This is the speech that I gave at the International Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers event at the Metropolitan Community Church in NYC this evening.
Last April, while I was at the grocery store shopping for the meal I was cooking for the first crop of Speak Up sex worker media trainees, my phone buzzed and I got a message that a sex worker from New York had been found dead – bound and shot in the chest – in a hotel in Boston. The message was from a fellow sex worker who urged me to spread the word around and encourage other sex workers I know to be extra-diligent with their screening. Sex workers look out for each other – the community was responding to each other and the news media before the media even understood the developing story.
The case was big news for a few weeks, as the so-called Craigslist Killer went on a bit of a spree and then was revealed to be a clean cut Boston University medical student. Everyone freaked out about the dangers of internet prostitution, which led to Rhode Island legislators getting outraged over the little-known fact that indoor prostitution was legal in the state – and so began a successful campaign to recriminalize prostitution there. All in the name of protection of sex workers.
On that night back in April, I was supposed to be putting the finishing touches on a media training and advocacy workshop for sex workers that I’d poured a lot of time, energy, and resources into. But for an hour, all I could do was slump down on my kitchen floor and cry for Julissa Brisman, a sensual masseuse my age, and think – that could have been me.
There are a lot of different projects that sex workers and our allies must work on to ensure our rights: we must work to reduce stigma and encourage the general public to think of us as multi-faceted human beings; we must work to ensure our legal rights and protections not just from potentially violent clients but from law enforcement officers and the legal system; we must work to gain greater access to nonjudgmental health care services and providers who are educated on our needs; we must create culture and tell our stories to each other and the world at large; we must defend ourselves against people who supposedly have our best interests in mind yet won’t listen to our statements of needs; we must challenge bad health policies and distribution of funds at the local, national, and international levels; and last but not least – we must create networks of emotional and spiritual support so we can stay strong and continue to do this very exhausting work. But it’s hard to do even a sliver of that essential work when we are being killed, silenced by hate and fear and a deep and dangerous assumption that we are expendable, that no one will care when we do not come home.
The night that reports of Julissa’s death reached me, I watched a flurry of messages roll through my email inbox and get posted online that said things like “Be careful out there!” and “Girls, do your screening!” And though I’m a strong believer in personal agency and safety and we all know that there are things that sex workers can do to stay safe, sane, and healthy – it’s not Julissa’s fault that she was killed. Taking safety measures and being on the defensive is a band aid, it is not a long term solution. We cannot stop violence against sex workers by ourselves. We need the support and participation of a culture that sees us as human beings – we are your mothers, sons, cousins, friends – who are worthy of living lives of dignity that are free of violence.
10:16 pm
Thank you so much.