Violence against sex workers is gender based violence on steroids.
Violence against sex workers is gender based violence on steroids. Credit: Sash Sriganesh / Unsplash Credit: Sash Sriganesh / Unsplash

Once again, December 17, International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers is upon us. Writing this column last year was hard. This year, it feels like I’m tempting fate. 

In November, a gay nightclub was shot up in the U.S. on the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance. (Also, remember the whole fiasco with the Netflix documentary Dahmer?)

Earlier this month, the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights, a gun lobby group, tried to use the Montreal Massacre to make money. December 6 is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, which itself is a commemoration of the Montreal massacre. The day after, I watched Indigenous women plead with Winnipeg police to search the city dump for the bodies of their family members who were murdered by a serial killer.

Our most vulnerable and marginalized community members are both individually and collectively traumatized by violence. 

I’m tired of being part of a “text me on when you make it home safe from the club” group text thread. I’m tired of living in a country where cops don’t bother to look for sex workers when we go missing, so we go out and look ourselves. I’m tired of looking at police mug shots and bad date lists, but it’s always better to see the devil coming. I’m tired of seeing missing persons posters. I’m tired of seeing the last picture of new angels smiling.

Violence against sex workers is gender based violence on steroids. 

It’s misogyny, colonial violence, racism, homophobia, mysogynoir, transmysogyny and xenophobia combined. This monster makes a hydra look like a friendly puppy. This monster is dead behind the eyes like a bad man about to make a bad decision.

The victims are generally women and femmes and the men often have a pattern of escalating domestic violence. (Originally used by lesbian, bisexual and queer women, femmes are members of the LGBTQ+ community who embrace and embody traditional feminine aesthetic ideals. Most sex workers present as femmes while at work due to demographics. The vast majority of sex workers are women and femmes, while the vast majority of our clients are straight men who seek out this aesthetic). Eustachio Gallese, who brutally murdered Marylene Lesveque in 2020, was let out on parole and giving express permission to see sex workers from the Parole Board of Canada even though we was serving time for beating his ex-wife to death with a hammer. 

This is how little our lives matter to those in power. They would rather see us dead. There is even a common phrase used by law enforcement for victims like us — “no humans involved.” When we defend ourselves, they put us in prison. When we work to escape poverty and challenge a religiously motivated heteropatriarchy with our mere existence, we risk losing our housing, our children, and our mainstream careers. We face all these consequences because we’re doing capitalism, but apparently we’re doing it wrong.

Two years after the incel terrorist attack in a spa in North York, where Ashley Noelle Arzagawas brutally murdered with a machete, City of Toronto by-law enforcement still hasn’t followed the common sense advice, and appeals to basic human decency from Butterfly, a sex worker-led advocacy group for migrant sex workers and their allies. They are still charging workers for closing their doors in an effort to more effectively screen clients. While those charges were dropped earlier this month when activists brought this to light, the point remains. Toronto’s law enforcement would rather we not close the door when we see the next man with a machete come to our place of work. (I don’t see them ticketing pharmacies who preemptively lock their doors after a string of robberies in their neighborhood.) 

The way celebrities who are victims of violent crime are treated is no better. Earlier this year, the court of public opinion devolved to something ugly and primal during the Depp v. Heard trial. Tory Lanez’s trial started this week. He has been charged with shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the feet back in the summer of 2020. The hate machine has already been churning since the beginning, and I’m afraid more hate, something even more sinister, is about to come.

Megan Thee Stallion is widely considered to be one of the best female rappers, ever. There is also some speculation that she used to be a stripper before becoming famous. Strippers have claimed her as one of their own, as have I. Megan Thee Stallion hasn’t publicly acknowledged her past as a stripper. This could be for a variety of reasons such as her trying to maintain good standing as she was already chastised by university administration for making twerking videos with her friends while she was completing her degree in health administration at Texas Southern University. Her mother was still alive at the time she rose to fame, or perhaps she wishes to maintain an aura of mystery while protecting privacy. Still, it is widely accepted that she has had previous stripping experience. Fans have come to this conclusion based on Meegan saying the only meat she misses is strip club chicken wings after transitioning to vegetarianism. She has friendships and professional collaborations with other strippers turned rappers such as Cardi B and City Girls. Strippers see their own bodies in Megan — those thighs are earned by seasoned strippers! Megan has not made any real effort to dissuade fans of this theory. One could say she skillfully dances around the subject.

It’s been reported that when Tory Lanez, who is also a rapper, shot Megan as she tried to exit his vehicle, he said, “Dance bitch.” I felt this deeply on many levels. First, the contempt in those words, as if his wish is her command, even in the face of death. 

I felt her pain in my feet. For many strippers, a serious foot injury means the end of our dancing career. Many of us avoid things like skiing in order to prevent injuring ourselves out of work. (We are systematically excluded from government benefits such as EI or the former CERB.) I myself quit cycling after the second time I got hit by a car — there’s only so much luck in one lifetime.

This shooting adds to the list of crimes my friends and I discuss in low somber voices. It’s this type of violence that fuels our nightmares. Megan admits in an interview that she initially lied and told the cops she had stepped on glass. She was concerned about how the police would react in the heat of the moment. During her darkest night, she had to do racial profiling mental math in an effort to protect everyone in the car, including her alleged shooter. 

The woman got shot and lost her mother to cancer in the same year. I cannot imagine what she’s had to overcome mentally and physically to keep making music and performing live when us mere mortals would break into pieces. 

If that’s not hard enough, she has had to deal with this while people were taking shots at her credibility. Most recently, Drake decided to diss her in his new album. The man who wrote many a strip club anthem is purposely using his platform to degrade the very type of woman that he purportedly pines for. 

It doesn’t matter if Lanez is found guilty or not. A guilty verdict will not unshoot Megan’s feet. It will not reverse her trauma. It will not untarnish her reputation. Most depressingly, even if he gets the maximum 22 prison sentence, it will not deter men from committing similar or even more violent crimes. A guilty verdict will further expose her to even more misogynoir. They will not let her forget that she’s now even more of a so-called ‘Angry Black Woman,’ even more of a ‘Lying Whore.’ 

These types of insults are weaponized against women, calling a woman a lying whore is a way for men to gaslight and discredit women. These words are intended to make us feel small and think twice about speaking out again. They promote misogynistic ideas like that “women are so evil – such vengeful, lying whores – that we cannot trust them to tell the truth.” The angry Black woman is weaponized mysogynoir. It suggests that Black women especially shouldn’t voice their opinions and when they do they are dismissed as just being “angry.” It suggests that Black women should know their place and not question the injustices around them.

This column isn’t about Lanez’s court case. If it’s about any court case, it’s about the current constitutional challenge the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform has launched earlier this year with the ultimate goal being the decriminalization of sex work in Canada.

Decriminalization is a step towards crimes against us being taken seriously. Perhaps, dare I say, it’s a step towards us being referred to as and treated as humans when we are victims of violent crime.

December 17th is a day when sex workers mourn, remember, and gather together to commemorate our peers who have been been taken from us by violent predators. It is a day that cements our resolve to continue to challenge and organize oppressive systems for those of us who despite it all, survived thus far.

It’s a day of an unspoken community promise:

I see you as a full human being, deserving of safety, dignity, respect and full and equal protection under the law.
I will do my best to keep you safe.
I will come find you. 

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Natasha Darling

Natasha Darling is a pseudonym to protect the author’s true identity from the stigma and harm associated with her sex work. Darling is a stripper and community organiser based in Toronto. Plant...