Sydney, Australia)

I wanted to mark International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers because late one night about two months ago I was in a bathroom in Newcastle and something reminded me of how I’d become a sex work activist.Sitting on the toilet seat, in the very still of the night after all the parties had ended, I began cry quietly so I wouldn’t wake the folks sleeping outside in the living room. My crying turned into sobbing. What made me a sex work activist are the 59 victims of serial sex work killer Robert Pickton.

I was walking down the street in Vancouver’s downtown east side one night. It was late summer, early fall and I had flown across the country for my yearly visit with my family. At that point my sister had been stripping and doing a bit of porn for about 6 or 7 years, ever since shortly after she’d given birth to her son. As I walked through the neighborhood notorious for having the highest rates of violence, poverty, needle use and HIV in Canada, I spotted a poster on a telephone pole with the pictures of dozens of women on it. It read: 32 Missing Women.

I stopped in shock. 32?! How had I not heard about this mass disappearance? I read the poster more carefully. The women were all from Vancouver’s downtown eastside. They were described as sex workers and drug users and many were first nations women. And they were all gone.

I looked at the dates when they were last seen. They’d been disappearing for years–over a decade.The poster had not been created by a special task force or the police. It was a home made poster made by a grassroots community group trying to find out where or what happened to these women.

Three thoughts raced across my mind:

1.Why hadn’t the media informed us that this was happening?

2. Why were the police not involved in the community appeal to find these women?

3. If this could happen to these women and no one noticed, what could happen to my sister?

I felt a shiver of terror run thru my veins. If she disappeared from the club on the way home one night, would anyone but us notice or care because she is just another single mom stripper with a mixed race kid?

Because these women—poor, sex workers, first nations women and drug users–were not reported on and their lives were not deemed worthy of police attention, and because maybe no one would care if my sister disappeared one night, i became a sex work activist that day. At the end of my visit, I flew back to Toronto, found a sex work advocacy group and promptly joined.

I joined because in that moment I realized that those in power don’t fucking care about us, about the women in my family. I knew they didn’t care about us when we were on welfare and couldn’t always afford to keep the heat on, had to move every year and I couldn’t afford lunch some days. When my mother was sexually harassed at work and my friends and I were violently sexually harassed in school. But that day I realized that with one false move, people might stop even caring if we lived or died. Because we are whores.

I am the second in 3 generations (that I know of) to have been born out of wedlock—a bastard. Of those 3 generations of fallen women, I was the first not to have a kid by 19. Whether we do sex work or not, we are whores, women with a lot of explaining to do. Women who’s sexuality is used against us every day in housing, policy decisions, on playgrounds and in schools. I remember how fellow passengers would frown at my 17 year old sister as she defiantly dragged her stroller on the bus. When i was a kid, that had been my mother.

I’m here because those women, the 31 which became over 50 and then it’s believed 59, (possibly over 60) before he was finally stopped, could be my family too. Because I think their lives were worth something. Because I can’t stop thinking about the fact that for at least a decade women were shot in the head or injected with windshield washer fluid, dismembered and their bodies fed to pigs on Pickton’s farm.

When the disappearances of these women were finally noted, they were invariably described as living “high-risk lifestyles which included prostitution” This concept of our work as “high risk” has always irritated the fuck out of me. It’s why until recently I felt some ambivalence toward this day because talking about violence against sex workers encourages people to think that i’m crazy to work in such a high risk profession and to completely stereotype my clients, none of whom have ever harmed me. I always cringed when sex work activists condemned the rapes, assaults, robberies and murders of street workers, thinking “but that’s not me. That’s not my experience at all.”

But over dinner one night at the Scarlet Alliance national Forum, an american sex work activist said to me “Dec 17 is where whores up privilege stand up and speak out against violence against those without”.

Suddenly I got it. I am a whore of privilege. Not everyone has my economic and racial privilege, my community support, my citizenship, my access to health care, education and housing, the connections to tell my story to friends, community and even some of my family and be listened to. Those women of Vancouver’s East Side are not here to tell you their stories. I can’t tell them either. But I can rage against their deaths, I can work to create change, I can work to keep it from ever happening again. I can be out, I can tell my story and provide a platform for others.

Sex workers die for our work. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing sex work. Out of the tragedy in Vancouver, came a strong movement to “rescue” women from the streets. I hate that i have to clarify this but because sex work can be dangerous (as can nursing or mining or being an athlete), we do NOT need help exiting or retraining or with our self esteem. We need solidarity and support achieving our own goals of continuing to work how and where and why we want, safely and happily, whether that’s to pay for a habit, rent or college.

It’s for the women who aren’t here today that I’m here. I wanted a space to mourn and to say to each one of those women: You mattered. I care that you disappeared. I think you were worth more than what happened to you. And it’s in your memory that I work. So I dedicate this night, I dedicate my heart my lungs my hands my feet, my brain my eyes my lips my ears to the murdered women of the Downtown Eastside:

To Marlene, Sharon, Angela, Elaine, Sherry, Cindy, Yvonne, Andrea, Heather, Nancy, Wendy, Marcella, Dawn, Sarah, Sheryl, Tiffany, Elaine, Sheila, Cara, Gloria, Cynthia, Jennifer, heather, Catherine, Rebecca, Michelle, Inga, Helen, Ruby, Janet, Tanya, Sherry, Angela, Patricia, Debra, Catherine, Kerry, Marie, Stephanie, Laura, Kellie, Jacqueline, Dianah, Leigh, Jacqueline, Lillian, Tanya, Sherry, Diane, Elsie, Ingrid, Dorothy, Theresa, Sharon, Kathleen, Olivia, Taressa, Frances and Julie.

With love, rage and respect.

–Born Whore