Moving On

I’ve had some time away from blogging as I’ve moved to Melbourne and not been online much. Through the three and a bit years I spent in Sydney, some part of me was always somewhat critical, somewhat held back, as the cultural differences between Adelaide, where I grew up and Sydney were often too stark. Although being a very out, extremely visible sex worker in a small place like Adelaide was eventually draining and the smallness of the queer scene meant fringe groups and minority queers were isolated; moving to Sydney made me appreciate so many things about the city-of-white-picket-fences-and-a-scarily-large-amount-of-churches-without-even-archetural-justification that I had left.

While I loved so many things about Sydney – Gurlesque and SLIT Magazine, that femme dykes were visible and that in some queer community spaces, being a whore was no big deal, the persistent lack of etiquette of the too-large-too-fast-and-too-easily-distracted-big city never stopped rankling with me. From the first few months when I was constantly blown away by people repeatedly bumping into others on footpaths, and never apologising, through to people’s crap behaviour within queer and alterna networks, including bullying and harassment, general online crap behaviour and high school mean girls behaviours in venues. For me, this was neatly summed up in a story I heard from a friend a few weeks before I left town, of a woman in the punk scene who broke up with her girlfriend, only to find that the ex had dealt with her post-break up feelings by producing a zine that spewed hatred and negativity at the woman, and distributed it at every gig she went to. The second aspect of this story is that no one ever seemed to challenge the embittered ex on her crap behaviour, and were happy to get their copy of the zine, for all the juicy details. I don’t pretend that this kind of behaviour is an exclusively Sydney phenomena, but that it can be easier to get away with things in a bigger city. I guess even though I hated that everyone always knows your business in a smaller city, that because in Adelaide everyone pretty much knows everyone, or at least only one degree of separation, that I felt that people didn’t try to fuck each other over quite so overtly.

Either way, I’m hoping that Melbourne will be a happy medium. So far I’ve been overjoyed at seeing manners displayed on a daily basis in my travels, but with the things I enjoy about bigger cities: butch-femme, trans and gender queer communities happening and putting on events, large ethnic and cultural communities coexisting and doing their own thing, and lots and lots of options for places to go and things to see.

My time so far has been spent getting lost, then finding my way back to somewhere I know (my technique for learning about new cities and new computer programs alike), learning about the local public transport quirks and finding my way in a new sex industry, governed by different laws.

The other day on the train I put together the reason I think I have experienced more weirdness from random strangers than usual. The person I am involved with is a transman and is at that stage of transition where he is passing a significant amount of the time, but passing as a teenage guy. So while I’ve long been used to getting filthy looks by elderly women, it’s usually when I have tattoos on display, or when I’m wearing something low cut or short, lately I’ve been dressed for a Melbourne winter, with nothing but my face and hands visible. The penny finally dropped, and I became aware that he is occasionally mistaken for a 16 year old, whereas I am far from looking like a teenager – so when we are behaving in amorous ways, it can confront some social mores, to say the least. As someone who is used to being involved with significantly older partners, it was an odd feeling to be pegged as a dirty old woman preying on a teenage boy…. Good thing I have a sense of humour, a healthy ego and that I celebrate each year further away from the tumultuousness and instability of my 20s. I just hope no one reports me to DOCS!

Truth and visas will set Asian sex workers free

Elena Jeffreys
April 4, 2008


The stereotype of the Asian sex slave captures the Australian imagination. When Puangthong Simaplee died in immigration detention in 2001, a story emerged of a girl trafficked to Australia at the age of 12 and forced to have sex as a slave. Her story was given under duress, after the Department of Immigration had taken her into detention, during the first phases of the pneumonia that eventually killed her.

Even when the federal police uncovered the Thai woman's high school diploma, proudly displayed in her family home, and discovered she did not arrive in Australia until aged 21, the image endured of pre-pubescent Asian girls chained to beds in back rooms with barred windows.

Media reports of a thousand sex slaves working in Australia have proved unfounded. But even when the coroner found no evidence that Simaplee was trafficked, the sex industry, not the detention system, continued to be the focus of coverage of her death.

The sensationalism surrounding the sex slave issue has created a government-funded rescue industry. This has diverted the focus from actual cases of trafficking in Australia and prevented an evidence-based response to the problem.

The federal police's transnational sexual exploitation and trafficking team, with the Immigration Department, has swept through the Asian brothels of Australia's capital cities, aided by an anti-trafficking package of tens of millions of dollars since 2003. The Australian Tax Office joined in and media were invited to the raids.

Non-English-speaking sex workers became the most overscrutinised sector of the sex industry. But the "sex slaves" remained elusive and trafficking was difficult to prosecute.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission chimed in with the suggestion to make "consent" irrelevant, but even that could not create victims that did not exist.

The time has come for a new kind of response to trafficking, grounded in labour rights rather than moral hysteria.

While pictures of brothel raids make big news, labour rights for migrants, a less glamorous issue, are ignored. As the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women noted last year, Australian figures on trafficking "do not seem to take into account cases of labour exploitation".

If the Federal Government wants to improve the conditions of migrant sex workers, it needs to protect their rights as workers.

Introducing a visa to allow migrant sex workers to work in Australia legally for short periods of time would pull the carpet from under the trafficking nexus by allowing women to travel here independently to work. Greater access to generic working holiday visas for sex workers from our region would enable travel for work, without having to resort to a third party or "agent".

Treating migrant sex workers as a legitimate class of worker will get to the core of the trafficking issue. Decriminalising the sex industry in all states, and protecting workers from discrimination, would improve conditions in the long term.

Punitive approaches have been unsuccessful. The health, safety and human rights of the migrant sex workers in Australia must be prioritised.

Elena Jeffreys is the president of Scarlet Alliance, the Australian sex workers' association. She will participate in the "Security and future prosperity" stream of the 2020 summit.

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/04/03/1206851098330.html

Exciting times, but more changes needed.

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd declared Australian Workplace Agreements "dead and buried" as Parliament today passed legislation dismantling the Work Choices laws.

Mr Rudd has told MPs that today was a landmark day for struggling families across the country and the first step to restoring fairness in the workplace.

The Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill was rubber-stamped by the lower house this morning after passing the Senate last night. The Bill needs the assent of the Governor-General to become law.

Mr Rudd said the Bill's passage marked a major day for working families across Australia and honoured a commitment Labor gave to the people before last year's federal election.

"Today we declare this shameful chapter in the history of Australia's workplace relations to be dead and buried," Mr Rudd told parliament with the rousing support of Labor MPs in the chamber.

"Today with this legislation we begin the process of buying the rest of that Work Choices omnibus once and for all.

At this rate, I could get to approve of this Federal Government!

However, there is a Get Up! campaign going on - possibly the easiest activism you will be a part of:

Dear friends,

Saying sorry was an extraordinary first step on the road to reconciliation. But now is the time for real action - starting with closing the 17 year life expectancy gap that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

That is why Indigenous health professionals from across the nation are descending on Canberra to meet with the Government this week - our one chance to send a clear message we want a national partnership to end this preventable crisis. What happens this week will help determine the health equality for an entire generation to come - that's why we'll be there with our close the gap petition.

Can you add your name to it to close the shocking 17-year life expectancy gap, before another Australian generation is condemned to third-world health conditions?

< align="justify">www.getup.org.au/campaign/CloseTheGap

When we joined Oxfam, ANTaR, HREOC and NACCHO in this campaign in April last year we laid out the challenge before us: "we want to give politicians an unflinching new mandate, backed by tens of thousands: to extend the fundamental rights to life and health to every citizen of our wealthy country." Together we rose to that challenge, and saw Kevin Rudd make a commitment to close the gap - but now we need the Government to match their commitment with real action. This week is our opportunity to make that a reality - and that will take bold political will.You have the power to create that will - add your name to the 40,000 GetUp members who have already signed the petition, and we'll take it straight to Canberra with the message that Australia demands real health equality for all citizens:

www.getup.org.au/campaign/CloseTheGap

Thanks for being a part of the solution.

The GetUp team

After more than a decade of feeling very ashamed of the government - and those that voted for them, I've started to feel a bit of hope for Australia moving into a time of compassion and social justice again.

Interesting quote, that picks up some of the themes of this blog

The modern fairy tale ending is the reverse of the traditional one: A woman does not wait for Prince Charming to bring her happiness; she lives happily ever after only by refusing to wait for him -- or by actually rejecting him. It is those who persist in hoping for a Prince Charming who are setting themselves up for disillusionment and unhappiness. (Susan Faludi, Writer)

Check out this article on Migrant Sex Workers...

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/78499/

Why Do Migrant Sex Workers Need Saving?


In the West, in the present, many people believe that sex should express love. This “good” sex is also said to provide a key way to discover personal identity -- who we really are, our innermost selves. It is assumed that feelings of love increase pleasure (quantitatively) and intensify it (qualitatively), resulting in meaningful passion that is expressed through long term, emotionally committed relationships. Other sexual relations then seem wrong, among them anonymous, public, and “promiscuous” sex. Above all, “real” love and sex are said to be incompatible with rationality and work -- at least that is the way many wish it to be.
At the same time, people wonder: Is there a boom underway in the buying and selling of sex, part of a general sexualization of contemporary culture? Since objective data is impossible to gather when businesses operate outside the law, we cannot know whether sex-and-money transactions are going on more than ever, but we certainly know we see and hear about them more. So although we tell a powerful story about sex and love belonging together, we also understand that people want other kinds of sex. We hear about people who buy and sell sex from our friends, acquaintances, the media, and sometimes through reporting on migration -- which is where “sex trafficking” comes in.


Laura Agustín has been studying migration’s links with the sex industry since 1994. Her new book is Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (Zed Books) and other publications are available on her website.

The issue of migration in relation to sex work is a huge one for the sex worker rights movement - as abolishionists often try to get anti-sex work legislation and policies through in guise of 'stopping trafficking', in the same way that anti-fornication Christians will target homosexuality rather than saying publically that they wish to outlaw all sex outside of marriage. I myself find so much of the rhetoric of the anti-trafficking movement so obviously racist - oh, it's ok for white, western, university educated women in North countries to talk about choice - but if you are a person of colour, working class, poor, young, female - well, you just have to be a victim of exploitation....

How To Kill A Transperson *Please repost*

Body: How to kill a transperson

February 15th, 2008

By Ceridwen Troy

This article was written on Friday, Feb. 15, 2008.

On Saturday, Sanesha Stewart, a transwoman of color living in the Bronx, was murdered in her own apartment. She was 25 years old. Her accused killer, Steve McMillan, had known her for months, yet when he was arrested, he claimed to have been enraged to find out that she was what the media coverage called not really a woman. He stabbed her over and over again in the chest and throat. She tried to fight him off; there were defensive wounds found on her hands.

On Tuesday, eighth-grader Lawrence King was in a classroom in Oxnard, Calif. He was openly gay, and often came to school in gender-bending clothing, makeup, jewelry and shoes. According to another student, it was freaking the guys out. One of them shot Lawrence in the head. He was declared brain-dead on Wednesday.

It is easy to look at cases like this and think, how tragic. How random. How senseless.

But then, you forget how easy it is to kill a transgender person.

You forget that all across this nation, faith leaders of all stripes, men and women who claim to speak for God Himself, call us sinners, call us abominations, call us evil.

You forget that at best the media depicts us as something to be pitied, something that our families must be strong and overcome. At worst, they depict us as abnormal, exploiting our bodies for ratings, exploiting the publics fear of us for shock value.

You forget that on a good day, law enforcement agents are neglectful of us, and that far more frequently they join in our harassment. You forget the transwomen of color who are rounded up on suspicions of prostitution. You forget the beatings that go uninvestigated. You forget the molestation and rape we face when we are arrested.

You forget the medical establishment that drains our wallets for the therapy and hormones and surgeries they tell us we need. You forget the way we are then refused treatment when we are dying, dying of treatable diseases, dying of easily patched wounds.

You forget that, by the law of the land, it is legal in the majority of states to deny us employment, to deny us service, to deny us housing.

You forget the shelters and the rape crisis centers that will not allow us through their doors.

You forget that many of us do not even have family to turn to when we are at our most desperate.

You forget that the leaders of our own community have told us that it is not time for us to have rights, that it is not pragmatic for us to be considered worthy of the same respect as other human beings.

You forget that in our own circles, it is considered a negative thing to be too flamboyant. You forget the way our pride parades have been derided by our own community. You forget the scorn heaped upon drag queens by other gay men. You forget the fear to be seen in public with a friend who is considered too open, too queer.

You forget the way it seeps into the minds of transgender people, too. You forget the way a transsexual will shout that she is not a crossdresser, as if there were something wrong with that. You forget the catty names we call each other if we don't pass"

You forget how many of us take our own lives every year.

You forget because the noise is always there, a constant drone in the background. Every newspaper piece that calls a transwoman he instead of she. Every talk show host who spends an hour talking about our genitals. Every childish taunt about looking like a tranny. Every transperson who talks about themselves as true transsexuals. Every activist and politician who tells us now is not the time.

You forget too, how easy it is to kill a person of color, with myths about gangstas and lies about immigrants. You forget how easy it is to kill a person living in poverty, cutting off her welfare because she is suuposedly being paid to breed. You forget how easy it is to kill a sex worker, with sex-shaming language, slinging about slurs like hooker and whore.

You forget the message hidden inside every single one of those statements.

You are less than I am. You are not worthy of the rights and respect that I am worthy of.

You are not human.

It is very easy to kill something that you do not see as human.

It is very easy to kill a transperson.

APOLOGY TO AUSTRALIA’S INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

http://www.getup.org.au/files/blogs/ruddsorrytext.pdf

Today, it felt a little better to be a non-Indigeous Australian. I am proud of the Federal government for the first time in many, many years. I hope this doesn't stop here - that all of the recommendations of the Bringing Them Home Report are implimented. And I am very, very sorry and ashamed of how Indigeous Australian families, culture, and human rights have been treated so shabbily over the last 2 hundred years.