Jane has moved.

I decided to move my blog to Wordpress. Even though I have less control over the look of my blog (unless I pay-- hell no!), I will be able to track visits and other statistics more closely.

Know Your Rights!

SerpentLibertine and the folks of SWOP created this phenomenal Know Your Rights video for sex workers of all walks of life.

This is an important video for any form of sex work, whether you consider yourself a sex worker or not. Really, it's an important video for everyone. I know I watch a lot of cop dramas on television. They're entertaining. But every time a suspect starts talking without a lawyer, to get out of a situation, to avoid arrest, I cringe. Just invoke your constitutional right to remain silent and speak to your lawyer.

I think what's most important that the video points out is that cops can do anything to arrest you. There's a myth that cops can't fuck a sex worker or do drugs to make a bust. They can. They can buy a lapdance, be dominated, slob your knob, have sex with you, smoke a joint with you, and so on. I once heard the advice that sex workers should advertise Roman or brown showers. Cops can get puked or dumped on to arrest you, but do they want to?

If the general public knew this as well, it would benefit the sex workers rights movement. Think about it. Your hard-earned tax dollars are going toward cops getting free lapdances, lays, and so forth. Sure, sure, you may claim it's in the name of busting bad guys and gals, but that's serious bunk. A lay paid for by the tax dollars of the public is still a free lay to a cop.

Scholarly whores do it in ivory towers.

I am a feminist. Hold your britches. I am aware of how controversial identifying as both a sex worker and a feminist is. This is for no good reason I can see. Feminists are individuals against oppression based on gender. When feminists stop trying to save the whores, they tend to realize that we're all in this together. But if you're the kind of feminist who just wants to save the whores to feel more secure about your place in the social hierarchy, stop reading now.

So I am a feminist and a scholar. No, I'm not Jane Brazen, PhD, and you won't see me published in any major (or any at all) journals. I haven't written any books (yet) or taught any classes. I'm a scholar in the classic sense of the word, when all you needed to break intellectual ground was a stack of books, a willingness to observe, and something to write on and with. Lately, I have been reading a lot about and have been fairly obsessed with epistemology, with the nitty gritty motivated doing of science.

Feminists have contributed to science the idea that science comes from a place of privilege. Anyone who ever read about Tuskegee or the development of modern surgery sees this. The people who have the power make up the rules of science and tend to do a kind of science that reflects their positions. People who can easily socially distance themselves from the so-called disadvantaged can do a kind of science that is positivism, that we can be separated, dispassionate, and neutral. But, as feminists have pointed out, we can't get outside of social location. The discourse of power is always at work. Someone always have the privilege.

When I read research about sex work, I see this need for a critical reflection on how we do science like a Las Vegas Girls! Girls! Girls! sign. I can't understand how anyone could possibly overlook this. So many studies of sex workers, studies that end up concluding we are all irrevocably fucked-up diseased victims of childhood trauma drains on the social order, come from someone in a position of power. That researcher decides that there's just got to be something wrong with this poor, poor group of people, and sets out to figure out why we are the way we are. And the research reflects it.

Well, I'm sick to fucking death of it. This is my call to arms for any whore out there with the guts and ambition to invade the ivory tower. There was a time when courtesans were the most educated women around. This is my call for the sex worker standpoint, for sex workers to start doing research about sex workers. Since sex workers have started doing research on their communities, there have been some really interesting books written. This research doesn't wonder what is wrong with sex workers, it wonders how it is that sex workers manage their work. It doesn't ask what type of person goes into sex work, it asks what skills a person needs to thrive in sex work. The people who are going to cry about how biased what I'm suggesting is are the kinds of people who privilege supports. There is no such thing as value-free science.

Instead of doing research that examines sex work to make everyone else feel safe, I want to see research that helps sex workers and I hope it makes everyone squirm. I hope this because the oppression sex workers face is tied to every classism, sexism, racism, heterosexism, and fear of sexuality we see in society.

Out, Not Inside Out

Many years ago, when I was in my late teens, I came out with a bang about living with a mental illness that few people understood or realized existed back then. I was fresh out of a hospital and telling my story to anyone who would listen, except for most of my loved ones. When I made this decision, it was after realizing with an out-of-air sensation, that if I didn't speak up, no one else was going to. Rather than waiting for another Phoenix to rise up and tell my story while I nodded in silent agreement, I was going to have to open my mouth and tell a story only I could: mine.

It's been years since that time. Others have picked up where I left off and months go by without me uttering a word about this to anyone. I grew incredibly weary of such extreme outness. I had strung my guts up on the city wall, the insides of my skin, so that even one person might learn something from my lived experience. I withdrew quickly. After they explode, aged stars collapse on themselves.

Recently, I have been contemplating what it means to be out as a sex worker. Out as really anything. I have a sizable list of things I could (and sometimes am) be out about: sex work, mental illness, a queer identity. For the most part, I am the kind of person who will tell you if you ask, but will not go out of the way to explain. Most things I feel no pressing desire to hide in everyday conversations. Except sex work.

There is no stunning lack of pioneers before me. Very wonderful, brave people who have not shied from self-revelation. Women like Robyn Few, Carol Leigh, and Margo St. James, the foundation of the current sex workers rights movement. And certainly, the forms of sex work I have engaged in have less societal stigma than those in which they have worked.

It comes down to this, essentially, for me, a reason which keeps most sex workers silent, endangered, and hidden: the law. Except for a few states with misguided sodomy laws, it is not illegal for me to be queer. I can't be fired from my job for the mental illness I have. In fact, I am protected by disability laws. But I can be fired for being a current or former sex worker. There are no laws that protect against discrimination based on other jobs.

I recognize that until the general public realizes that sex workers are everywhere, the law won't change. Until my neighbors, my family and friends, my doctor, the clerk at the grocery store, realize that a sex worker can look and act like someone like me, not a Monster Charlize Theron or a Pretty Woman Julie Roberts, things won't change.

But I also realize that we all must pick our battles. The fragility I felt during that initial flurry of outness haunts me. My skin is still raw in the places I was vulnerable. I know that I sound like I am throwing my hands up in resignation, that I am claiming a get out of jail free card because I've already served my time. I haven't. I know I haven't.

Sex workers have to infiltrate the system as well. Some have to stand outside and attack the walls. Some must sneak in, disguised as presents, and tear the wall down from the inside. And some must stand by and wait until the time is right for them. This is the way it has to be, for now. I'm still figuring out where I belong.

Secrets & Lies: What difference does abuse make?

Ms. magazine is good for my health. Really! This bastion of the second wave really wants me to have the hottest ass this side of the Prime Meridian. As I chose between the latest celebrity gossip rags the other day, I spotted the spring 2008 issue of Ms. I decided to catch up on the latest feminist news (because, apparently, feministing is not good enough?) while I worked out.

Trouble is, there was an article in there by the beloved Melissa Farley, conflating sex work with trafficking and making the same old tired argument that because most sex workers were (supposedly) abused as kids, there is no real "choice" to enter the industry. When I saw this article, I was so furious, I worked harder than I had in months, sweating until my elbows formed puddles.

Ah, the myth of the sexually abused whore rears its ugly head again! Kathy Griffin used this in a bit about strippers. A recently released (and I use this term generously) study by the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation claims that fifty-seven percent on male clients believe the sex workers they see were abused as children. This "study" was then picked up by major news sources.

This kind of press is usually followed by a flurry of sex workers shouting I Wasn't Abused And I'm a Sex Worker! And rightly so, I think, considering how often this angle is used against sex workers who are happy to have chosen this work. Look at that god awful 20/20 episode where Diana Sawyer grills an escort (who has since been outed, unfortunately) about her past, claiming she can't believe this escort was never abused.

I'd really, really love to claim that no sex worker has ever been abused, ever, but there are studies showing that among specific populations of sex workers (street-based drug-using youth, for example), there is a significant history of abuse. Considering how prevalent abuse is in our society, it's not surprising to find a high concentration in any industry. Hell, how many therapists got into the job to help others like themselves?

Now, whether or not I have ever been abused depends on your definition. And really, it's highly fucking irrelevant. Before I started working, I was in another group popularly assumed to have been abused as kids: women with eating disorders. If I claimed a history of abuse, it made sense what I did to myself. But I don't.

Here's my question for anyone who wants to use abuse to pigeon-hole and discount the choices of sex workers: what difference does abuse make? By using this as an excuse to explain why people work in the sex industry, or to explain away why they can't freely choose this, you twice-victimize the individual. You assume that abuse forever and ever amen negates a person's ability to make free, rational choices for their lives. Does abuse shape life history? No question. The same way any trauma shapes a life course. (Ask me about the car accident I was in.) But using abuse as a tool to deprive a person of her or his voice is oppressive, manipulative, and exploitative of that abuse.

So, what difference does abuse make? Whatever the individual herself or himself makes of it, not some researcher or journalist somewhere. Whether seeking recovery from an eating disorder or choosing to work in the sex industry, the only expert on a person's life history is that person. Anything else enforces the victim role.

Let's Talk About Privilege!

Ah, god, do we have to? The dreaded p-word rears its ugly head again, this time in the sex workers' rights movement. Privilege is the elephant in the room, if the elephant in the room allowed some people freedoms and protections that it doesn't allow others. If elephants' weight went down when you talk about them.

So, yes, we have to talk about privilege. Here's a shocking truth about sex work I'd like to share with you: we're not all the same. I know, I was shocked to learn that, too. It's this very denial of the diversity of sex workers that has me questioning my place in this movement. Much like the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the mainstream sex workers' rights movements seems to be so caught up in the privileged that privilege is a dirty word.

It's a problem with all social movements. Those with the most privilege tend to dominate the movement because privilege is as privilege does: it opens doors. The feminist movement worked because educated, monied white men could talk on some level with educated, monied white women. However, these women who were lobbying to enter the workforce completely forgot about women of lower socioeconomic status who had been in the workforce since Day One.

The fact that we all share a profession does not put us all the same level of society. Privilege is not a ladder. We are not all on the same step because we're all whores. Privilege is a matrix of education, class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and all the other things that people divide themselves on. I'm a barely middle class queer white woman. That's where I locate myself. When I walk out into the world and talk about sex work, I immediately look different than a poverty-level transgendered Latina woman.

I want to see rights for all sex workers. Somewhere, somehow, the sex workers' rights movement got onto the track of arguing against the stereotype of the "AIDS infected crack whore on the street". Sure, it's important to point out that not all of us are like this, that a lot of us choose this and are happy with our choice. But it's also important to point out that privilege operates in this profession just like any other profession. For example, a college-educated white woman of middle-class standing can get out of the business. A working class high school graduate might not have the same avenues. Street workers are subject to higher rates of arrest, which always looks good on a job application, and which is a direct reflection of why prostitution laws are racist and classist. But a movement that ignores these members of its cohort enforces that racism and classism.

There, I said it. I know many people will not be happy with me because I do want to talk about the ways privilege plays out in this system. It's about time those of us with more privilege stop defending ourselves against the Melindrea Dworkley types and shift the conversation back to why we want some goddamned rights in the first place. No one deserves to suffer abuse at the hands of clients, the police, or the criminal justice system. Not AIDS-infested crackwhores working the strip. Not manicured, PhD holding whores at the Hilton. Not a single sex worker. If I can use my white middle-class college educated privilege to open a few doors, then I will. But I'm not going to dominate the discussion because I'm not the one most affected.

And that's what I stand for. How about you?

Oh no! The gays are getting hitched!

The California Supreme Court recently, in effect, legalized "same sex" marriage, much to the hand-wringing dismay of the New Right. (The same people, of course, who think I am damaged in the head and morally bankrupt, in case you wondered.) According to this ruling, discriminating against nonheterosexual couples getting married is akin to discriminating on the basis of race. Of course, the New Right points out to us that, ahem, at least multiethnic couples are man and wife. Well, may I remind you, my dear fundamentalists, that fifty years ago, science thought that people of ethnic minorities were genetically inferior? It kind of just goes to show you that with science, you can prove anything you want!

I'm serious. Statistics can make anything a fact. (Look at Dr. Melissa Farley's work.) With a good enough study, I could prove that all cats are morally superior to most humans. Which I do believe is true. My cat has never threatened to beat me up because I'm queer.

What gets my goat is that the New Right cries that the queer "lifestyle" is destroying the family. We need to preserve traditional families, dagnabbit! May I kindly suggest that in the event of saving the traditional family, I ought to marry my first cousin, move in with my siblings and their spouses, my parents, and my grandparents? Hell, to be even more traditional, I'm going to go out west and join a polygamist cult because polygamy is far more traditional.

The New Right wants to save the modern family, the post-WWII family, the Leave It to Beaver mom-at-home, dad-the-breadwinner, two and a half kids family. This is a family that has never really existed for most people. This is a highly racist, classist, sexist family type. Working class women don't really have the luxury of staying at home baking for Junior's school bake sale.

I digress. My real point is this: sexuality is an incredibly fluid thing, not associated with any particular bodily manifestation. My real point is also this: society changes. Every generation thinks the next generation is dooming us all to hell and destruction. If two people loving each other opens the door to hell and destruction, that's not a society of which I want to be part.