hate crimes against sex workers
Hate Crimes
In the BCCEC report, "From the Curb" Sex workers who participated listed the following acts as violence;
- Physically being beaten, raped or assaulted by dates, pimps and drugs dealers
- Being ignored, belittled, humiliated, sworn at, shunned by police and public for being a "dirty ho, crack whore, or slut"
- Having items thrown at them from vehicles- (very common)
Sex workers commented that even children threw garbage at them. People in cars throw beer bottles, pennies, pop and hot coffee. One respondent lost part of her ear due to an assault by a non sex working woman in which the woman threw a beer bottle at her while she was working on the street. Sex workers in our consultation described the pain of being "beaten down by words". Experiences of robbery were also very prevalent amongst respondents. Workers felt they were more at risk after they had made some money.
Their words;
- "Any type of mistreatment is violence because people don't care what happens to our kind."
- "Being looked at like you're less"
- "Saying no to allowing us use of their phone or washroom- it leaves us depending on dates and other people who like to harm us."
- "Being mistreated by the public"
- "People laugh at me"
- It's like they take this beautiful thing we have... the ability to give love, and they destroy it."
- "Johns demean you like you are merely flesh that doesn't deserve respect like anyone else"
- "It's dangerous out there, especially recently with incidents of getting stripped, ripped off, pushed out of the car naked and hit."
Sex workers described violence as activities ranging from public humiliation and social exclusion to more extreme incidents of beatings, sodomy, rape, extreme violence and the abduction and murder of their friends.
Overwhelmingly sex workers agreed that violence against our community should be considered a hate crime. They also noted that doing so puts their violent experiences into a deeper context. They expressed that violence against our population is done with "specific intent to cause harm" due their social identity and compounded by their sheer accessibility.
The Sex Industry Community as a distinct culture
Currently violence against sex workers is not considered a hate crime. Although most can agree that there's not much difference between a truck full of good 'ol boys in white hoods jumping in the truck to drive downtown and find some to lynch and a bunch of teenagers jumping in their car to go downtown and throw things at "crack whores". The most disturbing aspect of this is that most of our community members reported the majority of attacks of this nature were being committed by women.
When we delve into history a bit we find references to the sex industry all through out recorded time; Always kept separate, always a distinct and secretive culture. A difficult revelation about recent history is that women in fact are responsible for a lot of the stigma sex industry community member live with today. In 1917 when women received the vote in the War Time Election Act one of the first actions influenced by their vote was the implementation of prohibition. Drugs, alcohol, gambling and sex were all made illegal. Unfortunately for sex industry workers that made us as people illegal.
During this time sex workers were put into asylums under the guise that they were somehow mentally ill thus their immoral behavior. This attack on sex workers in particular female sex workers by other women resulted in great pain and in some cases death for the workers affected. These women went as far as to create an ad campaign depicting sex workers as evil and as the vectors of disease. Their campaign of speeches, posters and radio spots was so broad and far reaching that this stigma exists to this day. We can see in the high numbers of women reportedly attacking sex industry community members and in the way feminist abolitionist groups still promote sex industry workers as victims, helpless and unable to defend or look after our selves. This latest campaign of hatred has gone on for 100 years some of us refer to it as the prohibition war. Since the beginning of this war human rights have come to the fore front and now the sex industry community is seeking recognition as a distinct culture deserving of protection under the charter. We hope to end the campaign to "end sex work" and have our rights to choose employment, be protected from hate propaganda against us, and to be protected from discrimination based on who we are.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
Article 20
- any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law
- Any advocacy or national, racial, cultural or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.
Article 26
- 1. all persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law. In this respect, the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on any ground such as race, color, sex, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
International Declaration of Human Rights
Article 1.All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2.Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3.Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person
Part III
Article 6
- 2. The states parties to the present Covenant recognize the right to work, which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts, and will take appropriate steps to safe guard this right.
- 3. The steps to be taken by a state party to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include technical and vocational guidance and training programs, policies and techniques to achieve stead economic, social and cultural development and full and productive employment under conditions safe guarding fundamental political and economic freedoms to the individual.
Applaud your commitment.
If I am not mistaken, the BCCEC site is to be found here. While perhaps an admirable group, I fail to see any connection with anti-racism work, other than the possibility that First Nations people and people of colour are disproportionately represented among those most vulnerable to assault and harassment. It seems to me that conflating prejudice and hatred of sex workers as a 'distinct culture' with racism is problematic, and may be worthy of discussion. If this topic takes on an anti-racism angle, I'll leave it here, otherwise I'll slide it over to the 'activism' forum.
This project reflects the diversity of the sex working community as it includes women, men and trans-individuals as well as those from different 'classes' and varying capacities and abilities. More specifically, sex workers engaged are multi-literate and culturally diverse. First Nations, Asian, Caucasian, Black workers and those of mixed race are currently invested.
well, i wasn't sure where we fit.....also, if we aren't a distinct culture.....who is.......mods, please feel free to move my thread....
excluded......again.....
Since your not excluded, what about this forum?
labour and consumption
Discuss work and economic issues from a pro-worker point of view
yay!!!tanx babe!!!lol
susiexxxo
Welcome to babble susan. Thanks for posting about this important issue.
Moving to the labour forum.
Welcome to babble, susan. Great to have you here!
Let me run something past you, if you don't mind. A few months ago I spent some time looking into the *theoretical* possibility of workers' compensation benefits for injured sex workers. The main obstacles that I could see were (1) declared income, and (2) a regular -- or regular enough -- employment relationship (ie with an employer, not with clients, or otherwise as a self-employed person who pays for their own workers' comp coverage). Those factors would be a problem for a lot of sex worker claims, but not all. I can also think of some potential ways around both issues. One other issue that might be a problem in some claims is the legality of some of this kind of work, but that again could be addressed on a case-by-case basis.
Anyone who qualifies under the Act as a "worker" should be covered for many of the kinds of injuries you are referring to here, if they were working at the time of the injury. In some cases there could also be entitlement for injuries that are due to the nature of the work and which occur outside of working hours.
I forwarded this question to a legal clinic in Vancouver that seems to do a lot of work with your community. They had someone look into it, but I never managed to get them to send me their legal opinion.
We also had a discussion about this on babble. Some people thought that extending workers' comp to sex workers would be the wrong way to go, because it would legitimize a trade that they feel is inherently demeaning to women. As I understand this perspective, they think that at the end of the day, the only thing that will really help is to criminalize the act of puchasing sex.
Would you have any comments on any of that?
It's cool having someone here take up this issue seriously, from this perspective..
i beleive workers compensation does inculde escorts and exotic dancers in the way you described.we discovered this during our project Trade Secrets- to design occupational health and safety training for the sex industry. in my opinion a lack of awareness aabout services offered by worksafe amongst sex industry workers is the reason for lack of participation in the program. information about this and other government programs for workers are inculded in the guide/ training.
many workers are very smart business people and i'm sure would take part in worksafe as a way to be sure of support during an injury. falling off your stillettos and twisting your ankle for instance seems fairly straight forward as a claim but contracting an STI would be more difficult. it may be a way to enourage people to move more towards mandatory condom use like in new zealand...it is certainly alot to think about and negotiate as a community. we are planning a sex industry/ academics conference here in vancouver next spring for us to work on some of this.
we are dealing with enforcement actions all over the country however and somethings are unfortunatley moved down the list of priorities...dang it!!
EA 761021 Massage Parlour,Steam Bath,Escort Srv 2003 base rate-0.84 2004 base rate-0.89percent change 6.0% agencies/firms taking part 22
http://www.worksafebc.com/publications/newsletters/assets/pdf_bod/20031021_01.pdf
also, criminalizing consumers will just make workers more desperate. they will still jump into cars too quickly in order to avoid law enforcement and we will continue to see the violence increase. it has been a disaster for swedish sex workers.
we are working to form a national system of self governance for our industry like logging or car manufacturing. a transparent system that respects the mainstream community's values (no youth or trafficking) and ensures workers
have access to resources and the tools to make safe decisions about their work.
http://www.rabble.ca/babble/labour-and-consumption/sex-industry-association
The following actions and recommendations emerged as common themes from dialogue with all stake holders including consumers, business owners and workers.i have explained here more specifically the relevance of each recommendation to each stakeholder group
"Establish a consortium of sex industry stakeholders to develop an Industry Association and negotiate where there are areas of commonality. ie. violence, consumer theft, health and safety, and industry stability."
Relevance
"Develop Standardized Health and Safety Training for Sex Industry Workers and consumers in partnership with ALL stakeholders including business owners."
Relevance
"Develop and implement a certification process in partnership with all stakeholders to stabilize and promote sex industry businesses (inclusive of independent workers as businesses). Design an industry association seal or brand to distinguish those businesses that support and have received certification for the negotiated health and safety standards and training."
Relevance
"Design a complaints process and penalty system in partnership with all stakeholders to provide a system of self governance and enforcement for the sex industry."
Relevance
"Support the formation of craft unions or trade guilds for all aspects or jobs within the sex industry."
"Establish a system of communications between the sex industry and those agencies who have traditionally had the role of policing or monitoring the industry such as the police, license inspectors and social work/ support agencies to prevent misunderstandings about safety issues within the industry."
anti trafficking campaings by abolitionist groups in vancouver made the police raid massage parlours, where VPD entered guns drawn everyone on the floor... scaring the workers to death ( is this how we treat victims of trafficking?)and took no supports or interpreters for any of the victims of trafficking found. many workers spoke very little english and then when it was discovered the workers weren't trafficked.....they were deported.
so now, they won't call police when they are robbed or assaulted because police intimidate them and they don't want to be deported.
we knew it would cause harm but we had no idea how bad it would get....
first the asian massage parlour worker killed in burnaby. then tony(security guy) killed in yaletown defending the lives of 2 women during a robbery, now an asian massage parlour worker is found in the trunk of her car...dead? i wonder how the abolitionist movement feelabout all the harm they've caused with their anti trafficking campaign and subsequent raids/ deportations and lack of trust for police generated amongst these workers...
also, it seems like even more workers are migrating here as a result of anti trafficking campaign claims of "big money" for the sex industry during the games (which has been proven untrue-it will be a bit of an economic crash -if you want the report message me or go to PIVOT we site)
it's seems they are causing the very thing they tried to prevent......
they lobbied vancouver and BC governments and police to enforce bawdy house laws to "save" the victims of trafficking with no consideration for the safety or stability of adult consentual sex workers ....and look at the outcome....
i just wonder if they have any conscience at all about all the sex workers they have harmed.......
i am not victim!!!!i am strong and chose sex work....i am not on drugs or sexually abused ....i come from a good familyand my parents are good people.
Attacks on sex workers in particular female sex workers by other women result in great pain and in some cases death for the workers affected. In the past women went as far as to create an ad campaign depicting sex workers as evil and as the vectors of disease. I have even seen a poster depicting hitler, the emperor of japan and a sex worker all arm in arm and the caption reads "the worst of the three".Their campaign of speeches, posters and radio spots was so broad and far reaching that this stigma exists to this day.
We can see in the high numbers of women reportedly attacking sex industry community members and in the way feminist abolitionist groups still promote sex industry workers as victims, helpless, easy targets, on drugs and unable to defend or look after our selves.
This latest campaign of hatred has gone on for 100 years some of us refer to it as the prohibition war. Since the beginning of this war human rights have come to the fore front and now the sex industry community is seeking recognition as a distinct culture deserving of protection under the charter. We hope to end the campaign to "end sex work" and have our rights to choose employment, be protected from hate propaganda against us, and to be protected from discrimination based on who we are.
abolitionists promote hatred of sex workers and cause wide spread harm with their arogance....attacking me personally when i try to speak publically and sending uniformed children to disrupt events that could impact our safety and create change.
i challenge people to justify this abolitionist stance and the subsequent raids and the harms/deaths it has caused.my friends are dead and i for one will fight any attempt by non sex workers to govern sex workers or impose what they think is right...
So glad you are posting here Susan Davis, it is very informative.
Hear, hear, thank you for taking the time to give us this first-hand info.
The WorkSafeBC Employer Classification Manual rate group policy that you link to is one of the same pieces of information that I sent to the Vancouver clinic for their review. There is a similar policy under our Ontario worker's comp system. These policies support that some sex workers' claims should be allowable. Despite that however, in probably 5,000 claims I have personally handled, I have never seen a single claim by a sex worker, whether an escort, masseuse, video store attendant, dancer, phone sex worker -- nothing. No one I work with has ever heard of such a claim, the people I know at the Board have never seen a claim like this, and I was unable to find a single such case ever reported in Canada. I'm sure there must have been some, but they are few and far between.
Under those circumstances it might not be as straightforward as we might hope, to get such a claim filed and allowed. However neither should it be impossible, depending on the case.
As you probably know, the benefits in workers compensation claims can be very substantial, not infrequently reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Depending on the nature of the injury, this can include health care benefits such as physiotherapy, medication, psychotherapy and many other types of treatment; income replacement; retraining into another job if necessary; retirement pensions; and survivors' benefits for the families of those whose work-related injuries result in death.
Please feel free to PM me, now or in future, if I could be of any informal help to you or your association in coming to terms with some of the barriers that might apply in sex workers' claims. (Please don't give me any identifying information, and I won't be able to tell you my name either.)
Susan Davis wrote "abolitionists promote hatred of sex workers" and much much more
When did Babble become a safe space to slander feminists?
interesting.....i was slandered by feminist abolitionists. i have proof. how is telling the truth slander?
can you justify the deaths of 4 sex industry community members as a result of mis information, inflated fears around trafficking and reactionary enforcement actions ?
incidentally i consider myself a feminist and am a member of FIRST- feminists for decriminalization.
http://www.firstadvocates.org/
i am an empowered woman and like my job.i know you do not believe in sex work as a choice but yet here i am. you do not have to be an abolitionist to be a feminist....
i did not slander feminists, just abolitionists with no lived exprience who use their power, positions and privilege to perpetuate the myths about sex work that cast us as victim's, abused, un able to take care of ourselves, disposable, dirty....
all people are entitled to have their own view on this issue but i am no longer willing to be silent and allow more workers to be harmed by uninformed actions based on morality....where is the morality in attacking sex workers in the ways described i my previous posts...what kind of person throws a bottle at an impoverished woman on the street?
the same kind of person who ignores the voice of the workers affected behind claims of workers lacking the mental and emotional capacity to have a voice as a result of ALL being on drugs, abused, bad families, products of incest....
this is why we are considered disposable, unsaveable...
susan davis asked: what kind of person throws a bottle at an impoverished woman on the street?
Certainly not the feminists who acknowledge and work to end the violence in and around prostitution, women whom you are grossly slandering by associating them with assaulters. What a cheap tactic!It must be part of the new services based economy neoliberal ideologues were on about since the 1980's, except sex precluded the supreme stupidity of the ideologues. I think I'd sooner pleasure another human being for cash than do some of those stupid low wage jobs in the newer service economy. Some of those US-based and other retail and service industry jobs, and the low pay, are an insult to human beings everywhere. I'm offended by that. Sex industry workers need treating with dignity and respect and protection of the law like any other human being. Capitalism is a monumental failure.
thankyou for your opinion....did you call me cheap?please try to be civil....
i am on 15 committees such as;
Living in Community- BCCEC members have been a part of the LIC Steering Committee for over 4 years. Living in Community was city-wide project whose goal was to develop an integrated approach in relation to the impacts of sex work on neighborhoods throughout Vancouver. The 27 point action plan created during this project includes initiatives like this and is supported by the committee. A letter of support for this project is attached.
Sex Industry Safety Action Group in partnership with VPD-BCCEC members contributed to the formation of this action group and have been active participants in defining the direction of the group for over 2 years.
and am a member of a cohort of sex workers known as the BCCEC
The lived experiences of BCCEC members within the sex industry and our strong commitment to the safety of our community and communities impacted by sex work are the foundation of everything we do. We actively maintain contact with our communities and have the network to ensure inclusion of the sex industry perspective. This will allow the strategies created greater success in the long run. The BCCEC and its membership have coordinated the following projects and research during the history of our organization;
considering most of this work is done in kind i don't see how you could call me cheap.....i work my ass off for free on these issues...
...did you call me cheap?
Of course not.
But attributing violence against prostituted women to those feminists who have worked long and hard to make such violence visible over and above the rosy pictures of denial painted by the sex industry is a cheap tactic indeed.
Fidel sneered: I think I'd sooner pleasure another human being for cash than do some of those stupid low wage jobs in the newer service economy.
Luckily, I take it you have the benefit of a third option, one that allows you to dump haughtily on low wage earners.
what about when those same women you hold in such high regard violate the rights of a sex worker by lying and defaming their character? what about the massage parlour workers who died as a result of skewed eveidence and numbers around trafficking?
how much protection is too much?
what would you call that? an expensive tactic?....costing lives....?
Spoken like a true Aristotlean. It's their personal right to earn low wages! If there was less hate and more love in the world, it would be a good thing. Hate and low wage philanthropy should be outlawed for all time.
I think Martin is just saying that all feminists are good and respectable, otherwise they would not be feminists.
Ya gotta be better than someone, I suppose. Cops with attitudes, nuns and priests, the pious ones, cranky spinsters who havnt been laid since prom night, ladies/men's auxiliary types, pillars of the community etc on down to the abusive pimps and those exploiting women and children by human trafficking, Clinton and Albright's pal Thaci in Kosovo - theyre the ultimate capitalists. It's a class thing and pecking order in the bourgeois capitalist setup.
martin, you need to dial it back and be respectful to susan, a new poster who's offering a perspective not generally heard on babble. Who, in this thread, has not defamed anyone.
takeitslowly, do not bait martin or anyone else.
And martin and Fidel your bickering needs to stop. It will not derail this thread.
susan I hope you have a long stay here, as your perspective and voice have been missing from babble debates about issues regarding sex work and sex workers.
thanks maysie!
susan davis