I’ve been buried pretty deep in my work over the past week and change and haven’t been able to give much brain space to what’s happening in Rhode Island, but I just spent some time catching up with the details, plus thinking some of this stuff through with Eliyanna Kaiser – who, to give you a refresher course, shared my title of executive editor at $pread magazine for several years, is a co-founder of Sex Work Awareness, and is my co-creator and co-trainer for the Speak Up media training workshop. Though Eliyanna isn’t very active in online spheres of activism so you aren’t as familiar with her work as you are with mine – the woman is seriously bad ass. She’s involved with New York city and state politics, and has a long history of organizing around labor and reproductive rights issues (also she’s funny and geeky and awesome and one of my best friends in the world).
Over oysters and booze this evening, we put our heads together to articulate some of our concerns with the way the discussions about Rhode Island have been running.
If you’re not following along super closely, here’s the (very very) short version. Indoor prostitution in Rhode Island has, via a legal loophole, been decriminalized since the 1980s. Since the Craigslist killer incidents in April, some state legislators and concerned citizens have been trying to get indoor prostitution re-criminalized. Click here to check out all the articles that have been devoted to the subject in the Providence Journal, the main paper of record in RI. There is a very outspoken contingent of activists, lead by University of Rhode Island professor of women’s studies Donna Hughes, who are supportive of the move to recriminalize. There are also some activists who are speaking up and saying that recriminalizing would put sex workers at greater risk of violence and exploitation.
A lot of these voices are coming from outside of Rhode Island, including a group of about 50 academics that have been principally organized by Elizabeth Wood (Assistant Professor at Nassau Community College, New York) and Michael Goodyear (Assistant Professor at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia in Canada). All the recent posts on Sex in the Public Square are about what’s been happening in Rhode Island and in the ever growing conversations around the issues at hand.
Eliyanna and I have been talking about this a lot, and though things are getting kind of nuts, we thought it was important for us to chime in with our perspectives – not on what is actually happening in Rhode Island, but with our perspectives on effective advocacy. Consider this a bit of a loving smackdown. We know you mean well, that you want what’s best for sex workers in Rhode Island, and that you see opportunity in this moment to make better legal precedents for prostitutes in other states.
Mocking the opposition on the internet, being snarky and dismissive makes us look disorganized, seriously unprofessional, and doesn’t actually do anything to dispel the idea that we’re crazy sex radicals. Think before you snark. It’s not really a useful tactic to counter the opposition – actually these attitudes do us a disservice. If you must snark, do it in private emails and reiterate that the conversation is not blogable or have (gasp, gag) phone conversations to vent.
Strategy and speaking out – especially speaking out to Rhode Island legislators – needs to come from the affected community. Rhode Island legislators most likely don’t care a whole lot what you think if you don’t vote in their district. A good analogy for this is what’s happening with the national health care debate – leaders from other nations with national health care systems can put in their two cents to our government, but ultimately Congress doesn’t care what the French think of our health care system. Same thing goes for how Rhode Island legislators feel about input from folks from Nevada.
It is both politically smart and ethical to help and support people inside Rhode Island to do this work. I know you feel like you want to do something – anything – to speak out and help. But if you are not from Rhode Island, the fact of the matter is that badgering Rhode Island legislators makes it look like you don’t understand how politics work – politics are local. We are creating an image of people who care about sex work issues as people who are outsiders with our own agenda who are muscling in with our own nefarious agenda and not respecting local public debate and political spaces. We folks who are not from Rhode Island need to support and offer help to people who are from Rhode Island so that they can fight this fight and they can build up their local institutions to face this. So what does this look like? I would bet that the folks who are doing the organizing in Rhode Island, like Tara Hurley and Megan Andelloux could use some money – if they didn’t have to worry about day to day expenses they could focus on the hard work of their activism. They could also use support with drafting statements. And they could probably use help in supporting local sex workers in making their statements. The people Rhode Island legislators most need to hear from are local sex workers who will be directly affected by recriminalization. They need to be supported and assisted in talking about what their lives will be like if their work is made illegal. Getting their stories into the hands of the Rhode Island legislators who are receptive to their perspectives (and those folks do exist, Tara has more info about that) should be the main priority.
Although sex workers rights advocates agree that the abolitionist perspective, which conflates trafficking with consensual sex work, is problematic at best, abolitionists do cut straight to the concerns of the public with their rhetoric. Certainly, we agree with the abolitionists that it is a bad thing that men, women, trans people, and youth are coerced into the sex industry. What we differ on is the opinion of how this can be remedied, but there is that baseline understanding.
In a recent abolitionist screed against the “sex radicals” (which I’m not linking to in the interest of discontinuing the feeding of trolls), they did pinpoint some of the weaknesses of approach and credibility of the academics who they refers to as sex radicals. Getting snarky in return is not all that useful, further underscores potential weaknesses, and creates the distraction of bickering, when our time could be better spent supporting the sex workers and allies in Rhode Island.
in solidarity,
Eliyanna Kaiser and Audacia Ray
[note on comments: We both have busy day jobs, which explains why we're co-writing this thing after midnight. We will both try to comment when we can throughout the day. You can also talk to us on twitter: @eliyannakaiser and @audaciaray]
6:13 pm
While I absolutely agree that being snarky in response to things like this doesn’t do anyone any good, I disagree with the notion that Rhode Island legislators don’t need to hear from anyone other than their constituents.
You know as well as anyone that very, very few active sex workers are going to step forward publicly and make a case for the continued decriminalization of prostitution, for a variety of reasons which are commonly known. And in fact very few of them are likely to be able to speak to the direct consequences of the proposed legislation, aside from the fact that they’re more likely to be arrested.
Those 50 academics are, in my opinion, just as qualified as anyone to offer up opinions and prognostications about the effects of recriminalization, as each has, in their own way, studied this subject and can speak to it as someone with some credibility on the issue. Even active sex workers in R.I. themselves generally won’t have that kind of background and knowledge base upon which to educate the legislature like these individuals possess, especially as it relates to countering the falsehoods and extra-contextual misinformation being presented by other supposed academics such as Hughes. In the minds of many, the opinions and assertions of an academic such as Hughes carry greater weight than those of the average “hooker” that most people see as the embodiment of sex workers. Therefore, it is essential that someone with equal or greater academic credibility weigh in to counter that misinformation.
And while your example of American legislators not caring what the French think about our health care system may ring true, they are indeed studying the health care systems of other countries in an attempt to see what does and does not work. There’s a difference there.
R.I. legislators need to hear from as many credible sources capable of presenting legitimate information as can be brought to bear. Some may not listen, but those seeking the truth (how many politicians do that, really, though?) might weigh the evidence presented by Elizabeth or Michael, or one of the other signatories to that letter (none of whom has responded snarkily to anyone to the best of my knowledge).
3:47 pm
[...] Ray and Eliyanna Kaiser of Sex Work Awareness co-wrote an interesting article about Rhode Island the other day. Not about the prostitution law itself, but about the way [...]
6:43 pm
“Strategy and speaking out – especially speaking out to Rhode Island legislators – needs to come from the affected community. Rhode Island legislators most likely don’t care a whole lot what you think if you don’t vote in their district. A good analogy for this is what’s happening with the national health care debate – leaders from other nations with national health care systems can put in their two cents to our government, but ultimately Congress doesn’t care what the French think of our health care system. Same thing goes for how Rhode Island legislators feel about input from folks from Nevada.”
That’s what I had been thinking, which is why I never sent any letters to Rhode Island legislators over this. However, I recently read (I forget where) that RI legislators have been flooded with mail from Hughes supporters, probably people on her DIGNITY listserv, and probably mainly out of state people.
So that makes me think if they’re receiving that much national and international feedback supporting Hughes position, then maybe its important that our side made its voice hear.
9:12 pm
Hi Audacia:
Something important you didn’t mention is that the people advocating for recriminalization also aren’t directly affected by the anti-prostituion laws like sex workers are, even if some of them do live in Rhode Island. I don’t know of any working sex workers who are advocating for recriminalization, and these are the people who are most strongly harmed by anti-prostitution laws. I guess it’s easy for some people to promote the recriminalization of prostitution when they aren’t being unjustly punished under these laws like sex workers are.
9:16 pm
Sorry, I should have also mentioned Eliyanna’s name in my response since she co-authored the piece and Audacia didn’t write it alone. That being said, I do agree with both of you in terms of supporting Rhode Island sex workers’ justice advocates and allies.
9:35 am
Thanks for all the comments. I wanted to add mostly in response to Alexa, that this is mostly a question of energy, a non-infinite resource. Collectively, a lot of national energy has been put into a letter to legislators from academics who aren’t local. Why not to helping locals write letters to legislators? One letter from a constituent means more to a legislator than fifty letters from people from other states, whatever their qualifications. I should know, for almost ten years I’ve worked in government watching letters (definitely the ones from out of state) be deleted and recycled–unread.
11:10 am
Holly suggested I share these reflections from the internal Center for Sex Work Research and Policy listserve with a wider audience.
“In this thought provoking blog, Audacia challenges our strategising.
I agree with everything she says in principle, if not necessarily emphasis. However I would like to place this in perspective. We recognised these problems from the start, but whether we achieved our goals is another matter.
We brought in 3 Rhode Islanders to this group, and consulted with several more, I wrote to a number of Rhode Island academics but got no response.
Where we could do more (but are not funded like CAT) is to forge formal links with supportive members of the legislature like David Segal, and with known activist groups in Rhode Island like ACLU and NOW. Obviously we would like to have a closer relationship with RI sex workers and their leaders.
Also the theme that Rhode Island laws should be made by Rhode Islanders has been a backdrop throughout – that Rhode Island input into the debate is more likely to be listened to is clear – but I don’t think we can say that we should not take a stand – as I blogged earlier today:
http://sexinthepublicsquare.org/ElizabethsBlog/dont-let-personal-attacks-distract-us#comment-12029
part of our role as scientists is to ensure that public policy and political decisions are informed as well as possible by a reliable evidence base. What happens in Rhode Island is influenced by the rest of the world, and will also inform decisions elsewhere.
Incidentally at least one of the signatories lived in Rhode Island, but
worked across a State line.”
There are some good ideas in both the original post and the comments, the difficulty being to translate them into specific actions. We would welcome overtures from Rhode Islanders to work together. In the mean time I believe we have done our best under the circumstances and with the resources available. I would like to take this opportunity for feedback on the second letter we have composed, and to get people’s support for it. Hopefully these two letters can be used by Rhode Islander’s in composing their submissions.
http://sexinthepublicsquare.org/MichaelsBlog/Rhode-Island-the-next-step
In my Public Health experience we have found opinion polling a very useful tool, but is resource intensive.