sex work

International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

by Viviane on 12/16/2024

in Events, sexwork

redumbrella International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers Join us for a vigil and community speak out

Where: Metropolitan Community Church of New York, Sanctuary (2nd floor), 446 West 36th Street, New York, NY 10018 btw 9th & 10th Aves
Who: Current & former sex workers, our allies, friends, families, and communities. This event is free and open to the public.

Join us in remembering those we’ve lost to violence, oppression and hate, whether perpetrated by clients, partners, police or the state.

We stand against the cycle of violence experienced by sex workers around the world. Recently in Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council looked at the human rights record of the United States during their Universal Periodic Review. Uruguay’s recommendation to the Obama Administration – to address “the special vulnerability of sexual workers to violence and human rights abuses” – is the moral leadership we have been waiting for! We come together each year to show the world that the lives of marginalized people, including those of sex workers, are valuable.
Speakers:

* Audacia Ray, Red Umbrella Project & Sex Work Awareness
* Chelsea Johnson-Long, Safe OUTside the System Collective of the Audre Lorde Project
* Michael J. Miller, The Counterpublic Collective and PROS Network
* Andrea Ritchie, Peter Cicchino Youth Project and Streetwise & Wafe (SAS)

Readings

* Reading of the names of sex workers we have lost this past year
* Memorial for Catherine Lique by her daughter Stephanie Thompson and read by Sarah Jenny Bleviss
* Speak out: Bring poetry, writings or just speak your truth.

Light snacks, beverages, and metrocards will be provided.

This event is co-sponsored by: Audre Lorde Project, Babeland, Counterpublic Collective, FIERCE, MADRE, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Peter Cicchino Youth Project, The Queer Commons, PONY (Prostitutes of New York), PROS Network, Red Umbrella Project, SAFER, Sex Work Awareness, Sex Workers Project, SWANK (Sex Workers Action New yorK), SWOP-NYC (Sex Workers Outreach Project), the Space at Tompkins, and Third Wave Foundation.

  • Facebook RSVP
  • International Day toEnd Violence Against Sex Workers
  • Cory Silverberg’s article about International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

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The Red Umbrella Diaries: “Well Seasoned”

by Viviane on 08/03/2024

in sex work, sexblogs

August 5 Well Seasoned The Red Umbrella Diaries: Well Seasoned

Location: Happy Ending Lounge, 302 Broome St, NYC (Pink awning says “Xie He Health”)

Cost: 21 and up – FREE

STARRING Veronica Vera, Lauren Wissot, Chelsea G Summers, Michael Pollack, and E.V. Fleurima, aka Ckiara Rose
Hosted by Audacia Ray
…
15% of the bar tab supports PROS Network (Providers and Resources Offering Services to sex workers)

Performer details:

Veronica Vera’s multi-faceted career began with several years on Wall Street. Then she decided to earn an honest living as a sex journalist, porn star, erotic model, prostitutes’ rights activist. Her collaborations with artists include Robert Mapplethorpe. Veronica testified in Washington for freedom of expression. In 1992 she created the world’s first crossdressing academy, Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls and wrote the book of the same name. Her second book is Miss Vera’s Crossdress for Success. She continues to offer classes in higher heeled education at her NY academy and college campuses, fields offers from reality show producers and works on her memoir.

Lauren Wissot is a NYC-based, award-winning filmmaker and freelance film and theater critic whose work can be regularly read at “Filmmaker” magazine, Slant Magazine and Theater Online among other publications. Her erotic memoir Under My Master’s Wings, about her time spent as the personal slave to a gay-for-pay-stripper/porn star, is available from Random House sub-imprint Nexus Books. Currently, she’s looking for film and writing opportunities in Amsterdam since she plans to relocate to the city this fall. Please visit her blog www.beyondthegreendoor.blogspot.com.

In order to fund her Ph.D. habit, Chelsea G. Summers worked most of the go-go ’90s as a stripper. Later, she found herself uninspired to write her doctoral dissertation and thus she began writing her award-winning blog, pretty dumb things, in March 2005. Since then, Chelsea’s work has appeared in magazines like GQ and Penthouse and in multiple anthologies. She has been interviewed by the legendary Susie Bright for her Audible.com show “In Bed With Susie Bright,” and her work has been featured in fine online publications such as Filthy Gorgeous Things.com. Chelsea is currently working on any number of projects, when she isn’t suffering from paralyzing crises of confidence. Chelsea lives and sometimes writes in glamorous New York City.

Michael Pollack grew up in Huntington, Long Island and graduated from Huntington High School in 1964, and got his BA from Syracuse University in 1968. While attending Syracuse he was the business manager for the “unofficial alternative” school newspaper, The Promethean. Their largest advertiser was the Civic Follies Burlesque and hence he started my involvement with porn. After graduation Michael stayed in Syracuse and while managing the Civic, attended the forming of the Adult Film Association in Kansas City in 1969. He spent the 1970’s in porn; the 1980’s in the video business; and for the last 20 years he has been selling foreign language books to schools.

E.V. Fleurima, aka Ckiara Rose, is of French Haitian paternal heritage and Miskitu/Nicargauan and Sudanese maternal heritage. She is the author of Ckiara Song of Men Slaves, a poetic biography that tells the story of her life as a sensual dominant and sacred whore. http://ckiararose.com/

The PROS Network (Providers and Resources Offering Services to sex workers) is a coalition of sex workers, organizers, direct service providers, advocates, and media makers. We exist to collaborate on programs and campaigns around sex work-related issues in the New York metropolitan area. We work with people of all genders who, by choice, circumstance, or coercion, engage in sexual activities for money, food, shelter, clothing, drugs, or other survival needs. Grounded in principles of social justice and human rights, the PROS Network embraces a non-judgmental, harm reduction approach. Check them out on Facebook.

More info: http://www.redumbrellaproject.com/august-5-well-seasoned/

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Journey Project @ Washington Square Park

by Viviane on 11/01/2024

in Events, sexwork

journeyproject Journey Project @ Washington Square Park

Time: 12:00-8:00 PM
Location: Washington Square Park

This month, if you see seven shipping containers in Washington Square Park, that’s the Journey project, sponsored by the Helen Bamber Foundation:

The aim of Journey is to bring the reality of the sex trafficking industry to the forefront of social consciousness and empower people to take action. Shackles bind perpetrators to victims, and victims to the punters who exploit them. The links extend to every level of society even to the organisations that care for the victims. They extend down the halls of government who pledge to act and pass laws to stamp out trafficking. The links form an invisible chain that binds us all together. It is the chain of modern day slavery.

It takes the audience on her journey of transformation from a childhood full of hopes and dreams into the harrowing reality of sex slavery, void …of freedom and self.

Each stage of this brutal journey has been interpreted and created by a different artist, titled Hope, Journey, Uniform, Bedroom, Customer, Stigma and Resurrection.

There will facilitators after you tour the installation…you might even meet Bamber Foundation trustee and actress Emma Thompson.

Journey exhibit slideshow
Emma And Elena, Exposing The Sex Trade (NPR)
Bondage from Freedom’s Facebook page

Photo from the Trafalgar Square installation of the Journey Project, courtesy of Bondage for Freedom.

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Paying for It (Bookslut)

by Viviane on 05/19/2024

in sex work

Canadian journalist Victor Malarek’s book The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It is a distinctive contribution to the ongoing conversation about sex work. While we tend to focus on the women who work in the sex trade (as Malarek himself did in his earlier book, The Natashas), here he trains his lens on the men who patronize prostitutes, arguing vehemently — and occasionally convincingly — that the demand side of the transaction is really the problem.

This argument is premised on an “unwavering realization” Malarek has proudly come to: “prostitution — all prostitution — is not about choice.” Researching his previous book seems to have clued him in to the hypocrisy of the whole situation: the fact that sex workers are stigmatized and demeaned, while the men who seek out their services literally get off easy. It’s a reasonable, and entirely welcome, point. But to make it, Malarek rests on easy assumptions, particularly about the women involved in the sex trade, who he uniformly portrays as victims. He makes his case with a sensationalist zeal that is often moralizing, sometimes condescending, and nearly always guided — and defeated — by sweeping generalizations. I wonder, though, if a decidedly mainstream takedown of men’s sexual privilege could really have gone any other way. (Perhaps tellingly, male sex workers are all but absent from these pages.)

Link

[via Melissa Gira]

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PRESS RELEASE: “Erotic Services” Denied: Craigslist and Attorneys General Are Putting Sex Workers At Risk

by Lolita Wolf on 05/14/2024

in craigslist, sex work

This is a collaborative press release – please distribute and repost widely!

Contact:
Dylan Wolfe – Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK), swank@riseup.net
Will Rockwell – $pread Magazine, will@spreadmagazine.org
Audacia Ray – Sex Work Awareness (SWA), aray@sexworkawareness.org
Susan Blake – Prostitutes of New York (PONY), pony@panix.com
Michael Bottoms – Sex Workers Outreach Project – New York City (SWOP-NYC), info@swop-nyc.org

With Craigslist’s recent announcement that its Erotic Services category will be discontinued within the week, hundreds of thousands of erotic service providers will become more vulnerable to dangerous predators. Eliminating erotic listings as Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and others propose will only drive us further underground.

Policing the masseuses, phone workers, pro-dominants, and escorts using Craigslist fails to protect those of us who are coerced into the sex industry. Preventing the use of Craigslist advertisements also eliminates the advantage of screening clients online, which makes for a safer work experience by filtering out potentially dangerous individuals. Furthermore, keeping us offline hinders police investigations of violent crime. In the Boston murder of Julissa Brisman, it was online tracking that enabled the police to identify the suspect. One has to wonder: are the Attorneys General examining the evidence or simply enforcing their moral values?

“Removing the erotic services category from Craigslist does not help prevent violence against escorts and other sex workers. It only pushes me and people like me out of the places where advertising is available,” said Jessica Bloom, a sex worker from Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK). In the face of increasing criminalization, we insist upon respect. As mothers, daughters, brothers, and members of your community, we claim that sex work is real work, work that we are entitled to conduct in safety. As such, we must be accorded the human right of full protection under the law.

###
**EDIT** an addendum. I just typed this up in response to a Facebook friend asking what he could do to help. Here are some suggestions:

You can totally help, mostly by speaking up and jumping into the fray!

Legislation about consensual adult sex work (not trafficking, coercion, or child prostitution) mostly happens on the state level – since you’re in NY, you can find your assembly person here: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/ – write to him or her and tell them how you feel about the risks created and perpetuated by continued criminalizing of sex work and cracking down on advertising

Write letters to the editor of newspapers that publish misguided pieces about how the elimination of craigslist erotic services will “help” women

Comment on blog posts and online articles (if you’ve got the stomach for it!)

And check out the very excellent and thorough reports on research done by the Sex Workers Project to arm yourself with statistics

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