Welcome to An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Queer/Sex/Worker Liberation

• At your seat there is a piece of paper• On this, please write down what comes to

mind when you hear the words….

• Don’t write your name. This is anonymous!

• We will collect these in a few moments

THIS IS A SAFE SPACE

A big thanks to SWOP- NYC/SWANK for sharing their guidelines with us!

• Confidentiality: What’s shared here stays here, what’s learned here leaves here.

• One Mic • Make Room, Make Noise • Ouch/Oops• If you don’t know - ask!• Speak from the “I”• Please do not record this

presentation. (The slide show with bibliography and notes will be made available)

Some guidelines

What is Sex Work?

sexual acts performed in exchange for money, food, housing, substances, security,

or anything of necessity or value. People engaging in sex work can be of any age,

race, gender, nationality, sexuality, or class, and enter the trade through choice,

coercion, or circumstance.

Who Is A Sex Worker?

• Webcam• Escort/Independent• Profession Dom• Profession Sub• Stripper/ Exotic

Dancer• Outdoor Worker• Pornographic

Performer

FACT vs MYTH1. There are currently 25 beds in the city for sex

workers looking to get out of the life.2. Police MUST tell a someone that he/she is a police

officer.3. Police Officers are allowed to engage in sexual

activity with a sex worker and then arrest them for prostitution.

4. Most sex workers get charged with “Prostitution”5. It is a criminal act to engage in sex work while you

are HIV positive. 6. HIV rates among trans women are the same

regardless of experience in the sex trade.7. The only kind of sex work trans masculine people

do is pornography.

SEX WORK

Work is the opposite of Leisure and something we may prefer not to do,

but get paid for. (Keith Grint, The Sociology of Work)

What is Work?

Universal Labor Rights

• Safe and Healthful Working Conditions

• Right to Organize• Fair Compensation• Freedom from Forced Labor

Criminalization: The High Stakes of A Shadow Economy

• Personal Dilemmas

• Institutional Quagmires

• Bureaucratic Discrepancies

What about Legalization? The Strip Club Model

• Independent contractors pay house fees that are approximately 30-50% of earned profits

• No recourse for substandard facilities

• Still targeted by law enforcement

• Trafficking and coercion still happen within clubs

• “Legalized” only in that it makes it easier for management to exploit workers.

From “Licensed to Pimp” a forthcoming documentary film

about strip clubs.

Legalization Vs.Decriminalization Vs.“The Swedish Model”

• Sex workers and public health experts oppose the Swedish Model – its ‘success’ has been largely misrepresented

• Legalization fails to address material factors and structural inequalities

• Decriminalization is about self-determination as workers

SEX WORK

Sex and Textiles – What’s the Difference?

Image: rights not sewing machines

pssst – it’s the sex!

Sex as Deviance

• “Power is essentially what dictates its law to sex. Which means first of all that sex is placed by power in a binary system: licit and illicit, permitted and forbidden.” (Focualt, The history of Sexauilty p. 83)

• “The pure form of power resides in the function of the legislator; and its mode of action with regard to sex is of a juridico discursive character.” (Focualt, The history of Sexauilty pp83-4)

“In the bars of the late fifties and early sixties where I learned my lesbians ways, whores were a part of our world. We sat on barstools next to each other, we partied together and we made love together. The vice squad controlled our world and we knew there was little difference between who was queer and who was a whore when a raid was on.” (Joan Nestle The Persistent Desire: A Fem/Butch Reader. pp 232)

Sex as Deviance

Discipline of Deviance

• Miscegenation• Anti-Sodomy Laws• Forced Sterilization• Depo-Provera In US Women• Criminalization of BDSM/ Fetish• Abortion Rights• Gay Marriage Rights

Beyond the Vice Squad:Public Health as Surveillance

• The Public Health industrial complex maintains a careful gaze on sex workers –“Risk Groups” are treated like

agents of disease–Compulsory Testing/ Compulsory

Treatment

• “Evidenced Based” > Lived Experience–Harm reduction measures not

funded–Sex workers are not stakeholders in

their own treatment

Towards a Points of Resistance/ Solidarity/ Alliance

• Intersectionality• Post Identity Politics • Homonormativity• Surveillance &

Criminalization• Queer Liberation • Justice