SWOP/SWANK @ SlutWalk NYC

Community organizer Sarah Elspeth Patterson was the opening speaker for the New York City SlutWalk, talking about sex work, police violence and social justice. More photos of SWOP/SWANK marching with SlutWalkers forthcoming!

Thank you, SlutWalk, for letting me spend today with you all. Thank you, SlutWalk organizers, for taking the time to listen to sex worker voices and involve sex worker organizations in the speakers for this rally. Today is a day for us to stand together, but I think most importantly, to listen to each other with a clear intent – to listen with openness and love in our hearts.

So, I want to talk to you about sluts. What does it really mean, to get called a “slut?” A “whore?” A “ho?” A “hooker?” What does that actually look like? How are we called sluts to our faces and behind our backs? What laws and policies treat us like sluts?

In the case of SlutWalk Toronto, it meant being told by a police officer that your slutty dress is the reason you’ll get raped. The same is also happening here in Brooklyn, in my neighborhood, police officers are responding to the repeated attacks on women by stopping women dressed in skirts on the street (which is the target of the assailant) and commenting on their dress. One officer suggested to a group that they try not to show so much skin, so as not to make the perpetrator think he had “easy access.”  

It’s hard to live in a world where those who are meant to serve and protect treat people that way. It’s really hard to live in a world where an off-duty police officer can rape a woman at gunpoint and have his behavior apologized for in the media by reports which cite the fact that he was drunk, since it may (and I quote) “explain certain behavior.” It’s even harder to live in a world where if a woman is drunk and she is raped, as in the case of the acquittal of two police officers for the rape of an East Village woman this summer, she can’t get a fair trial.

These are just two of the cases you may have heard of from the past few months. The truth is that there are so many more instances you will never hear of, because they are rarely ever reported. There are so many more instances of “violence directed at communities,” directed in particular at communities of color and sex workers. Bodies that are sexualized in our society, be it the bodies of women of color, sex workers, or queer folks, are often the same bodies that are criminalized by the police. This is not a coincidence. Street-based sex workers in New York City, especially those who are trans women of color or queer youth on the streets, are consistent targets for police arrests and experience high level of violence that goes unpunished. While few female sex workers feel safe reporting sexual violence, the idea that men and trans folks cannot be survivors of rape makes them ever filing charges against a perpetrator almost impossible.

In the case of one member of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, who wished to remain anonymous, her attempt to report her rape was met with a total disregard for the possibility that a sex worker could even be raped. She told me this:

I was taken very seriously until it came out that I was involved in sex work, that this man was going to get me work, that I had shown him my body. At that point, the cops started acting as though I had been dishonest for not revealing this sooner and started basically interrogating me. It was incredibly upsetting. One of the police officers actually said to me, “What makes it okay Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, but not Thursday?” I was not arrested, but I feared arrest, having heard of cops doing that. I was relieved just to leave the precinct, and needless to say, heard nothing of my complaint. And I was reminded of the treatment I had received when I discovered that he was later arrested in California as a sex offender. Presumably he raped someone with a little more social cachet.

We all have to carry a lot around with us. Every day I know I’m at risk of being raped. But I am also aware that the risk I know is only a fraction of the risk taken on every day by queer youth who are living on the streets, by sex workers who are working on the streets, by trans folks who are WALKING on the streets. I know that the same people our society marginalizes the most for their individual experience are also the most likely to be profiled, assaulted, arrested, targeted and ignored. And I know that my struggle to be seen, as a person of value in this world, worthy of living free of sexual violence, is tied directly to theirs.

Everyone wants to have the privilege of being heard. But you have to know that some of us are meant to count more than others. Those of us who are privileged enough to have a space to talk need to be listening to those who don’t, or can’t.

It’s no easy feat for everyone to be heard, especially within an economic and political system that tells us there’s simply not enough for everyone to go around. We have to promote the idea that there is always room for another story to be told and that everyone’s voice is worth hearing. And we need a response with thousands of people behind it. Millions, even. We need that because we cannot say enough, over and over again, that a society that does not treat its most vulnerable members with the respect doesn’t treat anyone with respect.