Category: Articles

Generation Equality, hear sex workers’ voices

October 11th, 2021 · · Articles, Conferences, News Archive No comments - Tags:

Due to whorephobia and transphobia, parts of the United Nations system and some women’s organizations attempt to deny our advocacy in participatory spaces dedicated to the rights of women. US sex workers are documenting our participation in the 2021 Generation Equality Forums held Mexico and Paris.

In 1995 representatives of the fourth world women’s conference in Beijing created the Beijing Declaration stating that “women’s rights are human rights.” Sex workers globally have the least resources to attend UN meetings and to advocate within the admittedly hard won spaces for women’s rights globally. Barriers are deliberately thrown in our way. Yet, representatives of communities of sex workers were there in Beijing in 1995, demanding to be heard and challenging attempts to denounce sex work due to machinations by people with anti-sex worker and anti-trans agendas (1).  Since that time sex workers have fiercely defended our rights at many UN meetings following the Declaration. This includes advocacy in spaces that have been sites of anti-sex worker policy attempts, such as those organized by UN Women as well as around the Women’s Convention (the Convention to End Discrimination Against Women or CEDAW), preventing the codification of harmful language about sex work in the world of human rights.

The Generation Equality Forums were held virtually due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the groups listed below in our coalition attended. The Forum kicked off in Mexico City from 29 to 31 March and ended in Paris from 30 June to 2 July 2021. According to the Forum’s own publicity it was a “global gathering for gender equality, convened by UN Women and co-chaired by France and Mexico, to chart the way forward and to accelerate the implementation pace of the gender equality commitments made in Beijing in 1995.” The Forum said it would enable “feminist agenda setting and the launch of Action Coalitions that have concrete measurable targets and funding for gender equality for the upcoming five years.” 

Access was limited. Many of our groups applied to attend the Mexico City Forum but never received registration permission. However, Desiree Alliance, a national sex worker rights organization, attended the forum sessions in both Mexico City and Paris. Desiree Alliance noted that Mexico City was problematic in that no mention of marginalized populations such as sex workers was upheld the message of Gender Equality’s “mission of inclusion.” 

We experienced the same deliberate silence in France. Translations were nonexistent for some sessions, there was no access to respond in community forums and discussions, and navigation around the conference sites was difficult. We understand that complications arise with virtual formats. However, the organizers of the Gender Equality Forum clearly have the financial power to create a global event. Accessibility was a problematic limitation for those who were trying to be fully engaged with the conference. Sex workers who committed to be a part of this forum became invisible with no means to interact due to these malfunctions.  

To counter, we made ourselves very visible on social media using the official hashtag #generationequality and #generationequalityforum 

We would like to thank the Urgent Action Fund for supporting our UN work and for providing valuable information about participation in the Generation Equality Forum. We would like to also thank Desiree Alliance for these policy statements on the Convention to End Discrimination Against Women(CEDAW), statements that were released 2019 and in response by coalition in 2020.

Attending

BPPP

Desiree Alliance

The BSWC

NJRUA

The Outlaw Project

FOOTNOTES:

(1) for example, the advocacy of  Sue Metzenrath and others. Scarlet Alliance https://scarletalliance.org.au/who/history/ recalls that the organization had to advocate at the highest levels for the right of sex workers to enter China at all.

Navigating AIDS2020 (first steps)

December 13th, 2019 · · Articles, Conferences No comments - Tags: ,

Breaking down barriers to attend International AIDS Conferences is a central element of BPPP’s work. Attending the conferences allows sex worker, drug user, indigenous and trans rights representatives, who have been marginalized repeatedly in the HIV/AIDS discourse, to forge global connections, protest, educate and be heard. The International AIDS Society has made the incorrect decision to host AIDS2020 in San Francisco in ways that even further marginalize our communities and place global attendees at risk should they attempt to enter the United States at a time of violence and oppression at US borders.

One of BPPP’s key partners in HIV/AIDS policy work is the Outlaw Project. We have been vocal participants in actions to pressure to move the conference from San Francisco. Now that official AIDS2020 deadlines approach we want to share our thinking with community members who may be struggling with what steps to take. Our approach is that our communities are NOT to blame for the mistakes of the IAS and we will not shame or question decisions people make to have their voices heard or to protest. This is their mess, not ours. We encourage people from our communities to apply to present in all aspects of AIDS2020 (deadline for Abstracts is January 14, 2020) and to apply for a scholarship by January 15, 2020 (11:59pm CET/5:59pm EST/2:59pm PST). This is called “getting a foot in the door” so that we will have space and whatever funds available to get activists to San Francisco as needs be. We will not be silent. We will be reaching out and working with local groups in San Francisco to follow their lead and sharing resources so that people who choose to go to AIDS2020, know the risks they are facing, have the best accommodation possible and are in solidarity with local organizations. Please reach out to us at hivaidsbppp@gmail.com if you need any help applying for AIDS2020 and check out our webinar recording from 2018 about how to apply.

#Move! Secondly, we support alternate conference sites in countries other than the US and we will also be fundraising for people to go to these alternate conferences just as we did for AIDS2012. However, relatively few members of our community can travel due to restrictions on travel documents placed on our US based members because of the prison industrial complex and other oppression. We support actions inside and outside of the US to hold AIDS2020, the US and the IAS accountable.

Please reach out to us at hivaidsbppp@gmail.com if you have any coalition you would like us to join or if you would like to join with us. We are working with numerous organizations not listed here who inform our approach.


Who will be harmed by this “Sex Trafficking” Legislation?

March 24th, 2018 · · Articles No comments - Tags: ,

On Wednesday March 21, 2018, the US Senate passed the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, the counterpart to the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act that passed the House last month. The legislation is now headed to Trump for signature.

While the titles of the bills would lead the general public to believe that this legislation is to protect “victims of sex trafficking,” the intent is to shutter “websites that promote and facilitate prostitution.” Section § 2421A of the house bill, for example, states that “Whoever uses or operates a facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce or attempts to do so with the intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person shall be fined under this title, imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both.” An aggravated offense in regards to any entity that “promotes or facilitates the prostitution of 5 or more persons” is tied to 25 years imprisonment. This legislation intends to target online venues where sex workers are thought to advertise.

A couple of weeks ago in a conversation with several advocates for the rights of sex workers, it was noted that we still do not know how this legislation will be implemented and that is even more worrisome. While it is true that not all is known, based on all the history of the implementation of criminalizing legislation pertaining to “sex trafficking” and anything relating to sex work, the following pattern emerges.

  1. Law enforcement efforts to implement this legislation will focus on people of color, specifically African Americans, routing them into jails and prisons. Low income women of color will face the harsh penalties associated with “facilitating” prostitution. To read more about how this has happened before, pick up a copy of Invisible No More by Andrea Ritchie.
  2. Transgender people, specifically transgender women of color, will be targeted with law enforcement efforts. The spaces where transgender people of color congregate online for any reason will be policed and in some situations transgender women will be misgendered as men in order to facilitate their arrest and demonization. This is already happening, as per observations made by Monica Jones, about the closing of sites since the passage of the legislation.
  3. These new laws will be used to police and surveil immigrants, leading to their deportation under the guise of ending sex trafficking.

The work for us now as advocates for the rights of sex workers and for the rights of trans people and other communities targeted by law enforcement, is to bring our knowledge of how racism, xenophobia and transphobia fuels the implementation of this kind of legislation. And to be ready to support those who almost certainly will be harmed. People of color, trans people, immigrants, young people and sex workers of color.

Navigating the References: Part 1

May 5th, 2016 · · Articles No comments - Tags:

In 2015, Jill McCracken prepared for a TEDx talk on the topic “Selling Sex: Contradicting Violence with Choice” amassing a great deal of the current research on the topic. Later in 2015 Jill joined BPPP’s research advisory committee for the Nothing About Us, Without Us Project, and these references and summaries proved to be an extremely valuable resource as we developed our work on HIV policy and sex worker rights. She has now kindly provided us with a comprehensive blog posting collating key research summaries. We are publishing her post in two parts, the first focusing on the intersections of sex work, HIV and health, and the second part will focus on references referencing trafficking in persons. Jill is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg and author of the book Street Sex Workers Discourse.

Navigating the References Connecting Sex Work, Criminalization, and Violence

By Jill McCracken, PhD

You may not learn a great deal of new information in this blog. I say that truthfully and also to acknowledge the incredible work that has and continues to be done and shared within the sex worker rights movement and beyond. As I was compiling these sources and writing the blog, explained more fully below, I was continually hearing myself say, “Well, this is nothing new. This is what we have been saying all along”. And yet, because sources are making this information known through case studies, sites of analysis, research methodologies, and community organizations and perspectives, it becomes extremely helpful to reiterate this information and put it in one place for easy reference; at least it has been helpful for me.

When I found out I was going to give a TEDx talk at the University of South Florida, I was instantly terrified. My terror is usually linked to not only my high expectations for myself, but also my fear of disappointing my audience. And when I considered my fear in relationship to this project (working through my fear has become my new way of being of late), I realized the audience I was most afraid of disappointing was my sex worker and sex worker rights colleagues and organizations. I also knew that in order to give a talk that was worthy of the subject matter: A World Beyond Ourselves, I would need to, once again, rely on my sex worker and sex worker rights colleagues and friends. I therefore went to my many online lists and organizations and asked for help. I also did a great deal of research. Ironically, most, if not all, of this research did not actually make it into the talk, because I later found out that TEDx talks were not meant to include lots of statistics and facts, but rather stories and information the audience can relate to. But what I did find in doing all of that research was that I became even more convinced of my (and many others’) central idea for this talk: that sex work must be decriminalized if we are to reduce violence against sex workers, sex workers must be at the forefront of any discussions about these policies, and that we must focus on a rights-based approach rather than a prosecution or criminal-based approach.

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