What’s In A Name

What’s in a name?

Being renamed by those who have no regard for you is a drag. Hence the case of California Senate Bill 1388 authored by Sen. Ted Lieu set to go before the California Senate Appropriations committee on May 5th. His bill is called Human Trafficking but really his bill renames us prostitutes as ‘performers and our customers as ‘purchasers’ and mandates the later to spend 48 hours in jail and pay a $1000 fine to be split between police, prosecutors and non profits creating a sex bounty. The bill says the fines must go to provide those shame based sex negative substandard ‘peer to peer counseling’ for minors who have been working as prostitutes. ‘Bounty’ and ‘self dealing’ are words the analysis of the Senate Public Safety Committee used described this bill before they voted to approve it.

This bill is just like the First Offender Prostitution Program here in San Francisco. The FOPP was sold to the pubic under the guise of holding our customers financially responsible for all structural race, gender and social inequalities on the planet but really the public has been subsidizing the salaries of the uncredentialed counselors, the police and prosecutors all these years.

My current legal title is prostitute. I’m fine with that. I used to be an escort when I first started working in the biz in a massage parlor the mid 1980’s that was also licensed for escorts. I got a massage permit, so then I was a masseuse. When I stared working as an outcall escort, I got a license for that too thinking I would be afforded protection. I was wrong. I really liked the term sex worker until I figured out the other people who were using it weren’t doing prostitution. I don’t know what they were doing but it didn’t seem to involve the touching of other people and they weren’t at risk for being arrested for prostitution. The sw terms seems to have some sort of class connotation to it. Political commentators on MSNBC use it now with a smile. I stopped using that term to describe myself for the most part. I am a provider, a provider of erotic services, an erotic service provider, I’m definitely not a performer.

California criminal code 647(b) is the legal definition for prostitution which is anyone providing a ‘lewd act’ for money or ‘consideration’. A ‘lewd act’ means anyone touching breasts, genitals or buttock area with anything by another. So even using my feet to give a sensuous massage of the groin area, or sliding my riding crop over someone’s nipples or grinding my hips on a lap where a penis resides, all constitutes prostitution in California.

Now agreeing to do a ‘lewd act’ for money or consideration is currently protected under the first Amendment but taking any ‘furtherance’ to do or receive the ‘lewd act’ for money or consideration, like even offering or accepting a ride down the street for example, can constitutes an arrestable prosecutable criminal offense under current law and under the proposed bill. However SB 1388 goes way beyond criminalizing behavior. This bill actually renaming us without our permission. This is shocking considered the bill’s title is human trafficking. Human trafficking, a form of modern day slavery, you know that mantra. Slavery like how Africans were captured and sold on action blocks here in the good ol U S of A to have their labor extracted by any means. People who were turned into slaves in this way were striped of every right known to mankind. Typically when they were sold, they were renamed by their masters.

Now I’ve never formally met the sponsor of this bill that’s attempting to rename us. But I did have occasion to sit near him at the April 22nd California Senate Public Safety hearing where he stated his case for his bill, SB 1388. Well he didn’t really that say much. He let Daphne Phong, of Prop 35 and some other woman who spoke about how her daughter liked to watch Disney at the age of 20 but then started dressing ‘like a cheep ho’ do most of the talking. The mother of the daughter testified that her daughter abused other women because he boyfriend made her. Somehow all of this domestic violence justifies reaming of us as ‘performers’ and our customers as ‘purchasers’ and recriminalizing our customers to spend 48 hour in jail and conflating them to sex traffickers to pay new high fines. It’s all about ‘that money’ according to the mother. That would explain why all the police and prosecutor associations supported it.

I’ve never spoken to Senator Ted Lieu before. I wondered why he wants to rename me to be a ‘performer’ and my customers as ‘purchasers’? So as I was sitting there in front of the Senate Public Unsafety Committee near Ted Lieu, a man of Asian decent and looking at one of 3 co sponsored for his bill, Holly Mitchell a black women, I’m wondered what possessed people of color to rename us to create a funding stream for counselors? Coining a pejorative term to refer to human beings is undignified and legislating it into law is certainly below the station of a state senator and the state of California.

I stated in my oppositional testimony among other things, that renaming us without our permission was a human right violation. The Chair of the Public Unsafety Committee, Senator Loni Hancock asked Ted Lieu and Holly Mitchell to address the issues we brought up in opposition to their bill. Senator Holly Mitchell said that we couldn’t just walk in and testify and expect her to respond. That we would have to submit our issues in writing if we expected to be addressed. One of the purposes of speaking up at hearings is to have a chance to speak why decision makers support or oppose something; that’s how our democracy is supposed to work. Chastising us, the unfunded already marginalized workers, publicly for not using a particular process is typical cheap shot and a form of political escapism to avoid taking responsibility. Besides, many of the issues we raised were already written in the 19 page committee analysis in great detail. Her high handed remarks to us made me think she had not bothered to read it.

Oppose California SB 1388

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Talking POINTS to OPPOSE SB 1388: Historic Change Proposed to California’s Prostitution LAW

This is a reprint from Erotic Service Providers Union site

California SB 1388 is two pronged failed approach:
It recriminalized customers of prostitutes with the purpose of creating a funding scheme from new high fines to pay for counseling services for minors involved in prostitution.

Where’s the evidence?

The author of this bill has yet to present any evidence that mandatory jail time and new high fines to be shared with non profits who provide counseling to minors and law enforcement has any positive effects on anybody. http://www.diplomaticourier.com/news/topics/politics/2105-devoid-of-research-an-evaluation-of-human-trafficking-interventions

Indifferent to the existing human rights violation of criminalization

By bringing mandatory penalties onto customers of prostitutes, SB 1388 places the burden on us newly defined ‘performers’ to protect our customers by forcing us to work in more secluded spaces. Carrying or insisting on using condoms to protect ourselves will put additional risks on an already vulnerable population, not to mention the public health risk.
UN General Assembly. The protection of human rights in the context of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS): Report of the Secretary-General. Human Rights Council, 16th session. UN doc. no. A/HRC/16/69, 20 Dec. 2010.

Why legislate failed policy?

The author of SB 1388 has yet to show that the cost of mandatory jail time, in combination with the bounty incentives it creates for law enforcement to make arrests and prosecutions will be covered by the proposed high fines let alone cover the cost of counseling.

The authors of SB 1388 have ignored the already failed policy of San Francisco’s First Offender Prostitution Program administered by the District Attorney’s office that clearly shows that this very same fine scheme DOES NOT cover the cost of said ‘counseling’ let alone the cost of criminalization.
http://rightswork.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/John-Schools.Lovell.Jordan.7.12.pdf
MOU Between San Francisco Police Department/DA/SAGE
Management Audit of the San Francisco First Offender Prostitution Program

The authors of SB 1388 have ignored widely published studies that show that long term housing is the priority for youth in prostitution, not counseling. http://ann.sagepub.com/content/653/1/225.full.pdf+html


Why Does SB 1388 Get To Violate State Professional Standards?

Given that the California State Legislature has allowed non credentialed ‘peer counselors’ to provide counseling to youth, SB 1388 has yet to show how these unaccountable non profits avoid the pitfalls of unethical and ‘self- dealing’ actors from being allowed to use and further risk the most vulnerable for more harm? http://oaklandnorth.net/2013/12/06/juvenile-hall-in-oakland-plans-to-create-a-girls-camp-for-sexually-exploited-youth/comment-page-1
Ms. R’s testimony
California Senate Public Safety Committees’ Analysis of SB 1388
2013 VAWA pp101 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113s47enr/pdf/BILLS-113s47enr.pdf

Why do they get to rename us?

SB 1388 renames us prostitutes as ‘performers’ and our customers as ‘purchaser’. This renaming of our identities, our relationships and our work as ‘commercial sex acts’ without our permission is a human rights violation of the most egregious kind and is completely unacceptable!

ESPU

4/25/14

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My Yearly Tax Sex Talk

Since its tax time, I’ll give my yearly tax talk.
Many folks say, “They should tax and regulate prostitutes” instead of arresting us.
Well, taxing and regulating prostitution won’t bring us equal protection under the law.

Many folks in the sex industry pay taxes, local, state and federal taxes already. We pay sales taxes, hotel taxes, property taxes, gas taxes…same kinds of taxes everybody else pays. Except we don’t have access to the constitutional rights like everybody has. We don’t have access to equal protection under the law for example. If I’m assaulted on or off my job, I have to seriously consider how reporting that crime and its substantive investigation will effect my ability to work. Even legal sector sex industry workers don’t have equal protection under the law. They are not protected from discrimination and harassment in housing, education, employment, child custody nor are they guaranteed access to financial institutions. Legal sector workers who pay taxes cannot keep religious zealots from invading their work spaces. Got cupcakes? Free mascara? Nail polish anyone?

FYI, the US doesn’t allot rights based on your ability to pay taxes. If that were true, then why are the big corporations being exempt from paying taxes? Why is one of the richest men in the world paying a less tax rate than his secretary? Yes money gives more access to legislators to make laws that favor your capital but our capital is outlawed and it doesn’t matter how much tax I pay my legislator won’t propose laws to change my status.

We’re severally economically disadvantaged because the anti prostitution laws that have systematically, over a 100 year period, banned our ability to negotiate for our labor and own safe work conditions. So I would say that the US government ought to mandate that our class not pay ANY taxes until such time we have been completely enfranchised to the point where all the negative stigma and discrimination against our class has disappeared!

That is my position and that should be your position. Don’t let them off the hook for how they’ve treated us all these years! Make them pay some consequences and restitution to us for violating our human, labor and civil rights. Don’t just sit back and let us activist do the heavy lifting of changing the laws and then agree to be taxed and regulated. We’re not like any other business. What other business has been so violated to the degree that ours has? Therefore the antidotes to the poison that criminalization has caused all of humanity must be cured and gaining tax exempt status is a good first start.

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