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March 3rd is International Sex Workers Rights Day. Some history, from Sex Worker Outreach Project USA (SWOP-USA)'s website:

The day originated in 2001 when over 25,000 sex workers gathered in India for a sex worker festival. The organizers, Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, a Calcutta based group whose membership consists of somewhere upwards of 50,000 sex workers and members of their communities. Sex worker groups across the world have subsequently celebrated 3 March as International Sex Workers' Rights Day.

Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (2002): "We felt strongly that that we should have a day what need to be observed by the sex workers community globally. Keeping in view the large mobilization of all types of global sexworkers [Female,Male,Transgender], we proposed to observe 3rd March as THE SEX WORKERS RIGHTS DAY.

Knowing the usual response of international bodies and views of academicians and intellectuals of the 1st world [many of them consider that sex workers of third world are different from 1st world and can't take their decision] a call coming from a third world country would be more appropriate at this juncture, we believe. It will be a great pleasure to us if all of you observe the day in your own countries too...We need your inspiration and support to turn our dreams into reality.

A note that the events listed at the SWOP-USA link are from last year. Events for this year are being advertised on local SWOP chapter websites, so I would suggest googling SWOP in your region. They are also being posted on the wall of the Facebook group "Love your hooker and pay them well," which was created in response to the "Kill your hooker" groups we've written about before. You can also post in comments here about events taking place in your community.

Related post: Guest post: International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers...My Thoughts by Audacia Ray

Global Feminist Profiles highlights feminist leaders all over the world who are creating change and empowering their countrywomen to demand equality. GFPs run on the third Monday of each month. This month’s featured activist is Audacia Ray, a sexuality rights and new media activist based in New York City. Feminism and sex [...]

A guest-post by Miranda from Women’s Glib.

It has come to my attention that there is a Facebook fan page entitled, “Killing your hooker so you don’t have to pay her.” The page boasts such updates as, “Ever stab your hooker with a blunt object to add insult to injury?” The page was created about a month ago.

And, as of today, it has 22,127 fans.

This is a deeply offensive, misogynistic, and outright violent page. Hypothetical violence is not funny, but real violence is even less amusing — and this violence is real. The murder of sex workers is frighteningly commonplace, and all too often is excused under some bullshit pretense that sex workers are expendable, are unhuman.

What happens online matters. George Sodini showed us that much. Wrote Bob Herbert in the aftermath of Sodini’s shooting:

We’ve seen this tragic ritual so often that it has the feel of a formula. A guy is filled with a seething rage toward women and has easy access to guns. The result: mass slaughter.

…We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.

We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation’s entertainment.

Facebook pages like this one are surely a form of entertainment, of shits and giggles, for those involved. For the sex workers who are killed for no other reason than hatred, the amusement fades.

This “entertainment” is what happens when people hate women, hate sex workers, and see violence as a viable solution to their rage.

Please, please visit the “Killing your hooker so you don’t have to pay her” Facebook fan page and report it for its offensive content. (Scroll down and look in the lower left corner of your screen to find the link to report it.)

Cross-posted at Women’s Glib.

Audacia Ray wears many hats. Author, blogger, activist, advocate educator and director are just a few. Ray, a former sex worker, is the co-founder of Sex Work Awareness, an awareness and advocacy group that aims to empower the sex worker community and educate the public about the rights and needs of sex workers. She edits Sex Work 101, the organization's blog, and also runs Speak Up, a media training workshop designed especially for sex workers.

Ray is the author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration, and was an executive editor of $pread Magazine, the groundbreaking publication written by and for members of the sex industry. She's the director of the award-winning feminist porn movie The Bi Apple, and an adjunct professor of Human Sexuality at Rutgers. Ray is also the Program Officer for Online Communications and Campaigns at the International Women's Health Coalition, where she is a colleague of Feministing's own Lori Adelman. That's a lot of hats. This week, I had a chance to sit down with Ray and pick her many-hat-wearing brain about sexting, burlesque dancers and the future of the feminist movement.

And now, without further ado, the Feministing Five, with Audacia Ray.

Chloe Angyal: What led you to your multifaceted career as a professional pro-sex feminist and activist?

Audacia Ray: There are a couple of aspects of my work. Part of it is media advocacy and storytelling and new media, which came out of the sexuality activism. I've always thought of myself as a feminist, since I was a teenager. When I first heard that word, it was the first identity that really rang true to me. When I was in college, I studied gender and sexuality, and was really taken with that kind of work. After college I spent some time working at the Museum of Sex, as a researcher, and that started make sense for me in terms of doing activism through making culture and documenting culture. And at the same time I was applying to graduate school and trying to pay my bills and stuff, so I started working in the sex industry, and kind of got into this interesting tangle of trying to think about and write about gender and sexuality while also having these peculiar and interesting experiences in the sex industry, that sometimes were really at odds with what I thought of as feminism and what I experienced in my own life.

So I was trying to get a grip on all that stuff. And then I saw a call for $pread Magazine, when it was first being launched in the fall of 2004, and at the time I had been writing my own blog, and I wasn't really interested in publishing a magazine, but I didn't know any other sex workers, and it was the first time I'd seen other sex workers being public about their sex work, and so I gravitated towards that and started working there, and quickly became an editor. And that turned into a bigger activism and advocacy project for me, which was really the personal-is-political piece of it for me, because I was lonely and wanted to meet other sex workers and talk about what I was going through.

And so I met these really cool folks who were running $pread and moved out from there. So between that and my experience at the Museum of Sex - when I left that job, I didn't really see the kind of work that I wanted to be doing existing in the world, so I started a curating art shows and hosting events and readings and lots of fundraisers for $pread that were about sex work and sexual counterculture. So basically I think that producing culture can help you to create a political vision and to create what you want to see in the world. It helps you to find the answers to the questions that you're asking.

And then I started doing media production and taught myself how to shoot video, and I directed and produced a porn film, The Bi Apple, that came out in 2007. And from there I got more interested in using video not for entertainment, but for activism. And that culminated in my working for six months for the Village Voice, doing a video blog for them that was all about sexuality stuff. And that in turn gave me the skills that I needed to start doing work for the International Women's Health Coalition.

CA: Who are your favorite fictional heroines?

AR: At this point in my life I know a lot of writers who are trying to create fictional heroines, so I'm just going to name drop some of my friends. Right now I really loving Molly Crabapple, who's a really fantastic artist. She just had her first graphic novel come out; it's called Scarlett Takes Manhattan, and her main character Scarlett is really interesting; she's strong and sassy and she's a burlesque performer. Another book that I think about all the time, with two really strong female characters, is Rain Village, by Carolyn Turgeon. The two main characters are really fantastic and strong and fun.

CA: Who are your heroines in real life?

AR: My heroines are my peers. I've never been very good at respecting my elders. But I really admire the hell out of the sex worker activists I know and my peers in the feminist movement. I'm really inspired by them.

CA: What recent news story made you want to scream?

AR: I've been following the stories about sexting and teenage girls and different legal cases that are going on about that. That stuff is making me really crazy. There are a couple of instances where teenaged girls have taken photos of themselves that may or may not be nude - but probably not all that pornographic - and sent them to someone, and they're being charged with child pornography. And the people who are distributing aren't being publicly shamed, but the girls are. And that's happening on a wide scale level that's panicky and upsetting.

CA: What, in your opinion, is the greatest challenge facing feminism today?

AR: I think it's a combination of things. Inclusivity is a really big issue, the degree to which the movement is diverse and has intersectionality. That's one of the core things that I see people getting at each others' throats about all the time. They're things that I think hold us up a lot, that there isn't enough diversity and inclusivity. And part of the reason that doesn't exist is that people don't listen to and care enough about other people who have different experiences and don't necessarily represent their own issues. I would really like to see more listening, because I think listening is a crucial part of movement building, especially in the feminist movement. The way women are socialized as kids is not to be rowdy. And then when we get ready, we stop listening to each other.

CA: You're going to a desert island and you're allowed to take one food, one drink and one feminist. What do you pick?

AR: Dark chocolate, bourbon and Eliyanna Kaiser, who was my co-executive editor at $pread Magazine. She's the smartest woman I've ever met and we'd be able to endlessly amuse each other.

The indispensable Figleaf (not necessarily a work-safe site for all) has a terrific commentary up today on the recent study, reported in the Guardian, on men who visit prostitutes.

Fig quotes one of the more troubling passages of the Julie Bindel piece:

One of the most interesting findings was that many believed men would “need” to rape if they could not pay for sex on demand. One told me, “Sometimes you might rape someone: you can go to a prostitute instead.” Another put it like this: “A desperate man who wants sex so bad, he needs sex to be relieved. He might rape.” I concluded from this that it’s not feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and myself who are responsible for the idea that all men are potential rapists – it’s sometimes men themselves.

It’s not hard to see that this belief — part of what I refer to as the myth of male weakness — serves a particularly important self-justifying function. “I need to have sex with prostitutes”, the line goes, “or I might rape.” We see something similar in arguments about pornography, in which men (often husbands or boyfriends) explain that the use of erotica “prevents cheating”. Call it the “You should be bloody grateful that this is all I’m doing” narrative.

Many women who are uncomfortable with their male partners’ porn use (or visits to strip clubs, etc.) tell themselves (and concerned friends) that they’re grateful that their guys “don’t do anything worse.” Perhaps there are some who genuinely believe what the men in the Guardian study claim to believe: that prostitution provides a necessary sexual outlet for fellas whose supposedly insatiable needs cannot be met in any other way. This is the soft bigotry of low expectations writ large, with the twist that the most painful consequences affect those who hold these assumptions — rather than those about whom the expectations are held.

It’s worth noting that the two men quoted in the Bindel piece use the second and third person to describe what “you” or “a desperate man” might do. Perhaps this is a way of claiming cover under the myth of male weakness without risking the sobriquet of a potential rapist. On the other hand, perhaps these lads don’t use the first person because in their hearts, they know it isn’t true. The “prostitution is necessary because otherwise men would rape” thesis is useful enough to be repeated; it is hoped that wives and girlfriends will believe it, and thus co-sign men’s hiring of sex workers as the lesser of two evils. But because these guys know well enough that in their own experience, lust is not a catalyst for rape (anger is, but that’s a different story), they are unwilling to use the first person singular or plural. They want the myth of male weakness to work because it serves their agenda; they know that in their own lives, the myth is oversold. This is cynical, yes, but devastatingly effective.

Until we dismantle the narrative of uncontrollable male sexual desire we cannot build a just and safe world for all.

Yesterday, December 17, was the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, a day that was created to draw attention to violent hate crimes committed against sex workers all over the world. Unfortunately in my hectic day, I missed blogging about it. No excuses, and my sincere apologies.

I would, however, like to take the belated opportunity now to highlight this epidemic of violence, and the work that activists are doing to combat it. Here is a remembrance list of known sex workers murdered in the past year (pdf). There are almost certainly unknown victims whose deaths have not been recorded. And while this is a list of those who have been killed, the number of those who have lived through physical and sexual assaults is infinitely longer.

For more about violence against sex workers, and the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, I recommend checking out this blog post about a MADRE event on Human Rights Day (thanks Robin), this article by Annie Sprinkle in On The Issues magazine, Audacia Ray’s post, the GRITtv video commentary on violence against sex workers (sorry, no known transcript yet), and lastly the new report from the Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN), Arrest the Violence: Human Rights Violations Against Sex Workers in 11 Countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

This is just a tiny fraction of what actions have been taken, what information has been released, and what blog posts and articles that have been written. So if you’ve written a post yourself, or have something else you want to pass along, please feel free to leave links in the comments.

In my Power and Sexuality class, I sometimes assign articles from a book called Whores and Other Feminists. All of the essays are written by current and former sex workers who identify as feminist. It’s pretty fascinating.

So some of the phone sex operators talk about what they do while having “phone sex,” like chores and booking airline tickets and whathaveyou. It really demystifies the industry.

As do these photographs by Phillip Toledano, sent in by Phillip B. Below the jump (because NSFW), I intersperse screen shots from phone sex websites with his photographs of real sex phone operators.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

A reader named Sarah recently wrote in about a conversation she had with her husband about strip clubs:

My husband today mentioned the time he took his younger brother to a strip club when the brother turned 21. I laughed a bit, and said, “wow! i never heard that story before!” A few more teasing words were said between the 3 of us, and Imentioned that if he ever took our (still non-existent) son to a strip club i’d be furious. I assumed no more needed to be said, as the whole idea of it was so ludicrous and that my husband wouldn’t do something so creepy and so anti-women with a son of ours.

My husband shocked me by saying that yes, he would take our kid to a strip club and he doesn’t see why it would matter to me if “our son is getting married, and we all go to a titty bar for the bachelor party. it’s not like i’d encourage him to cheat!” I was left sputtering and a little disturbed, and totally unsure on how to proceed with this conversation as my husband is a man who’s always respected women and agreed on these matters. (or I obviously wouldn’t have married him!)

I’m no fan of strip clubs for a host of reasons. But Sarah’s email isn’t really about strip clubs — it’s about the problem of homosociality, a topic I’ve written about many times before. (Homosociality is the notion that for American men in particular, the approval of other males is of paramount concern, even more sought after than validation from women.) One of the most odious features of homosociality is the way in which it employs women’s bodies as devices for bonding men together. For example, many women are perplexed (as well as infuriated) by the habit young (and not-so-young) men have of cat-calling female pedestrians from passing cars. “Why do they slow down and whistle at me, making those comments?” a young woman asks; “Do they really think I’m going to get in the car with them?” The answer, of course, is that the fellas in the car are far less interested in the woman they’re harassing than in bonding with each other. They demonstrate their heterosexual bona fides to each other, and in the process of humiliating women on the street, forge a closer homosocial relationship. (It’s more than anecdotal to point out that groups of men, having just harassed a woman sexually, will high-five each other; one of the most devastating depictions of this comes in the rape scene from “Boys Don’t Cry”.)

Going to a strip club, of course, isn’t necessarily analogous to participating in a gang rape. But fathers and older brothers have been taking their sons and younger brothers to “titty bars” and brothels for a long time; in parts of Latin America, the practice is particularly common. The stated purpose may be an “initation into manhood” for a teen boy, or a bacchanalian farewell to bachelorhood for a man about to be wed. But there’s invariably more to it than that. Wives and girlfriends, not unreasonably, suspect that the motive is sexual: fathers and brothers may claim to be doing it as a favor for a son or a sibling, but in reality they’re just looking for an opportunity for “justified infidelity” of one kind or another. That may be true, but there’s a deeper and more common reason: a longing for homosocial intimacy.

Going to a baseball game is the paradigmatic “father-son” bonding activity. But for many men, sporting events are less effective than strip clubs as homosocial strategies. Women haven’t been excluded as spectator from ball parks for generations; very few wives and mothers actively disapprove of sports. (They may find watching sports dull, but that’s hardly the same.) Men in our society, as countless scholars of gender have pointed out, are socialized to find particular delight and meaning in activities from which women are excluded, or which most women find repugnant and objectionable. American boys prove their manhood, after all, through their rejection of their mothers’ values; to care too deeply about what mom thinks is to be a sissy, a mama’s boy. And need I point out how many American men have relationships with wives and girlfriends that closely resemble the mother-son dynamic? Mama might not object to taking little brother to the Yankees game — but she’s likely to be less pleased with a sojourn to the titty bar down the block.

The effectiveness of strip clubs as a homosocial bonding strategy is thus linked to two things: the shared sense the male patrons have that their wives and mothers disapprove of their being there, and the opportunity to establish their credentials as “red-blooded, straight American guys” by sharing the experience of objectifying women’s bodies. A single man in a strip club, nursing a beer, is seen as a vaguely pathetic — or perhaps threatening — figure; a group of men on a “stag night” in that same club are anything but. What is unacceptable in solitude is admirable and manly when done in solidarity with other males.

For men who, perhaps like Sarah’s husband, who have not yet done the vital work of learning how to establish intimate relationships with other men which do not require the objectification of women as “bonding glue”, the homosocial appeal of the strip club experience is tremendous. But women aren’t cement to hold together that which can’t otherwise be joined. Emotionally competent adult males don’t use either women’s revulsion or women’s bodies in order to establish closeness and cameraderie with each other. And men’s universal capacity to become emotionally competent — at a relatively young age — is very real. The fact that so many choose not to exercise that capacity is not evidence that they lack it.

Sociologists have observed that pornography is becoming increasingly mainstream, especially among people who are now in their teens and twenties.  No longer something for men to hide under a mattress, pornography is now considered, by many in these generations, to be a routine and regular part of everyday life for both men and women.

I was struck by this normalization of porn while watching a special on the technological challenges facing pornographers today.  The show, Vanguard, does special in-depth reporting on a different topic each episode.  Here is a screen shot of the most recent episodes available on Hulu.  You’ll see that recent episodes cover the war, revolution in Cuba, and illegal and legal drugs:

I found out about the program because it was on the front page of Hulu:

So, just to be clear, this program was just plain ‘ol, regular programming for regular folk.

And the program treated pornography as if it was just any other industry; it could have been a discussion of the car industry in light of the economic downturn or pig farmers in light of swine flu.

It’s not that I necessarily think that the show should have been all “Oh and, by the way, we know this is porn and porn is bad OOGA BOOGA!”   I was just shocked by how easily it brushed off any such concerns (with a few employees explaining that their job is just like any other job) and moved onto the “isn’t it interesting how the industry is coping with these new challenges.”

I feel like I’m having a tough time explaining it.  If you’ve got 22-minutes, see for yourself:

(I’m sorry non-American readers!  I know you can’t watch Hulu!  You maybe able to watch it here.)

See also our posts on pornification of everyday life here, here, and here.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

Because there is nothing funnier than a person, disadvantaged by the perfect storm of race, class, and gender, being forced to give lap dances to feed herself (source):

Also, she’s fat. Hahahaha!

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)