The Whore Stigma (part one)

Spoke today with one of my favourite fellow whores, Sienna. We discussed her mother's recent comment about the sex worker rights movement as a 'quite an industry construct' and about how we (the sex worker rights movement) worked hard to get sex workers involved.

I still find it incredible that women (whether sex workers or not) can discount the need for a sex worker rights movement. The impacts of the whore stigma is felt by all women, whether professionals or amateurs, chaste or unchaste. I recognised in this comment, the distant voice of my own mother, who aside from her Catholic objections to my sex work, experienced my outness and activism around this issue as a further confrontation to her value system. Not just a whore but a whore who refuses to be shamed into silence.

Good girls are kept from straying by consequences attached to sex work. Around Australia, the consequences can include a criminal record, having the Family Court remove your children from your care, individual registration as a sex worker with either the police or government department, being evicted, having sexual assault considered to be par for the course, crimes again sex workers treated as less-serious than those against non-sex workers as well as social ostracism.

Obviously, in other countries the consequences of sex work can be death.

As long as we maintain the divide between good girls and whores, and punish the whores, good girls will be forced to restrict their behaviour in order to avoid those consequences. What does that mean for good girls? I'm reminded of a Reclaim the Night chant that has always been special to me, "Yes means yes. No means no. Whatever we wear, whereever we go" The concept of stranger danger keeps women afraid and restricted in their everyday lives. Don't leave home after dark, don't dress too slutty, don't be intoxicated in public, don't be loud or draw attention to yourself, don't talk explicitly about sex, don't swear, don't be unladylike.... Don't be whorish. Even though the majority of abuse experienced by most women (including whores) will be perpetrated by their partners or other family members, most women restrict their behaviour for fear of consequences.

I was reading this article written by Sasha, a sex worker activist about her experience at the Toronto 2006 AIDS conference http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_08.24.06/fun/lovebites.php that highlighted for me the systematic way that the whore stigma opporates. A newer incarnation of the consequences of deviance has emerged through the neo-conservative movement in the US and other Nations - the use of money to enforce Christian morality. Absolutely chilling.
I was particularly moved to angry tears by certain sections:

"In 2003, the Bush government created a policy that forces nations to sign a "prostitution pledge," preventing organizations that empower sex workers from getting US HIV/AIDS funding."

"Thursday is a press conference called "New Findings on the Impact of the US Prostitution Loyalty Oath on HIV Prevention," moderated by Jodi Jacobson. Activists Melissa Ditmore from New York, Gabriela Leite from Brazil and Hazera Bagum from Bangladesh -- who just the night before won a Red Ribbon award for her work with the organization Durjoy Nari Shangha -- are on the panel. The havoc wreaked by US policy is enragingly transparent in all the literature given out by international groups (condom shortages in sub-Saharan Africa; outreach workers in Cambodia fired for treating sex workers; sex workers turned away from clinics in Thailand) but it is Bagum, breaking down in tears when telling of the 16 drop-in centres (DICs) around the Bangladesh capital that have been closed in order to comply with the pledge, who really drives the point home for me. The DICs not only provide a place for thousands of women to get condoms -- the number they're selling now dropping from 73,000 to 30,000 per month -- but somewhere for them to rest, wash and gain literacy skills and moral support."

I find the 'industry' focussed on the abolition of sex work - the organisations that construct sex work as violence against women, that kidnap and deport sex workers, that set up the spectacularly unsuccessful but very well funded exit and retraining programs to save sex workers from themselves to be far more bizarre and 'impressive'. The ability for the 'rescuers' to discount the voices of sex workers and their lack of concern about providing real economic alternatives just blows me away....