Elizabeth's blog

Stop Shaming Us to Death: First National Sex Workers' Rally, USA from PJ Starr on Vimeo.,

It's been quiet around here, and for that I apologize. Things have been unusually busy for me. Much of that is good, and some is regular end-of-semester chaos, but it has meant less time here and I regret that.

The winter solstice is the darkest time of the year, and it is the moment when things start getting brighter. In the spirit of the solstice I want to highlight sex worker solidarity, writing and activism all of which represent efforts toward constructing that brighter future.

Click here to read more

It is Sex Work Awareness Month and on the day that Bettie Page has died I want to take a moment to express my gratitude for the life of a woman whose work is iconic not only for its imagery but also for its lasting impact on generations of women and men who look at porn differently because of who she was. Her life was not an easy one after her modeling career and much of that difficulty is not-so-indirectly linked to the stigma attached to the kind of work she did. 

The New York Times had her obituary-of-record today, and ended with a moving wish on Page's part:

Originally posted on Best Sex Bloggers

We are exactly 9 days away from December 17, International Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers. I’d love to suggest that we dub December “Sex Work Awareness Month,” and spend as much of our blogging time in December focusing on the violence and stigmatization that sex workers face, and also on the good that sex workers do in the world. And just as there is much of the former, there is also a great deal of the latter.

At Sex In The Public Square this month Rebecca Deos told her story about being outed as an escort, and discussed the harm done emotionally and financially not just to herself but to her husband and kids, and she also talked about how the experience brought them together as a family. We also posted a brief piece about the Women’s Institute Lady’s Guide to Brothels. We’ll be posting more this month about legislation in the UK that will increase the stigma on sex work rather than decrease it and about the banning of “extreme” pornography in the UK. And of course we’ll certainly be highlighting the December 17 events.

Sex work is a pretty common theme at Sex in the Public Square, and there are sex worker blogs that address the issues of sex workers in their own voices and with great power and eloquence. But equally important is the support that comes when people who are not necessarily sex workers speak up on their behalf. Not to talk over sex workers’ own voices but to support them by adding many more. Audacia Ray, in a post on Bound, Not Gagged, wrote about the Sex Work Awereness fundraising calendar project:

The vast majority of the people who posed for the calendar and are buying the calendar are not sex workers, but they are expressing solidarity with sex workers and putting their faces, names, and dollars on the lines to support the efforts of a sex worker advocacy organization. And this is a great thing.

Since interviewing Lisa Chavez last April and following the fallout of her being outed as a phone sex worker, and inviting Liz Derrington to tell her part of that same story, I have come to know an increasing number of outed sex workers. One of them, Rebecca Deos, is an amazing woman who traveled from North Carolina to join us at the Sex Work Awareness fund-raising party where we launched our 2009 NYC Sex Bloggers Calendar. (For a $20 donation to SWA you can support sex worker advocacy and have a calendar yourself!)

Rebecca told me about living with her husband and kids in a small town in Florida and about being outed as an escort. The impact of that outing was profound. As Rebecca and I talked I found myself wishing other people could hear her story. In that conversation and in emails since, we've discussed her telling her story here. She maintains her own web site but was hesitant to use it to tell her story because she didn't want to appear to be portraying herself as a victim there. It is her personal and professional site. She was looking for a place with an analytical bent, and she was also looking for a place that might be able to put her story in a context that would be helpful to others. I was flattered when she said she thought that Sex In The Public Square was such a place.

Rebecca tells her story below below. Look for her to appear more around SITPS. We're even discussing a forum for outed sex workers and their allies to share information, resources and support. Rebecca would be the lead moderator. We are also considering a "speaking out" series where people can share stories about how the stigmatization of sexual expression or sexual identities have affected them personally. If you have such a story you'd like to share, please contact Elizabeth by using this contact form.

Click here to read Rebecca's Story in her own words

What happens when the women of the Hampshire Women's Institute decide to take a clear-headed look at prostitution to figure out what makes for "best practices" in brothel prostitution? You get the UK's Channel 4 program, A WI Lady's Guide to Brothels, which describes itself like this:  Click here to read more.

OutHistory.org is an educational web site on LBGT history developed by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at the

City University of New York Graduate Center . Part archive, part museum, part encyclopedia, it is a rare resource in that it makes scholarship on LGBT history widely accessible outside of academic journals. 

This very important project needs your help. Please make a donation if you can! Because of the economic crisis and its impact on public higher education in New York, CLAGS  can't continue funding the project, and the grant that established OutHistory expires on December 31, 2008. In an email sent out today by CLAGS director Sarah Chinn and OutHistory director Ned Katz, the importance of the site and its need for funding is put like this: Continue reading after the jump

Sex Work Awareness helps sex workers and their allies challenge the way that the mainstream media outlets and prohibitionist writers tell their stories and report on the issues that most directly affect them. Here is a very recent example:

In reaction to the ABC News Ashely Dupre Exclusive Megan at Jezebel wrote this piece applauding recent changes to prostitution law in the UK that will criminalize the buying of sexual services and increase reliance on shaming techniques to try to inhibit demand for prostitution thus increasing the stigma attached to sex work. The new rules troublingly conflate trafficking with prostitution and make it less likely that clients will report suspicions that a worker has been trafficked. The Jezebel piece is full of assumptions about prostitutes, and these are the same assumptions - often fueled by methodologically problematic and heavily biased research - that are used to justify policy changes whose unintended consequences are likely to make things more dangerous, not less dangerous, for women. 

Organizations like Sex Work Awareness help sex workers be heard more often, in more places, and with more impact. We need those voices desperately. Help us support Sex Work Awareness by making a $20 donation, for which you will receive our lovely NYC Sex Blogger Calendar. (I'm December -->)

Your entire donation goes directly to SWA because of the generous sponsors who covered the entire cost of producing the calendar.

All calendar photos by Stacie Joy .

And support Sex Work Awareness with your purchase!

It's official: The 2009 Sex Blogger Calendar has officially launched! And if success can be measured by crowd size, we had a spectacularly successful launch party on Friday. And I understand that in just a few hours we raised nearly $2000 for Sex Work Awareness.

My only regret about the party? So many wonderful people and not nearly enough time -- or space! -- to talk to so many of them. I especially regret that, while I was called to join in a group photo with Candida Royale - a woman whose work I have admired for years - that I never had a chance to say more than a brief hello. In addition to being a pioneer in woman-produced porn, Candida and her companies, Femme Productions and Natural Contours, helped sponsor the calendar. And I don't think I even said "thank you" in person! How did I let that happen?!? Click here to read more about the party, the sponsors and the calendar.

UPDATE, 11:25, November 4: The University has publicly stated its support for the faculty member whose privacy was violated. It has so far found no misuse of campus email accounts and it states clearly its confidence in the qualifications and teaching abilities of the professor whose reputation was attacked. I applaud their public statement of support.

On Sunday, November 2, the Ottawa Citizen reported that a faculty member at the University of Ottawa was being targeted by an email campaign clearly intended to question her position on the faculty. The basis for the attack?

The claim that she was as a sex worker.

An anonymous source began circulating an email to the University community and the media last week that included photographs, personal information and transcripts from research interviews.

The violation of the faculty member's privacy is astonishing. To have circulated information with the intent to discredit her is awful enough. To have included hotel room confirmations with home address, linked to her professional name is unconscionable. To have revealed confidential research data - and how was that acquired? - is unethical and appalling. Read more below the fold

There is a reason they only allow one person in at a time!

We are suddenly less than a week away from Election Day in the United States an there is sex on the ballot all over the place. I'm especially interested in the following ballot questions that deal with

• Sex worker rights and public health
• Marriage
• Reproductive freedom