The Trans Women's Anti-Violence Project

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December 17^th is the International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers. It is a day of mourning, but it’s also a moment for allies and friends to show their support for individuals in the sex trade. If you’ve never been involved with December 17^th before, or are considering how you might be an ally to sex workers year round, here’s a list of three ways to be an ally on this very somber, but important day.

1. Listen to the stories of people in the sex trade.

Transactional sex is a complicated and complex world of experiences. There are sex workers who feel incredibly empowered and excited by their work. There are queer youth living on the streets, trading sex for food and shelter. There are single mothers with children, trying to survive, engaging in work they would rather not be doing. There are individuals who have been coerced by another into trading sex for the profit of others. There is no one story about how transactional sex happens and no one story is more valid than another. Different people have different choices that they can make and circumstance plays a large party in any profession someone chooses.

One the greatest ways you can be an ally is to listen to people’s stories as their own. Respect that everyone is an expert of their own experience and that nothing you have heard before about sex work, survival sex or sex trafficking will tell you what that particular person thinks and feels about their own life. Consider the possibility that the statistics you may have heard on the news, the stories you may have read online or the anecdotal messages you’ve been given about transactional sex may not be the whole story and, at the very least, are not the story of the person in front of you.

If you have never met someone who identifies as a sex worker, attend a sex worker event. If you live in New York City, you can attend the Red Umbrella Diaries (which is also available as a podcast). Consider your own concerns, hang-ups and potential prejudices when listening to folks speak about their experiences in the sex trade. What is difficult to hear, and why? Be thoughtful about what is hard to hear or doesn’t sit right with you. Consider how your own upbringing and background may be a factor in how you perceive the sex industry or people involved in the sex trade. Take what you hear and think about your experience and share it with your friends, partners and coworkers. Engage them in more conversations about what’s interesting, troubling or somewhere in between.

2. Advocate where advocacy is needed.

While most sex work is illegal in the United States, the ways that individuals in the sex trade are affected by stigma and discrimination go beyond their illegal work status. Like any stigma or prejudice, discrimination that is supported by laws leads to further criminalization, more individuals working in unsafe conditions or being unable to report a crime against them if they experience violence from a client. Being silenced out of shame or fear can have very real consequences for one’s safety and wellbeing.

Beyond being made invisible or insignificant by laws that criminalize their work and a society that supports their invisibility and insignificance, sex workers face day to day realities of having limited access to services and healthcare. Many individuals in the sex trade are unable to disclose to medical providers, for fear of shaming or misunderstanding of their work. Many social services providers are unacquainted with sex worker experiences, or treat sex workers as victims of their own poor choices. Some people expect sex workers to be trauma victims, believing that all people engaging in transactional sex are sexual trauma survivors or come from backgrounds of violence and abuse.

If you work with medical providers, social workers, psychiatrists, teachers, case managers, or anyone in an educational or clinical setting, ask them how much they know about the sex trade. Consider what kind of answer they give you. Do they view the sex trade through a singular lens? Do they see the multifaceted nature of sex trade experiences? Do they know how they might talk to a sex worker competently, if they were to have one as a client or patient? Take the time to educate yourself and those around you on the issues those in the sex trade face. Being educated and aware is the first step you can take to being an affirming and empowering ally.

If you are interested in having a training for your office or organization about how to speak to sex workers with sensitivity and care, contact your local Sex Workers Outreach Project for more information. If you are a student, start a conversation about the sex trade in a feminist group or LGBT organization. Consider conducting a panel discussion or organizing a workshop.

3. Attend a December 17^th event, in any way you can.

If you can attend a December 17^th event in person, it is a wonderful opportunity to support those in the sex trade as an ally. However, not everyone lives near an event or has the means to get to one. Change your Facebook or Twitter photo to a December 17^th logo. Read and repost articles about sex workers and violence, such as this one from Annie Sprinkle on how to help stop violence against sex workers, and start conversations with your friends, partners, families, coworkers and neighbors. Get involved in the conversation online. Think about ways you can support every day of the year, not just December 17^th. Hopefully, the ways listed above will get your started. Above all, remember that December 17^th is a day of remembrance, so take a few quiet moments to experience the memories of sex workers who have been lost this year and what that means to you on this day.

Dec 17 is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

Every night Lexi Tronic risks her life at work.

If she gets beaten or raped, she feels she can’t call police to report the attack because – at least for now – Tronic is also a criminal.

“What happens when you’re trapped in someone’s car with the doors locked? You don’t have any options. It’s fight or flight,” she says.

Tronic is a 10-year veteran in the sex trade who has worked both on the streets and from her home, as many sex workers have, she says.

On Dec 17, the transgender and sex worker rights activist will join others to mark the 9th annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Such violence is a pervasive problem that is largely preventable and often ignored, she says, noting that most violent crimes against sex workers go underreported, unaddressed and unpunished.

 

[Lexi Tronic, a Toronto-based transgender and sex worker rights activist, who is a 10-year veteran in the sex trade.]

Tronic started as a sex worker in Winnipeg at Higgins Ave and Waterfront Drive, a notorious spot known for transgender sex trade workers, she says. “One of those hardcore areas where girls turn up dead or missing.”

Likewise, Canadians are still haunted by the name Robert Pickton, who brutally murdered as many as 49 women, most of whom were sex workers from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Toronto is no different, says Tronic. “Women are getting attacked and abused daily. Sex workers are easy targets. And because sex trade work is not legal, many of these women are afraid to go to the police because they’ve had negative experiences, especially trans women. Police not only berate them for being a sex worker, they bully them for being a trans sex worker.”

Sex workers deserve the same rights as everyone else, she says. The profession is perceived to be dangerous. And it is, Tronic notes, because the laws make it so.

“The police victimize the victim by saying it’s their fault,” she says. “[Sex work] is no more dangerous than working a midnight shift in a 7/11. It becomes dangerous because it’s not legal and we don’t have the safeguards for resources that the rest of the public do, like being able to go to police and seek help and safety.”

Regardless how many laws governments write, nothing will ever eradicate sex work. “It is always going to be here,” she says. Therefore, the working conditions need to change.

Last year, Ontario Justice Susan Himel struck down three key anti-prostitution laws that create hazardous working conditions — laws against communicating for the purposes of prostitution, keeping a common bawdyhouse and living on the avails of the trade. Himel ruled that the laws made prostitution more dangerous.

 

[Lawyer Alan Young.]

 

The federal and Ontario governments are now appealing that landmark ruling, arguing there is no obligation to maximize the safety of sex workers because it is not a constitutionally protected right to engage in the sex trade.

For the past four years, lawyer and Osgoode Hall professor Alan Young has represented sex workers Terri-Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott, who are challenging the laws criminalizing sex work in Canada. He argued the appeal in June in front of five judges.

“I had a good time in the Ontario Court of Appeal,” he says, with boyish excitement. “I just got to sit back and watch the government squirm as they tried to overturn this decision.”

The appeal court’s decision could be released tomorrow or months from now, says Young.

Likely contributing to the delay is the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision upholding British Columbia’s right to operate a supervised drug injection site.

The court ordered the federal government to abandon its attempts to close Vancouver’s Insite facility, agreeing with scientific evidence that the site is saving lives without increasing crime.

 

[Laura Agustín is a sex worker rights advocate and an expert on undocumented migration who visited Toronto Nov 24 to discuss her book Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry.]

The Insite decision offers a parallel situation for the case against Canada’s prostitution laws, Young says. “It’s a constitutional violation from a government action that is increasing a risk of harm.”

“The thrust of the decision is very strongly in support of what we argued for sex work,” he says. “[Insite] has to be considered. It would be senseless not to.”

Young expected the decision by November. “So I believe they are struggling with this.”

The case will eventually end up in the Supreme Court of Canada sometime next year, which will have the final word.

If the laws are struck down, Young says, appropriate regulation needs to replace them. “I still think we shouldn’t put a brothel next to a junior high school.” Ultimately, sex workers should drive reform, he says.

But, even once it’s made legal, there will always be some sex workers that will choose or be forced to work outside the margins. It’s called “survival sex work,” he says. “Look at cigarettes. They are legal, but there is a huge black market for people who want to avoid tax.”

“That has been a big problem in other countries. Legal regimes are set up for sex workers, but people don’t enter into them. They stay underground … So it’s not solving problems for everybody. What it is doing is giving sex workers who choose to be sex workers some autonomy to take care of themselves.”

There is already a black market within the black market, fueled largely by human trafficking across borders, something Maggie’s: The Toronto Sex Workers Action Project, says is not the same as sex work. Sex work is a job selling some form of sexual service. Trafficking is coerced or forced labour and sex slavery.

That distinction is important because the decision Canada makes will have a ripple affect internationally.

Laura Agustín, a sex worker rights advocate and an expert on undocumented migration, visited Toronto Nov 24 to discuss her book Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry. She says the criminalization of sex work in North America contributes to international human trafficking and enslavement.

For migrants trying to get to countries like Canada, the sex trade is sometimes the only option, especially for women and trans women who may not, for whatever reason, get work as a maid. “For some it’s a chance at a better life,” she says. “But because it’s invisible and happening in an underground economy there’s lots of opportunity for exploitation or abuse.”

Agustín says the sexual liberation movement is not over yet, and it won’t be until sex work is viewed widely as any other profession. “Why do people get so excited? In a capitalist society people can buy and sell anything they want, even motherhood by hiring a nanny, but not sex. Why?”

Rather than look at sex workers as victims in need of rescuing out of the trade, she says, sex workers should be empowered from within the community to make the trade safe.

“When legalization happens you will see a lot of women leave the streets and be able to come work indoors,” Tronic adds. Regulation, such as occupational health and safety, will be created at the local level and, hopefully, sex workers will be at the table making decisions like any other taxpaying industry stakeholder.

“Wouldn’t it be great to one day see us so evolved that sex workers are given rights and treated like people? They could form unions, pay into benefits. A pension plan, that’s my dream,” Tronic says.

Changing the laws means Canada stops looking at sex work through a moralistic lens.

Maggie’s says selling sex is a pragmatic and sensible response for someone with a limited range of options. If a person is doing sex work but would rather not be, it is the lack of options available to them that is the real problem – not sex work. Queer youth, trans women, people of colour and indigenous people often face limited economic options and discrimination.

“For many, sex work is the best or only option for work and we work to improve the conditions of work.”

International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

In Toronto, Maggie’s is launching 17 Reasons: Sex Workers, Resilience and Resistance, a collectively-made zine featuring the writing and art-work of sex workers with street-experience.

Maggie’s says the zine will contain humour, insight and analysis from the people who best understand the intersections of oppressions, which lead to violence against sex workers—and the solutions.

The launch party is at the 519 Church Street Dec 17 from 4pm to 6pm. Copies will be available. The event is free.

For more information, contact Maggie’s here.