Read Anna Forbes’ article for more. I’m quoted in the second-to-last paragraph.

This editorial is a small step in the direction of remembering and reclaiming the names of those who have died: those who faced death alone in the cold arms of heartless killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy, Jr., but also those of us who have been raped by the police, kicked out of our homes, incarcerated, and abandoned.

I also did a radio interview on the subject, just click on the following link and clock in one quarter of the way into the interview on WBAI’s Out-FM.

‘No Humans Involved’: Ending Violence Against Queer and Transgender Sex Workers

To mourn the victims of murder, incarceration, and intimate partner violence in their midst, this past December 17, sex workers, clients, and allies filled New York City’s Metropolitan Community Church and marked the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. The Day was honored by more than 27 cities this year, from Nairobi to Hong Kong. Here in New York, the high-ceiling room of the church reverberated with the names of the dead.

The list of the dead grows yearly. In 2008, Duanna Johnson, a transgender female, was beaten by Memphis police while she was in custody. Once released, three men shot her to death as she worked a street corner. This past July, the alleged murderer of Paulina Ibarra was finally taken into custody. The walls of Ibarra’s apartment were said to be drenched in blood as a result of multiple stab wounds.

The names are familiar to us all, but Johnson and Ibarra are only a handful of the scores of queer and transgender sex workers killed in the past few years. They share a great deal besides the brutality of their murders. They share facts that situate their killings in a pattern of who gets killed in America, and for what. They were gender non-conforming. They were people of color, and, whether by choice or circumstance, they traded sex for money.

On the Day to End Violence, our thoughts naturally gravitate to serial killings, and rightly so. This violence is not new to the queer and transgender community. Who among us could forget Jeffrey Dahmer? The majority of Dahmer’s victims were hustlers lured by promises of cash in exchange for nude photographs. One of the 17 boys killed was named Jeremiah. He had a hole drilled through his skull so that hydrochloric acid and boiling water could be injected with a syringe.

The gruesome nature of Dahmer’s crimes is perhaps unprecedented, but Dahmer is no exception. The world has committed to memory the name of John Wayne Gacy, Jr., who strangled and buried 33 boys underneath his Chicago home, many of them hustlers. Likewise, the perpetrator of the Atlanta Child Murders murdered at least 28 boys, all African-American. The thought of these young people facing death alone, in the cold arms of heartless killers, should fill every queer and transgender person with the same rage we wore proudly in the recent headlines decrying the epidemic of teen suicides.

Add to these lost boys the scores of transgender women who also traded sex, such as Johnson and Ibarra, who were targeted for cold-blooded murder. Consider the many non-trans women, whether straight or queer, who slept with men for money, and who are now dead in riverbeds and highway ditches, strangled by Gary Ridgway or fed to Robert Pickton’s pigs.

The crimes are almost too bloody to conceive, the names too numerous. To cope, sex workers started the Day to End Violence, and on this day, we break the names down to faces and piece together the paraphernalia of the trade — condom wrappers, laced boots, acrylic nails — into a story of the last days of those lost. It is in this way that we stand witness and gather the strength to fight back.

In mourning those we have lost to murder, we must also remember those who remain. The Day to End Violence is as much about our own stories as it is about those who have been murdered. In my own case, I was a male hustler for more than four years, and before that I traded sex informally for food, shelter, and security. I left home at 15 to escape abuse and managed to take part in several causes championed by the “gay movement” — like HIV treatment access and ending queer homelessness. Yet, I have never seen a “community” effort to combat the criminalization, police brutality, and social benefits exclusion waged against queer and transgender sex workers.

The omission should not be taken lightly. Long before I was scraping my knees for $50-per-blow-and-gos, there have been queer and transgender people who traded sex. It was sex workers who threw the first heels at the police outside Stonewall. We have been denied the same jobs and social benefits, hounded by the same vice squad, locked up in the same prisons, and lain side-to-side in the same hospital beds due to lack of access to AIDS treatment.

“No humans involved” is what the police say to refer to many sex workers, queer and transgender folk, and people of color alike. The enemy sees our common cause, but why don’t we? For many of us those identities come together entirely. It is on these bases that queer and transgender people must recognize a common cause in decriminalizing “prostitution.” With decriminalization, sex workers may report crimes to the police, qualify for benefits and healthcare, and improve the conditions of our work.

The thought has its corollary in the observation that violence against sex workers is also institutional. Politicians push quality-of-life policing and close our workplaces, resulting in fines and incarceration for minor conduct. The police use vague and far-reaching laws to harass us and cycle us through the system. Killers lurk in the dark, taking advantage of our isolation. And the media greases its distribution with the yearly bloodlettings of “‘Jack the Ripper’” headlines, where “Hooker Murdered!” is just a placeholder, signifying nothing. We are not considered mothers, sons, brothers, cousins, or even neighbors to the public, just bodies to be murdered and moved, whether to prison or as dismembered body parts in the trunk of a car.

We gather on the Day to End Violence to protest precisely this dehumanization.

Like other queer and transgender people, we are castigated for our “lifestyle choices,” but while many of us choose this work fully, the fact is that as a result of racial and sexual occupational discrimination, lack of a living wage or affordable housing options, homophobia, and transphobia, many of us have been driven into the limited choice of sex work. The only lifeline for many is to trick. Studies show that it is precisely this lack of alternatives and isolation that fuels vulnerability to violence, and this isolation, from our families, friends, and intimate partners, is the product of stigma.

In a recent Daily News piece, incarcerated Long Island serial killer Joel Rifkin laughed aloud at the interviewer’s inquiry as to why sex workers were targeted by him and the “Seaside Slayer.” His response was simple, “No family,” he said, “no one is looking.” The unprecedented and global turnout at the recent Day to End Violence puts a lie to Rifkin’s claim. As Audacia Ray, one of the event’s organizers, said, “Our families are made by blood, by choice, and by love. The idea that no one cares when we go missing comes from people who don’t care. We care.”

As a male hustler, someone who proudly straddles the line between our communities, I invite you to stand witness, too, as our communities first did at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco and Stonewall. Our enemies are too great for sex workers to defeat alone. I urge you not to allow the mainstream of the movement to desert us in hopes of future “respectability.” Queer and transgender people will never be respectable in the eyes of America, no matter how much property we own or how normal-seeming our demeanor. Our dignity and “respectability” shouldn’t be measured by some external standard. True respectability is measured by our commitment to a concept of liberty that includes all people.

Visit the site of the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP-NYC) at swop-nyc.org to find out more about the Day to End Violence. Rockwell’s blog Sex! Work? is at http://williamrockwell.wordpress.com. To contact Will Rockwell, write will@spreadmagazine.org.

From WBAI: “On December 17th at the Metropolitan Community Church, a hundred sex workers and their allies met to commemorate the 7th annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Sex worker activists and members of the community shared their stories and honored the 60 sex workers known to have been killed in the past year. They focused on the different forms violence can take, from the serial killer in Long Island to everyday police violence. Out FM documented the entire event.”

I was not an editor but a peer reviewer for this issue.

While the majority of the work is focused in a general sense on access to HIV prevention and treatment for all sexual minorities, on rare occasions I’m gifted with an offer to work on sex worker organizing. The ‘Donor Collaboration to Advance the Human Rights of Sex Workers’ was such an occasion. I worked with two other consultants to produce a recommendation for the collaborative donor mechanism, as well as its governance and administration. In the end, a number of donors, both veteran funders and those newer to the issue, and sex worker advocates gathered to commit themselves to additional funds to human rights-based approaches to sex worker movement building. Read this summary from Mama Cash for the outcome.

‘Nothing for us without us’
Collaborating to Advance the Human Rights of Sex Workers

Amsterdam, December 9 and 10, 2010

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Donors and sex worker activists from around the world gathered in Amsterdam on December 9 and 10 for a historic convening hosted by Mama Cash and the U.S.-based Open Society Institute’s Sexual Health and Rights Project. Calling itself the Collaboration to Advance the Human Rights of Sex Workers, the group is committed to generating new funds and advocating for human rights-based approaches to building sex workers’ movements.

The sex worker-donor collaboration is unprecedented. One of its first activities will be to set up a fund that will attract new resources for sex worker-led organisations that use a human rights framework. The funding will support core costs, capacity building and crisis response.

Because of the stigmatisation of sex work and the widespread assumption that sex workers are always coerced and are in need of rescue, most donor funding worldwide is earmarked for HIV programming or economic empowerment. Sex workers are rarely given the opportunity to present their own agendas and shape their own programmes.

The vision of the collaboration is that societies uphold and respect the health, human, and labor rights and self-determination of sex workers of all genders. This vision translates into support for movement building and an end to the violation of sex workers’ rights and the stigmatisation of sex workers.

MacKlean Kyomya, one of the activists present at the meeting, is the Director of the Women’s Organization Network for Human Rights in Uganda. She had this to say:
‘The stigma and discrimination attached to sex work and blaming us as the vector of HIV really makes me feel disgusted and angry. Our society forgets that HIV is not transmitted through exchange of sex for money but through unsafe sex. Supporting our rights means increasing our ability to negotiate for safer sex. The collaborative meeting marks a turning point. I really see the support and recognition of sex workers from the grassroots to the global without the “Buts and Ifs”.’

Working in the spirit of ‘nothing for us without us,’ sex workers will be at the heart of the grantmaking process for the new fund. In the coming months, the Collaborative will establish its governance structure. The governing body, comprised of both donors and sex workers, will request proposals from existing international funds that want to be considered to administer the pooled fund. The new fund is slated to be set up and accepting donations by the autumn of 2011.

Once the fund is up and running, all proposals from sex worker groups will be reviewed jointly by the administrating fund and regional peer review panels comprised fully or largely of sex worker representatives.

Nicky McIntyre, Mama Cash’s Executive Director, was thrilled about the outcome of the meeting.

‘There was a lot of trust building. And in the end, having a joint grantmaking process with sex workers in the driver’s seat was embraced by everyone in the room. You have no idea how historic this is. We all feel that this fund will contribute significantly to a shift in the relationship between donors and sex workers, will build the capacities of both our communities, and most importantly, will allow for regional movement-building on a scale that was previously unheard of’.

In addition to the new fund, the Collaboration will also be involved in advocacy both within donor communities and in order to assist the sex workers’ rights movement in its long-standing efforts to become more visible at the global level.
The following guiding principles for the Collaboration were hammered out during the meeting:

• We recognize the self-determination of sex workers.
• We believe that sex workers must be at the heart of the design, implementation, and evaluation of programmes.
• We oppose the criminalization of sex work and recognize that sex work is work.
• We embrace the gender, sexuality and all other types of diversity of sex workers.
• We recognize the equal value and voice of all participants in the collaboration.
• We commit to learning and using it to inform our interventions and demonstrate the value of working collaboratively.
• We commit to support actions that catalyze advocacy for policies, laws and practices that are based on evidence of what works.

We end our report about this exciting development with responses from two more of our activist partners.

Ruth Morgan Thomas – NSWP

‘The recent donor dialogue marked a historic moment when a number of donors and sex workers activists from around the world came together to discuss the need to support sex worker-led organisations themselves to advocate for the advancement of their human rights. The Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) welcomes the commitment of donors given during the meeting to establish a new collaborative fund which will bring much needed additional resources for sex worker organising’.
— Ruth Morgan-Thomas, Global Coordinator, Global Network of Sex Work Projects

Aliya Rakhmetova – SWAN

‘The meeting was educational and inspiring. It was amazing to see donors committed to support the sex workers’ rights movement. I hope the commitment and drive of this collaboration between sex workers and donors lasts long years to come’!
— Aliya Rakhmetova, Network Coordinator, SWAN, The Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia

“The Red Thread: A Time Line,” by Will Rockwell and Christina Cicchelli, an except from $pread‘s Issue 5.3, the Age Issue

In honor of the many hard-fought battles of those before us, $pread has included a special time line for the Age Issue, highlighting the accomplishments of the sex worker movement. We have limited ourselves to the period between the 1970s and the present in order to spare you the Sumerian cuneiform. We have largely focused in on the U.S. and Canada because of our experience-base and that of our readership. We have, however, taken the opportunity to emphasize the very real impact of a globalized movement on the U.S. and Canada, with entries on the Netherlands, India, South Africa, Mexico and Taiwan, to name a few.

In an effort to spice up the onward-ho foot-dragging of whore history, we have included a few of the more infamous showdowns within the movement, as well as a few choice game-changers that have altered the playing field itself. In researching the time line, we have waded through the tremendous highs of the Whores Congress and Lyon church occupation to the extreme lows of sex worker serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and Robert Pickton, as well as the criminal policies of governments and aid packages such as the anti-prostitution pledge. Here’s hoping we learn from the lessons of the past and hustle them into the future. Our increasingly international movement needs movers and shakers now more than ever. Enjoy the time line and enjoy the times. Onward, hos!

Read the interview here.

I prefer to call this article “Lipstick and Elbow Grease” instead of “It’s Not Selling Your Body, It’s Controlled-Access Rental,” because the latter was chosen by the editors from a quote I explicitly referenced from Craig Seymour that they failed to credit. Additionally, there is a significant misrepresentation in the line “a male sex worker who’s serviced men for almost a decade,” that I have attempted to correct with many phone calls and emails. Let it be said: I worked professionally for more than five years, but while I left home at 16 and pulled my first trick at that time, I only traded sex informally for resources on and off until I started professionally.

Other than these mistakes, I thought the interview was well worth it, and I hope other leftist publications will follow suit. Thank you to Titania Kumeh for the interview and for her continued coverage of sex worker rights issues. In any case, take a load off and read the interview, or just skip the interview and read the very entertaining comments, which I usually avoid but simply couldn’t get away from this round. According to one reader, I have a “VIP mentality” when it comes to sex work. Well, pop open the champagne!

The Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) was a vocal and visible presence at the 2010 International AIDS Conference (IAC) in Vienna, Austria this year. NSWP members challenged both policy makers and funding agencies to break with the status quo, which perpetuates institutional violence and violation of sex worker’s human rights that lead to a higher rates of HIV infection and death. Read the Global Network post “Denial of Service” for more.

On Tuesday, July 20th, NSWP organized sex workers and allies to disrupt a speech by United States Global AIDS Coordinator Dr. Eric Goosby to demand justice for sex workers harmed by PEPFAR’s discriminatory anti-prostitution loyalty oath.

I highly recommend listening to Macklean Kyomya (WONETHA-Uganda) minutes 1:00 and on.

Will Rockwell is a youth advocate and editor of $pread magazine:

’Ideally’ is such a huge question, and I like how Audacia framed [her answer] in terms of how the sex industry would necessarily have to be a part of larger structural changes in the world around economic, racial, and gender justice.

In addition, we need to incorporate a youth perspective into the vision too, not to assume that every young person is sexually exploited, but that perhaps it’s a more complicated story and until there are those options […] to choose more empowering paths or different paths as opposed to the limited choices many of us who started young were left with, which is to say a ‘choice among limited choices.’ Still, every choice under post-industrial capitalism is a choice among limited choices, and those options would have to include, in this ‘utopian’ universe, a place to sleep, regular pay, non-minimum wage job, an end to racist, sexist, and transphobic occupational discrimination.

Definitely, I think a practical step to take right now is to incorporate more into the movement a vision of what we’re doing to help young people who work, too, and to address their self-determined needs, whether it is improved working conditions, an end to criminalization, or a safe exit from the industry.

The Little Black Book is just what the title says: a compendium of Réal’s experiences with her clients. What Réal accomplished in choosing to compile her work log before her death (I know the word “choice” in this case disturbs you) is to showcase the “humanist science” she practiced. The Little Black Book, thankfully without the typically tedious frills and diatribes of political ideology, is a testament to Réal’s immense capability, her meticulous and inspiring attention, the lonely commitment of our profession: “We know them like the back of our hand. As soon as they get in the door, it’s like we’d made them ourselves.”

Your review bemoans the lack of “arguments about prostitution,” but have you considered that Réal’s whole life was an argument? That every client was a case in point? Or that she was tired of fighting so-called feminists demanding a rebuttal? You say “who cares about the client wanting a finger up his ass,” but who cares about your silly, uninformed, and uncomplicated judgments? As if you can simply allude to the complexities of the sex industry, voice your amorphous “support for sex workers,” and call it a day. Réal took notes on her clients in order to document their incredible and secret idiosyncrasies, to become a better and more skilled worker, to keep a record for her own safety, and to provide a unique and lasting testament to the intricacies, and even mundanities, of working in the sex trade. In the future, please consider asking a sex worker to review a book documenting their profession. With that choice, the Review (which is a wonderful resource), would avoid mistakes like this in the future.