It is a very interesting and charged time for sex workers. The recent Deborah Palfrey “D.C Madam” case has millions more people talking about sex workers, and whether or not prostitution should be legalized. National Obscenity laws have endangered the freedom of consensual alternative lifestyles. In some states in this country it is illegal to sell vibrators. Several cities in the state of texas are cracking down on strip-clubs, enforcing distance rules (three feet between a dancer and a client). Strippers in Ohio are organizing. In many states, sodomy is still against the law. Meanwhile, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and as governmental money continues to go to war, many people are left out in terms of education, housing, and health care.
San Francisco, the capital of sexual freedom, queer sex, sex positive, and one of the best places for the sex worker has been the cite for dangerous developments. Recent Chronicle articles about sex trafficking and even more recent massage parlor raids has made room for some important voices around trafficking issues, while excluding other important voices. As San Francisco is quickly being gentrified, along with raids on immigrants, evictions of low-income families (who are often people of color), the streets are being swept of all the homeless, who are more often than not sex workers. Gavin Newsom has been following ex- New York mayor Guiliani’s lead in “cleaning up the streets” by taking money out of social services and putting into throwing people in Jail, or buying people tickets out of town, in order to make the richer, whiter inhabitants of San Francisco feel safer. At the surface, all of these measures may look good to certain (privileged) populations, but overall have been causing more harm than good. Where do people go when they get evicted? What happens when a transgendered person gets thrown in jail? What happens when an illegal immigrant gets deported back to the country where their problems are even worse then in the United States? What happens when somebody with problems with substance loses access to services to help them deal with their problem?
I want to discuss these questions. They affect me, they affect my friends, they affect my neighbors, they affect the people that I work with.
What else?
I am a student. I have a bachelor’s degree, I have been working towards pre-requisites for a master’s. I live in San Francisco, and I work for a free clinic for sex workers and their partners. For the clinic, I do harm reduction street outreach, and in the clinic, I provide reiki. I have been a sex worker for almost seven years. I am also an artist: writer, musician, and performer. I am concerned about my community – not just the sex worker community, but my neighborhood community, my school community, my queer community, my artist community. All of these segments of my greater community are affected negatively by all sorts of city, state, and national policy. I wish to have a dialog within and across community lines about issues affecting people worldwide. The world is not as black and white as many people would like it to be. We need to make room for our diverse voices and experiences. We need to work to make this world a safe place for ALL of us.
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