Bar-girl Games, Fashion Shows, Protests and Marches

The remainder of an 8 hour work day

My day ended today playing the role of "mama-san" in Empower's newest intereactive presentation, a game really, about the realities (fun and challenging) of sex work in Thailand, 7:55, or what sex work is when you're not having sex

    Sex! Sex! Sex!

    Libraries are about to burst open... they're overflowing with information about sex and sex workers! AIDS researcher centers drowning in data about us and sex... thesis after thesis on how we do it, why we do it, how to do it safely with us. Seems about sex workers is covered again and again... everyong in the whole world seems to know and have an expert opinion, paper or presentation about us to put forward at any conference whether local, national regional or itnernational.

    ...but maybe you never considered that the part of our work that has filled the academic halls with mountains of data, statistics and tehaories... is a tiny tiny part of out work... just like a small 5 minutes of our working shift!

So began our latest adventure with Empower, one of the strongest most inspiring sex worker groups in the world. It's important for people to understand that sex workers, like all people, have many other things besides how/why we have sex that affect our ability to be safe, in all manners of the term including from HIV.

The game consisted of people taking on different roles, including police, clinic, hotel, rehabilitation center, customers, bar-owners, and most importantly sex workers. The sex workers had to roll dice to advance around the board, and would encouter negative challenges like bad new laws, too loud music and such, or positive encounters that earned them money from customers. But in the end, we saw how although almost 13,500 "E" were produced by the goings-on in the sex sector, the working girls themselves took home only about 2,000 E of that, while the banks, hotel,s and police raked it in and bar owners and clinics got in on the game as well. But it was also clear by the end of the game that the biggest problems facing sex workers are not our clients/customers, or the fact that we sell sexual services for a fee, but the discrimination, lack of workplace safety, and aweful policies that leave us in jail - the best ways to support sex workers is not by further criminalization of sex workes or clients, or rehabilitation programs, or efforts to stamp out prostitution - sex workers need their rights! 

Sexy Fasion

That was certainly not the only exciting sex worker creativity of the day. Earlier in the afternoon, the Global Village main stage area was packed as people eagerly awaited the DASPU fasion show. DASPU is a clothing lined designed by and for sex workers in Rio De Janeiro, Brasil. I first learned about it two years ago inToronto at the last AIDS conference and I was really excited to get some stuff this year - but as of yet I have not found where they are selling it. Part of the idea behind DASPU, in addition to the obvious anit-stigma, bring sex work into the open and normalize it, agenda, sex workers with Davida (the Rio sex worker group) wanted to find new ways to fund themselves.

Especially in the light of the extremely negative US policies regarding sex work that have severely limited groups' ability to get international funding, this strategy makes a lot of sense. For exmple, sex workers are so well integrated in the HIV/AIDS work in Brasil, that when the PEPFAR anti-prostitution pledge came into effect, the Brasilian gave the money back to the US.

The DASPU fashion show was so beautiful, especially since most of the models were sex workers, modeling clothes made by sex workers, for sex workers. Yee-ha!

A classic IAC pasttime - protesting

While I was attending the morning session "Listen to Us! Effective Advocacy Sessions" to hear Meena Seshu of SAGRAM, other sex worker activists were stalking Peter Piot, the director of UNAIDS. Sex workers in the conference session and those hunting through the Global Village had a common goal - to raise awareness about UNAIDS about-face on sex worker issues. After initial consultations with sex workers from around the world on what should be included in an official UN Guidance Note about sex workers and HIV, a draft document was circulated at the last International AIDS Conference, which included the rights-based approached advocated by sex workers from around the globe, including this quote, "The UN system-wide approach on HIV and sex work will be: rights-based, culturally ensitive, evidence- informed, comprehensive in scope, and will be built on UNAIDS
prevention principles and promote universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care nd support." But in 2007 when the Guidance was released, it did not include these perspectives, and instead advocated some of the most repressive approaches to sex workers and HIV. Sex workers reject this document. Rather than focusing on empowering sex workers and supporting sex workers as leaders in prevention and treament of HIV, it recommended preventing entry into sex work and rehabilitation for sex workers as the best approach.

Can you imagine if a UN document suggested preventing men from becoming gay and rehabilitation for gay men as an HIV approach? It is this ridiculous perspective that has led UN agencies to support the new repressive laws in Cambodia, which are violating sex workers' and others' human rights. Representatives of Women's Network for Unity and Womyn's Agenda for Change are here advocating for support in opposing these laws and pressuring the UN to take a different appraoch. Of course, the Cambodian law is also teh result of heavy pressure from the United States government which mistakenly thinks that all sex work is trafficking and that the best way to help sex workers is to lock them up and abuse them.

This pocture is actually from Saturday as the sex worker contingent prepared for the International March against Discrimination, Stigma and Homophobia. We add "And against Transphobia!" We had a really beautiful contingent of a lot of sex workers and allies, all wearing our excellent t-shirts, with our slogan "We are not the problem, we are part of the solution." It was a very long march but a lot of fun. We chanted many excellent chants including the above phrase. Also "Mi cuerpo, es mio! No se droga, no se viola, no se mata!" Which translates as "My body is Mine! Don't drug me, don't rape me, don't kill me!" Also "Whores united will never be defeated." And so much more. We also had wonderful banners presenting just about every part of the world (with the notable exception of Africa - we need to do more to support African sex workers to attend these conferences), and we got cheered everywhere along the parade root. It was fabulous to be present there with so many thousands of people marching against discrimination, against homophobia, against transphobia and all that stigma that keeps us down.