Thursday, June 14, 2012

No Arrest for the Weary

On Sunday, June 17th, I will march in silence with thousands of other New Yorkers who are fed up with police brutality, stop-n-frisk racism, and the routine harassment of young men, LGBT folks, and (increasingly) women of color. I'll march as a woman of color, an immigrant, a socialist, an educator, and - yes - as a sex worker.


Why should sex workers - strippers, more specifically - give a shit about this march, and join me for it?


For starters, the legal system we have is, at its core, about economics. More specifically, a larger atmosphere of 'neoliberalism,' the reigning economic system in which nebulous 'market' forces are presumed to be the best arbiter of the fate of humanity, in which the 'public' sphere quickly disappears, in which blame - for poverty, criminality, marginality - is to be doled out strictly to individuals for their own personal failings instead of to a system of capitalism that's failed them.


This might explain why corporations like the CCA have actually been buying state prisons and operating them! Yes, a private corporation, with a goal of turning a profit, merges with a system that (we're told) aims to keep those on the outside safe and reform those on the inside. But no, the CCA and other private entities have benefited from incarceration of (mostly poor, non-white) young people. To keep their revenues a-rollin' in, they've lobbied and even had some buddies elected to office, campaigns aimed at introducing Draconian laws and law enforcement. Gotta be tough on crime - those prisons won't make any money if they're empty, will they? Meanwhile, those of us who work in the sex industry - walking the fine line of legality and criminality - are thrown into the mix. Those of us who have experienced a raid, an arrest, or worse for consensually selling sexual services know just how much of a numbers game law enforcement is. That's probably why your lawyer and everyone else present when you got arrested encouraged you to take a plea deal, even though you insisted you were innocent. (After all, no one told you sitting on a guy's lap during a lapdance could technically count as prostitution...) It's what they call "maximum throughput" - the prison industrial complex can only be profitable if it's massive, if it cranks people through it enough to be the kind of growth machine capitalism needs.


Notice how these ginormous prisons are usually in rural, white towns? Many prison towns, usually all-white, were plunged into a terrible type of poverty when they lost their jobs after deindustrialization (thanks again, neoliberalism!). Those jobs were not lost, just sent somewhere else where brown folks can do the work dirt-cheap because their government is giving the US a huge blowjob and keeps labor and environmental regulations super-low to attract dollars. What fortuitousness that mega-prisons could occupy such a convenient niche: at once incarcerating now-redundant workers of color from urban areas (can't have 'em roaming the streets, can we?) and employing poor white folks who'd otherwise be unemployed - as prison guards, food service workers, medical staff, etc. So these poor white folks - who'd largely do well allying with people of color around economic injustice - are now given a token of authority over criminalized people of color. The divide & conquer circle is complete...


As sex workers, we are fodder for the business of criminalization. No one knows exactly what constitutes a violation of the law in terms of 'sexual contact.' Stripping and pornography are legal, provided that money is not being exchanged for sexual services...Wait, what? Isn't stripping for cash a sexual service? Where is the line of legality drawn, exactly? We've all had customers blow a load in their pants during a lapdance (and if you haven't, Goddess bless you, child) - is this tantamount to giving a happy ending massage? Can I be hauled away, labeled a "prostitute," and lose my teaching job as a result? Would I even have time to investigate these issues if I were hauled to central booking in the middle of a shift at work and urged to take a guilty plea to avoid legal costs I can't afford? Would I accept a criminal record permanent enough to affect future career prospects, custody battles, and housing?


My first year stripping, I had a late night customer buying tons of lapdances, begging me for a blowjob in the champagne room. I refused, and his offer became more and more generous. By the time he realized I wasn't going to do it, he'd spent all that money on lapdances while he'd tried convincing me. After the lapdances were done, he flashed me a police badge. He told me I did the right thing, not taking him back there. I had another customer who was going through police academy confess that he'd seen over 200 sex workers during his lunch breaks. I had a retired-cop-turned-strip-club-bouncer confess to me that, during his career as a detective, he made several arrests because he "didn't like the way the person looked." (A very thinly veiled racist statement, since he quite often cursed out "niggers" without much hesitation.) Yes, these are the police who will raid our clubs, banking on the fact that we don't know our rights, and have so few to begin with. These are the police who serve and protect Bloomberg and his cadre of Wall Street cronies and criminalize more and more of us with impunity. These are the police who shot and killed Ramarley Graham, beat the hell out of peaceful Occupy protesters, spied on Muslim students and businesses. The same police who, with each day that passes, get more authority over enforcing immigration law. The same police that can decide that, if you are carrying a condom on you, it can be used as evidence against you in a prostitution case.


The time is running out to raise hell about this issue. How many more diligent mothers will be stigmatized for work that allows them to support a family? How many trans sex workers will be felt up in "gender investigations" by police on the streets of Jackson Heights? How many more university students will be arrested or beaten for simply protesting a tuition hike? Dancing girls, this issue is ours. Let's do this.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

I love both my husbands...Isn't that big'o'me?

"Pretty Woman. Memoirs of a Geisha. Firefly. The Girlfriend Experience. Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Moulin Rouge. I began to see a trend: The media says that if you are a person in the sex industry, even one who consensually entered sex work, you will always have to make a choice between love and work. Sex workers, you see, cannot afford to love. Cue dramatic music and wistful looks into the long distance." Check this interesting discussion of loving and sex-working.