I have been feeling inadequately queer since returning to school this year. I don't know why. Is more of my social circle straight? I don't think so. Most of my friends haven't changed, although I have no classes in the SWG department, and so see fewer members of that community. But still, I haven't changed in any definable way, and neither has my social circle really. But there are things which feel markedly different.
The other day there was an article about short hair in the school newspaper. This interested me because it was discussed from the perspective of a hetero woman who was identifying short hair with a kind of intellectual, mature freedom, something she had rejected as a child as masculine and unattractive, but was learning to understand differently. I cut my hair this summer, but it is still markedly longer than a number of my friends, and is not in any way the stereotypical shop. It is a longer than chin length asymmetrical cut with bangs that I pair with braids and bows and clips. My clothing and style is girly and I love it. But I feel overlooked in this critical part of my identity.
There is definitely an aspect of discussion that is marked by this idea that your sexuality is not your only or most important identity, so why get so caught up in it? Because it's hard enough to claim and it sucks to be invisible. And right now I feel kind of invisible. Maybe I just am tired of being single. Maybe I'm having a new year flash of insecurity. But I don't feel queer enough, no matter what I do lately. There is no social context which seems to fit my need for that community. I'm just not sure what to make of it.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Overlooked and Under-protected, Over-legislated and Under-aided
One of the topics that makes it into the women and queer studies curriculum at my school at only a marginal level are topics like sex work. We discuss them in radical contexts, examine the ramifications of sex work in queer communities, how it has been used in organizing, how it played out in things like butch-femme relationships, etc. But for the most part, modern sex work doesn't get talked about a lot. Recently, though, I've run into a lot of articles on different sites about legislation and changes in the existing "structure" of sex work.
The first article I read was on Mother Jones (read it here). $pread, a sex worker magazine, is entirely run by people in the industry and provides a critical and honest location for tips, support, and other information. This is insider information and allows sex workers to address both the stereotypes and the truths of what they do. One of the topics that this article brought up was a recent controversy regarding Craiglist and the use of Craigslist for "adult services." The particular question asked to one of the main folks at $pread was "Could you explain why you consider Craigslist to be "one of the most equalizing forces in the sex industry in generations"?" It was answered in regard to the fact that this stopped being true when it suddenly cost money to post ads. This became a considerable economic block, and one which in turn reduced the safety of people who could no longer advertise there and had no means to otherwise screen clients, left now to the streets and sheer luck. Craigslist had provided autonomy and safety in one neat package - sex workers could post and add and screen their clients, able then to do things like voice verifications and email exchanges without having to depend on agencies which drained them financially. Now, folks in sex-work are even more cut-off in the face of a recent Craigslist decision.
I was reading Huffington Post today and found this. Craigslist has, for all intents and purposes, removed its adult services section. In it's place (and I went and looked) is just a black rectangle bearing the white text of the word "Censored." Now there isn't even the option to use Craigslist with payment. It's just gone. The accusation against Craigslist was that it was acting as an intermediary in illegal activity by not screening or blocking ads in this section. The question is, though, what is more important: preventing an intermediary from existing for an industry that exists and isn't going anywhere or allowing that intermediary to exist such that the same industry can at least exist safely? If people are still going to engage in sex work, and they will because the people who do primarily do so out of economic necessity, then why make it more dangerous? You can't legislate it away, and legislating it into the tenuous margins of society only succeeds in recentering the debate when it is revealed that the dangers are so great.
That's what Canada, where sex work is putatively legal (but essentially not legal) has found in the face of some of it's new laws for the industry after a spate of murders. Salon posted on Thursday about Canada's new laws that even more explicitly prevent a lot of the safety structures - groups, "bawdy houses", etc - that made sex work safer. The community that could protect each other by moving in a group with clients picked up in ways allowing for screening is basically eliminated by this legislation which makes the penalties for basically any identifiable form of sex work greater - longer jail terms, removal of children from custody (because these people are trying to support their children and have money to raise them). One of the scarier things to me is that police will be able to pick up people believed to be engaging in sex work without having a warrant, one of the most basic tools of protection against "law enforcement" and the often racist and classist policies that go along with arrests.
So how do we make prostitution safer, if even in places where it is technically legal it is incredibly dangerous? Part of it has to do with listening. Just listening. The spate of sex worker killings in Canada went on as long as it did because police refused to listen to tips from other local people in the industry. We have an obligation to provide safety. The only people being hurt by sex work as it is structured now, are the workers, the people who should be protected. They are not the dangerous ones. They provide a service that in turn provides them with money to eat, clothe, and shelter themselves and their children. But sex-shaming morality triumphs here such that the moral obligation to provide safe working conditions, to protect people from basic bodily harm, is overruled. The moral law that sex is bad becomes more important than the one that says putting others in danger is bad. How does that benefit anyone?
The first article I read was on Mother Jones (read it here). $pread, a sex worker magazine, is entirely run by people in the industry and provides a critical and honest location for tips, support, and other information. This is insider information and allows sex workers to address both the stereotypes and the truths of what they do. One of the topics that this article brought up was a recent controversy regarding Craiglist and the use of Craigslist for "adult services." The particular question asked to one of the main folks at $pread was "Could you explain why you consider Craigslist to be "one of the most equalizing forces in the sex industry in generations"?" It was answered in regard to the fact that this stopped being true when it suddenly cost money to post ads. This became a considerable economic block, and one which in turn reduced the safety of people who could no longer advertise there and had no means to otherwise screen clients, left now to the streets and sheer luck. Craigslist had provided autonomy and safety in one neat package - sex workers could post and add and screen their clients, able then to do things like voice verifications and email exchanges without having to depend on agencies which drained them financially. Now, folks in sex-work are even more cut-off in the face of a recent Craigslist decision.
I was reading Huffington Post today and found this. Craigslist has, for all intents and purposes, removed its adult services section. In it's place (and I went and looked) is just a black rectangle bearing the white text of the word "Censored." Now there isn't even the option to use Craigslist with payment. It's just gone. The accusation against Craigslist was that it was acting as an intermediary in illegal activity by not screening or blocking ads in this section. The question is, though, what is more important: preventing an intermediary from existing for an industry that exists and isn't going anywhere or allowing that intermediary to exist such that the same industry can at least exist safely? If people are still going to engage in sex work, and they will because the people who do primarily do so out of economic necessity, then why make it more dangerous? You can't legislate it away, and legislating it into the tenuous margins of society only succeeds in recentering the debate when it is revealed that the dangers are so great.
That's what Canada, where sex work is putatively legal (but essentially not legal) has found in the face of some of it's new laws for the industry after a spate of murders. Salon posted on Thursday about Canada's new laws that even more explicitly prevent a lot of the safety structures - groups, "bawdy houses", etc - that made sex work safer. The community that could protect each other by moving in a group with clients picked up in ways allowing for screening is basically eliminated by this legislation which makes the penalties for basically any identifiable form of sex work greater - longer jail terms, removal of children from custody (because these people are trying to support their children and have money to raise them). One of the scarier things to me is that police will be able to pick up people believed to be engaging in sex work without having a warrant, one of the most basic tools of protection against "law enforcement" and the often racist and classist policies that go along with arrests.
So how do we make prostitution safer, if even in places where it is technically legal it is incredibly dangerous? Part of it has to do with listening. Just listening. The spate of sex worker killings in Canada went on as long as it did because police refused to listen to tips from other local people in the industry. We have an obligation to provide safety. The only people being hurt by sex work as it is structured now, are the workers, the people who should be protected. They are not the dangerous ones. They provide a service that in turn provides them with money to eat, clothe, and shelter themselves and their children. But sex-shaming morality triumphs here such that the moral obligation to provide safe working conditions, to protect people from basic bodily harm, is overruled. The moral law that sex is bad becomes more important than the one that says putting others in danger is bad. How does that benefit anyone?
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