This month, as many college and university students eagerly await their final marks, I want to focus on how post-secondary institutions in Ontario are working to better support their sex-working students. I also want to share what I’ve learned as a guest speaker in post-secondary settings over the last year.
First, a disclaimer: I recognize that my guest-speaking experience comes out of years of community work, luck and a dose of relative privilege. I admit that I’m somewhat “respectable” as a guest speaker. I have this column, I have many years of sex work experience and remain relatively unscathed (knock on wood!), and I’ve had conventional jobs in the gender-based violence sector, “daylighting,” if you will.
As we know, school is expensive, and coupled with a rising affordability crisis, it’s no surprise that some students choose sex work as a way to survive. I’ve mentioned in previous columns that sex work is a rational and pragmatic choice for all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons. Paying for an education is one of them.
Setting boundaries
I’ve had the pleasure and honour of speaking at York University, University of Ottawa, McMaster University and Toronto Metropolitan University over the past school year. Some of these were guest lectures for classes, and some were put on by sexual health and assault prevention offices within the schools.
My hosts, the folks who invited me, were always super gracious. They made sure we set ground rules so that I would feel comfortable speaking about my experiences, and so that I wouldn’t get blindsided by any questions during question-and-answer periods.
My firmest boundary is: yes, I can speak broadly about how sex workers experience violence or criminalization, but I won’t entertain any questions about my personal experiences with the above. After all, I’m not a zoo animal, nor am I there to satisfy someone’s prurient interests in my work.
A rule set by a professor prior to my first-ever speaking gig was: “don’t ask a question that you yourself don’t want to answer in a room full of strangers.” While I didn’t come up with this phrasing, I have used it since. The point is that sex workers are not here to retraumatize themselves for the curiosity of strangers. Some of us do have tragic tales, but it should be up to us to choose where and with whom we share them.
My other firm boundary is that I won’t be answering any questions along the lines of “tell me about your weirdest client.” Again, the reason I was invited to speak on issues pertaining to sex workers’ legal, human and labour rights is because I have lived experience and thus valuable insight into the harms of stigma and criminalization. I was not invited to perform a stand-up routine or to mock my clients.
Positive experience in the classroom
I’m thrilled to say that the kids are all right!
Not once was a boundary pushed! Not once did I feel mocked or shamed or asked a lurid question. The questions ranged from utter dismay at the lack of labour protections to questions about how to practice better self care. They included questions about what concrete steps sex workers take to stay safe, and if our strategies could be used outside of sex work. (Always let someone you trust know where you’re going, practice setting firm boundaries, learn some self-defence moves, carry Naloxone, and learn about bystander interventions!)
I was asked what universities should be doing to better support their sex-working students.
Inviting people like me is a good first step. Adapting the work done by the University of Leicester, which includes the development of an official policy and statement of support in partnership with sex workers who were paid for their lived experience, is another important step.
Even something simple, like a red umbrella sticker on the office door of a school counsellor or sexual health and assault prevention office is a subtle way to tell sex workers that this is a safe space for them. (A red umbrella represents sex workers in a visual shortcut much like a rainbow flag indicates that a space is safe for the LGBTQ2S+ community.)
What I stressed most and can’t stress enough, is the recommendation not to conflate consensual sex work with human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation. It’s bad enough that the government and law enforcement subject sex workers to this. We should not have to put up with this bullshit when we pay good money to get an education. Which is why, at the risk of sounding like a broken record and reiterating it month after month, decriminalization is so important.
I also talked about how unpaid placements in professions such as social work, nursing and teaching, all traditionally female-coded jobs, keep sex workers, the bulk of whom are women, in the sex industry for longer.
Collaborating on research
Last week, I was invited to a meet-and-greet at York University’s Critical Trafficking and Sex Work research cluster. The purpose was to provide an opportunity for academics and sex workers to discuss how to meaningfully and, most importantly, ethically collaborate on research about sex workers. Again, we are not zoo animals to be studied, and I’m glad that the days of (mostly white) academics swooping in and studying us, with no room for nuance, are in the rearview.
I’m glad that academics are slowly realizing that, as they are building a career and enjoying a comfortable middle-class life — I’m talking about full-time profs and not TAs and adjuncts, who deserve so much better! — it’s only fair that they think of actionable ways to improve the material conditions of the people they study, the same people whose stories and experiences indirectly make their careers.
There is no reason sex workers can’t be trained as community research assistants and help keep a project moving along. There is no reason we can’t be paid advisers, given our lived experience. There is no reason sex workers can’t be included in research ethics committees, to make sure that proposed studies don’t harm us.
Shout out to one of the event organizers, Dr. Tuulia Law, who said, “if you get invited to speak at a class but the professor tells you they can’t pay an honorarium, know they are simply too lazy to take the bureaucratic steps it requires.”
Recognizing sex workers’ lived experience
The idea I put forward is to give sex workers advanced or accelerated standing in fields like social work, nursing or communications, though I realize it will likely take a long time to implement given how slowly the bureaucratic cogs turn at large institutions.
We know how to market ourselves in person and on digital media. We are already experts at keeping ourselves, and by extension, our clients healthy. Many of us have Naloxone training and mini pharmacies in our work bags — we know how to bandage up sprained ankles after we roll ours on uneven club floors while wearing seven-inch heels. We know de-escalation techniques; we practice bystander interventions on the daily. We know how to comfort our clients when they are dealing with loss. We help our fellow sex workers make safety plans and leave abusive relationships. I have provided a couch for others to stay on, and I have been blessed to have a couch to stay on in my darkest hours.
If it’s possible to recognize previous work and lived experience for other mature students in a variety of fields, including social work, education, and to an extent, nursing, it’s just a question of goodwill to do it for sex workers.
What I learned this past academic school year is that the kids are all right, and the adults are starting to catch on, too!
If you want to support students who do sex work, advocate for the introduction of paid placement programs. Support politicians who want to lower, or better yet, abolish tuition. And if you are a client, for the love of all that is good and holy, treat sex workers with dignity, don’t push their boundaries, and tip them!
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