Trigger Warning on post and links for graphic descriptions of sexual violence against sex workers, including sexual torture; rape apologism

This past April, a woman who was doing sex work was picked up by one John Hauff and driven to his home to engage in a pre-negotiated sexual encounter. Hauff requested some bondage elements in that encounter — to which the woman agreed, while setting strong limits.

John Hauff allegedly violated those limits wildly. Instead of loosely tying her to the bedpost and stimulating her with a vibrator, as she says she agreed, he allegedly chained her to the ceiling and forced painful sexual acts on her involving extreme bondage, paddles, electrical shocks, speculums, and catheters.

The first page of this article in the Seattle Weekly offers a lengthy, extremely explicit description of the allegations in question.

The second page goes on to begin (technically in the second paragraph down):

But is John Hauff a monster? Or is there, as some in the bondage community suggest, another way to interpret what happened between John Hauff and the woman he picked up on Aurora Avenue on April 2—one that makes Hauff less a cruel and sadistic rapist than a participant in a bondage session gone haywire?

Rape is not BDSM¹ gone wrong. And what has been alleged is not “BDSM” or “bondage” but rape and sexual torture. Anyone in bondage/BDSM communities making the argument that there is only a thin line between BDSM and rape is doing themselves an incredible disservice. They serve not to speak for the rights of those who wish to engage in consensual, non-mainstream sexual behavior, but for rapists. To conflate BDSM enthusiasts with rapists is to wrongly vilify BDSM and its participants, the vast majority of whom don’t rape people. And it is to suggest that anyone who agrees to any BDSM elements in a sexual situation is more or less requesting to be raped.

As it turns out, though, this article ends up splitting very neatly among gender lines. All of the women consulted in the piece — one who previously engaged in consensual BDSM scenes with Hauff, and the executive director of the Center for Sex Positive Culture — absolutely agree that the allegations as described constitute sexual violence and are utterly unacceptable.

The men who weigh in on the subject are, shockingly, a little bit less sure. One of them is Master Ray, a man who makes his living doing BDSM trainings, and who seems to have rather antiquated views on gender roles.

The other is Jonathan Kaminsky, the author of the piece himself, who sets up this absurd, rape apologist framing on the basis of nothing more than the word of one BDSM practitioner (against the word of two others), and seemingly his own gut instinct about how rape allegations just can’t be trusted. This is despite the fact that Hauff admitted to police that he did not stop the first two times the woman told him to.

The article is supposedly intended to interrogate whether or not Hauff’s “fetish will set him free.” It’s a real possibility, with both rape culture and mainstream views and misunderstandings regarding BDSM being what they are. But Kaminsky doesn’t explore the prejudices of the average public. He doesn’t consult lawyers regarding defense tactics, or speculate on what “expert” witnesses may be called to the stand to act as apologists. He just asks some people who also engage in BDSM what they think of the case. Most of them say “this sounds like rape.” One reads from a rape apologist script. And suddenly, we’re supposed to believe that there is meaningful “controversy” here and reason to entertain the possibility of a gray area.

We’re not supposed to notice that this angle was manufactured by the author, who turned “one guy I talked to” into “some in the bondage community” and closed his article like this:

Only two people know what happened the night of April 2, what boundaries were drawn, what deals were struck, and how, when, and to what degree they were breached. It is possible that their understanding of what happened on that night differs. It’s possible we’ll never know the truth.

…

What we do know is that no bodies were found in his yard, and no other women have come forward with terrible stories of kidnap and rape. We also know this: The events of April 2 have marked a dark chapter in the lives of prostitute and client alike.

Indeed.

Of course, anyone with the slightest familiarity with rape culture will know that “only two people know what happened” is the classic way of saying that we better take the alleged rapist’s word for it. And anyone who knows anything about alt-weeklies that do their damnedest to seem street-smart will also know that the Seattle Weekly editors have absolutely no excuse to not know the term “sex worker” or how the unnecessarily repeated references to the victim in this case as a “prostitute” (instead of a rape victim) are incredibly stigmatizing towards her in the current U.S. cultural climate. And anyone who knows anything about life will know that not having decaying corpses on your property or a long line of highly marginalized victims who are willing to step forward and involve themselves in a very public case hardly means that you didn’t rape that one woman who says you raped her.

But surely we can all agree that this sucks as much for the rapist as it does for the rape victim, can’t we?

Frankly, if this is what passes for objectivity and journalistic ethics these days, I don’t want it.

But back to Master Ray. Well, some of his own views are as terrifying as they are long-winded:

When the subject turns to John Hauff, Master Ray’s face hardens. He’s never met the man, he says, pausing to sip from his glass of milk. He knows only what he’s seen on TV and heard on the radio. Because he doesn’t have all the details, Master Ray cautions that making a judgment “would be improper and foolish.” Still, he says, there’s something about the young woman’s story that troubles him. She acknowledges negotiating up front for a certain amount of bondage, Master Ray points out. She got in his car willingly, and they drove to his place. There was no threat of brutality in the car.

“It wasn’t a kidnapping,” Master Ray says. “It was a negotiated sex scene between a hooker and her client. And somewhere along the line, she crossed her own panic line and cried ‘Help!’ ”

As for her texting of Hauff’s license-plate number, Master Ray points out that this is standard operating procedure in the fetish community, and doesn’t necessarily mean the young woman was unusually leery of Hauff. “We call that a ‘safe call.’ It’s perfectly legitimate and normal,” he says. Once she’d revealed the text message to Hauff, Ray continues, “What happened next? She got dressed. He took her back where she belonged. He dropped her off. There was no threat. No murder. No ‘Keep quiet or I’ll come get you.’ ”

During a bondage session in which the rules have already been agreed upon, a dominant partner’s saying something to arouse a submissive partner is as common as flirting, Master Ray says. If, during a bondage scene, Master Ray were asked by a submissive he didn’t know if he planned to kill her, he would read it as a sign that this type of talk turned her on. “So I’m going to smirk and say something like ‘We’ll see,’ or ‘Maybe later,’ or ‘Only if you’re not pleasing to me, only if you don’t satisfy me,’ ” explains Master Ray. “Call me a smart-ass, but I’m going to say something that is going to elicit a response from her.”

When the prostitute asked Hauff if he was going to kill her, Master Ray says, “We don’t know what tone of voice she used.” Her question, he says, could have been understood as a clue that this form of “danger” was a turn-on for her. “And the worst part of it is that between the time it happened and when she finally decided to report it, her feelings, her thoughts, can change,” Master Ray says. “Shame can set in. And then he gets punished because now she’s feeling bad about it.”

Still, Master Ray acknowledges, Hauff’s alleged use of such techniques as bladder manipulation and electric shock, which are at the outer edges of the bondage-play repertoire, give him pause. “If he did spring this on her, then he crossed a line,” Master Ray says. “That would not be tolerated in the [fetish] community.”

There’s something about the woman’s story that bothers him: namely, that he doesn’t seem to think a woman (let alone “a hooker”) who agrees to any kind of sexual contact can then be raped. The fact that she admittedly cried “Help!” doesn’t count. After all, her rapist didn’t kill her. (Master Ray is wrong about her not being told to keep quiet; Hauff allegedly told the woman to not involve the cops, easily understood as a threat in itself.)

His argument seems to be “this would have been completely consensual, if both parties consented.” Which, obviously. The very point is that one party explicitly says she did not consent. But Master Ray asserts that we don’t know the tone of voice she used when asking if Hauff was going to kill her, so the consent was probably implied.

Personally, I’d say that Master Ray sounds like an incredibly irresponsible and dangerous dom, if his portrayal of how he treats partners he does not know and has not negotiated said elements with in advance is accurate. And yet, we are supposed to respect him as an expert not only in BDSM, but also in consent as it relates to BDSM. As if BDSM communities are somehow uniquely immune to rape culture.

According to Master Ray “the worst part of it” is not that a woman was allegedly raped and tortured, but that she might be lying about it. Which alone should tell us all we need to know about him. The myth that women quickly become “ashamed” of their sexual activity and then falsely claim rape in order to protect their patriarchally-approved virtue is a pervasive if widely debunked one. The fact that said myth is able to be twisted and applied to sex workers — the same women who are routinely portrayed as having no virtue left in a world that judge’s women’s virtue on the basis of their chastity — is nothing more than evidence of how far misogynists are willing to contort their own logic to support men’s right to rape (at least certain) women with impunity.

Indeed, one of the truly remarkable things about this case is that the police care at all. One could indeed speculate that the particular amount of violence used and the non-mainstream sexual acts allegedly forced are likely the reason. In a culture where consensual kinky sex is vilified, rape involving elements that would be considered kinky in a consensual setting will always be more severely demonized. In a culture where sex workers are routinely raped by police, where sex workers are almost always too afraid to report their rapes to police, where judges call the rape of sex workers “theft of services,” it’s not a stretch to imagine that we wouldn’t be seeing the same amount of resources or outrage applied had the woman consented to one kind of sex and then forced into another, with no BDSM elements present. We’d be hearing choruses of “what did she expect?”

Clearly some commenters aren’t content to entirely avoid those choruses now. Some people can’t get past the idea that a woman who agrees to any kind of sex deserves whatever violence might be inflicted on her. This is far more so when the woman in question is a sex worker.

But no matter what the Seattle Weekly or Master Ray sees fit to either imply or outright say, there is no such thing as blanket consent. Every person has the right to say no, to set limits, and to have those limits respected. When those limits are violated, it is assault. No matter what other acts they may have agreed to. No matter who they are.

Thanks to Una Feral for the link.

Trigger Warning for descriptions of sexual violence and abuses against sex workers

Last week, Jordan Flaherty wrote an article at Colorlines about how sex workers are being punished under an archaic and punitive law that specifically targets those who are convicted of selling oral or anal sex (as opposed to vaginal sex). The law makes these sex workers open to being labeled as felons by police and prosecutors, and worst of all, forces them to register as sex offenders.

Last month, a coalition of advocates, including Women With A Vision and the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed a federal lawsuit challenging the statue:

Eve, who asked that we not reveal her real name or age, spent two years in prison. During her time behind bars she was raped and contracted HIV. Upon release, she was forced to register in the state’s sex offender database. The words “sex offender” now appear on her driver’s license. “I have tried desperately to change my life,” she says, but her status as a sex offender stands in the way of housing and other programs. “When I present my ID for anything,” she says, “the assumption is that you’re a child molester or a rapist. The discrimination is just ongoing and ongoing.”

Eve was penalized under Louisiana’s 205-year-old Crime Against Nature statute, a blatantly discriminatory law that legislators have maneuvered to keep on the state’s books for the purpose of turning sex workers into felons. As enforced, the law specifically singles out oral and anal sex for greater punishment for those arrested for prostitution, including requiring those convicted to register as sex offenders in a public database. Advocates say the law has further isolated poor women of color in particular, including those who are forced to trade sex for food or a place to sleep at night.

In 2003, the Supreme Court outlawed sodomy laws with its decision in Lawrence v. Texas. That ruling should have invalidated Louisiana’s law entirely. Instead, the state has chosen to only enforce the portion of the law that concerns “solicitation” of a crime against nature. The decision on whether to charge accused sex workers with a felony instead of Louisiana’s misdemeanor prostitution law is left entirely in the hands of police and prosecutors.

Prior to the lawsuit, Colorlines was covering the issue over a year ago. Melissa Gira Grant wrote about the suit at Third Wave right after it was filed last month, and the INCITE! Blog was on it both last year and earlier this month. You should definitely go check those articles out, as there’s no doubt that I’m behind. But I still think the issue is worth writing about and getting further attention.

As noted by Flaherty, Louisiana is the only U.S. state that requires people who have been convicted of crimes that do not involve minors or violence outside the sexual violence itself to register as sex offenders. Meghan’s Law, which created sex offender registries, was clearly intended to target rapists. Louisiana has actively made the choice to abuse the registry to further shame, punish, and vilify sex workers who have not committed any violence. Women are by far the primary target of these efforts, though gay and bisexual men are also incredibly vulnerable. Of the women targeted by the state, women who are non-white, trans, and/or poor are most open to attack.

People convicted under the Louisiana law must carry a state ID with the words “sex offender” printed below their name. If they have to evacuate because of a hurricane, they must stay in a special shelter for sex offenders that has no separate facilities for men and women. They have to pay a $60 annual registration fee, in addition to $250 to $750 to print and mail postcards to their neighbors every time they move. The post cards must show their names and addresses, and often they are required to include a photo. Failing to register and pay the fees, a separate crime, can carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison.

Women and men on the registry will also find their names, addresses, and convictions printed in the newspaper and published in an online sex offender database. The same information is also displayed at public sites like schools and community centers. Women—including one mother of three—have complained that because of their appearance on the registry, they have had men come to their homes demanding sex. A plaintiff in the suit had rocks thrown at her by neighbors. “This has forced me to live in poverty, be on food stamps and welfare,” explains a man who was on the list. “I’ve never done that before.”

In Orleans Parish, 292 people are on the registry for selling sex, versus 85 people convicted of forcible rape and 78 convicted of “indecent behavior with juveniles.” Almost 40 percent of those registered in Orleans Parish are there solely because they were accused of offering anal or oral sex for money. Seventy-five percent of those on the database for Crime Against Nature are women, and 80 percent are African American. Evidence gathered by advocates suggests a majority are poor or indigent.

There are several broad critiques to be made of sex offender registry programs. In addition to the racial profiling and discriminatory enforcement noted in the Colorlines article, there are also further questions regarding whether sex offender registries actually keep communities safer and/or lower recidivism rates. Support for sex offender registry programs generally, however, should not be viewed as in any way incompatible with thinking that the Louisiana system is being used as a means of violence and oppression against sex workers and must immediately be overturned.

This is not in any way about keeping communities safer. It is about further punishing and portraying as deviant those who have failed to comply with societal rules regarding sexuality, class, and womanhood. It’s not about making communities safer, it’s about specifically ensuring that these particular community members are as unsafe as possible. And in that sense, it’s certainly working.

Because of the way that sex workers are generally made vulnerable to violence, as well as the ways that prisoners face frequent sexual assault, the most callous part of this practice may be the fact that such large numbers of those forced to register as sex offenders for non-violent offenses are victims of sexual violence themselves. Most of the women and men profiled in these articles talk about having been raped, whether as adults or children, whether by clients or family members, by prison guards or fellow prisoners. They must register as sex offenders, be unable to find employment or residences, face harassment and assault, and bear scarlet letters on their identification while at the same time, probably all of their actual rapists do not have to do the same. They have not only been raped, but been given their rapists’ punishments. They have not only been raped, but told that they are like, or perhaps worse than, their actual rapists.

And while this form of punishment for an act that should not be illegal in the first place is not even remotely acceptable for those who do engage in sex work because it is their preferred profession, it is also worth noting that there are many sex workers who do sex work as a form of survival or have otherwise been coerced. These workers are already more likely to be in street-based economies, and therefore are more likely to be targeted by law enforcement and more likely to be singled out for felony instead of misdemeanor punishment as a result of judicial prejudice.

In other words, punishing people for what they choose to do with their own bodies, when those actions do not harm any other person, is unconscionable — as is punishing them specifically for selling forms of sex perceived as less acceptable by a cissexist, heterosexist, anti-sex society. But quite a few of those women and men who have been forced to register as sex offenders didn’t even necessarily have a choice. And for that, they have been branded by a racist, anti-trans, classist, anti-gay system.

It will be interesting to see how this case plays out, and whether the court will decide with power and oppression as usual, or with the people and justice.

Trigger Warning for transphobic violence and police violence

At the beginning of December, an altercation between a trans woman and an off-duty police officer resulted in the woman being charged with assault (h/t). The problem is that this charge is in spite of the fact that she alleges the officer assaulted her — and that two witnesses corroborate her story. The Washington Blade originally reported:

D.C. police last week arrested a transgender woman for spraying a chemical repellent into the face of a man who she says called her names and assaulted her before identifying himself as an off-duty District police officer.

Chloe [redacted] Moore, 25, was charged with simple assault following a 2 a.m. incident on Dec. 1 along the 1500 block of K St., N.W. According to court records, Officer Raphael Radon alleges that Moore squirted him with pepper spray in an unprovoked action following a brief exchange of words.

But two police sources said a sergeant and detective who responded to the scene determined through interviews with witnesses that Officer Radon initiated the altercation and may have committed a bias-related assault against Moore.

The police sources, who spoke on condition that they were not identified, said a night supervisor apprised of the incident by phone while at her office at the First District D.C. Police station overrode the recommendations of the sergeant and detective and ordered that Moore be charged with simple assault.

Officer Radon was not charged in the incident.

According to the Washington Blade report (full details can be read at the link), Moore claims that she asked off-duty Officer Radon for a light for her cigarette, when he began shouting transphobic insults and slurs. She claims that he pushed her, and fearful for her safety, she pepper sprayed him and ran. Moore alleges that Radon chased her for two blocks before grabbing her by the back of the neck, throwing her to the ground, and only then identifying himself as a police officer.

For his part, Radon claims that Moore and her friend approached him and offered him sexual services for money. He claims that when he turned them down, Moore pepper sprayed him in the face, and then ran after Radon identified himself as a police officer.

Between “cis man randomly assaults trans woman” and “sex worker randomly assaults man for turning her down,” I personally know which story intuitively makes most sense and seems more likely to me. But my personal inclinations don’t count for much. The recommendation of the responding officers, however, probably should. And so should witness statements, which corroborate Moore’s version of events:

But the report says two other witnesses backed up Moore’s version of what happened. One of the two apparently is the transgender woman who was with Moore. The report, which does not identify any of the witnesses by name, suggests that Witness 3 may have been standing nearby and was not with any of the others involved in the incident.

“Witness 3 recounted the same story as D1 [Defendant 1—Moore],” the police report says.

Local attorney Dale Edwin Saunders, who practices criminal law in the District, described as “highly unusual” the decision by police and the United States Attorney’s office to charge Moore in the case.

“This person would have never been arrested or papered if the complaining witness had been a civilian,” Saunders said. “The defendant had two witnesses corroborating her version of the events.”

One also has to wonder whether she would have been arrested if she had been cis.

Officer Radon’s version of events just so happens to follow a convenient popular narrative regarding trans women as both violent (and therefore “manly”) and sex workers. The latter allegation, particularly, is one which a set of dangerous, (trans-)misogynistic cultural biases regularly allow to work against trans women. As both sex workers and trans women are portrayed as deviant and hypersexual as compared to all other people, trans women are regularly represented as sex workers even when they are not. Because sex workers are so devalued and scorned by dominant society, accusing a person of being a sex worker becomes not only an insult (oppressing both the target and sex workers in general), but a process of dehumanization. When sex workers are seen as generally undeserving of basic safety, and trans women are viewed similarly, accusing trans women of being sex workers is an easy way to reinforce the notion that they deserve violence, belong in police custody, and are unworthy of the same basic respect and rights as other citizens.

Ms. Moore’s story, on the other hand, follows a very real pattern of behavior that is generally ignored by dominant society, in which cis men feel their gender identities and sexualities are challenged by the mere presence of a trans woman, and lash out violently against her in rage and abject hatred. Trans women are a particularly “easy” target of violence anyway, since their rights and humanity are so widely disrespected. As a result, everyone ignores the highly tenuous sense of safety that trans women live with every day, and it is officially assumed that she is the one who must have done something wrong — often, by merely existing.

But as Sylvia Renee points out at The New Gay (Trigger Warning for graphic descriptions of rape against a trans woman in a men’s prison), most people are likely to believe Officer Radon’s version of events not only because they generally fail to recognize or simply do not care about the violence that trans* folks face, but also because Officer Radon is a police officer. And police officers? Well, they’re the good guys, right? They don’t behave violently. They must be telling the truth.

A week ago, the D.C. Transgender Coalition released a statement with regards to this case. They state, in part:

“What’s especially disturbing about this case is that it features several flagrant violations of MPD’s general order on dealing with trans people,” said Alison Gill, a DCTC attorney.  “Medical attention was apparently not provided promptly, and the use of degrading, transphobic language is expressly forbidden,” Gill continued.  Since June, DCTC has been working with several LGBT community organizations to train officers affiliated with MPD’s special liaison units in cultural competency and relevant MPD policies.  So far, roughly 70 officers have been trained in this program.  “What this incident shows us is that training self-selected volunteers is only a small step toward ensuring that MPD officers fully comply with DC’s human rights law.  We want to see a swift rejection of this kind of behavior from the highest levels within MPD, along with a real plan for making sure that every law enforcement officer knows and follows the law, including mandatory training for the entire force,” Gill said.

DCTC highlights a particularly disturbing part of this story that might have otherwise gone ignored: even though the responding officers apparently ultimately believed Moore’s version of events, only to be overridden by a supervisor over phone, they allegedly did not see fit to provide Moore with requested medical attention. Of course, whether they believed her version of events or not should be irrelevant to this issue — all people deserve medical care, no matter what they’ve done. But the point is that apparently even when a trans woman is seen as legitimately the victim of a crime, she is still not seen as fully human. Not fully human enough to have the injuries she incurred as a result of her victimization treated.

These allegations are despicable, but they are unsurprising. They are a part of a pattern — not only in D.C., but virtually anywhere that trans* people interact with law enforcement, or are the victims of crimes. They’re part of a pattern in which law enforcement generally treats marginalized victims as criminals. Only certain members of society are seen as entitled to safety. They’re the same members we view as entitled to commit violence against everyone else.

UPDATE: Title changed to add “cis” after critique of ciscentrism by Helen G

UPDATE 2: Change.org is running a petition demanding that D.C. police address anti-trans bias within their department. Click through to sign.

Trigger Warning for violence against sex workers, including but not limited to sexual violence and police violence

Today, December 17, is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. The International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers is a day to remember sex workers who have been murdered, and to acknowledge and spread the word about the ways in which sex workers are uniquely vulnerable to all forms of violence. This year, the list of those who have been killed is forty entries long (pdf); several entries contain more than one victim, and many of the victims’ identities are unknown. It should be noted that these murders are only the ones that are known of. Undoubtedly, they make up only a fraction of the real death toll.

But today is not just about those who have died; it’s also about those who live with violence, or the threat of it, every day. While victims of violence span all social markers, some are more vulnerable than others. The vast majority of victims are women. Women of color are more vulnerable than white women. Trans sex workers are more vulnerable than cis sex workers. Queer sex workers are more vulnerable than straight sex workers. Sex workers are already deeply devalued and dehumanized by society as a class; the more they are additionally devalued and dehumanized along other axes of oppression, the more likely they are to be subjected to violence.

From the SWOP-USA website:

Violence against sex workers is an international concern which plays out on a daily basis, in all countries around the globe.

• A study conducted by the New York City-based Sex Workers Project reported that 80% of participants had reported experiencing violence, including 27% at the hands of police.
• In a report on violence against sex workers in India, 70% had reported abuse by police, and 80% had been arrested without evidence.
• During a meeting of sex workers and advocates from Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa, participants described “routine police violence including sexual violence, beatings, rubber bullets, and spraying sex workers’ genitals with pepper-spray guns.”

It’s these notes about police violence that I want to address specifically. Because as the fabulous Audacia Ray puts it, it’s not just violent clients who hurt sex workers. It’s police. It’s the law. It’s the government.

State violence is wielded against sex workers in many ways. Individual cops certainly pose a part of the problem, as listed above. Beating sex workers, threatening them with weapons, and raping them either through force or coercion. Police officers certainly have a history, like clients, of seeing sex workers as easy victims of violence, victims who they believe no one will care about.

But it’s also the law itself that both promotes abuse and acts as a direct form of violence against sex workers. With many forms of sex work being illegal throughout most of the world, sex workers are placed in a position even more vulnerable than that created by the extraordinary social stigma alone. It’s the oppressive nature of the law that lets police officers rape sex workers, by giving them the option of “having sex” or going to jail. It’s the oppressive nature of the law that puts sex workers at risk of HIV and other STDs by making them afraid to carry condoms and denying them access to HIV prevention funding.  It’s the oppressive nature of the law that makes sex workers afraid to report violence when it is committed against them, not only because they may be subjected to further violence at the hands of police, but because they may also be arrested themselves.

It’s the law which puts sex workers in prisons for doing nothing more than using their own bodies as they saw fit, subjecting them to state violence and control on a daily basis. It’s the law which places them in prisons, where it’s possible that they will be denied health care; where they will be compelled to undergo strip searches and cavity searches; where they may be beaten or locked in solitary confinement; where they may be raped by guards or other inmates; where, if they are trans, they may be placed as women in prisons with men. It’s the law which may force them to submit to public floggings while crowds and authorities laugh. Or worse.

The law doesn’t just “fail to protect” sex workers. Far worse, it is an active danger to them. Criminalization of sex work causes violence against sex workers just as much as personal misogyny, racism, transphobia, classism, and homophobia do, and it’s all of these -isms in which such laws are based. These laws are framed in terms of paternalism — we must protect women from their choices, even when we don’t bother to work on why they probably don’t have any better ones available — but they’re really about a much more vitriolic form of oppression. They’re about outright hate. And even if you want to quibble about intentions and motivations, the fact remains that they do just as much if not more violence against sex workers than direct beatings.

Decriminalization of sex work will not magically erase anti-sex worker stigma, or magically make police take violence against sex workers seriously, or magically cause them to stop raping or otherwise abusing sex workers themselves. But that’s no reason for the state, for countless states all over the world, to continue having direct authorization to commit violence against sex workers itself. It’s no reason for the state to have the right to enact violence against vulnerable and marginalized persons precisely because of their vulnerable and marginalized status. And it’s no reason to act as though, when we’re talking about violence against sex workers, we’re somehow not largely talking about state violence.

Sex workers deserve safety. Sex workers deserve freedom. Sex workers deserve human rights. That needs to be remembered and spoken today and every day.

Trigger Warning for prison abuse, specifically denial of medical treatment, and reproductive rights violations.

At the beginning of this year, a 27-year-old woman named Amy Lynn Gillespie died (h/t @DCdebbie). She was 18 weeks pregnant, and died in a hospital after being transferred there by Allegheny County Jail, which was currently detaining her. The problem is that they apparently transferred her much too late, and Gillespie’s mother is now suing the county, among others:

Amy Lynn Gillespie, of Cuddy and, later, Knoxville, was jailed in December for violating the terms of her work release by becoming pregnant. Initially found to be in good health, according to the complaint filed by Downtown attorney Robert N. Peirce, she was complaining by the end of that month of difficulty breathing and discharge from her lungs.

Treated for viral influenza and denied diagnostic tests, according to the complaint, she worsened and then was transferred on Jan. 1 to UPMC Mercy. There she was found to have bacterial pneumonia, too far advanced to be successfully treated with antibiotics. She and the fetus, then 18 weeks along, died Jan. 13.

Mr. Peirce filed the civil rights lawsuit for the deceased’s mother, Luann Gillespie Shultz.

But let us back up just a minute — she was jailed because she was pregnant? Yes, indeed she was.

Ms. Gillespie’s legal troubles started with a pair of shoplifting convictions in 2004. In 2007, she was caught taking shampoo and steak from the Bridgeville Giant Eagle, and told the arresting officer that she did it because she was hungry. That year she was also caught stealing two $55 silver rings from Macy’s, Downtown.

In 2008, she was picked up for soliciting men on Brownsville Road. Put on probation, she was referred to the Program for Reintegration Development and Empowerment of Exploited Individuals, which offers counseling and services to women arrested for prostitution.

She didn’t comply with her probation terms and was sentenced to six to 12 months of jail or alternative housing in February 2009. Mr. Peirce said she would have been released around the beginning of this year had she not become pregnant, been jailed, and gotten sick. He said UPMC Mercy did not appear to be liable.

So she stole some shampoo and steak, and then some lower-end jewelry from a major department store. Then she was caught in the act of engaging in sex work, which should be legal anyway. As a result, she was placed on probation — a term of which that she not become pregnant. And when she did become pregnant, she was jailed.

Which is to say that for shoplifting less than $200 worth of merchandise and using her own body as she saw fit, the state robbed her of the right to make her own reproductive choices. Let us just sit for a moment with the fact that an individual cannot take a $55 ring from Macy’s, but the government can take one’s fundamental right to decide what to do with hir own reproductive capacity. Let us just reflect on how much more highly the U.S. government regards the right of multimillion dollar corporations to their petty property than the right of individuals who can get pregnant, disproportionately women*, to control their own bodies and reproductive lives. The former right cannot be violated without punishment; the latter right is routinely violated as a means of punishment.

Now, to be clear, I am not even remotely suggesting that if Gillespie’s crimes had been more severe, it would have been acceptable to deny her the medical treatment she needed to go on living; this is never okay, even for those guilty of the most horrific crimes. What I am suggesting is that the requirement that Gillespie not become pregnant is wholly wrong, misogynistic, and abusive — indeed, no matter what crime she committed. What I am suggesting is that she never should have been jailed for what she did with her own reproductive capacity, whether intentional or not. No, it is not acceptable to deny any detained person medical treatment. But it’s also not acceptable to detain a person who has done nothing wrong. Gillespie should not have been in that jail to begin with. And this would be a travesty of justice even if she were still alive.

But she’s not still alive. She’s dead, and she didn’t have to die, and someone is to blame for the fact that she did. Someone is to blame for the fact that she didn’t get the medical treatment she needed in time to survive. And when the government detains anybody, with or without legitimate reason, they are ultimately 100% responsible for ensuring that those people receive any and all needed medical care promptly and respectfully. In this case, they clearly failed. With Gillespie dead of a treatable ailment, there’s absolutely no other way to look at it.

The allegations regarding how, exactly, she died are also particularly horrifying:

[The lawsuit] alleges that while Gillespie was serving a 30-day jail sentence, at least one guard ignored her request for help and the jail’s medical staff failed to diagnose her pneumonia early enough.

“Stick it out,” one guard told Gillespie when she asked for help three weeks before her death, the lawsuit states. [...]

Gillespie nearly completed her original sentence for retail theft when she got pregnant, a violation of terms in her halfway house, Peirce said. She arrived in the jail Dec. 2, and though she complained to guards for weeks about breathing trouble and discharge from her lungs, she wasn’t sent to the infirmary until Dec. 29, according to the lawsuit.

The medical staff first diagnosed her problem as viral influenza. After three days, jail staff sent Gillespie to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed pneumonia and noted that the jail didn’t treat her fast enough, according to the lawsuit.

She was sedated and breathing with the help of tubes for nearly all of the two weeks she spent in the hospital before she died.

We’ll have to wait to see if all of the allegations pan out, but the fact is that they are not even remotely unusual. Claims of medical treatment being denied while in detention are extraordinarily common. Our governments routinely fail to treat detained persons humanely, and few people care because of how severely we’ve dehumanized any and all people who are in jail or prisons, and internalized the notion that they deserve whatever indignities we impose on them. No one cares because we’ve decided that “bad” people aren’t really people anymore, and that all people in jail or prison must be bad. Even if all they did to get there was get pregnant.

It’s time to stop denying people of their fundamental human rights. It’s time to stop detaining them when they’ve done nothing to materially harm anybody. It’s time to stop treating people who cause harm like they, too, deserve harm, no matter how appealing vengeance may feel. It’s time to stop treating other human beings’ bodies like property, to stop seeing health care as a privilege, to stop behaving as though we have any right whatsoever to tell other people what they can and cannot do with their own bodies and reproductive functions. Not a single case of denying a person’s right to make their own reproductive decisions is acceptable. Not a single case of prizing property over human beings is right. Not a single case of letting someone die because we thought they were a liar, or worthless, or a slut, or whatever, is okay.

We’re seeing all of these things right here, but they happen separately all the time. They’re all culpable for Amy Gillespie’s death. And if we keep the system going as it is, there will inevitably be more like her.

*EDIT: Language changed. See comments, with thanks to August.

Trigger Warning for discussions of human rights violations against sex workers, as well as sex trafficking and sexual violence.

Tomorrow November 5, the United Nations will, for the first time under its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) system, review the human rights record of the United States. That’s a pretty big deal period, especially since the process is composed not just self-assessment by the nation being reviewed, but also reports by civil society organizations.

Undoubtedly, a lot of really important issues (such as prison rape) are going to be addressed by those organizations, and all kinds of human rights violations by the United States are going to be openly discussed. But one issue set for discussion will not only likely surprise observers, but also be considerably underrepresented in any media coverage that the review garners: that of sex worker rights, and the U.S.’s appalling record with regards to violating the human rights of sex workers.

The U.S. Sex Workers Outreach Projects (SWOP-USA) reports:

This Friday November 5, 2010, the United Nations Human Rights Council will review the human rights record of the United States as part of a new process – the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The UPR calls for a review of member nations’ human rights records every four years, and this is the first time the U.S. has participated. The Human Rights Council will base its review on the U.S. government’s own self-assessment, as well as reports submitted from civil society organizations. U.S. sex worker advocates are engaged in this process, working to highlight the appalling record that the United States has in regards to communities of people engaging in the sex trade.

A comprehensive national report on sex workers’ rights was prepared by the Best Practices Policy Project and the Desiree Alliance earlier this year. The report draws on the perspectives of networks, such as SWOP USA, and organizations working with sex workers, people in the sex trade and people who are affected by anti-prostitution policies in the United States more generally. Two representatives from the Best Practices Policy Project are currently in Geneva presenting summary recommendations to delegations and encouraging countries to ask the United States questions about it’s human rights record in regards to sex workers and to include issues pertaining to sex workers in the recommendations they will raise in Friday’s session.

The Best Practices Policy Project report (pdf) is a highly comprehensive and informative document that strongly centers intersectionality and emphasizes not only the generalized risks of violence and civil rights violations that sex workers face, but also how those risks are even more severe for those sex workers who are particularly marginalized on the basis of race, trans* status, immigration status, and perceived sexual orientation. It’s only 5 pages long and a really strong overview of the oppressions faced very day by sex workers in the U.S., so I urge you to read it.

Before the U.N., the Best Practices Policy Project representatives are presenting the three most key recommendations from the report, which are as follows:

The United States should implement comprehensive criminal justice reform that includes measures to stop human rights abuses committed in the name of anti-sex trade laws. This would include repealing laws, including laws against prostitution-related offenses, and eliminate policies, such as “prostitution free zones”, that erode legal protections barring law enforcement from detaining individuals on the basis of how they are perceived or the way they are dressed (ie racial and gender profiling). The application of felony-level charges against sex workers and people living with HIV should be halted as should sex offender registration requirements of those arrested for engaging in prostitution. Criminal justice reform must also address the frequency of abuse of sex workers, or those perceived as such, by law enforcement and other state actors. Similarly, reform must ensure that people involved in the sex trade or profiled as such receive appropriate responses from authorities when they are targeted for violence and other crimes.

The United States should ensure health rights for those engaged, or perceived to be engaged, in sex work and the sex trade. In many jurisdictions in the United States condoms are used as evidence of criminal activity in the enforcement of anti-prostitution laws. Individuals involved in street economies face tremendous stigmatization in health care settings. Sex workers urgently need access to health care services including harm reduction oriented programs, which often are prohibited from receiving federal funding.

The United Sates should reorient national anti-trafficking policy to a rights-based framework and repeal the US governments “anti-prostitution pledge” requirement on foreign aid. Migrants involved in the sex trade who experience exploitation require services and legal support, but the response to human trafficking in the U.S. currently focuses on law enforcement approaches that alienate and traumatize victims. U.S. anti-trafficking policies and practices undermine the health and rights of sex workers domestically and internationally, including requiring recipients of HIV and anti-trafficking funding to adopt a stance condemning sex work. These requirements should be repealed.

It’s my personal view that all of these recommendations should be seen as straight-up common sense. I wrote about the last recommendation much more comprehensively a few months ago, and I’m going to let that post on the issue stand on its own.

The first recommendation is one that I’ve also discussed before, but is most commonly placed in dispute, and the second relies heavily on the former. So let’s repeat it again: a large majority of sex workers agree that laws which make their work illegal do not help them. They criminalize an incredibly marginalized population specifically on the basis of their marginalization. They do not protect a group already incredibly vulnerable to violence from it, but rather make that violence easier for police officers, clients, and others to commit. They ensure that sex workers who want to leave the trade cannot, by giving them highly stigmatized criminal records. And they use laws intended to keep primarily women and children safe to label primarily women, including those who entered sex work as children, as sex offenders. They label them as those likely to commit sexual violence, when they are actually among those against whom sexual violence is most likely to be or have been committed.

We can and should fight human trafficking — including forms that are not sex trafficking, and which receive extremely little publicity — without fighting sex workers. We can and should fight violence without fighting the existence of marginalized populations. Just like we always can and should fight elements of rape culture without fighting either sex or victims of assault.

But this is a point that seems to be continually lost on governments all over the world, family values conservatives, and many feminists. An illustrative example rose at the end of last week, with yet another campaign to drive sex workers who advertise their services online underground:

SWOP-NYC in collaboration with SWOP-USA strongly opposes the misguided campaign against Backpage.com. This campaign is part of a trend of actions against adult services sections online including a recent action against Craigslist.

The campaign against Backpage.com has been framed as a way to “protect innocent women and children” (as per State Attorneys General, Letter to Attorneys for Backpage.com, September 21, 2010, available at: http://ago.mo.gov/pdf/Backpage.pdf). However, the forced closure of this site will not diminish the prevalence of trafficking and, worse, will substantially harm victims of trafficking and people in consensual sex work.

“This campaign purports to protect people, but it actually has the opposite effect,” explained Liz Coplen, Board Chair of SWOP-USA. “Criminalization and repression of consensual sex work drives sex workers underground, creating the conditions which lead to the exploitation and abuses of trafficking.” The models that have been internationally accepted as best practice for addressing sex trafficking center around working with sex workers to end exploitation and abuse, not further criminalizing and marginalizing the work.

…

“First they complain when they see us on the street, then when we are off the street they try to shut our work down by closing the advertising venues. And they claim it’s to protect us! It’s hypocritical, discriminatory and ultimately makes sex workers more vulnerable to the violence they are supposedly so concerned about,” said Michael Bottoms.

Looking at the letter itself (pdf), the paternalism just oozes off the page:

We are writing to request that you immediately take down the adult services portion of backpage.

We believe that ads for prostitution– including ads trafficking children– are rampant on the site and that the volume of these ads will grow in light of craigslist’s recent decision to eliminate the adult services section of its site. In our view, it is time for the company to follow craigslist’s lead and take immediate action to end the misery of the women and children who may be exploited and victimized by these ads. Because backpage cannot, or will not, adequately screen these ads, it should stop accepting them altogether.

…

We recognize that backpage may lose the considerable revenue generated by the adult services ads. Still, no amount of money can justify the scourge of illegal prostitution, and the misery of the women and children who will continue to be victimized, in the marketplace provided by backpage.

Call me naive, but I can’t quite bring myself to believe that this many state Attorney Generals are really so obtuse as to believe that the kind of people who sell the right to rape children will be dissuaded by a single website cutting off their ads and decide “Well, I guess that ends the child rape business for me.”

No, I’m sorry — that’s going to require not only some hardcore dismantling of rape culture, but also serious investigative work on behalf of law enforcement. I doubt that any trafficking victims have been spared rape as a result of campaigns like these — as I’ve pointed out time and time again, rapists will always find new ways to rape. (The goal, of course, is rather to stop people from being and becoming rapists.) Meanwhile, all sex workers trying to sell their services in the safest ways they know how have been pegged as “victimized … women and children” suffering “misery” — as supposedly well-meaning people actively create misery for them by preventing them from finding and screening clients from the safety of their own homes.

This bullshit needs to stop, both in the U.S. and everywhere else. Sex workers need to be treated like adults with agency, and their oppression as a marginalized group needs to be recognized for what it is and combated, rather than compounded by supposed anti-oppression efforts. The rights of two highly vulnerable and oppressed groups — trafficking victims and sex workers — shouldn’t be and don’t need to be placed in conflict with each other. And the fact that said groups sometimes do overlap and often are difficult to distinguish is indeed part of the reason why it makes absolutely no sense to punish one in attempt to support the other.

My hopes are realistically tempered, but I wish all luck to those activists preparing to go before the U.N. While I unfortunately doubt that a transcript will be made available, for those who can watch video, the Universal Periodic Review will be streamed live and available for archived viewing here.

Last Friday, Titania Kumeh wrote an excellent blog post at Mother Jones about the International AIDS Conference in Vienna, and the over 100 sex workers and advocates who protested outside. The protest was about how U.S. funding to fight HIV transmission explicitly and deliberately excludes sex workers, even though they are one of the groups most vulnerable to becoming infected and transmitting the virus to others.

The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) requires that funds do not go to sex workers or those who work with sex workers, and has done so for years. In fact, it recently came up in a post that I wrote about police abuse against sex workers in Cambodia. But while the situation is nothing new, it is discussed far too little, and needs to be highlighted whenever an opportunity presents itself. Because it’s killing people.

Back in 2003, Congress mandated that in order for any group or organization to get US global HIV/AIDS funds, it must have “a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking.” (See: Sex, American Style). The 2008 PEPFAR fact sheet states “prostitution and sex trafficking are abusive and dehumanizing to women, and they fuel the spread of HIV.” It’s not clear whether former-President Bush—who implemented PEPFAR and its anti-prostitution pledge—recognized the difference between sex trafficking and prostitution, spoke to any sex worker-run organizations that combat exploitation, or spoke to groups that seek HIV preventative care and battle sex trafficking. The anti-sex worker, anti-trafficking pledge left sex worker organizations—which incidentally work with one of the most at-risk populations for HIV (PDF)—out in the cold.

“We need HIV treatment but we don’t need the mandate that sex workers are excluded,” says Pisey Ly of Cambodia’s Women’s Network for Unity (WNU), a sex worker advocate organization. When WNU applied for US HIV prevention funds, it was denied and told to drop its sex worker status, Ly says. It refused. “The original idea behind WNU was to be an independent sex worker organization, to provide sex workers with ownership and leadership to speak about the issues that effect their lives,” Ly says. Because of PEPFAR’s anti-prostitution policy, Ly says, many donors and NGOs that once worked with Cambodian sex workers have abandoned them for fear of losing their US funding.

Meanwhile, unprotected intercourse between sex workers and clients is the main cause of new HIV infections in Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Really, you should go read the whole post. I wholeheartedly mean that — quoting as much of Kumeh’s text as I would like to would genuinely constitute copyright infringement.

What it comes down to though, is this: U.S. policy is not only failing to help sex workers, it’s actively harming them. Through requiring that any group oppose sex work in order to receiving funding, we’re not just failing to provide funding to those who already didn’t have it and leaving them where they started — though when the situation is so dire, that would be unconscionable on its own. No, we’re ensuring that organizations that previously worked with sex workers and trafficking victims, providing them with information, resources, and care that they needed, no longer will. Because they can’t keep working with sex workers and trafficking victims and afford to stay open.

It’s very similar to the Global Gag Rule. It’s probably just as deadly, if not more so. And it deserves every damn bit as much attention from feminists and other people who care about women’s rights and welfare.

The PEPFAR policy is blatantly misogynistic and sex worker-phobic. It makes sense that organizations should be anti-trafficking in order to receive funds — kidnappers and rapists don’t need anymore money than they already have — but it certainly doesn’t make sense to say that organizations can’t even assist trafficking victims as a part of their work, as such victims are usually among those who most need assistance. To further extend anti-trafficking sentiment to anti-sex worker sentiment is to conflate two issues, and obscure them both. And to deny funding and services to sex workers because they are at particular risk for contracting and transmitting HIV is more than counter-intuitive, it’s downright nonsensical. No — it’s malicious.

I would go so far as to say (and do not doubt that I am not the first) that such a denial of funds constitutes a direct act of violence. With a vast majority of sex workers being women, it constitutes an act of misogynistic, gender-based violence. With sex workers also being disproportionately women of color, trans*, and/or non-straight men,  it further constitutes an act of racist, transphobic, and homophobic violence. And when the U.S. has such great financial power over those who are most vulnerable to it, the label of colonialist violence also applies. We know that when sex workers don’t have access to condoms and information about how HIV is transmitted and prevented, they die. And yet, we continue as though we’re not killing them, or as though their deaths do not matter.

I greatly resent the notion that PEPFAR’s anti-sex work rule has anything to do with “protecting” women. The paternalistic notion that sex work is inherently “dehumanizing to women” isn’t based on a concern for women’s health and well-being. If anyone was concerned about that, the rule wouldn’t exist. The rule is about shaming and punishing those women who step outside of society’s bounds, whether through choice or coercion or force, of what a proper woman acts like. The rule is about appeasing the concerns of religious groups and middle-class moralists and generally taking out society’s hateful, misogynistic disgust at sex workers at those who can be harmed the most. It’s about taking power and abusing it in the worst way possible, just because we can.

Just because we can, and because we can simultaneously tell ourselves that by doing so, we’re doing something good.

And until the rules regarding access to U.S. anti-HIV funding are changed, it’s just yet more blood on the nation’s hands.

h/t @audaciaray

Trigger Warning for discussions of sexual violence and police violence, specifically including violence against sex workers and transphobic violence.

Earlier this year, I wrote about an Amnesty International report about sexual violence against women in Cambodia, and the judicial response (or more accurately, lack of judicial response) to sexual violence. A section of that report dealt with sexual violence against sex workers, and the fact that good portion of such violence is actually committed by law enforcement officials.

Now Human Rights Watch has released a more detailed report specifically about police abuses against sex workers in Cambodia, including but not limited to sexual violence. You can view and download the full report here. The Human Rights Watch press release states:

Police arrest sex workers in regular sweeps on the streets and parks of Phnom Penh. Some of the violence is opportunistic, while other abuses commonly occur in periodic crackdowns and raids by police and district authorities, at times targeting sex workers specifically  and other times picking up sex workers along with other groups of marginalized people on the streets.

Police abuse sex workers with impunity. Sex workers told Human Rights Watch that police officers beat them with their fists, sticks, wooden handles, and electric shock batons. In several instances, police officers raped sex workers while they were in police detention. Every sex worker that Human Rights Watch spoke to had to pay bribes or had money stolen from them by police officers.

A 2008 Cambodian law on trafficking and sexual exploitation criminalized all forms of trafficking, including forced labor. Human Rights Watch found that police officers at times can use those sections of the law that criminalize “solicitation” and “procurement” of commercial sex to justify harassment of sex workers. The provisions are also broad enough that they can be used to criminalize advocacy and outreach activities by sex worker groups and those who support them.

Human Rights Watch urged the Cambodian government to consult with sex worker groups, United Nations agencies, and organizations working on human rights, trafficking, and health to review and address the impact on the human rights of those engaged in sex work of provisions in the 2008 law on trafficking and sexual exploitation, before implementing those provisions.

In Phnom Penh, police refer sex workers to the municipal Office of Social Affairs and from there to NGOs or the government Social Affairs center, Prey Speu. Conditions in Prey Speu are abysmal. Sex workers, beggars, drug users, street children, and homeless people held at Prey Speu have reported how staff members at the center have beaten, raped, and mistreated detainees, including children. Local human rights workers, citing eyewitness accounts, allege that at least three people, and possibly more, were beaten to death by guards at Prey Speu between 2006 and 2008.

This is sadly the problem with far too many efforts that purport to be anti-trafficking: they actually don’t work to prevent or address trafficking, but merely serve as a cover to abuse all sex workers and trafficking victims. The stigma, revulsion, and misogyny (combined with many other prejudices) directed at sex workers is enormous. And verbal taunts and harassment easily lead to physical and sexual violence. Dehumanization of sex workers through slut-shaming, classism, transphobia, etc., enforces a culture that turns the other way to such abuses, or actively affirms them. And while not the only perpetrators, law enforcement is always first in line.

That’s why it’s absolutely vital that anti-trafficking efforts actually involve groups made up of trafficking victims and sex workers, to ensure that the law will truly be used to assist those who are victims and not work to create new ones. And it’s also why, as the report addresses (starting on page 60), the U.S.’s inability to do its job as a member of the international community without imposing moralization and anti-sex mandates on other governments is so problematic:

The US is one of Cambodia’s largest bilateral donors, and a major donor supporting antitrafficking efforts in Cambodia. Under the Bush administration, the US government maintained that in order to combat trafficking, countries should take steps against prostitution. National Security Presidential Directive 22 stated that, “Our policy is based on an abolitionist approach to trafficking…. In this regard, the United Statesgovernment opposes prostitution and any related activities including pimping, pandering, and/or maintaining brothels as contributing to the phenomenon of trafficking in persons.”

Since 2003, US legislation dealing with HIV/AIDS and human trafficking has required recipients of international anti-AIDS funding to have a policy “opposing prostitution and sex trafficking” as a condition of receiving funding. The legislation bars the use of funds, to “promote, support, or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution.” This provision was retained when the law was reauthorized in 2008 and remains in force. In May 2010, the US government issued implementing regulations that largely mirror those imposed by the Bush Administration.

This anti-prostitution stance combined with the impact of the annual US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report seemed to show US support for the Cambodian government’s efforts to criminalize voluntary sex work.

…

While there is no language concerning criminalizing sex work as a means to combat trafficking in the MOU, US policy on sex work under the Bush administration was quite clear. In supporting these efforts in Cambodia, the US failed to consider the context of a police force long known for its problems with corruption and for committing abuses against sex workers with impunity, when it pushed for the 2008 law [that authorized brothel raids and street sweeps].

Nice job, U.S., nice job.

One critique I had about the Amnesty International report was a failure to take a look at experiences by trans* individuals. The HRW report specifically interviewed multiple trans women sex workers. While the information provided about trans experiences is hardly comprehensive, and while it’s highly unfortunate that HRW seems to take pains to separate out trans women sex workers from “female” sex workers and uses other problematic language, some level of inclusion is both positive and illuminating. In the press release, a woman identified as Neary recounts:

“Three police officers beat me up seriously at Wat Phnom commune police station after I was taken from the park. One of the police officers pointed his gun at my head and pulled the trigger, but the bullet did not fire. They kicked my neck, my waist, and hit my head and my body with a broom stick. It lasted about half an hour. I begged them not to beat me. The police officers were cruel and they did not tell me any reason why they did this to me. “

And in the full report (page 33), she also states:

Sometimes the police say, “A-khtoey [a disparaging word for a transgender person] you fuck up the ass. You have HIV/AIDS and you infect other people. You deserve to be shot.”

Unsurprisingly, wherever there is misogynistic violence, there will also be specifically transmisogynistic violence, and it will always be magnified.

At over 70 pages, the report contains a whole lot more than I’ve highlighted in this brief overview, including many more personal testimonies from sex workers who have experienced abuse by police. I strongly urge you to take some time to browse through it, or at the very least read the full press release, and pass it along.

Trigger Warning for descriptions of sexual violence, specifically sexual violence against sex workers.

Continuing in an unfortunately long line of stories about police officers using their state power as a means to commit sexual violence against women, comes this one out of Oregon. An officer named Joshua Jensen (left) was alleged to have forced two women, both sex workers, to perform oral sex on him while he was on duty.

When Joshua Jensen twice arranged to meet a prostitute in a Beaverton parking lot for sex, neither woman knew he was a cop until he showed up in uniform and ordered them behind a garbage container, investigative reports show.

Both women said they were upset and felt they had to go with the officer.  

“When he first took me back behind the Dumpster … my hands were shaking,” one of the victims told The Oregonian Wednesday.

“I was scared – his whole demeanor was very intimidating,” she said. “I really didn’t know what to expect or what would happen.”

In the first incident, Jensen told the woman what she was doing as a prostitute was wrong. Then he asked for oral sex. She asked if she had to, and he said she didn’t. Afterward, he paid her $40.

But with the second woman, Jensen asked her why he shouldn’t arrest her. She replied that she wouldn’t do it anymore.

He said, “Well, if there’s something I want out of it,” then unzipped his pants, reports show.

The woman told investigators and The Oregonian that Jensen then “grabbed me by the back of the head and forced my head down, and I really didn’t have a choice.”

The good news is that Jensen has pleaded guilty. The bad news is that what he pleaded to doesn’t quite add up with the details presented above:

Jensen, 25, pleaded guilty Monday to two counts of prostitution, two counts of official misconduct and one count of coercion, and was sentenced to 30 months in prison. He was not charged with a sex crime and will not have to report as a sex offender when he is released.

Um, what? I’m sorry, how exactly is this not a sex crime?

Detectives who investigated the case were considering first-degree sodomy and first-degree sexual abuse, both Measure 11 crimes, police reports show. Those charges require evidence of “forcible compulsion,” said prosecutor Roger Hanlon. Based on the evidence, he said, “he didn’t commit those crimes.”

Forcible compulsion requires an expressed or implied physical threat, Hanlon said. Coercion occurred because of his implied threat to arrest the victim if she didn’t perform the sex act, he said.

“He didn’t force them, but he certainly coerced them,” Hanlon said. “He didn’t threaten to kill them or hurt them, but there was this element of coercion.”

Look, I’m ambivalent right now about categorizing sexual violence via forcible compulsion and sexual violence via coercion as two different levels of criminal offense, though I think the often blurry line between coercion and force creates a strong argument against. What I don’t see any argument whatsoever for, though, is not even classifying sexual violence via coercion as a sex crime.

Because coercion is not consent. And sex without consent is rape. So this, as described, and as Jensen apparently confessed to, is rape. It is rape. Further going back to that often blurry line between force and coercion — again, neither of which count as consent — I think there’s a strong argument to be made that a man ordering you to perform a sex act on him while he has a gun strapped to his hip and a badge saying that he can arrest you anytime he likes very much crosses it. And while I don’t exactly expect prosecutors to recognize as much, contrary to what Hanlon expresses up above, the threat of arrest is a threat of force and violence, especially when the threat is made against someone marginalized and particularly at risk for police violence, like a sex worker.

There are, it seems, at least two things going on here.¹

The first is the often special treatment that police officers who commit crimes receive at the hands of the judicial system. Sadly, with all of the victim-blaming and rape apologism in the legal system, it’d be absurd to suggest that “anyone else” who committed such a crime would receive harsher treatment. But it is probably safe to say that most people who committed such a crime,  saw their case progress to the point of charges being pressed, and then confessed, would in fact probably receive harsher treatment, and would have been charged with a sex crime and been given a longer sentence. This is in spite the fact that law enforcement officials who commit acts of violence while on the job should be held to much higher standards than the average civilian, what with their positions of enormous power and role in representing the government. And yet, the legal system cares a lot more about protecting its own than it does with ensuring that the state doesn’t represent fear and violence.

Just as important and influential in these cases is that unique brand of misogyny reserved specifically for female sex workers. While the victim-blaming doesn’t seem explicit in this case, from what’s being reported, a lot of victim-blaming tropes are poking their heads out. The two most notable among them are the myth that a victim who has had consensual sex with her attacker previously cannot be raped by him at a later date, and that a sex worker cannot be raped at all. While it doesn’t seem that either the prosecution or defense has directly made either of these arguments — and thank god for small favors — it’s difficult to believe that in spite of their exceedingly common nature, they’re not playing a role here.

It’s next to impossible to honestly look at a case in which all evidence suggests that two women who do sex work were raped by a man who had previous paid them for sex, and think that these misogynistic, victim-blaming, sex worker phobic myths had nothing to do with the decision to not charge the perpetrator with a sex crime. All women are at some risk of this level of atrocity, but some of us more than others — and it’s difficult to think that there is an equal likelihood of this happening to a woman who does different work. It’s hard to believe that for most other women, the standard for force would just as readily be placed so high.

One of the two known victims told the Oregonian that she is upset with how the case was handled, and says that she continues to fear for her safety. And why shouldn’t she, when prosecutors have devalued her safety so much that they won’t admit it was ever at risk to begin with?

via Woman Undefined, h/t SAFER

Good News: earlier this month, the New York State legislature passed a bill allowing victims of sex trafficking to have prostitution convictions against them vacated. The bill currently only awaits Governor Paterson’s signature, but activists are hopeful that he will give it his stamp of approval:

Sex trafficking victims may soon be able to have prostitution convictions against them vacated, thanks to new legislation approved in Albany.

Young women are often lured to the New York area with promises of jobs and then find themselves coerced into prostitution. Many of these young women get arrested and charged with a crime even though they were forced to do the work against their will.

Sienna Baskin, a staff attorney for the Sex Workers Program at the Urban Justice Center, says treating trafficking victims like criminals simply pushes them back into the hands of their abusers.

“They end up with a conviction on their record and they go right back into the hands of their trafficker, so we have clients who were arrested up to ten times before escaping their trafficking situation, usually on their own,” Baskin says.

Baskin adds that those convictions can make it harder for women to get jobs or legal residency. The landmark legislation–New York’s law is the first in the country–will allow trafficking survivors to start their lives over with a clean slate. As it stands, women who’ve been abused for years are then forced to disclose their criminal convictions to potential employers.

Now, personally, I find the need for such legislation in the first place to be very sad. This comes from a position of supporting decriminalization and believing on principle that no one, whether forced into prostitution or engaging in sex work freely, should have to face a prostitution conviction, let alone being ostracized because of it. It also comes from the chill sent up my spine at the thought of women being tried in a court of law and convicted for the “crime” of having been repeatedly raped, since that’s what non-consensual sex work is. It’s an utterly appalling system.

That said, in a climate where decriminalization still seems a hell of a long way off, this bill is a good start. People, usually women, who are trafficked into the sex industry tend to face an uphill battle getting out. Often, they don’t speak the dominant language or have legal immigration/working papers, and have reason to fear law enforcement. Almost always, they lack strong outside support systems, something that made them a desirable target for traffickers in the first place. They also tend to lack a financial support system, making an escape potentially even undesirable, as it means a lack of shelter and ability to feed oneself. To ensure that this battle is even more difficult by leaving a criminal conviction on a victim’s record — and for prostitution, among the most stigmatized of crimes, no less — is unconscionable. Being the first of its kind in the U.S., the bill is a huge victory, and one that was diligently fought for by sex worker’s rights advocates.

Indeed, even more than just advocating for the bill once it was drafted, the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center actually assisted in writing it, ensuring that language was genuinely favorable to trafficking victims. For a group that does work to “protect the rights and safety of sex workers who by choice, circumstance, or coercion remain in the industry” and highlights the voices of actual sex workers and trafficked persons, helping to write a piece of important and passed legislation is a major success, and one that deserves to be celebrated and applauded.

Unfortunately, the Feminist Majority Foundation didn’t seem to think so. FMF, which publishes the major and long-running feminist publication Ms. Magazine, wrote a story last week about the bill’s approval by the Senate, and didn’t see fit as to so much mention the Sex Workers Project’s name — despite working from the same sources I am now, including the press release that was explicitly put out under the Sex Workers Project. Instead, all materials are simply credited to the Urban Justice Center, and no mention of the organization’s role in drafting the bill is mentioned.

Seeing Ms. Magazine’s track history regarding the erasure of the experiences of sex workers by choice, the decision to ignore the self-advocacy done by sex workers, and the regular support of legislation that many sex workers explicitly say hurts them — reasons why, I should note in the interest of full disclosure, I opted to not renew my own subscription with the magazine quite some time ago — it’s incredibly difficult to read the press release and FMF’s own story, and see this as an accident. And even if it was an inadvertent omission, it’s still not at all excusable, when the voices of sex workers and trafficked persons are so regularly left out of stories about them.

Over at SWOP Colorado, where I was first alerted to both the bill and the FMF story, sixtoedkittens writes:

So what did this article do aside from mutilate a press release that someone probably worked very hard on?  THEY LEFT US OUT OF IT.  Entirely.  They wouldn’t even publish the name “Sex Workers Project.”  But it is more than that.  Both major grassroots sex workers rights organizations in NYC, SWOP-NYC and SWANK, not only officially supported the legislation but worked to get it passed.  I was a member of both organizations at the time.  One thing we did was to write a memo of support to legislators that was not only deeply personal to some of us but also well-researched and broadly applicable.  Some of us also contacted our legislators personally, distributed materials, etc.  And the campaign to get this legislation passed in the first place?  It was spearheaded and carried out by….The Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center.  Look, there’s that word again.  Sex Worker.  Yes, we were involved!

Some people don’t realize, I think, that there are people involved in the sex workers rights movement in the US who have experienced force, fraud, or coercion in relation to the sex industry.  Well, there are.  And you know what?  Most of the rest of the people involved in the movement are actually decent people, who are as horrified by sex (and labor) trafficking as any decent person, and even organize to improve the lives of those affected by it.  Go figure.

Apparently, some feminists think that it’s okay to erase the contributions of women, and the work done in support of women’s rights and safety, when that work contradicts a set of principles set forth by a very specific form of feminism. Not just disagree with or counter those contributions, mind you — but outright act like they don’t even exist. I guess it’s better to act like the majority male legislature, which doesn’t deal with these issues on a very real and personal level on a daily basis, deserves all of the credit. To act like the work that marginalized women do to further free themselves and other women just doesn’t matter.

Maybe its expected that advocates will simply be grateful that they wrote about the story at all. After all, almost two weeks after the Senate’s decision to pass the bill, their story and the one by WNYC are the closest things I could find to “major” news sources reporting on the issue. But I remain personally unconvinced that one type of erasure of marginalized bodies and voices is superior to another.

Thanks to Robin for the link.