Entries Tagged 'media' ↓

By: Melissa Sontag Broudo and Penelope Saunders
October 27, 2011

In the last four weeks, many have been wondering what has driven people to Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and bring attention to the economic situation that has developed in our country. Critics have argued that so many issues are being discussed and that so many disparate groups have joined forces, that the occupation has no cohesive message, purpose, or goals. As our group of sex workers and allies stood in solidarity with our fellow revolutionaries Wednesday, October 5th at the rally at Foley Square in New York, it was apparent that we were included in that critique or question. What were we doing there? What was our purpose? What was our message? And how do sex workers’ rights connect to the larger OWS movement? Those of us who were there, or who are active in the sex workers’ rights movement generally, have no doubt about how we fit within OWS and how OWS fits within our movement. United, in solidarity, with everyone coming together in Zuccotti Park and in all the plazas nationwide, we can bring about greater change. After the rally, we decided to highlight the points that bring together our intersecting movements and realities. We, as sex workers and allies, have joined OWS because:

1. Sex workers, people in the sex trade and people affected by anti-prostitution policies (such as trans communities, youth) are deeply oppressed by the economic inequities that exist within our society. As the OWS slogan goes, we are the 99%, with 1% of the country’s wealthiest owning 40% percent of the country’s wealth [see these and other facts about economic disparities here]. These disparities are highlighted and magnified across racial, gender, ethnic, geographic, and other lines. Many sex workers and people in the sex trade are from economically marginalized and oppressed groups and seek to address their economic needs through a wide range of sexual commerce. The criminalization and stigmatization of many forms of this work only compounds the economic and social disempowerment that many already have faced and is a deep form of injustice (that is punishing people for their desire to provide for themselves, their communities and families).
2. Sex work is work, and thus we as the sex workers’rights movement are joining forces in solidarity with other labor rights’ movements. The idea that sex work is work has been a critical rallying cry for sex workers all over the  country and world. The United States lags in recognizing sex workers as a labor force and creating an environment in which sex workers may fight for and establish their rights [in India and Brazil, for example, there are strong and powerful voices for the sex worker labor  movement: e.g. Durbar Mahila Samanoy Samity in India and Davida in Brazil]. Participating in OWS allows us to be seen – and heard – as a workers’ rights movement and to gain ideas and momentum by linking visions and strength with fellow workers.
3. The NYPD must be held accountable for the abusive practices they utilize against those they perceive to be politically powerless, including sex workers, street vendors, people who are living at or below the poverty level, people of color, transgender people, and others. Sex workers and their allies have long known what some are just finding out at OWS: the NYPD often utilizes harsh, ineffective, inhuman, and downright degrading tactics to subdue and control those without power. Sex workers have been and continue to be targets of police abuse. Police demand sexual favors, perpetrate physical violence and refuse to take rape and assaults against the sex work community seriously. The ability of our community to come out and join forces with others to fight against this is critical and will hopefully create positive and empowering change.
4. Because sex workers have critical roles to play in making this movement more accountable in regards to racism, sexism,transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, and the stigmatization of various activities. M, an organizer and former sex worker, notes that, “many sex workers exist at the intersections of marginalized identities and are contributing to the dialogues among protestors as our movement takes this opportunity to confront oppressions within our ranks.” We hope to be able to provide this awareness about how various identities interrelate and intersect with multiple systems of oppression relating to race, gender, heteronormativity, the prison industrial complex, and other issues to other activists and to the general public by our presence and voice.

Just like others who are coming to OWS, we each have our own stories and reasons for joining in solidarity. We hope to bring a distinct perspective to the OWS movement – and to solidify the sex workers’ rights movement as a critical labor force standing in solidarity with the 99 percent.

Quotes from Sex Workers

As a sex worker, I joined Occupy Wall Street because the issues that impact both myself and my community are issues that are affecting other workers: lack of affordable housing, healthcare, education, and childcare. I come to stand in solidarity with communities of color, immigrants, Indigenous folks, and LGBTQ folks who have remain disproportionately impacted by a system that has failed to provide justice, decriminalization, destigmatization, and the practice of fundamental rights.
- Hannah, a sex worker for over a decade

We’re participating at OWS because sex work is real work,and all workers deserve living wages, affordable housing, and healthy communities. Sex workers are a part of OWS’s cross movement dialogues at working groups, marches and teach-ins, inorder to build mutual understanding and work for broadbased social change.
-M, an organizer and former sex worker

I hope that my presence at OWS and the sign that I carry  revealing myself as a sex  worker and a person affected by  the crimes committed on Wall  Street, open up people’s minds  to the possibility of including sex  workers in the process of the  people’s liberation.
- Andy, a male prostitute and organizer for sex worker rights

Occupations are at the heart of sexworkers’ rights movements. Think back to the Lyon occupation in France in the1970′s. Taking Times Square last Saturday was a full circle moment, given the history of sex work in Times Square, and the joined forces of corporate and political interests that have displaced sex workers from not just Times Square but any public space. For sex workers, occupying public space is about economics as much as it is free speech.
-Melissa Gira Grant, writer and former sex worker

Penelope Saunders and Melissa Sontag Broudo are both representatives of SWOP-NYC and the Best Practices Policy Project. We are also involved in many other organizations working for the rights of sex workers. We would also like to thank SWOP-NYC and SWANK members for sharing their thoughts about OWS with us.

by Sarah Elspeth Patterson, Community Organizer, SWOP-NYC

This week, the public humiliation of Nafissatou Diallo that has been the “DSK Rape Case” has come to a close, as all charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn have been dropped. This motion marks the end to a case that has amounted to little more than a character assassination of a rape complainant who has endured a litany of shame-driven media accusations, including but by no means limited to the Post’s declaration that she “wasn’t just a girl working a hotel – she was a working girl.” This unsubstantiated claim of her sex worker status, in addition to problematic framings of her race, immigrant status and background, has been used in the media to reinforce the idea that she is not a credible witness and therefore unworthy of having her rape charges validated in a court of law.

It’s been a rough summer for rape cases going through the DA’s office in New York City, with no lack of victim-blaming happening all around. It’s been mere months since two NYC police officers were acquitted of raping a women in her East Village apartment after a call for their assistance at the same location. Since the victim was drunk, though, it wasn’t difficult to see how she would become the one on trial. In fact, there was enough victim-blaming to acquit two men who were caught entering the woman’s apartment on outside surveillance tapes not once, not twice, but three times. Enough victim-blaming to acquit a man who admitted to lying in bed with the victim while she was wearing only a bra and passed out drunk. Enough victim-blaming to have one of the officers, Officer Moreno, publicly declare post-acquittal that the results of the case “were a lesson and a win.” A lesson and a win, indeed.

How rape cases can play out in our criminal justice system, as seen this summer in NYC alone, is a lesson to every person that is socially vulnerable to the effects of a rape culture, and that’s a whole lot of people. If you have been raped, it does matter how you got there. It matters what your race is, what your immigration status is and how you’ve made a living. It matters a lot. For some rape victims, just being able to report the crime without shaming scrutiny is not a possibility. That is what one SWOP member experienced when she attempted to report a rape to the NYPD:

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, and that I showed 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, and 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 nothing came 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.

Sadly, it is not just the acts of a few that affect how the system treats rape complainants. There are also policies in place that directly affect how a sex worker is treated in the eyes of the court in regard to sexual assault cases. For instance, in the New York City Rape Shield Law, a criminal procedure code that provides that “evidence of a victim’s sexual conduct shall not be admissible” in a rape case, there is a noted exception to the code. New York is one state that permits the victim’s status as a convicted prostitute to be admitted into evidence if the conviction occurred within three years of the sexual offense. In the past, this practice has been defended on the grounds that such information speaks to the credibility of the rape complainant “as a witness” and somehow suggests that the complainant, being a sex worker, may have consented. In many ways, this practice being upheld represents how prostitution (and indeed, sex work in general) is still considered an immoral act and treated in the eyes of the law as representative of a person’s defective character.

In the aftermath of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn dismissal and the recent acquittal of two police officers accused of rape, both cases which had a great deal to do with vilifying the complainant rather than the defendant, we must recognize that the rights of rape victims are tied up directly with how we frame rape victims in general, both in the media and in public policy. We must also be cognizant of the notion that there is a heirarchy of victimhood and that issues of race, class and status go into making up that heirarchy. Laws like NYC’s Rape Shield Law uphold the notion that our courts are the arbiters of sexual morality. Likewise, a court system whose decisions are in any way shaped by a rape victim being a sex worker (whether a valid claim or not) cannot be held to treat any complainant with a reasonable level of dignity. All in all, it’s a real wonder how any of us could withstand the scrutiny of such a system of judgment.

###

SWOP-NYC New York Times Blog

Congratulations to SWOP-NYC members who received press from the New York Times blog today for this performance/action entitled 86 The Violence.

This year, the United States participated in a Universal Periodic Review (UPR) – a process set up by the Human Rights Council at the United Nations to assess the level of human rights in each country.  The U.S. received more than 200 recommendations and must now decide to accept or reject each recommendation. Recommendation 86 called on the Obama Administration to “…ensure access to public services paying attention to the special vulnerability of sexual workers to violence and human rights abuses.”  This is the first time the US has been internationally called upon to address its insensitivity to the long-neglected issues faced by sex workers.

To capitalize on this momentous opportunity, sex worker support and advocacy organizations from all across the country have organized to move government officials to agree to accept the recommendation.  As a part of our organizing efforts we have reached out to sex worker groups, academics, policy makers, community organizations, funders and NGO’s around the globe and received unprecendented levels of support.

For more information, visit 86 the Violence.

In response to a July, 13th New York Daily News news article reporting on the arrest of Monica Gonzales for alleged prostitution — charges that were subsequently dropped, and that were apparently brought simply because Ms. Gonzalez was walking in an area targeted by the police for prostitution arrests — members of swop-nyc have sent the following statement to the editors of the Daily News:

The unfortunate arrest of Ms. Gonzalez brings to light a fundamental
flaw in the laws that govern prostitution in New York State. Herein, a
police officer may arrest a person for loitering for the purposes of
prostitution with only “probable cause” as their grounds for doing so.
In many cases, like that of Ms. Gonzalez, people are charged,
stigmatized, and sometimes made the focus of media attention, simply
for making certain gestures, being on a certain street or dressing in
a certain way. In short, non-criminal behaviors and people can be and
regularly are arrested simply because the police don’t like the looks
of them. Of course, those who bear the brunt of these oppressive
practices often already face discrimination on the basis of their
race, sexual and/or gender identity, and economic class. It is high
time that this crime be removed from the law books, so that Ms.
Gonzalez and others like her are no longer victimized by abuses of
police power.
Maryse Mitchell-Brody
Sex Workers Outreach Project – NYC

Thursday, March 13, 2008

New York, NY – In the last few days, Governor Eliot Spitzer has publicly admitted to being associated with an escort agency and is considering resignation. As sex worker advocates, we are concerned about the representation and fate of “Kristen” and sex workers who are being thrust into the spotlight because of the investigation into the Governor. We also share the widespread concern for Governor Spitzer’s family.

Sex worker organizations urge the press and the public to focus on the violation of sex workers rights and the need to change these laws and policies, rather than simply on the story of one individual who has purchased sexual services. Continue reading →