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Ode To Margo St. James

Posted by May 1, 2021

I first spoke with Margo St. James in 2008 following the failure of Proposition K – a San Francisco city wide ballot measure to decriminalize prostitution and defund diversion programs. I was the proponent and qualified it for the ballot.

Someone had given me Margot’s phone number and said I should call her at her home in Western Washington. I called Margo and she started talking about Coyote v Roberts – which was a class action lawsuit litigated against the state of Rhode Island in 1976. Margo told me that four members of Coyote (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) had gone to RI to work and became the plaintiffs in 1976. She thought that the way forward was to bring a similar lawsuit in California.

So I started calling people in Rhode Island to figure out information about that lawsuit.

Because of the visibility that Proposition K had brought me, I was asked along with Veronica Monet, to participate in an event called Rebellious Lawyers at Yale Law School in Connecticut. This provided me with an opportunity to drive to the Rhode Island’s State Capital courthouse to search for information on lawsuit.

The Coyote v Roberts case claimed that Rhode Island’s anti prostitution law was bening enforcemed in a discriminatory way against women but not men. This eventually lead to the Rhode Island legislature removing the criminalization of indoor prostitution from the law books to settle the lawsuit out of court.

Because we’d had so much trouble raising money to support Prop K in 2008, because folks didn’t want their names, home addresses and work identified in associaiton with prostitution, I founded a 501(c) non-profit the Erotic Service Providers Legal Education and Research Project (ESPLERP) in 2010, so we could collect donations anonymously. I recruited a first amendment rights attorney, gathered plaintiffs and some money and in March 2015, we filed a groundbreaking court case, ESPLERP v Gascon [16-15927].

We asked the Federal courts to find that California’s prostitution statute 647(b), unconstitutional. George Gascon was San Francisco’s district attorney at the time – and so he ended up as the first named defendant, along with the District Attorney’s of Marin, Sonoma and Alameda Counties.

The case went all the way to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which eventually dismissed it in October 2017 . But even so, in its judgement, the court did state that the State of California legislator should review anti-prostitution law..

Although we didn’t get the anti prostitution law struck down at that time, we did get the attention of many District Attorneys, who clearly had never conceived of the idea that people actually thought that they had the constitutional right to be prostitutes and customers of prostitutes.
It was like the knowledge of Margo St. James and all her comrades’ good work to give rights to whores had never touched their ears. But as a result, while the police continued to enforce the law, we saw a definite slowing of prosecutions and turnover in the diversion programs.

We also got the attention of legislators. Our allies in the California legislature were able to pass progressive legislation such as SB 239 which repealed the criminalization of HIV positive status, and SB 233 which gives immunity to anyone reporting a serious crime without being charged with prostitution, and condoms can no longer be used as probable cause to make prostitution arrests.

Ironically, George Gascon went on to be elected Los Angeles County District Attorney, and immediately started to roll back the prosecution of misdemeanors including prostitution. So much so that the LA County sheriff recently complained that Gascón had “basically legalized” prostitution in Los Angeles by failing to prosecute suspected solicitation of prostitution cases referred his office by LA police.

So, in this way, we see Margo St. James’ fight to decriminalize prostitution delivering results.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re charismatic like Margo, whether we are worldly and educated like Margo, or whether we have lots of friends, lovers and comrades like Margo. We can still make a difference and have a role to play.

We believe that prostitution should not be criminalized – and that prostitutes and our customers and our larger communities make valuable contributions to humanity, that we make a difference in the world.

So go join your local movement and lend your talents, your energy, your money, and your presence towards that end. Everyone has a role to pay.

Maxine Doogan
May 2021

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Who’s Really Behind the Atlanta Massage Parlor Murders? The American Taliban

Posted by March 19, 2021

Who’s Really Behind the Atlanta Massage Parlor Murders? The American Taliban

Aaron Long may have pulled the trigger on Tuesday night’s massage parlor killing spree, but in many ways, he was just a hired hand. The real culprit? The American Taliban.

That’s what me and my friends in the sex biz call them: the politicians, the cops, the media, the anti-sex work feminists and the religious extremists that oppose rights for prostitutes and migrant workers. They invented a century-long morals war on sex trafficking, and left the lives of countless immigrants and prostitutes in their wake.

I got my start in the massage parlor system in the 1980s, and I’ve seen first hand how alleged concern by the FBI, Homeland Security, countless legislators, regulators, cops and anti-trafficking groups like The Polaris Project came together to demonize our work and make us less safe.

Take the raid at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa, the high-profile FBI “sex trafficking” sting operation that ensared Patriot’s owner Robert Kraft in 2019. Kraft was ultimately released with no charges, and no evidence of trafficking found, but the employees — the ones supposedly being saved — were arrested and fined tens of thousands of dollars.

The criminalization of prostitution and immigrants is fueled by both xenophobia and fetish for sexual purity a hundred years old. Religious organizations, with their fear of sexual desire, have long co-opted an immigration system that sees non-whites as a threat. (In this regard, anti-Asian sentiment is particularly strong, going back to Chinatown vice raids and brothel busts in the early 1900s.)

I listened to the 911 recording from a worker at the Golden Spa, calling for help as she hid from what she thought was a robber. That’s because the American Taliban has worked to force financial institutions like Visa/Mastercard to stop doing business with us. All cash businesses make easy targets, and a beacon for criminal activity like burglary.

They use the fear of sex trafficking to pass laws like FOSTA-SESTA, which helped shut down sites like Backpage, and removed the safer online sex spaces that we used to meet clients. We’re booted from banks, we’re banned from online platforms, and forced to live on the margins.

To say these efforts have detrimental effects on the lives of sex industry and migrant workers is an understatement. For all their concern about vulnerable women in the sex trade, their goal seems to be to make our lives unlivable, make us seem unlovable, our skills despicable.

Is it any wonder that the killer, brainwashed by religious zealots to believe his need for release was an addiction, a dangerous and foreign temptation emerging from a criminal underworld, staffed by the untouchable, would turn his selfhate on the women themselves? After all, sometimes you have to destroy the village in order to save it.

While the American Taliban soaks up millions of dollars in anti-trafficking grants from Congress, supported by millions more in taxpayer funded prostitution stings, the family of Hyun Jung Kim has to crowdfund for housing, funeral expenses and legal issues.

People come to this country trying to run businesses that sustain themselves and their families. But instead, the American Taliban pushes them to the margins, where they can easily be harassed and targeted, where they live in fear of government, where protection means prosecution, and where they are responsible for violence against them.

The killer in Atlanta might appear to be a lone gunman, but those in the sex biz know he had a massive organization behind him providing a map, the ammunition and the targets.

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Happy International Whore’s Day 2018

Posted by May 29, 2018

I tried to educate Cat Brooks about the pitfalls of using the language as well as the approach created by modern day white supremacists when discussing prostitution and forced labor back in 2016 when I saw her on Democracy Now.

I thought it especially important to bring to her attention the connection between the current white supremacist anti prostitution narratives and the white supremacists and their anti prostitution campaigns at the turn of the century, known as the suffragettes who organized to help pass the racist Mann Act.

The suffragettes opposed black men being able to vote, as they believed they should get the right to vote first. The racist suffragettes used similar language, line of thinking and approaches to that which we are seeing today; at that time in history they wanted to prevent the mixing of races as well as to control sexual behaviors by getting anti prostitution laws passed, specifically the Mann Act.

The Mann Act passed in 1910 and was used in 2002 to charge Robyn Few, the founder of SWOPUSA.

Those suffragist white supremacists specifically used ‘sexual purity’ to justify their ‘rescue operations’ and additionally to outlaw prostitution on a state by state basis, because they couldn’t get a constitutional amendment outlawing prostitution on a federal level, no different than what is happening today with laws such as #FOSTA #SESTA being passed.

When Cat Brooks didn’t get it in 2016, we made a video about it:

CAT BROOKS ON DEMOCRACY NOW- FORWARDING WHITE SUPREMACY
CAT BROOKS ON DEMOCRACY NOW- FORWARDING WHITE SUPREMACY

Cat Brooks continues to use the language and line of thinking of the modern day white supremacists when discussing prostitution and forced labor in the sex industry.

She uses their language in the public sphere as demonstrated on the Up Front Morning Show which aired on KPFA April 18, 2018 when she interviewed me for 14 minutes Maxine Doogan Interviewed on Up Front KPFK 4/18/18 by Jeannine Etter & Cat Brooks and then the following day when she platformed Holly Joshi of M.I.S.S.E.Y on the same program, for twice the amount of time Cat Brooks Interviews Holly Joshi of M.I.S.S.E.Y. Of Oakland on Up Front KPFA 4/19/18
to spew even more modern day white supremacist cookie cutter rhetoric exactly like all the other modern day white supremacists/ anti prostitutionists have used to pass laws like #FOSTA #SESTA

The same rhetoric is being used to frame and conflate all sex workers as ‘sex trafficking victims‘ on an alternative listener sponsored radio show that purports itself to bring perspectives not often heard in mainstream media except in this instance, Cat Brooks brought a perspective that is exactly all the mainstream media outlets. The rhetoric is being used to pass hundreds of anti prostitution laws across the nation under the guise of rescuing children like #FOSTA #SESTA

Cat and Holly’s ‘solution’ is to platform the prison industrial complex and the NGO’s adjunct to it.

Cat Brooks and Holly Joshi assume the position of arbiters of who gets access to human rights and when, by suggesting that we must first fix long standing cultural, legal, and institutional inequalities that white supremacists caused, instead of decriminalizing prostitution so that people in the sex trade have the benefit of equal protection under law and to prevent police abuses that criminalization enables.

Here is Cat Brooks of the ‘Anti Police Terror Project’ giving media space to another women of color Holly Joshi, a former porn performer and former Oakland cop, who now directs an NGO known as M.I.S.S.E.Y, which is the recipient of the unfortunate young people who have either been arrested in anti prostitution sting operations funded by ‘End Demand’ grants to the Alameda District Attorney’s Office under the guise of rescuing victims, and/or they’ve been profiled as underage prostitutes, though in either case M.I.S.S.E.Y is adjunct to the prison industrial complex.

Cat Brooks puts herself out there wanting to hold police accountable and yet she ignores or doesn’t have the capacity to register, that Holly Joshi and her org are aligned with the police and even depends on the police to traffic ‘clients’ into Joshi’s org.

These NGO’s have a history of accompanying police on prostitution sting operations under the guise of ‘rescuing victims’. This is called ‘profiting from the criminalization of our labor’!

M.I.S.S.E.Y is involved with police and benefits from the criminalization of the youth who’ve been profiled as prostitutes or who have been involved in the court system by being criminalized in other ways.

Cat Brooks conveniently ignores this relationship between M.I.S.S.E.Y. and the police and doesn’t acknowledge it for the violent terrorizing act that it is. This is duplicitous on her part.

Cat Brooks consistently demonstrates poor judgment when referring to the youth in the sex trade, in both interviews she refers to youth in the sex trade as ‘babies on the street’.

This business of infantilizing youth is what the modern day white supremacists do as a means to justify profiling everyone as victims and then holding them in ‘protective custody’ i.e. juvenile hall, where they are terrorized, forced into treatment, manipulated, coerced to provide testimony and held indefinitely, which is a violation of Habeas corpus and human rights.

Be sure to listen to our interview with Dr. Lois Lee who founded ‘Children Of The Night’. Dr. Lois Lee describes the reality of ‘protective custody’. Dominate The Nation: Maxine Doogan and Domina Elle interview Dr. Lois Lee of Children Of The Night

Cat Brooks gives Holly Joshi a free pass on her role in facilitating the terrorization of youth in the sex trade by police under the current prostitution and sex trafficking laws.

For someone claiming to be so concerned with youth involved in the sex trade, Cat Brooks hasn’t availed herself to the mountain of realities exposed, such as the testimony of Dr. Alexandra Lutnick, RTI International, UC Berkeley, before the California State Assembly in 2015:
Alexandra Lutnick, RTI International, UC Berkeley testifiys before the California Assembly Public Safty Committee- Oct. 2015

Specifically renaming youth in the sex trade as ‘victims’ just because our modern day white supremacist government gave the youth in the sex trade the label of ‘victim’ doesn’t mean it’s okay for anyone to use this same disrespectful term or to infantilize and minimize them by calling them ‘babies’ when speaking of them! The sex worker community rejects when ‘white saviors’ do this, why should our community let Cat Brooks and Holly Joshi get away with this?

During this time where white people are being asked to be more conscious of blatant and subtle white supremacist comments, actions and systemic mechanisms which support institutional racism, its duplicitous that women of color like Cat Brooks and Holly Joshi subscribe to the criminalization of prostitutes and use the language of the sexual purity agenda crafted and perpetuated by white supremacists of the past and today. This rhetoric and line of thinking is being used by current white supremacists to rename and recriminalize us as sex trafficking victims under #FOSTA #SESTA and all other ‘anti trafficking’ laws, which are all wrongly predicated upon the criminalization of prostitution.

Furthermore, Cat Brooks demonstrates her willingness to subscribe to the dominant culture’s view- saying in the interview that we, the actual prostitutes rights activists, have to fix long standing cultural, legal, and institutional inequalities that white supremacists caused, when she asks me during the interview “how do we regulate sites like Backpage so that the ‘babies’ are protected while the rights of sex workers are protected as well”?

I mean, here she is, a non criminalized worker, not being hunted by modern day white supremacists under the guise of rescuing her, asking me, the criminalized worker, the one who doesn’t have access to equal protection under the law, the one whose family doesn’t have access to equal protection under law, the one whose co workers and fellow activists don’t have access to equal protection under law, the one whose speech used to negotiate for my own labor and safe work conditions is criminalized, the one whose intimate, domestic and commercial relationships are all criminalized as sex traffickers- is asking me to: 1) protect people who are also subjected to the same systemic and institutional inequalities as I am, 2) to invent regulatory schemes for my third party bosses who don’t support my rights because they’re too busy being bullied and coerced into cooperate with the police under the guise of rescuing ‘victims’, when the end goal is to stop me from working as a prostitute altogether, and 3) our rights are always contingent upon protecting other people, which is why we don’t have any rights, we are an afterthought if even that.

I recognize this tactic for what it is because I’ve had training by the labor movement. It is a long standing strategic weapon used by the ‘bosses’ to pit groups of marginalized people against each other with the end goal of nobody getting any rights. The goal is to keep everyone consenting to giving up their rights as a means to protect another group-hence #FOSTA #SESTA

In closing, the organizers of International Whore’s Day in Oakland would do well to spend their time getting themselves some training in how to be activists and work to gain access to the institutional memory of #whorenation itself and learn about our past and recent history. For several years, there were sex worker contingents in the San Francisco Dyke March or the Trans March. Why don’t you all work on something like that if you have so much energy.

In the meantime, the #sexworkernation should not be giving any space to anyone, especially in the public sphere, to spew modern day white supremacist sex trafficking apologist garbage, even when the person spewing it is a person that says the sw worker rights words, or purports themselves to be against police violence and is a woman of color.

Happy International Whore’s Day 2018
Maxine Doogan

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Bye Bye Eros Guide

Posted by November 9, 2017

I remember when I first met Sachi. She came to one of our meetings of the Cyprian Guild. The Cyprian Guild was a monthly meeting of providers in San Francisco that met from 1996 to about 1998. Sachi had asked to come address our group to propose that we advertise for free on her new website, called the Eros Guide.

Many of us were weary of this new digitalization technology. Our concern was the high visibility to people we didn’t know. At the time, we all advertised in print publications that were known for adult content and ads. Sachi thought that this new way of advertising would bring high exposure which would be good for our business and that this new technology was the wave of the future and the future was now. She and her partner Byron had a corporate background in marketing and business, so they presented themselves as being the best people to lead in the marriage of adult content to the internet; and they claimed that we would be treated professionally.

At that time some of the workers had already put up their own websites under their work names. All of these workers that I knew had been targeted by the police in anti prostitution sting operations. They were told to take their websites down lest they be used as evidence against them in court. It seemed that we were being herded by law enforcement into websites like Sachi’s.

At first the ads on the Eros Guide ads site were free. As more and more us put up ads, the more we were pressured by the site to put up photos showing our faces. We were pressured to hire photographers to get professional photos that showed us in more graphic poses. This was quite a change from print ads, where groups of us workers were making bank off of generic 5 line text ads for minimal costs.

As many workers acquiesced to this new platform and its requirements of exposure, the kinds of words we used to describe ourselves began to be censored by the Eros Guide, and they instituted a pay system to use their site. They instituted the ‘stat box’ where we were to fill out our breast size, height, hair color, age and rates. Many of us explained to Sachi that we relied upon phone calls to give this information because it was the phone calls that brought in the money.

The Eros Guide claimed that this information was being requested by the people who were visiting and viewing the site, and that it generated more ‘clicks’ on the site; more clicks was supposed to translate into more exposure for the advertisers and more money in our pockets.

It didn’t make sense that we advertisers were the one’s paying the Eros Guide yet their content was being directed by non paying viewers. In this way, the Eros Guide had positioned itself as a third party boss controlling our images, our services and our rates.

It was then made clear whose side the Eros Guide was on and it wasn’t ours the workers.

These changes never materialized into more money for less advertising dollar spent. In fact, many of us saw this new platform bring more advertisers with lower rates and the race to the bottom was on. These lower rates in combination with the police raids of both street based and private incalls would not be able to keep pace with the high cost of housing in the face of the tech boom.

There was no turning back to the inexpensive print ads where we had mutually beneficial relationships with ad agents, who shared information about bad clients from advertiser to advertiser.

Many of us would voice our concerns individually to the Eros Guide as well as privately amongst ourselves as they instituted each change but we as the worker community never accessed our collective voice to gain control over our own advertising with businesses like the Eros Guide. This is still our reality as a worker community.
As the years went by, we saw free ads expand on Craigslist and penny ads on Backpage, not to mention constant solicitation for free ads on new start up adult sites.

It became obvious that the Eros Guide’s own business strategy had failed them as they started to include free adult hook-up sites that promoted free adult hook ups.

We also saw the proliferation of the ‘sex trafficking’ propaganda and subsequent passing of new laws reclassifying us as ‘sex trafficking victims’ and ‘sex traffickers’ interchangeably by anti prostitutionists.

We saw these zealots viciously attack Craigslist specifically and we saw their founder, Craig Newmark’s woefully inadequate response. The ‘sex trafficking’ narrative was carefully crafted political speech by the anti prostitutionists, for the specific purpose to capitalize on the public’s sympathy which had become greatly leaning towards stopping arresting prostitutes and legalizing prostitution. The anti prostituonists reclassified us all as ‘victims’ to justify arresting us for our own good.

This, in combination of recasting the public’s naïve views towards our third party facilitators as ‘sex traffickers’ resulted in prostitute rights activists becoming ‘sex trafficking apologists’. This phenomenon eclipsed every conversation about our rights to negotiate for our own safe labor and safe work conditions including hiring third party facilitators such as security, housekeepers, bookers, agents and multi media specialists.
As the struggle for prostitute rights wore on over the years, we too changed strategy forming monthly meetings to directly confront the abusive laws.

Currently this struggle takes the place in the federal court with the Erotic Service Providers Legal, Education and Research Project Verses Gascon [16-15927]

This case challenges California’s anti prostitution law, 647(b) on the basis that it violates, among other things, our first amendment rights to free speech to negotiate for our own safe labor and work conditions. Essentially to say, yes I’m a prostitute and I want to offer my selected services for a price and in working conditions of my choosing. Challenging the constitutionality to the ban on prostitution is to champion the right to privacy, specifically everyone’s sexual privacy.

The criminalization of prostitution at the state level is the basis of the criminalization of free speech in advertising at the federal level in a proposed law called the Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act which aims to undermine section of 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996, which says that a site hosting third party content cannot be held responsible for someone else’s free speech posted on their site.

This bad legislation if passed, would be able to hold Facebook, Twitter and Google criminally liable for all third party content that may violate a state law such as prostitution and under the guise of abating ‘sex trafficking’.

If passed this law would force these websites to institute the same failed policies that Eros Guide and all the others have. This bad law, if passed, would result in websites that host third party content like Facebook, Twitter and Google to choose reduced revenue streams of potential advertisers in an effort to self police lest they be charged as sex traffickers themselves.

In looking for plaintiffs to sign on in support of our case, adult websites like Craigslist, Backpage and Eros Guide were contacted and offered an opportunity to sign on as a means to support their own ability to stake out their 1st amendment right to advertise prostitution services and they all declined. They also declined to support the case financially.
Prostitution is not illegal at the national federal level. Prostitution is only illegal at the state and local level where the enforcement happens.

The federal anti trafficking laws have tried to muzzle the free speech of those advertising websites and have failed. We’ve only seen loss of advertising venues because the owners themselves engaged in failed strategies and no matter what they did it was unappeasable to the the anti prostitutionists. No matter how many changes the sites instituted; charging money, requiring credit cards, contracts and ID, it would never be enough to stop the tide of politicians who would use them as whipping posts to get elected to the next higher office.
Turning over our private information including our electronic data over to the police without a warrant, (as had been a long standing practices by the Eros Guide), would never be enough as they have found out today.

Today, they’re being raided by the Homeland Security Agency, a federal agency, just like the other adult websites before them; escort.com, bigdoggie, sfredbook and rentboy just to name a few. If the police can show that prostitution was an activity conducted on the Eros Guide, it’s all over for them. The loss of online advertising will mean loss of income for those advertisers, loss of housing, loss of ability to care for ourselves and our children.

It is within everyone’s best interests to speak up by supporting the historic court case ESPLERP V GASCON the goals being to see the expansion of the right to free speech and specifically the right to sexual privacy.

Imagine if Craigslist, Backpage and Eros Guide had just stood up to the government and the police when they had the chance. Imagine where we would be by now, if we were able to collectivize our voices to force them to. We sure wouldn’t be here.

Another day of scrambling for advertising.
I think we should collectively call Facebook, Google and Twitter and tell them to sign on to as plaintiffs of the ESPLERP v Gascon case to save the internet let alone their own asses because we’re going to win our rights with our without them.

Opps-Too late, Their clout diminished, Silicon Valley firms abandon fight over sex-trafficking bill

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Amnesty International Makes The Right Policy Call

Posted by September 20, 2016

Amnesty International Policy Decriminalize Sex Workers Check Out Amnesty Internationals New Policy Here!

And check out the debate on Aljazeera English with Maxine Doogan, Catherine Murphy, Policy Advisor at Amnesty International and some haters…

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A Whore’s Eye’s View

Posted by August 2, 2015

Dear Ms. Shetty & Mr. Hawkins;
On behalf of the Erotic Service Providers Union (ESPU) I have been following Amnesty International’s evolution on my industry for over a decade. I used to contribute financially to your organization because I supported your work to get people, especially political prisoners, out of jail and away from ill treatment by governments. I stopped my support in 2005 when your organization plattformed actress Mira Sorvion as your spokesperson in a made for television mini-series titled “Human Trafficking”. This fiction was promoted as fact and directly contributed to the further criminalization of my occupation in the U.S.

As a result of this false and misleading information, new anti-prostitution laws have been promoted and passed under the guise of stopping violence against women. Other “reality” TV shows continue to promote this false narrative depicting us as victims while being subjected to police raids and arrests for prostitution. For example, MSNBC’s “Sex Slaves in America” has in-sighted a special rebuke from my community. Our online petition continues to call for signatures and action to get the show taken off the air. Another show by the A & E network was forced to stop airing a show called “8 Minutes” this past spring in the midst of objections from our community. That show featured a former San Diego vice officer turned pastor. He, his production crew, and other “non profit” rescuers who work with law enforcement agencies, staged fake rescues using real escorts. The women were promised help with rent and food but instead ended up with prostitution arrests. Sex Worker Solidarity

In the wake of the onslaught of this type of media, new state laws have been proposed and passed across the U.S. These laws falsely conflate prostitution as being a form of forced labor and our customers as traffickers. These new criminal penalties create new high fines, fees, and mandatory prison terms. We have seen systematic expansion of federal monies made available to religious based non profits under the guise of raising ‘awareness’ and providing hollow ‘services’ to those in my industry who have been caught up in the new expansion of criminalization under the guise of rescuing us.
The new anti-trafficking laws are actually the same old anti-prostitution sting operations. Everybody is still going to jail and having criminal cases that are being adjudicated in criminal court regardless of age. Juveniles and adults alike are having their civil rights systematically violated by being coerced into diversion programs. The reality is that the arrest records become the basis upon which discrimination is experienced in housing, employment, education, child custody and access to financial resources.

The latest federal law passed this spring, “Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act JVTA”,
created a new federal vice squad fully equipped with electronic surveillance powers that will further erode and violate our already non-existent privacy protection.
I am particularly concerned with how the Hollywood celebrity class acts as if they have any say over our right to negotiate for our labor, define our safe working conditions, and with whom. This elite class lobbies for unfair labor practices that continue to criminalize our occupation. While their labor is protected not only by state and federal laws, they have the benefit of working under collectively bargained unionized contracts with democratically elected representation. In addition, they have layers of managers and agents who lobby for their wages and working conditions. It is hypocritical to demote us to a low class status while they run a boycott on who gets to purchase our labor and how. If they really cared about us they would be working with us to end exploitation in our industry by putting our voices first in a lobby for the same labor protections they have.

The elites have never demanded immunity or amnesty clauses to be included in any state, national or international policies or legislation they have championed. Their anti-trafficking policies have only focused on re-criminalizing us as traffickers as has been the case in Alaska where workers have been arrested for sex trafficking themselves. All of their legislation has brought heavier fines, fees, and mandatory prison time to all of our intimate, domestic and commercial relationships to be named as sex traffickers.

As someone who reported an extortion attempt last summer
on behalf of a victim who was targeted because she worked in our industry, I have first hand experience negotiating immunity. I spend many hours of my unpaid time reporting to local and state police and legislators. It wasn’t until I met with representatives of the Governor of Alaska that I was taken seriously and an investigation was launched leading to the perpetrator being charged. The victim in this case was granted full immunity. However, she experienced intimidation by the police who served her with a subpoena compelling her testimony and then they violated her privacy by giving her phone number to a religious group who harassed her because she fit their definition of a victim. She was forced to change her phone number to avoid their harassing phone calls.

In the passing of the Californian Against Sexual Exploitation (CASE) Act, Prop 35 in California in 2012, everyone convicted as a ‘sex trafficker’ now has to register as a sex offender (a life long registration) regardless if they ever put their hands on anyone. It is in this way that they took a leading role in fueling the fervor of proliferating the prison industrial complex in California. As you know, the California prison system is currently under a federal injunction to reduce its population because of its inability to provide human rights such as access to healthcare. Our voices continue to be drowned out by their personal political power and their depictions of us on film.

As someone who is a working prostitute with permission to represent working prostitutes, I urge you and your fellow members to vote in favor of the proposed resolution for decriminalization of our occupation. The proposed policy sets a foundation towards gaining a widespread rights-based approach instead of a continuation of the failed criminalization approach.

Further, I suggest that Amnesty International has a debt to pay in terms of offering redress in the role it has played in creating the current hyper-oppressive criminalized state. I encourage your organization to publicly name and support our historic lawsuit to invalidate the prostitution law in California:
ESPLERP v Gascon, Federal filing #3:15 01007 . I extend an invitation to Amnesty International to support our efforts to decriminalize prostitution.
Our position is that regardless of how anyone becomes involved in sexual commerce, everyone has the right to access equal protection under the law.

Sincerely,
Maxine Doogan
Erotic Service Providers Union
http://espu-ca.org/
@espunion

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A Whore Beige Courtesy Announcement

Posted by June 15, 2015

Attention #whorenation!

I have some sage advise I want to impart. Since the filing of the constitutional legal challenge, I’ve been getting all kinds of requests. Media types, researchers, people who want to help us, the desperate wanting work hook up as well as prospective customers looking for someone to play a role for them. Wink wink…All wanting my free labor to fulfill their needs and further their agendas. Fulfilling all of these requests isn’t physically possible not to mention not always in the best interest of the #whorenation.

oldhage

Most of the request are coming from media types who are contacting current and former workers who have social media presence, folks with escort ads, government and non government agencies and self describe experts looking for quotes to support their narratives about us.

Mind you, I had Daisy Anarchy as my mentor so I had some guidance at the beginning of my tenure about how to set priorities and who do spend time with. I did go on from there and get myself lots of different types trainings including media trainings. Not that I’m a total expert but I feel its really important to share with you some of my experience and mistakes in light of the fact that the constitutional challenge is going to bring different types of interests out of the woodwork asking our community to participate in their projects.

Daisy Anarchy (touring with ‘Millions of Dead Cops M.D.C.’) reciting her poetry autumn ’87

Daisy Anarchy (touring with ‘Millions of Dead Cops M.D.C.) reciting her poetry autumn ’87

As far as the media is concerned, I really never wanted to be in the public eye but I realized that if our movement was ever going to get anywhere we had to change our narrative. We had to move away from the tired old rhetoric since it wasn’t moving anyone to jump up and decriminalize us and get us equal protection under the law.

I expect that when I send out a press release with my name and phone number on it, I will get media inquires. This is good, I want our story out in the public. We need more of our actions covered by the media. I expect the press to call others in the #whorenation to get their opinions as well. That’s a good thing. The more the merrier. We need more voices. We need a choir. Our side doesn’t get asked enough about stuff that effects us but I see that changing now. I see more internet based media outlets reaching out to us. This type of media is younger and becoming more dominate as the older print press diminishes. If you ever are contacted by media to participate and you don’t know what to say, just go look though our websites at any of the press releases and use some of our talking points. Its worked for me, it’ll work for you.

If you seriously want to talk to the press, get your self some training before you talk to them. Pre negotiating with yourself your identity before you speak to the press is a topic for another time.

When asked to give a quote or an interview to the press, ask some questions first like, what is your deadline? Who is your editor? Can I contact your editor to verify that you are in fact working for that media outlet or in contract with them to write this piece. If the answer is no then your answer should be no too. Next.

questionsmark

I know that many online media outlets are now producing video pieces to increase their appeal. This has had mixed results for our community. They range in 2 to 3 minute shorts to longer 10 minutes pieces. I really like how this piece turned out not just because I’m in it… More Harm than Good: Sex Trafficking Law in Anchorage, Alaska #GRITtv Nov 6, 2014. One of the community members who is very media savvy, courted that producer specifically to show case our issue. She picked him because of his commitment to social justice and his solid multi level media experience. The piece is very focused so the message we wanted to share was amplied and dignified.

This media piece about Legalize Prostitution to Fight Sex Trafficking? Sex Workers Say “Yes” reasontv 1/14/2014 and Prop 35 didn’t bring home the bacon for us. The speaker for our side did a great job giving great sounds bites so the editor had to use them. The fatal flaw was that it tried to give context by including larger topics by featuring too many voices and view points. The message was muddled. This lack of focus is frequently the outcome when producers think they have to give all points of view which can back fire like it did in this piece. We don’t need viewers walking away shaking their heads feeling overwhelmed by what they just saw.

We want viewers to walk away thinking, yeah that’s fucked up but good thing those whores are doing something about that, good for them! Its okay to have our agenda. We want our message to be the dominate message! We can and should have an effect towards this end. Ask as many questions as you can before you agree to an interview. Always ask producers who else they are including. Its okay to say no. Its okay to back out at anytime if you become uncomfortable.

haters court Actual Court house hallway were the below conversation took place 2008

I remember walking out of court after a hearing regarding ballot arguments during Prop K in 2008, when a gal approached me with her video camera and asked if she could interview me. I asked her who she was and what media she was associated with. She gave her name but didn’t have a card or anything. I turned to my media advisor who shrugged his shoulders and said its publicity and my attorney said trust your gut. I insisted that she give more information about herself and asked what she planned to do with the video otherwise I wasn’t going to speak to her. She produced a pamphlet of some group that did environmental work from Santa Cruz that she was affiliated with and said she just wanted to ask some questions about the ballot measure. Some time later, I found my answers to her questions posted on a youtube video that had been edited to tell the oppositions’ narrative with my image and voice. Its took a few days but I got it taken down.

Once somebody has your image via video, they can edit it how ever they want. You have little control or recourse over how someone presents your image to the public unless you have your own copy of what you said in full to dispute any distortions they may put forward. I would say that live TV and radio are the most difficult to control message wise. And always be very weary of the documentary film maker. Media folks are well trained in how to ask unexpected and difficult questions. There are lots of strategies you can use to respond. Get some training, get informed or just say no. In any case, best to rehearse your talking points and stick to them no matter what. Have your agenda.

I was contacted by an activists a few months ago who alerted me to how they and others were about to be mis-characterized in a not yet published book on decrim. The concern was about lack of control over their own images and the damage to our community since so many of our community had contributed interviews. I can relate to this the feeling of betrayal. I have had two situation where I spent a good bit of time educating writers about our issues, giving them example after example of how we’re discriminated against, what’s wrong with the law, what needs to be changed, I referring other workers to them to have their experiences included, follow through with everyone about how it went and then those articles never saw the light of day. It seemed our experience didn’t fit the publishers’ ideas of the story line they wanted to publish.

In the weeks following the filing of the court case, I was contacted by a media outlet who wanted to do a piece on the high rents in Silcon Valley and wanted me to connect them with some young, vocal Silicon Valley-area sex workers who would be willing to go on camera to talk about how living/working in an area has become so expensive with the arrival of major companies and tech start-ups. The media outlet wanted to ask if they felt underpaid or have a second or third job to make ends meet?

Here is my response; “Thanks, I generally do not full fill these types of request for many reasons.1) I don’t care for the angle of your story, 2) I don’t see how it will benefit our cause, and 3) it involves my unpaid time.” The producer responded by thanking me for my response and appreciated my position. I added her to the press list for updates about our case in the event she wants to cover what we’re doing. The producer continued sending this same request to other groups and individuals in hopes of getting participation to give voice to their pre determined story line. I don’t know if it ever got produced.

Erotic

Last week, I received and email from a gal who said she has been doing webcam work but for economic reasons wanted to start working in another part of the sex industry and wanted me to talk to her about that. My response, ‘No I cannot talk about anything illegal. Sorry.’ Seriously, nobody should be expected to put themselves in a situation to explain that kind of stuff, I could be entrapped into talking about engaging in anything illegal as far telling others how to do it. Entrapment is legal in the state of California. Not to mention the expectation of giving my time for free to anyone who asks for it.

I will not liable myself and you shouldn’t either. Its legal to say I’m a prostitute. Its part of my right to free speech. If you want to know what constitutes acts of prostitution, go look it up. In California its called penal code 647(b). It’s the one I and others have spent years trying to repeal. It’s the one law we are targeting in our constitutional challenge. Have your read the brief? If you are going to call me up and engage me, then read what’s already out there first.

You can always hire a criminal defense attorney to tell you what is legal and what can get you arrested. I’m stunned to see so many people asking for and agreeing to illegal stuff; in email, on chat boards, in text messages and on fb. Too, I’m concerned when people who consider themselves allies are completely unaware of our precarious legal position often assuming we and they by association have so much legal ground to organize on when we don’t really. I will not be putting myself at risk for arrest or to catch charges for conspiracy or pandering so don’t let people ask those obviously stupid questions.

You know Robyn Few and I talked constantly about how it was our movement was going to be infiltrated. History has shown that all movements get infiltrated by informants. There are many Black Panthers and environmentalist jailed because paid informants set them up. I’m not only talking about the being informed on. The government is conducting electronic surveillance already. I’m talking about counter organizers within our movement who will tell lies about you to others, pitting people against each other, steel from you, eat your food, get you evicted.

Speaking of lawyers, in the wake of Prop K, one wrote a resolution for the California state bar basically asking California state legislators to implement the Nevada brothel model. I spend my unpaid time hunting down the president to explain why perusing that course of action wasn’t a good idea. Everyone I know in the business opposes working under those conditions including many whom had worked in the Nevada legal system. I contacted him about our brief to ask what he thought. I’ve not heard from him.

OH and the researchers. I remember during Proposition K I was contacted by a researcher student who wanted to do his research on the prevalence of HIV among prostitutes. He wanted me to refer workers to him. I asked him how finding out about the prevalence of HIV would benefit our community when we didn’t know how many people were even in our community over all? Why would I spend my unpaid time, calling up everyone I know to ask them to call him, spend their unpaid time talking to him or doing what every he needed them to do to further his career? He got the picture and apologized. There has been so many more like him since then.

After much research on how other sw groups have handled research and researchers, we now have an research evaluation tool available. Everyone should read it. Everyone in the industry should read it before they decide to participate in any research. Every researcher should do their best to structure their research with these guidelines in mind. Do not contact to me after you’ve administered your questionnaires to the most vulnerable population and ask me what I think. I will ask you, if your work is comparative? Did you get written consent? How are you keeping the confidential information safe? If you surveyed folks who were in involved in criminal prosecutions, how did you not manage to exploit them?

Lots and lots of students doing their papers, masters thesis and PhD’s on our community. Their careers will be furthered but we have to ask key questions. How will our community benefit from this research? How will our community be able to access the raw data that was collected and draw our own conclusion? How will our identities’ be protected? I have also been contacted by high schoolers who are writing a paper on our community. I ask the students to have their parents contact me with written permission before I answer their questions. And I only answer their questions in writing. I had a high school teacher ask me to speak to his class during the 2012 Prop 35 campaign via skype. I made him get written permission from the school as well. He felt it was important to bring balance to his students’ overwhelming need to save invisible people after they had been overexposed to so much propaganda via shows like MSNBC’s sex slave shows. Speaking of which, I don’t have a TV but its seems like we’ve not seen a new version of that media hype in over a year.

We can expect more students doing papers on legalization verses decrim as the case moves forward. They can spend $10 dollars to watch my movie, www.legalizationsucks.com

I was contacted and met with a doo gooder recently. He had a reference of which I checked out from another member in our community. Its seems he has been systematically contacted many people. He gave a donation for the cause which was great. His idea was to make a documentary about how he came to understand that sex work is okay to help others know that its okay too. I explained, as I do to everyone, that I’m doing what I can for the #whorenation from the back of the bus, (literally and figuratively) while running my internet off my hotspot.

To quote a long time activist in our community response to these types, ‘…never underestimate the intelligence of my colleagues. These are some amazingly bright and talented people and all they lack is the financial wherewithal to keep going. There is much burnout among activists because there is only so much that an individual can give up for a cause, knowing that their efforts will probably be for naught because there is no funding to get beyond the point where we have stagnated for so many years.’

For myself, I’m happy to hear ideas for our movement. But we need folks with skills who want to contribute their unpaid time to us in ways in which we think is best. Its not like I’m winging it here. Other workers have been in struggle for their rights with different degrees of success so we know what has to be done. We know what we have to do. Everyone is welcome to join us but lets respect the work and experience that has already been done. Let’s show some solidarity for each other. Let’s exercise curtesy when it comes to sharing all this information.

I know its frustrating for us as well as those who come close to see how severely limited our capacity really is. Of course we’re limited. We’ve been denied access to our right to negotiate for our own safe labor and safe work conditions for 100 years via different efforts to eradicate us through criminalizing our work spaces. Our right to associate has been eclipsed via criminalization of all of our intimate, domestic and commercial relationships! We been denied stability individually let alone afforded the luxury infrastructure for our organizations. So everyone time someone comes along and say to me, ‘hey you oughta’….I’m like , ‘yeah that’s a great idea.’ But don’t expect me to jump to it.

And that concludes my rant for today.

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The Vernacular of Vixens

Posted by October 31, 2014

Last week The Daily Dot ran a story about a Twitter campaign petitioning the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook to rename prostitutes as sex workers in their 2015 annual update. The AP Stylebook, for those who may not know, is the essential go-to writing manual for journalists, freelance writers, editors, professionals and students. It provides fundamental guidelines for spelling, language, punctuation, usage and journalistic style, along with constantly changing common use slang.

I am more than a bit perplexed by the idea that we need to be renamed. Who is suggesting this? The Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) USA, Mamacash and Soros Foundation? Mamacash, the only granter to ‘sex workers’ in the US of A, demands that recipients of their monies be ‘sex worker led’. According to SWOP’s overbroad definition, legal sector sex workers include but are not limited to strippers or dominatrixes. It seem that by supporting the replacement of use of the term prostitute, they’re supporting non prostitutes to rename us prostitutes a clear act of colonialism.

The term sex worker obscures the underprivileged illegally working prostitutes. Is it appropriate for actual prostitutes to be renamed by privileged legal sector workers such as exotic dancers and fetish models? The Soros Foundation too seems to be supporting this change when they haven’t lifted a finger to help us get out from underneath the train-wreck of being renamed sex trafficked victims by the UN and DoJ, and subsequently journalists who read the AP Stylebook.

Basically, I am concerned that non-working non-prostitutes are calling for this change in the AP Stylebook when they don’t understand the legal consequences of ignoring the fact that ‘sex work’ is considered ‘prostitution’. Prostitution is not only illegal, it is often considered a component of ‘sex trafficking’. The press perpetuates the public perception of that reality by the vernacular they use in reporting on prostitution.

As an activist and working prostitute, I would say that reporting on my industry leaves a lot to be desired. Pun intended! I spend a lot of my unpaid time educating journalists and asking people like Soros and Mamacash for financial support. My experience convinces me renaming us won’t change my legal status. Changing what name we are called in the public spheres won’t enfranchise us. It won’t bring us equal protection under the law.

The term prostitute is completely appropriate to use especially when reporting on arrests for prostitution, which is what the press usually reports when it comes to our community. It is not like reporters go out of their way to cover our fundraisers, or events like they often used to prior to California’s Red Light Abatement Act of 1914, or the Alaskan ‘Line’ being shut down in the 1950s. Old newspapers frequently covered brothels and prostitutes philanthropic events at a time when we were treated as any other (legal) valuable members of society.

Now-a- days those of us who are ‘out’ get hit up by young journalists who want to follow us around for a few days to give the ‘day in the life of…’ feel to their piece. Exposing ourselves doesn’t really do anything for us. It doesn’t make us more money. It doesn’t make us safer. It actually makes us more likely to be arrested for or discriminated against- not for sex work but for prostitution. In fact, since these requests are often unpaid and may introduce unwelcome attention, it usually costs us to participate in that style of expose. It is important, however, to report on prostitution arrests so we all know what is going on.

So consider this: If arrested it is not going work to say we’ve been arrested as ‘sex workers’. Telling judge and jury you were just ‘sex working’ will not clear charges. Changing vernacular without changing the law does not get us out of being criminalized.

Changing our name may allow some to feel like they’ve done something for the cause. It’s one of the those feel-good neoliberal moves that we’ve recently seen, for example in being called ‘victims’, as in ‘sex trafficked victim’, and how now we are being provided ‘much needed services’ when in fact we’re being forced to give our time for free to attend yoga classes and/or unqualified ‘peer-to-peer’ based substandard mandatory counseling to get out of going to jail.

Another problem when journalists write about prostitution arrests is they often use real names. Using our real names without our permission, causes harm. It puts targets on our backs so all the creeps, both within and outside of law enforcement, can find us for a ‘free sample’. Using our real names exposes us – and our families – via Google searches to landlords, employers, education systems, child custody challengers and financial lenders who can line up to take a swipe at us because we’re named to be in association with (not sex work) prostitution, which illegal.

Currently the trend is on reporting sex trafficking. Would it behoove journalists to be more accurate in their reporting on prostitution by stopping calling all of us victims of sex trafficking? Just because the police blotter or the yearly FBI press release renames us as victims doesn’t mean reporters should repeat these inaccuracies, or infantise us by conflating all acts of prostitution with child abuse. Statistics about us in press releases by self appointed experts are often presented out of context. This lack of critical thinking misleads the public and policy makers. In this way reporters play a role in getting the public to go along with the proposed bad policy du jour being brought by the politicians under the guise of rescuing sex trafficked victims. The fact is that we’re all going to jail for (not sex work) prostitution. We’re all having criminal cases being adjudicated in criminal court for? Prostitution. Renaming prostitution as sex work, especially during the current trend in stacking trafficking with prostitution, is more complicated than mere politically correct etiquette.

Ironically, the renaming campaign is being led by SWOP USA. Their founder the late Robyn Few, came to me after her arrest, enthusiastic to start some kind of sex worker group, she asked my input. I told her about the Sex Worker Outreach Project in Australia where prostitution is decriminalized. My friend Rachel W. was an outreach worker there distributing condoms and safe sex information kits. Robyn immediately liked the name, saying she would use it. I encouraged her to contact Rachel W. for permission to associate and share mission, though she never officially aligned with the Australian network. For SWOP USA to say they want to rename prostitutes as sex workers seems highly suspect. I’ve yet to hear current U.S. members actually publicly identify as actual working prostitutes. For legal sector workers like strippers, fetish models, or even former prostitutes, to want to rename of group of active workers they don’t globally identify with is not entirely okay.

I’m not opposed to the term sex worker, but until all workers gain access to their individual and collective voices via decriminalization of prostitution, this effort will create more false reporting.

Lastly prostitution isn’t just a legal term. Prostitution is a part of each era of history. The terms prostitute and prostitution predate adult film performers, pornography, webcam and phone sex performers, lingerie or fetish models, doms, subs, burlesque and pole dancers, strippers, the gamut of diverse erotic service providers. The term prostitute has historic value. Some of us are able and willing to stand in pride as being part of this valuable occupation. We accept – embrace even – what we truly are, and what as prostitutes we have to offer.

Maxine Doogan and M. Dante

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What’s In A Name

Posted by April 27, 2014

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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My Yearly Tax Sex Talk

Posted by April 2, 2014

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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