Archive for Sex+ Work
Then As Now
“But paradise, we found, is always frail; against man’s fear will always fail…”-From the narrated poem in the opening of Dangerous Beauty
The movie is Dangerous Beauty. The screenplay is adapted from the book The Honest Courtesan, a biography by Margaret Rosenthal of Veronica Franco, sixteenth-century Venetian writer/poet and courtesan. Ms. Franco lived, and thus the events in the movie and the time period in which they are contextualized occurred, 450 years ago—a time so far in the distant past it may seem archaic or hard to conceptualize in light of how different human society is now.
Except it’s not. Different, that is. As I finished watching Dangerous Beauty for the first time that day last year, I was struck by how much, on some level, we have not changed.
Now indeed, I will say first that there are things that have on some level shifted or rearranged such that our gender roles, for example, seem less strict, and of course I appreciate that. At this point and in this location on the earth, I have additional options as a woman to survive financially beyond marrying, becoming a nun, or working as a courtesan or prostitute. There are practical ways in which women in many parts of the world have far more opportunities for financial independence now than they did in sixteenth-century Venice. This of course calls for acknowledgement, and I duly extend it. My personal appreciation for such is profound, and to not acknowledge that would be disingenuous and inappropriate.
That withstanding, however, I would argue that throughout our collective civilization, deep-seated and unconscious perceptions and distortions still exist that relegate us in very fundamental ways to the same as we were then. We’re dressed up a little bit differently—but we’re the same. So much so that it’s staggering.
Marriage is still a contract (if in doubt, observe phenomena such as alimony and the state’s having anything to do with whom is “allowed” to marry), and though what we tend to associate with romantic love seems more of a reason to marry now than then, people still feel political, financial, or other reasons to get married. Marriage itself is still expected—monogamy is still the default, the standard for people’s lives in romantic relationship. Affairs still exist, and we still pretend not to acknowledge their prevalence or potential complexity as any invitation to examine the possibility that monogamy and marriage are perhaps not the ideal configurations for all individuals.
“The Church” still inserts itself into public affairs—sometimes via official governments—claiming an esoteric authority and the position to judge the general populace according to the standards it chooses to set. We are still compelled by war. Poverty, disease, populist unrest remain. There is still rampant evidence of nationalism, classism, sexism, and political manipulation. We are still encouraged to follow the rules, whatever they may be, and not question or flout them lest we interrupt the fragile illusion of whatever arbitrary perspective of “reality” our ego-based selves have created and think they feel comfortable with.
In Dangerous Beauty, when the plague begins to run rampant through Venice, the townspeople/collective society turn on what is considered the decadence and indulgence of the city, of which courtesans are perceived to be squarely in the middle. A following of religiously oriented purveyors develops and overtly blames “those who tempt us” with “fornication and carnal practices” for the “God”-inflicted downfall of the republic.
In response to a protest that the Inquisition has appeared in Venice, the doge (presiding figure of the republic at the time) responds, “Fifty-six thousand people are dead. The living want answers. They may be the wrong answers, but they want them just the same.”
To me this line virtually epitomizes that which has not changed in four and a half centuries. Throughout society there are examples of selective intervention in human rights abuses, astounding hypocrisy in application of laws, and scapegoating of cultures, people, entities in order to get “answers” that a part of us finds tolerable internally and/or in response to the cognitive dissonance in us.
What seems most concerning to me about this uncanny similarity to a time centuries ago is not just the clarity with which it seems that we are such a parallel reflection of it but that we do not seem to realize that. We truly think we are different. That things were so primitive then, that they were so inhibited, their roles so strictly defined. We think we are so advanced because we have skyscrapers and spaceships and smartphones. But we still use that technological capacity to create ways to destroy each other and ourselves—which tells me we are not.
It seems obvious to me that despite our apparent advances and some level of progress in social redresses, under the surface the same prejudices, constraints, ignorance, and fear that formed what was seen in sixteenth-century Venice is with us now and still forming the same things. The seemingly obvious things like racism, classism, xenophobia, sexism are outcrops, manifestations, of what has remained the same—which is our ignorance of ourselves. We have not awakened enough to be consistently aware of our true nature. We are not conscious of the unconditional love that is the deepest level of ourselves and the innate oneness of the universe.
Underlying this lack of awareness is the resistance and refusal to examine ourselves, to see that it is what is inside ourselves that may be tormenting us rather than projecting it onto a perceived external. Repression is one of the key ingredients in this phenomenon, and repression of a fundamental instinct—such as, say, the sexual one—is one of this phenomenon’s very bedrocks.
As in the movie, many of the above-described circumstances and the societal responses decrying and attacking them have to do with sex. All over the world, a conservative populace still behaves as though perceived “immorality” around sexuality is or will be the downfall of civilization. “The Church” (represented by fundamentalist perspectives of virtually all major religions) still bewails “fornication and carnal practices” and proclaims our collective suffering “punishment” for a culture steeped in “sin.” These perspectives seem to see open sexuality rather than denouncement, vilification, and repression as dangerous, sinful, and undesirable.
Why would this be? As depicted so beautifully in Dangerous Beauty, sexuality is one of the preeminent paths to love (not just romantic, but love in the universal sense), self-awareness, Divinity, connection, gratitude, openness, and beauty. Then as now, this aspect is so fundamental to us that it instills the kind of fear that has through the ages attracted measures of denouncement, repression, fear, violence, and desperation in the face of truly experiencing and interacting with it because it is so impossibly close to us, so unavoidably reflective of ourselves—we cannot not see ourselves if we are truly and openly acknowledging and examining the sexual impulse within us. It forces us to face ourselves, and to truly do that is something we have found, probably throughout our human existence, excruciatingly difficult to do. Sexuality, our instinctive drive for what it represents, for pleasure and beauty and openness and love, is so close that we must either surrender to it or do everything in our power to control it. Yes, there are measures in between, but the sexual impulse does not give up—it doesn’t have that capacity. No matter how we try to control it, sexuality just is. It’s how we be with it that is the opportunity.
Sexual repression appeared rampant at the time of Dangerous Beauty‘s depiction (and highly encouraged by social structures at that time). It appears rampant to me now (and highly encouraged, perhaps in superficially different ways, by social structures currently). Am I suggesting that a large part of the fear, hatred, and relentless harm we do each other around the world at this time is based, at least in part, on sexual repression?
I am.
At a key point in the film, Veronica Franco’s character states,
“I confess I find more ecstasy in passion than in prayer. Such passion is prayer. . . . I confess I hunger still to be filled and enflamed, to melt into the dream of us, beyond this troubled place—to where we are not even ourselves.”
Those lines gave me chills the first time I watched the movie, and they did again yesterday when I watched it most recently. I would certainly not say that everyone should agree with them and feel the same way—we are all unique and experience things as such. I do wish, though, truly and deeply, that we would see the offering in them and open to discover whatever truth resonates uniquely and authentically within each of us.
It is in that, it seems to me, that true progress lies.
Love,
Emerald
-Adam Lambert “Aftermath”
Bittersweet Balloons
Two years ago, one of my dearest friends informed me that her great Uncle Jesse’s (names changed for privacy) 90th birthday was coming up. She said that at his 80th birthday party, he had told everyone that if he made it to his 90th, he wanted to have a “girl jump out of the cake” at his party. With his 90th birthday and corresponding party plans imminent, my friend told me her mother and Uncle Jesse’s wife (Aunt Grace) were wondering if they could hire me to surprise Uncle Jesse at his party with a (very tame) strip tease.
I said of course, and on the day of the party I wore a matching polka-dot push-up bra and boyshorts set and covered myself with blue balloons, which Uncle Jesse was provided with a thumbtack to pop while I danced. I had a delightful time performing that job and meeting Uncle Jesse and Aunt Grace, whom I enjoyed seeing occasionally over the next couple years as my friend got married and her family and I encountered each other at different wedding-related events.
Several weeks ago Uncle Jesse underwent surgery and experienced some subsequent complications. While he was recovering, I was told that Aunt Grace had brought him a picture of me taken the day of his 90th birthday party so he could show the nurses his “balloon girl,” whom he had apparently talked about. My friend said this was done “not in a silly way – it really cheered him up.”
Uncle Jesse died last week, just short of age 92. I will attend his memorial service on Saturday.
Sometimes, professional sexual entertainment is lighthearted, fun, sweet, moving. Sometimes it may hold an importance or make a difference in someone’s life many people aren’t or wouldn’t be aware of.
Today (March 3) is International Sex Workers’ Rights Day. This year has brought me, not that I need one, a bittersweet personal reminder that sex work encompasses and touches a wide variety of services, people, and experiences. As always, I offer love and support for sex workers and the recognition of their/our professional and human rights.
And I offer love to all who knew and loved Uncle Jesse, and wish him a beautiful journey.
Love,
Emerald
“If you could stand tall with me…so much more that we could know…move past this flesh and blood, see what’s inside of you…”
-Ed Kowalczyk “Stand”
Illumination
Earlier this week, I wrote about avoidance and anxiety. It happened that the next day, the ongoing Inner Work group of which I am a part had a conference call, which we have scheduled sometimes in addition to our two annual in-person weekend retreats.
A participant on the conference call talked about, as I interpreted it, a feeling she had been experiencing of “non-movement” lately. She said she didn’t see it as necessarily an egoic resistance or defense maneuver but just a slowing down or quietness of action. She wondered if there may ever be an energetic “pause” in the experience of Essence—that there might be a time in the authentic experience of ourselves in which there did not seem to be any particular movement seeming called for.
Immediately the internal response in me was, Of course there may. And that was when I realized it.
I had forgotten it was Winter.
As I’ve mentioned here before, Winter is the season in Five-Element Acupuncture that offers stillness, silence, immersion in the mystery, respect for unknowing/the unknown. In listening to my fellow participant’s question, I realized the entire season of Winter, as I understand it, represents and invites the very phenomenon of which she spoke. Winter itself could be one answer to the very question.
At that moment, this seemed obvious to me—and yet immediately preceding her inquiry, this awareness had been entirely blocked from my consciousness. The exposure to this conversation invited an entire reframing of the perception of my recent experience. The anxiety I have experienced recently may be specifically related to the call of Winter—or more pointedly, my own ignoring and forgetting of it—and the perception of and frustration with avoidance may not necessarily be with actual avoidance of things as much as—or at least as well as—a product of the resistance to, paradoxically, slowing down, surrendering to the authentic stillness deep within me as invited by this season. A part of me may in fact have been deliberately blocking the conscious awareness of and remembrance of the symbolism of Winter, finding the stillness, silence, and surrender to the unknown that Winter invites intimidating and unnerving. And of course the further I am from what is true in me, including connection with the flow of the Earth and its offerings, the more anxiety I am likely to feel.
Nothing I said in the post on Monday was wrong. It just wasn’t seeing everything (as probably my perspective now isn’t either; it has just expanded to encompass more than then). I was seeing something from a particular, and limited, perspective; others were, at the time, blocked from my consciousness. It was like looking at a rainbow but with such a narrow perception that all that is seen is blue. The gift of my colleague’s sharing invited the expansion of my awareness to include more than one color—which, of course, may change the whole perspective.
The anxiety is still there, and the reasons for it I expressed have not changed, in my perception. The reframing did not make the anxiety go away—it allowed for a different relationship to it, a new awareness of why it may be there and how to awaken more and hold within myself the invitation and response in me that feels truly called for. That might not be the one the culture surrounding me, or anyone with whom I’m interacting, or perhaps particularly a part of me that is made up of structures that formed in my past may seem interested in. But as I said at the end of the post earlier this week, anxiety may be an invitation.
The message I feel right now is, Slow Down; It Is Winter. Alas, I had forgotten. Thank you, Universe, for the reminder.
As I mentioned last year and the year before, today, December 17, is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Organized events are planned today around the world to commemorate this designation and the sentiment behind its inception in 2003.
My red candle honoring such is lit and pictured above. From the mystery, stillness, and depth to and from which Winter calls us, I acknowledge and observe as love all who have been affected by violence in their professions as sex workers in the last year and ever, all who have felt directly impacted by such, and all who have committed it, as well as everyone everywhere. It is here especially, in the darkness, depth, and unknowing of this season, that the ultimate Oneness that we are may be so clearly seen.
May we so.
Love,
Emerald
-Adyashanti
At the Risk of Repeating Myself…
I feel like I’ve said this all before. Yet I seem to continue to encounter some of the same assertions, postulations, perspectives about sex work, specifically the decriminalization of prostitution, to which I still feel, and have felt in the past, compelled to respond.
In this case, as I mentioned in my recent post about human trafficking, there was more to which I wanted to respond in the two articles I referenced. That post of mine focused on the (erroneous) conflation of sex work and sex trafficking, and as I said then, in the interest of post length I didn’t want to get into as well the things in both articles with which I disagreed about the principles of prostitution and its decriminalization in general.
That I saved for this post.
Philosophically, in addition the fallacious perspective that equates prostitution and sex trafficking, the perspective offered in these two articles seems to find the current and continued criminalization of prostitution advisable and desirable. Michelle Brock, the author of both articles, asks in the second one,
“If you were a trafficker, would you be drawn to a country where men were criminalized for giving you business, or to a country where they felt free to roam?”
And that seems to me an interesting question. The first answer that occurs to me is that since trafficking of human beings is (appropriately) illegal, I don’t know whether the legal status of the places traffickers are going would seem of particular importance to them. If what they’re doing is illegal anyway, it doesn’t seem obvious to me that they would be seeking out legal enterprises or environments in which to operate. Dealers of illegal drugs in the United States, for example, don’t seem to have avoided bringing said products to the country despite their illegal status. If such drugs were decriminalized, I don’t feel sure that the same covert mechanisms and tactics for provision would still be necessary and that current dealers of illegal drugs would suddenly flock to the United States where they were “free to roam.”
And actually, it seems to me that the traffickers referred to in the question may prefer the former—being somewhere where the demand was criminalized. If they are doing something illegal to provide a service, why would they go somewhere to provide it where the practice is not criminalized? Essentially it seems this would eliminate or at least decrease the demand for their services. If the service were freely or easily accessible and legal, why would illegal means be necessary to further provide it? Such may in fact create an environment in which traffickers might not feel so comfortable operating.
The same article states,
” … I have read in most other government and NGO documents that many victims are afraid of telling police the truth, since they are threatened and by traffickers.”
That strikes me as truly ironic. I don’t doubt that it’s true (and find it tragic). I wonder why it doesn’t seem to occur within this context that when prostitution is criminalized, virtually ALL working whores, trafficked or not, feel exactly this way by the very law in regard to reporting crimes and telling the truth? If they do experience some kind of assault, especially on the job, the exact description cited above fits that which every sex worker (in an environment in which said work is criminalized) may face—sometimes afraid not of traffickers, but of the law and officials employed to uphold it. Incidentally, since decriminalizing prostitution certainly doesn’t mean decriminalizing human trafficking, nothing about the above would presumably change in the face of the decriminalization of prostitution. What would change, rather, is that the many working in the sex industry by choice would legally hold more recourse in reporting abusive or unlawful acts without (so much) fear for their own freedom or safety. In addition, law enforcement would be in a position to devote more attention to actual situations of abuse and coercion since the law would not call on them to identically pursue incidents of consensual sex work.
Going back to the first article,
“Paying to have sex with a prostituted woman/sex worker is inherently dehumanizing because it takes the wholeness out of the woman’s humanity.” [Emphasis theirs]
…What in the hell does that mean? I’m really not being a smart-ass here—I truly do not understand this. What exactly is the part that’s “dehumanizing”? The having sex? That would seem to be quite the assertion (though not unheard of, I guess). The being paid for it? Um, is most gainful employment dehumanizing, then? What about, for example, writing, which is something I have loved to do since I was seven and that I feel has been a significant part of my existence—and for which I have also been paid. Is that dehumanizing? How about professional psychologists? Are they “dehumanized” by being seen for their training and education when one buys their services, taking the “wholeness” out of their “humanity”? Feel free to insert virtually any profession you’d like to in the above statements, as I don’t see exactly what is differentiating one from another. Why is this profession somehow more “dehumanizing” than the other services we perform for money in a capitalistic social and economic system?
Moving on to practical matters (still in the first article):
“If you throw in some drugs, second-hand clothing, and the watchful eye of a pimp, you’ve got yourself a more realistic picture of what the majority have for a work environment.”
First, I really wonder how one claims to know that this represents a “majority.” But second, why, why, why does it not seem to occur to us that this may be in huge part because the industry is forced underground due to its illegal status? I really don’t understand why this does not seem more commonly recognized. Does it really seem like the above would need to or likely be the case in a non-criminalized industry?
Maybe an example would help this seem clearer. Let’s pretend that we decided to criminalize, say, soccer for some reason. Do you think soccer would remain just as it is now, with the same audiences, environments, and performing conditions? Does it seem that perhaps the aforementioned factors may be affected by its suddenly having lawfully punishable status? That viewing it, following it, participating in it would suddenly need to be done covertly, so that the methodology(ies) arranged to employ this may shift, take on a different feeling, be exploited in different ways? Seriously, ponder that. And if this were the case, does it seem obvious that this would be not because of soccer itself but because of its illegal status?
Then there is the line at which I just sigh:
“This means she [Pye Jakobsson] cannot speak on behalf of the sex trade industry, specifically when it comes to trafficking victims.”
I wonder why, then, Ms. Brock feels that she can? I wonder who exactly can speak for sex workers if not sex workers themselves? This is not the first time I’ve seen or heard such an assertion—you’re “an exception”; “most” sex workers are like this. How do the people purporting this know this (even more pointedly, know this better than sex workers themselves)? Why does it seem so commonplace and cavalier to blatantly disregard, particularly as “atypical,” sharings from sex workers who have chosen to work in the industry and who express their perspectives? At what point is it appropriate for those perspectives to be taken into consideration? Why have they seemed so consistently ignored? What constitutes a “valid” sex worker perspective worthy of attention? Perhaps most pointedly, why would someone who has not worked as a sex worker seem to feel so strongly about wanting to speak for them while ignoring expressions from those who have or do work as sex workers as they speak for themselves?
For the record, I don’t claim to speak for all sex workers, nor do I feel I have some magical understanding and knowledge of the majority of sex workers’ experiences or working environments or contexts. I frankly don’t know how virtually anyone feels like s/he knows this, especially in an area of work that tends, contemporarily, to be so covert. What I do feel is that, as I have said before, in a capitalistic environment, I see no justification for the arbitrary disallowance of sexual services to be recognized as among the myriad services legitimately offered and sold within the structures of that system. In addition, to purport to speak for the workers comprising an entire industry without necessarily even speaking personally to any of them, much less what may be construed a representative sample, seems inappropriate, or at the very least, subject to scrutiny, to me.
Love,
Emerald
“Everybody’s talking all this stuff about me, why don’t they just let me live?, I don’t need permission, make my own decisions, that’s my prerogative…”
-Britney Spears (originally by Bobby Brown) “My Prerogative”
Fallacy and Distinction
Recently on AKIMBO, the blog of the International Women’s Health Coalition, Audacia Ray posted about the June release of the 10th Annual Trafficking in Persons Report by the United States Department of State. I have not read completely the 373-page report but rather browsed it a bit, spot reading a few paragraphs on different pages. What I read I (not surprisingly) found heartbreaking.
There is no intention in me whatsoever to undermine, dismiss, or observe with any lack of appropriate reverence the horrific phenomenon of human trafficking. I do feel concern, however, about a conflation of human trafficking or sex trafficking specifically with sex work in general. As Audacia pointed out when she provided the link, the ugly phenomenon of human trafficking encompasses far more areas of industry than just sex work, and indeed, in my brief perusing of the report, much of what I saw related to other forms of industry. And yet, sex trafficking seems to be the area most associated with human trafficking to the public, and in some cases this emphasis seems to be used to argue for continued (or increased) criminalization of prostitution.
This is not to necessarily accuse the perspective that proposes this conflation of exploiting the tragedy of human trafficking, but it does seem important to me to provide another perspective(s). The current phenomenon of human trafficking seems to me related to a number of economic, social, psychological, evolutionary, and consciousness-related factors beyond the scope of this post, and a consideration of human trafficking or sex trafficking as synonymous with sex work seems to me severely misguided. I see no intrinsic connection, much less interchangeability, between the two.
I read two online articles recently that I interpreted as presenting fallacious assertions about sex work and human trafficking.* Both were at an anti-sex-trafficking website called Hope for the Sold. The first was published June 8 of this year and is a response to a video of Pye Jakobsson discussing sex worker rights and the Swedish model of criminalizing the patronization of sexual services. The second is a follow-up article in response to comments received on the first.
In the second referenced article, Michelle Brock of Hope for the Sold states,
This seems to me a possible subtle fallacy. The legalization of alcohol at the time of Prohibition did not seem to increase the demand for it. The demand was already there. Maxim claims prostitution as the world’s oldest profession. In this country and much of the world, capitalism is an official and strongly ingrained social system. Sexuality is intrinsic in us. Combined, the demand for sexual services does not seem to need much help.“Legalization grows the size of the sex industry, which includes a rise in demand for paid sex.”
Does it seem likely that an increase in the demand for manual labor has occurred because it is legal to work in that industry? For domestic work? Is that why we think human beings are trafficked for these purposes? Because domestic work and manual labor being legal are increasing the demand for it? To me that makes little sense. As with sex work, the demand seems to be already there and not to need any help. I see no basis for a supposition that sex work being legal increases a demand for it, or really that demand is or would be affected very much by legal status at all. Human trafficking seems to encompass numerous factors, contributors, and circumstances not exclusive to or even necessarily directly related to sex work or any of the particular industries in which it is occurring.
In the first article, Ms. Brock asserts,
“[Ms. Jakobsson] fails to see that prostitution and sex trafficking cannot be separated.”
Really? So does that mean manual labor and manual labor trafficking cannot be separated, and domestic work and domestic work trafficking cannot be separated? What will we do about that? Try to abolish a demand for manual labor and domestic work? Criminalize them? Criminalize the purchase of such services? I fail to see how “prostitution and sex trafficking” any more “cannot be separated” than other kinds of work from their respective trafficking occurrences.
Which brings me back to the heartbreaking point that there are many other areas and cases in which human beings are currently being trafficked besides sex work. The fixation on sex trafficking to the exclusion of other areas of trafficking is one of the things that signals that a bias against sex work itself may be in operation.
It does not seem productive to me to perceive an “us against them” circumstance between those who support decriminalization of prostitution and those who seek to eradicate human trafficking. There is nothing mutually exclusive about these positions; on the contrary, I don’t recall ever encountering or hearing of anyone who supports the decriminalization of prostitution not also unquestionably desiring the elimination of human trafficking.
What seems important to me is to present an alternative perspective(s) to any which may be focused on a hostility toward sex work itself and thus draw superficial, ignorant, or arbitrary connections between decriminalization and sex trafficking that may be more related to ingrained cultural perspectives than what is actually occurring. (I do not use “ignorant” there derogatorily but rather advisedly—ignorant of an understanding of consensual sex work, a category into which much of the population may fall—and not necessarily by fault of their own: there is little in mainstream society to illuminate this understanding for the general public.)
As I ponder how to close this post right now, what feels forthcoming is a sincere reiteration of respect and love for everyone, encompassing the heartbreak for the tragedy of human trafficking and the holding of unconditional love in this deep wish for the Awakening of all humanity.
Love,
Emerald
“Hey you, don’t tell me there’s no hope at all, together we stand, divided we fall…”
-Pink Floyd “Hey You”
“Versatile Inspiration” at Oh Get A Grip!
As announced earlier this week, my guest post is up today at Oh Get A Grip! It is again such an honor to share space at OGAG with the esteemed writers who blog regularly there, and I thank again the extraordinary Ashley Lister (of whom I am a huge admirer) for inviting me to make an appearance there.
I myself have a busy day in front of me as the Maid of Honor in a good friend’s wedding, so I will likely be offline most or all of the day. I look forward to catching up tomorrow—thanks for reading and again to the lovely hosts/bloggers at Oh Get A Grip! :)
Love,
Emerald
-from “Versatile Inspiration” at Oh Get A Grip!
International Sex Worker Rights Day
Today (March 3) is International Sex Worker Rights Day. I would like to observe the occasion here by listing and highlighting some things pertaining to sex work/sex workers’ rights lately that I find cool/uplifting/heartening/lovely. The t-shirt I am wearing in the picture, by the way, was produced by the fabulous and local-to-me organization HIPS (Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive).
“I will, though, share a story.
When I first started my work 14 years ago, I shared with a Tantrika friend about what I was doing [prostitution, I have the impression] and why. I felt safe sharing as, heck..we were assisting at a Tantra workshop, she did “healing massage” and we were both supposedly doing our inner work. She blasted me like no one had before. I just kept breathing, knowing that we had to be together all weekend in this close environment, working together for the participants. Our “stuff” had no place there.
At first she wouldn’t look at me. I simply kept reminding myself that this had nothing to do with me, it was her stuff. I was safe, all was well, etc, etc.
The last day she came up to me and thanked me. During the course of the weekend she realized that her blast had come from her fear about doing the same work. That she had been getting intuitive flashes that it was her next step but she was afraid.”
Oh my. I don’t even know what to say about this except that it may be one of the coolest personal accounts I have ever read in the context of sex work.
And there is my list of beautiful celebrations I specifically honor on this International Sex Worker Rights Day. Best wishes, support, gratitude, and love to all current and former sex workers on this day of celebration of our universal rights amidst our professional vocations. (And of course best wishes, support, gratitude, and love to everyone everywhere as well. We are, after all, all One. :)) Love,Emerald “No more turning away from the coldness inside, just a world that we all must share, it’s not enough just to stand and stare, is it only a dream that there’ll be no more turning away?…”
-Pink Floyd “On the Turning Away”
Lighting a Red Candle
As I mentioned last year (though on MySpace at the time, as it was before this blog was launched), December 17 is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers as conceived and named by Annie Sprinkle and SWOP-USA in 2003. The red umbrella is an international symbol (history/origination here) of support for the rights of and protestation of violence and discrimination against sex workers.
An article by Dr. Sprinkle about the origination of the recognition of this day may be found here. It is a read I highly recommend.
SWOP-USA’s December 17 site contains a listing of events around the country and world to recognize the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. I don’t know of any organized gatherings in the geographical location where I am this year, so my own commemoration will be solo. I have procured a red candle (conveniently easy to do this time of year) that is currently lit and that I plan to have lit throughout the day in silent support for current and former sex workers, our rights as professionals and as individuals, and deep reverence and respect for those who experienced violence in the line of work in the last year and ever.
And reverence and respect for all.
Namaste.
Love,
Emerald
-Our Lady Peace “Innocent”
