Stop the Trafic – The Red Light

Tags

brothels, consent, discrimination, feminism, laws, money, rants, sex industry, Sex Work, south australia, stigma, the boss, unions, work, workers rights

This is part three in my series of posts about trafficking. I previously wrote about my suspicions in regards to the portrayal of sex trafficking in the media, and the motivations of the anti trafficking industry in Peak Hour, and the negative outcomes of the trafficking hysteria in The Car Crash. This post is the answer. A green light for migrant sex workers and a red light for trafficking.

If you follow on from my original post the answer seems really obvious to me. There are many sex workers all around the world who travel or would like to travel. Just let them do it.

Let people apply for working Visa’s in Australia as a sex worker. As I have mentioned, I personally have the contact details of at least 10 sex workers currently working in China who would love to come to Australia to work in your brothel, if they could get a Visa. The barrier is that they are unable to get a working Visa as a sex worker. Not to mention the process of applying for Visa’s to enter Australia is extremely difficult because we conveniently do not translate the required documents, so people who do not speak or read English, often need a third person to help them apply for their travel documents. Some of the sex workers I referred to have considered paying a third person a lot of money to assist them in travelling to Australia to work, and some knew other workers who had done that. Obviously being in a lot of debt to the person assisting you travel or your employer does create vulnerabilities for the worker though, it can take away a some of their bargaining power and in some cases could restrict the sex workers choices.  A few simple changes could allow sex workers from around the world to come to Australia willingly to work. There would be no demand for stolen or coerced non sex working Asian women in the sex industry, because lets face it while having sex slaves in place of willing workers might be slightly better for short term profits, it has got to create some serious challenges. Cut out the middle man and the demand by allowing migrant sex workers to enter and work in Australia legally and independently.

That is ofcourse if your concern is stopping trafficking, and not stopping sex work.

It might also be useful to educate all sex workers, our employers, our clients and the general community about our rights, in appropriate and useful ways. Through our peer organisations and that are supported to make sure they can outreach to all sex workers from all backgrounds making sure people know their rights. Make sure we all know what we should expect and what is not OK at work so that we are less likely to be exploited or treated badly and we know what to do or who we can get more information or support from if we do have problems at work.

Of course, where I live in South Australia that would mean giving us some rights in the first place. Decriminalise sex work, and give us our rights!

Educate the wider community, health and welfare services and the police to treat sex workers with respect. Help break down the stigma of being or seeing a sex worker, so that we can talk to people about what’s going on without fear of being judged. The discriminatory perceptions that exist about sex workers and our clients doesn’t make it easy for us to share anything openly or honestly, or to voice our concerns.

Take crimes against us seriously. Dont turn it into a witch hunt on an entire industry, or blame my choice of work, just give me the support I need and deal with the crime at hand. Create safe spaces for people to report crimes, concerns or suspicions and then treat those reports seriously, and respectfully, like you would if the crime or complaint had been committed in a restaurant.

Encourage and  support our organising. In Australia, we havent got our own union, but we have our own workers rights groups and organisations. Many sex workers are members of those organisations and many many many more sex workers receive support, information or advocacy around workplace issues from these groups and organisations. They are also fighting for our workers rights at a state and national level. Strong sex worker organising reduces the risks of us being exploited at work.

Stop the police raids. Stop pushing us and our workplaces, industry, employers and clients so far underground that we can barely see the light. Change the approach and try protecting sex workers instead of scaring us. Save the raids for actual crimes.

Is it really that difficult? Want to stop slavery? Free the slaves.

Seriously, allow sex workers to travel to Australia and work in the sex industry legally, educate them on how to do that, give us rights, make sure we know our rights, create safe and supportive spaces for us or our clients to report crimes or concerns or to make complaints, treat those reports with respect and take them seriously, stop thinking and suggesting that being treated badly is part of doing sex work, support us to organise to improve our work conditions for all sex workers and make the cops protect us instead or raiding us.

Double Trouble

Tags

3somes, clients, fantasy, friends and family, money, personal stories, safe sex, sex industry, Sex Work

There was a time in my sex working career when I worked very closely with a very close friend. It all started on the day this girl walked into my life at a sex worker event hosted by SIN. She was about 5 years younger than me, cute, bubbly, opposite in looks but similar in personality to me. We clicked and quickly became friends. We laughed at the same things, had the same taste in music and our values aligned. As friends we complimented each other well, laughed lots, shared lots of stories and supported each other through our life hurdles. My new friend was full of energy, she had lots of ideas and was always telling me about the many ways she was going to make money and/or change the world.

One of those money making ventures that I got involved in was our double trouble act. I admired the guts of this girl, she knew how to work it, everything was an opportunity to her, even our friendship. So we began advertising together and offering a threesome experience to our clients. This was purely a business decision on our part, times were slow and we decided the best way to make money was to get more money out of less clients. We also happened to be very aware of the difficulty of getting a realistic somewhat genuine affordable paid for threesome experience. To book a ‘double’ through an agency it can become quite expensive once you add up the price of two workers plus the many extras, and even then there is no guarantee that the two workers will be comfortable enough with each other to be able to sell the fantasy convincingly. The service might be more mechanical than it would be with two workers who are used to each other. Both of us had been in these situations and knew they were not uncommon. But when you specialise in a service you are in a position to provide a more polished service for a more reasonable price, well in our case, we had a whole range  of prices, to ensure that no client went home before being completely spent.

We encouraged all our clients to see both of us together, If they couldn’t afford that we would offer the other worker to join us for only  part of the service for a smaller fee. We developed a long list of extra services we could offer together for varying amounts of extra money. We decided any amount of money was better than one of us sitting around doing nothing while the other one made all the money.

It was lots of fun working with my friend, we would rent gorgeous waterfront apartments for weekends or a couple of days at a time and order delicious food and drinks and work and work and eat and drink and work and work. The first time you do a booking with someone it can be awkward, especially if it is with a friend. They get to see you in work mode and you get to see them in their work mode. Not to mention you get to lick their nipples, smack their bums and lick their clits which is not something I usually do with my friends. And there is the whole trick to remembering to call them the right names at the right times. Sometimes you get to be part of the their lies to their partners and sometimes you annoy each other and need time out. But friend or not the first time you do a double with another worker can be hard work too. Trying to negotiate not one, but two people in a booking especially if you’re not sure about the other workers boundaries or ways of doing things it can be difficult. In addition the client is often nervous with no idea what to do with two women. But as experienced negotiators and actresses it doesn’t take long for we two workers to find our routine.

There are certain things you need to consider when doing doubles. First of all you have to be clear with the client and the other worker what is expected. In Adelaide a ‘double’ usually only refers to two workers giving their service to the client, whereas a ‘bi double’ means there is interaction between the two workers as well. You may also want to discuss with your co worker their boundaries in regards to things like, kissing, oral, toys, penetration, etc. both with you and the client and it’s a good idea to discuss how much extra you want to charge for what.

Double bookings are funny. When you’re doing them all day and night with the same person for a couple of days straight, they become hilarious. You get your routine down pat. To the point where you make the exact same jokes with every single client, and giggle appropriately in the exact same spots, and moan and groan at the exact same ways and use the exact same lines. There came a point where we were literally doing it in our sleep. Our cute giggle wasnt quite as sexy and convincing the 100th time round.

We got good at our doubles service though.  I learnt some things from all those threesomes including using different coloured condoms. I would have pink and she would have clear and that way we knew when the condom needed to get changed between partners (I told you we take safe sex pretty seriously). I also learnt to look out for my co worker. It was not unusual for a client to take a liking to a particular worker and she would get more of the attention and thus do more of the work. When this happened it was the other workers job to make sure lube was always accessible, tickle, talk dirty, do something to help get him off faster and redirect the client to you if you see your colleague needs a break. We would pull faces and use hand signals to check each others comfort, discuss timing and share a joke.

We made great money together. We went from booking to booking and turned our phones off at midnight. Then we would take a long hot shower, wash our make up off, wash our hair, put on clean and comfortable daggy pyjama’s and count our money. We didn’t just count it we  would roll around in it. I am not even joking, it was not unusual for us to throw the piles of fifty dollar notes up in the air and then pose for photos laying amongst them.

I mean, we would work hard. So it was so much fun to wallow in our rewards. Afterwards we would gather our money back up,tuck it away and make lists about how we planned to spend it before falling asleep in our luxury apartment ready to wake up and do it all again the next day. I cant wait to show those photos to my grandkids.

Stop the traffic – the car crash

Tags

consent, discrimination, feminism, laws, Melbourne, money, rants, sex industry, sex trafficking, Sex Work, south australia, stigma

Like the car crash you can’t look away from….

I explained my suspicion of the anti trafficking rhetoric and I promised I wouldn’t leave it there. I want to tell you about the harms being created by the trafficking hysteria because the problem is not only misinformation and preconceived stereotypes, it has actual detrimental real and measurable effects on the daily lives of sex workers, Asian sex workers in particular. Get a load of this:

Knee jerk reactions to the 4 corners one sided story on trafficking in the sex industry resulted in immediate promises from law makers to introduce tougher laws. The four corners ‘expose’ relied on one sad story, lots of bad recreations, the occasional sound bite from experts only where it backed up the ongoing spin and ofcourse sex work abolitionist and founder of project respect, Kathleen Maltzhern. All set to a predictably dark and sinister soundtrack. Well done 4 Corners  award, you certainly got people to bite. even before airing of the show and still continuing media are all over it, opportunists using it and the politicians responded.

Now specifically and admittedly in response to 4 corners sensationalism New South Wales is likely to “toughen up laws on brothels”. NSW has the best laws in the country, and just like that it’s going to be taken away. And WA have just introduced a bill into parliament that among other shockers, criminalises ALL migrant sex workers. Even if you don’t share my opinion about the lack of actual trafficking in our industry, surely you understand that bad laws are not the answer. We already have laws about trafficking, how about we use them rather than making more and more laws that only serve to push us all further underground and make it more difficult for all of us in every way and do not work. Awesome 4 corners is now creating our public policy.

And in states like South Australia, where we are all illegal anyway, it means Asian brothels get raided more often. elping the sex slaves by regularly arresting, harassing and intimidating Asian sex workers, their employers and their clients more than usual. Despite all the hundreds of sex work related charges laid each year, there are very few cases of trafficking ever found. And the few cases where victims of trafficking have been identified, criminalisation did not or would not have helped them. And in some cases victims were not treated appropriately by the cops.

Not only are sex workers generally feeling the effects of harmful laws, and Asian sex workers get more attention from the police, but, our saviours come out of the woodwork, ready to sniff out the sex slave and try out their scriptures or skills. What this means for us? More patronising visits from various health services, church groups or any other outsiders forcing themselves into our workspaces and being inappropriate. In Adelaide, it’s RAHAB. A church group who run a ministry training course charging young Christians good money to do outreach to sex workers. These people visit Asian brothels (among other parts of the industry), forcing themselves onto people while they are at work, often with nothing translated, nothing practical to offer and asking personal questions. Sex workers feel pressured to play along and be friendly because there is a suspicion that they will inform the police if they are not allowed in to a particular premises (on the presumption that we must be harbouring slaves). No one in the industry wants to talk to them, they are untrained and inexperienced christians who say completely offensive things and give us patronising bars of soap and deodorant sticks as bribes. They have even been known to break the conidentiality of one Chinese woman in a serious and kind of shocking way.

Not that publicly outing someone matters when you’re intent on saving a sex slave. People and their lives are just vehicles for furthering an agenda in most cases. Victoria’s Project respect, headed up by the afore-mentioned Kathleen Maltzhern whose agender shone through the 4 corners special, was trading on the misery. Sure enough no sooner had the show finished but there were calls for donations to her organisation everywhere. As mentioned in my previous post on the subject, everyone jumped on board ready to ride the wave, all hoping to get some air time, or some funding or public support. From big sex industry business associations wanting to minimise competition to abolitionist feminists and church groups. And they are all getting the airtime and using it to make things worse while groups that actually represent us desperately need the same support.

And I suggest a lot of the willingness to believe the hype is due to a touch of racism effecting people’s views of Asian women and preconceived ideas about sex work generally. Add that to some sad music and some recreations and the proble seems likely. And so it feeds your views of sex workers and Asian women further. It’s a vicious cycle. I once heard a woman who did outreach with a church based group speak at (one of the many) anti trafficking forums. She told a story about the night she saw trafficking with her own eyes in a South Australian brothel. It was late one night and she said she couldn’t really know for sure if “lets call her Lucy” (her words not mine) was trafficked or not, but it seemed probable for the following reasons (explained in a sad knowing kind of way):

1. “Lucy” didn’t engage at all with the christian outreach worker but sat quietly in the corner listening, with a “sad look on her face”

2. “Lucy” didn’t speak English

3. “Lucy’s” Thai boss spoke English and chatted with the church outreach woman and explained how “Lucy” lives in Melbourne and is only in Adelaide for 2 weeks and will be going home soon.

4. The Thai female boss had a white Australian boyfriend who likes to travel.

That was it.

She told this story to a room full of other keen would be “helpers” and interested public who didn’t seem to bat an eyelid. I shudder to think what urban myths that presumptuous story has now created, and the effects of that story being recreated over dinner tables everywhere.

Can i just mention as a side note, that the constant portrayal of Asian women and sex workers as submissive, exploited and/or abused, is not good for business. It keeps the good clients away and attracts the creeps!

It’s like – what do you want from us?! No one is listening unless we give them victim porn! Reading the accounts by Nicholas Kristof in this awful book (that was a best seller but I had to abandon half way through) about buying the freedom of young sex workers in places like India and Thailand, and he spends an uncomfortable amount of time describing her physical features and her sad brown eyes, before going on to gloat about his own saint like characteristics. JUST PAY HER AND LEAVE HER ALONE ALREADY NICHOLAS!! And you lot just eat it up. Salivate for it even. White saviours rescuing pretty young sex slaves and returning them to innocence. To the point that for some people to believe me,  i first need to break down and disclose any traumatic experience i may have had right there in front of you. Before you even hear me! Here – Elena says it better than me.

*End rant*

(Stick with me on this, I am getting to the friendly bits where I hand out all the answers)