Sex workers not political footballs

DR GABRIELLE JAMELA HOSEIN

HUMAN TRAFFICKING and prostitution, which are not the same thing, are back in public uproar. There are a lot of voices speaking, such as politicians, police and even neighbours of brothels, but the voices of sex workers and prostitutes are mostly unheard.

Hearing from this group is essential for recognising what sex workers want and need from legislators, social services, police and others, rather than having their issues defined for them. As well, as feminist scholar Kamala Kempadoo puts it, in her collection, Sun, Sex, and Gold: Tourism and Sex Work in the Caribbean, we should be “sensitive to the humanity of those who [make] a living selling sex, not pathologize or condemn working women and men for taking up prostitution,” particularly in an economy that has been in contraction since 2010.

First, human trafficking and prostitution are not the same. Sex workers are not necessarily trafficked or forced into sex work in the ways typically imagined.

There are trafficked girls and women who are imprisoned and forced into sexual labour. There are also women (and men and transpersons) who engage in sexual labour and who live at home with their families, raise children, and may have additional, but insufficient, sources of income. Provision of romance or sex in exchange for food, money, or housing, for example, takes place along a broad continuum in our society. It has been so for 500 years.

While issues of male dominance and violence, oppressive conditions and sexual exploitation are real, as they have been since slavery, it is also true that there is a long history of women of all ethnicities using sex work to reconfigure power and to improve their families’ and their own lives.

Treating these women as only victims to be rescued stereotypes diverse and complex experiences in this area of labour relations, driving sex work further underground and into precarious contexts. As well, when we don’t think of sex work as work, its stigmatised status means that harms experienced on the job, such as physical violence or rape, are less likely to be reported to the police.

Thinking instead about prostitution and sex work in terms of labour rights, working conditions and unionised representation is a shift that is long overdue.

All over the world, sex workers are organised. The Jamaica Sex Work Coalition was founded in 2007. The Guyana Sex Worker Coalition was established in 2008, the same year that the Caribbean Sex Work Coalition was formed.

To quote comments made by executive director Miriam Edwards in 2016, “Sex work is work. Sex worker rights are human rights. Each sex worker belongs to, has a family, has feelings, and has needs. As such, they should benefit from the same rights as any other person.”

The dominant union tradition in our country plus the space taken up by male-defined concerns and respectability politics are reasons why sex workers are not embraced by unions and find it challenging to organise those in their own industry. Yet, unions build worker power from the ground up and create more democratic decision-making regarding laws and protocols that should govern sex work and protect sex workers’ rights.

Sex workers are generally freelancers working under a range of circumstances, like many media workers, domestic workers, sanitation workers, DJs, graphic artists and others in the gig (temporary or part-time) economy. They could benefit from lessons learned from organising such groups and well as contribute to national knowledge about how best to organise those in the informal sector.

Sex worker unions are not necessarily focused on decriminalisation, but may prioritise improving health services, community-building, sensitisation of state representatives, and reducing discrimination through human rights awareness.

Nonetheless, decriminalisation would allow greater collective bargaining, assisted by legal recourse. It would enable prostitutes to sit at the table and propose how their industry as a whole should or should not be regulated, just like chambers of commerce.

Those in prostitution may be divided by ethnicity, employer, other employment status, gender, age, sexuality, class, health status, motherhood, marital status and more. They are often in a contradictory relationship with the State as HIV policies may be non-discriminatory while legislation is not.

Public hysteria prevents understanding of sex work as a labour process that includes choice and exploitation – as do most forms of low-paid, low-status and non-unionised labour.

It includes oppression as well as bases for collective action and self-determination. Greater recognition of the latter would reflect genuine concern about sex workers’ realities. Currently, this is merely a football among political elites.

Diary of a mothering worker

motheringworker@gmail.com

Entry 501